Room Sizes...

[Celebrim]

Had to get to the 15th post before someone said this.

/sigh

The architect who designed, or the builders who built the dungeon, castle, tavern, tower, etc., didn't construct each area based on how easy it would be to fight a battle there, using their crystal balls to see the future and know exactly how many creatures would be in the battle and how fast they are.

Typically, if what someone else is saying seems really silly, there is a good chance you aren't being very generous in considering what they are saying and are arguing against a strawman of you own construction.

No one is suggesting all structures are built according to the needs of future dungeon dwellers. In fact, despite my interest in the discussion, I'm not even suggesting that dungeons should be designed primarily to serve gamist needs.

But I am saying that it is a consideration.

Moreover, you can reach the same logic beginning with a simulationist stance and moving in reverse. Monsters need a certain amount of space to live in, and a certain amount of space to fight in. So monsters will seek to dwell in locations that accomodate them, and seek to do battle in locations that are suited to them. So, twenty kobolds won't do battle in a 10'x10' room unless they think its advantageous of them to do so. Lone Ilithiads 'lurkers' won't choose to give battle in large feast halls if they have any choice in the matter. People designing thier strongholds will make consideration of defensive aspects of the construction, and that will include allowing minions to concentrate thier attacks on heroic foes, and will provide rooms accordingly.

Fantasy societies are fantastically wealthy compared to thier real world counterparts. They can and do build big.

I cannot even imagine building a dungeon (or any other structure) around the idea of making each room large enough for the encounter that might be fought in it.

I cannot even imagine designing an encounter without giving some consideration to the size of the room and accessways that the dungeon provides. I'm not randomly going to toss creatures into rooms. But if I have some prior notion of some of the inhabitants I want to put in the dungeon, I'm going to design the dungeon such that there are logical rooms logically suited to those inhabitants. This thread is about how you'd go about deciding what a necessary minimum size would be to achieve certain goals regarding the free flowing nature of the combat of that encounter.

 

[Celebrim]

Because the encounter space isn't built by an architect.

It's built by a set designer: me.

My very first post on EnWorld was about the usefulness of looking at what architects had built when setting about to design the stage your story would play on.

I don't see nearly the conflict between 'built by an architect' and 'built by a set designer' that you apparantly do. But then, we don't see the game in the same way either.

 

[frankthedm]

[imagel]http://img209.imageshack.us/img209/7586/purplewormffin9.gif[/imagel]Posted by DM_Blake
I cannot even imagine building a dungeon (or any other structure) around the idea of making each room large enough for the encounter that might be fought in it.
____________________________________________

Mostly agree. While it is still a game, played for fun, construction should be done based on the builder’s intent. Destruction on the other hand is a wonderful tool to enhance playability. Yes, the armory, storeroom and the dwarven bath chamber were all small areas, though the purple worm wound up connecting those areas as it was eating its way through the dwarven stronghold.

 

[Clavis]

I can see it now...

Players complaining because their DM's realistic 3-5' wide underground corridors and 10' x 10' rooms make 4th Edition's numerous movement-based powers useless. You can't move opponents around a battlefield if there's nowhere to move them.

I thinks that's going to be one of the first big problems noticed with 4th Edition, causing a lot of player-DM friction. Subsequent books will address it, adding powers to make up for how often the movement-based powers are nullified in practice. Then we'll get 3rd Edition-style power creep all over again, necessitating 5th Edition.

 

[Wormwood]

Players complaining because their DM's realistic 3-5' wide underground corridors and 10' x 10' rooms make 4th Edition's numerous movement-based powers useless. You can't move opponents around a battlefield if there's nowhere to move them.

That's not a 4e problem---that's a DM/player problem. The players want to play their characters, the DM doesn't want them to.

Those players don't need a new edition. They need a new DM.

 

[jodyjohnson]

I imagine any room where you want to place a cinematic combat in 4e will require at 8x8 space or if broken into several well connected areas will be 12x12 squares.

While I can imagine fights in something designed like the areas in a house they don't feel like exciting fights for a multiple character party. Even a casual comparison to movie fights shows that cinema fightland occurs in a fantasy universe where gun fights occur in warehouses, malls, corporate atriums, palacial mansions, and huge cubicle farms not in normal homes, university dorms, or the other efficient style spaces we spend most of our time in.

It's not that efficient use of space doesn't exist. They just don't get Room numbers and encounter descriptions.

 

[Wormwood]

While I can imagine fights in something designed like the areas in a house they don't feel like exciting fights for a multiple character party. Even a casual comparison to movie fights shows that cinema fightland occurs in a fantasy universe where gun fights occur in warehouses, malls, corporate atriums, palacial mansions, and huge cubicle farms not in normal homes, university dorms, or the other efficient style spaces we spend most of our time in.

Don't forget the spacious yet perilous Smoke and Flame Factories (coined by Roger Ebert) which are the favored location for climactic final showdowns.

Back to the topic, I think the Fantastic Locations line (Hellspike Prison, Fane of the Drow, etc) may be an indication of the type of encounter spaces Wizards has in mind for 4e.

