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<blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 6099085" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 310: August 2003part 8/9Dungeoncraft: Monte talks about the map-first method of dungeon building. Just as with plot first, you do need to have an idea behind what you're doing, as it makes things much more coherent than just adding rooms and figuring out what goes in them afterwards. Of course, you could say that it started out as one thing, and then got repurposed, but if you're coming up with stuff like that, I think you're well on the way to building an interesting story and environment anyway. What also helps is to imagine what it looks like and then draw it, rather than just sketching, and think of it in three dimensions, rather than entirely separate levels on different sheets of graph paper. The map is not the territory, and hopefully, your environment and description of it'll be good enough that the players think of it in that way as well. As with Johnn's advice, this is fairly familiar, and the difference is mainly in the flavour of the retelling. You use this kind of article as a checklist to make sure you aren't forgetting something obvious when you build your adventures, and to see how playstyles are evolving over the years. And as we already know, their official stance is back to the dungeon, but in practice we're still keeping most of the lessons we learned in 2e about building more elaborate characters and stories. That's about the tone of it here. Let's see where it takes us next.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="(un)reason, post: 6099085, member: 27780"] [B][U]Dragon Issue 310: August 2003[/U][/B] part 8/9 Dungeoncraft: Monte talks about the map-first method of dungeon building. Just as with plot first, you do need to have an idea behind what you're doing, as it makes things much more coherent than just adding rooms and figuring out what goes in them afterwards. Of course, you could say that it started out as one thing, and then got repurposed, but if you're coming up with stuff like that, I think you're well on the way to building an interesting story and environment anyway. What also helps is to imagine what it looks like and then draw it, rather than just sketching, and think of it in three dimensions, rather than entirely separate levels on different sheets of graph paper. The map is not the territory, and hopefully, your environment and description of it'll be good enough that the players think of it in that way as well. As with Johnn's advice, this is fairly familiar, and the difference is mainly in the flavour of the retelling. You use this kind of article as a checklist to make sure you aren't forgetting something obvious when you build your adventures, and to see how playstyles are evolving over the years. And as we already know, their official stance is back to the dungeon, but in practice we're still keeping most of the lessons we learned in 2e about building more elaborate characters and stories. That's about the tone of it here. Let's see where it takes us next. [/QUOTE]

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