D&D General The senseless achitecture in most official products

[Jfdlsjfd]

I am not sure the care/don't care is a player divide. Some players can "not care" most of the time and then, suddenly, one of them asks "how can the cave we are in can have a access to the sea, since we just went down X feet, and the cave entrance was Y feet above sea level? We should be submerged right now..." I retconned the length of the shaft they climbed down immediately so they could be at sea level, but I did'nt expect them to have tracked the depth they were at. It was totally inconsequential at the moment, but you can have perceptive players just throwing a remark and threaten to break suspension of disbelief. If you're designing coherent architecture every time, you'll be less prone to make a blunder. Not that it's game-breaking in any way...

 

[Paul Farquhar]

If your players really don't care, then in some regards you're quite lucky.

But some players - and I'd count myself among them, though I've seen and played with far worse than me - do care.

It's and interesting point. My players did pass a comment on the "weird architecture". Thing is, it was one I'd done myself, and I didn't think is was that weird. I had a spiral staircase running up the centre of a cylindrical tower, with an interior wall around it, with a door leading to the stairwell. This made the rooms sort of donut shaped.

 

[Richards]

We started a new backup campaign and one of the players still hasn't named his PC after a 6 hour session. Its just not that important to him.

I've had that happen, only in our case it was because the player had thought up a cool name he wanted for his PC, didn't write it down, promptly forgot it, and then spent the next half-dozen adventures with an unnamed PC as a result.

We just gave his PC a nickname and that nickname stuck with him for the rest of the campaign, even after the player came up with an actual name.

Johnathan

 

[David Howery]

We just gave his PC a nickname and that nickname stuck with him for the rest of the campaign, even after the player came up with an actual name.

In the first group I was in way back in early 1E days, modules were rife with unnamed NPCs. Our players just tended to call all of them Fred. There was Fred the merchant and Fred the farmer and Fred the guard, etc. In fact, since in our group no one wanted to play the cleric and we had an endless conga line of NPC clerics helping us, we just called them all Fred and decided that they all worshipped the great god Fred. This was before Greyhawk had any official pantheon, and we were just making it up as we went...

 

[Tony Vargas]

those dungeons that do have ... multiple floors/levels - there's almost invariably not enough vertical connections or access points; leading to those that do exist always becoming chokepoints.

That's a definite old D&D tradition, too - the idea of each dungeon level being tougher and more rewarding than the one above, and the SOP of clearing a level before descending to the next.

 

[Lanefan]

I am not sure the care/don't care is a player divide. Some players can "not care" most of the time and then, suddenly, one of them asks "how can the cave we are in can have a access to the sea, since we just went down X feet, and the cave entrance was Y feet above sea level? We should be submerged right now..." I retconned the length of the shaft they climbed down immediately so they could be at sea level, but I did'nt expect them to have tracked the depth they were at. It was totally inconsequential at the moment, but you can have perceptive players just throwing a remark and threaten to break suspension of disbelief. If you're designing coherent architecture every time, you'll be less prone to make a blunder. Not that it's game-breaking in any way...

It also means they're paying enough attention to maybe notice other things that don't make sense e.g. maybe that shaft was a teleporter and they're coming out in a completely different cave, and the elevation difference is the first clue that all's not right...

 

[Lanefan]

We just gave his PC a nickname and that nickname stuck with him for the rest of the campaign, even after the player came up with an actual name.

Same thing happened once with us - a player brought in a new character without a name so we named it for him, and that name stuck like glue for its entire career.

Since then, due to this, every new character has come in with a name, no matter how humble or ridiculous.

 

[Lanefan]

That's a definite old D&D tradition, too - the idea of each dungeon level being tougher and more rewarding than the one above, and the SOP of clearing a level before descending to the next.

True, but far more interesting to have multiple vertical accesses and have the threats not quite so sedimented.

Also, not all those vertical accesses should go just from one floor/level to the next. Stairways (or shafts, whatever) that bypass levels or floors are always fun.

Again, check out Dark Tower if you haven't already. It does this really well, while still eventually guiding you in to the - somewhat more linear - final sequence of encounters (which is almost like a dungeon within a dungeon).

 

[MonsterEnvy]

At least we need no explanation for Acereak's Dungeons. He designed them to confusing and dickish.

 

[Bohandas]

Maybe the weird design has some occult significance, like the apartment building from Ghostbusters, or like Winchester Mansion in real life.

On a related note, rather than having a paranormal purpose, some of it may be of paranormal origin. Either of a naturally occurring sort (as in things like SCP-002, SCP-229, SCP-836 or House 2: The Second Story) or intentional (as seen with the shifting passages in places like Castle Ravenloft or Crypt of Lyzandred the Mad)