 

[DM_Blake]

you can reach the same logic beginning with a simulationist stance and moving in reverse. Monsters need a certain amount of space to live in, and a certain amount of space to fight in. So monsters will seek to dwell in locations that accomodate them, and seek to do battle in locations that are suited to them. So, twenty kobolds won't do battle in a 10'x10' room unless they think its advantageous of them to do so. Lone Ilithiads 'lurkers' won't choose to give battle in large feast halls if they have any choice in the matter. People designing thier strongholds will make consideration of defensive aspects of the construction, and that will include allowing minions to concentrate thier attacks on heroic foes, and will provide rooms accordingly.

Very true. This is exactly how I see it.

Kobolds like tight quarters. It lets them swarm their bigger foes and minimized the mobility and combat ability of the larger foes, too.

Lone Illithids won't choose battle in a giant feast hall, but they might get ambushed there, or taken by surprise when they were passing through, or serching for something.

I don't always expect my monsters to be in their ideal environment. Some encounters I devise give the monsters advantageous terrain/environment, but some give the advantage to the players. And some are fairly neutral in that regard.

But when I do put an encounter in an advantageous setting, one that that particular monster or bad guy selected for "home turf" advantage to maximize its/his chance of survival, then yes, that encounter goes into a space well suited to it.

Which means the huge dragon chooses to fight in the feast hall with the collapsed roof (for easy escape if it goes bad), the illithid finds a long corridor tht funnels the invading heroes into a narrow line for maximum effect of its psionics (and preferably one with a pit in the middle to catch the foolish charging paladin and slow down the rest of the heroes), and the kobolds lurk in a small, dark room with lots of furnigure and impediments to the heroes movement - all assuming they can pick their battlefield.

I cannot even imagine designing an encounter without giving some consideration to the size of the room and accessways that the dungeon provides. I'm not randomly going to toss creatures into rooms. But if I have some prior notion of some of the inhabitants I want to put in the dungeon, I'm going to design the dungeon such that there are logical rooms logically suited to those inhabitants. This thread is about how you'd go about deciding what a necessary minimum size would be to achieve certain goals regarding the free flowing nature of the combat of that encounter.

I guess I take a different approach.

I determine what the structure is, what purpose it serves, and then what rooms are in it and what purpose they serve. I imagine the dungeon, castle, tower, etc., as if it were currently being used for the purpose for which it was designed.

Then I fast forward to today. Maybe I work out why the original inhabitants left, maybe I don't. But today the structure is inhabited by monsters (or, sometimes, it's a new structure inhabited by whoever built it).

Then I put the monsters/bad guys in it. I put most of them into rooms that they would prefer to be in (not necessarily a combat preference - their preference might be a private place to sleep, or an interesting place they are searching for treasure, or whatever suits their immediate purpose).

If that monster's immediate purpose is inhabiting a good defensive position according to its preferred environment for combat, then I select a room in the dungeon that best suits that purpose, is accessible to the monster, and is not contested by the uncooperative mean monster in the next room. You won't find the human assassin setting up an ambush in the bedroom closet if the bedroom is inhabited by giant venemous spiders - unless they chased him into the closet.

Sometimes I get a neat idea for a monster, or even a prior notion of some of the inhabitants I want to put in the dungeon. Then I look around my map and decide that this particular monster wouldn't be suitable for any available map location, so I pick a different monster and save my neat idea for the next dungeon.

 

[DM_Blake]

Players complaining because their DM's realistic 3-5' wide underground corridors and 10' x 10' rooms make 4th Edition's numerous movement-based powers useless. You can't move opponents around a battlefield if there's nowhere to move them.

That's not a 4e problem---that's a DM/player problem. The players want to play their characters, the DM doesn't want them to.

Those players don't need a new edition. They need a new DM.

Maybe.

If the DM does that to them all the time, or most of the time.

I'm all for the idea "hey, the player has a nifty ability, let's make sure he gets to use it". This makes it fun for players.

But I'm also all for the idea "hey, the monster isn't just a target for player abilities - the monster wants to live, will fight hard to defend its life, and will choose terrain/environment to limit the attackers if it can". This makes it challenging for the players.

I think players want to have fun. And I think they like to overcome challenges.

So sure, sometimes I set up battles where many of the player abilities are limited or useless.

And, as a player, I enjoy overcoming those challenges myself.

Just this last weekend we had a battle in a dungeon where the room we were in had some kind of replenishing Obscuring Mist spell. My mage cleared the room twice with a Gust Of Wind, but the mist just reappeared a round later. On the other side of the door was a room full of badguys. Our fighter couldn't get through the door, so I had to stand behind him, and therefore I couldn't see through the mist to target any bad guys in the room. Which meant I really couldn't cast any offensive spells because the spells I had all required line of sight to the target. That dang room completely wiped me out of the encounter. It was frustrating for that fight to be unable to do anything but fire my crossbow with a 50% miss chance, assuming I even got a hit to begin with. But on the other hand, it turned a room full of hobgoblins that I would have wiped out with a single fireball into a challenging encounter because I couldn't do that, and our fighter pretty much had to handle them alone, with clerical healing and a little buffing and random blind firing from the ranger, rogue, and my mage.

It was a fun challenge, even if I was useless.

Now, if he did that every fight, I would need a new DM.

 

[spontaneuscombustion]

What? 2' by 2' squares?

I don't really see how it would help anything whatsoever to have 2' by 2' squares. That would simply mean that your character would have to be Tiny to fit in it. I think that this question is on the same field as why shocking grasp doesn't shock the guy grappling the target. It isn't feasible, but it is part of the rules. At some point you'll have to step back from logic and realize that D&D is called fantasy for a reason.