Shadowdark Shadowdark General Thread [+]
- Thread starter overgeeked
- Start date
What is your design philosophy behind the flow of the maps, as played in Shadowdark?
One thing that I don't see discussed very often is how the torch timer changes the calculus of actual torch consumption. In B/X (or similar) where processes like checking doors, searching rooms and other activities eat turns, a lot of small chambers, short corridors and searchable heaps eat a lot of light resources. In SD tho, a focused party can get through a lot more of these things in "real time" thus saving light resources.
DarkCrisis
Let her cook.
How often should the group carouse if doing a hexcrawl style game? Just whenever they return to the Inn/Fort/Whatever?
Scribe
Legend
As long as you have the resources and an opportunity.
My adventure I'm working on has scenarios where it's enabled but if those are not met, no amount of gold is relevant.
Whizbang Dustyboots
Gnometown Hero
Since carousing takes resources away from gear upgrades, torches, food, hirelings, I let players choose to have their characters do it whenever they go into town, typically at the end of a session.
There are definitely situations where it wouldn't make sense (if they remain stuck in the underworld or are marooned on a desert island or something), but otherwise, letting them expend their resources as often as possible is a key part of the Shadowdark game loop, IMO. If they're fat and happy and living off their investments, they're not incentivized to go out and explore dangerous spaces again.
There are definitely situations where it wouldn't make sense (if they remain stuck in the underworld or are marooned on a desert island or something), but otherwise, letting them expend their resources as often as possible is a key part of the Shadowdark game loop, IMO. If they're fat and happy and living off their investments, they're not incentivized to go out and explore dangerous spaces again.
I have a bunch of factors I consider when designing the dungeon. First, I do try to limit, to some extent, the extraneous searching after red herrings implied by my descriptions (minimal secret doors and traps too). Second, I already have functions for the rooms in mind as I design them and the map, with the idea being that all the bits work togther to paint the evocative picture I want them to (and there aren't wasted rooms with nothing interesting to add). I also do a run through for each level, and the dungeon overall, to roughtly balance encounters to the desired level tier and to get the amount of loot set to something correct, also for the listed tier.
I do include both time wasters and countdowns in most of my stuff too. In the case of the dungeon above, which is tomb kings flavoured, there is an alarm tracker. The dungeon hasna bunch of 1HP mook skeleton workers that weill go about their programmed tasks and ignore the PCs, but once the alarm happens they will attack. There are also two bits,the rooms containing smaller rooms, that are purpose designed to bait the PCs into wasting time searching. There is loot to be found, but the cost of time spent might be high.
I usally have something to put some time pressure on the PCs in addition to the torch timer, with the goal that the two different time indexes will keep things moving along at a good clip.
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Micah Sweet
Level Up & OSR Enthusiast
Arilyn
Hero
My guess, is it'll be a generic setting suitable for games from Knave to 5e.
Whizbang Dustyboots
Gnometown Hero
Based on his description, I could certainly see running it in a lot of systems.
