#dungeon building

[gayocmaker]

Hmmmm Sfadtde Hmmmmmm

This aint finalised (FARRRRRRR from it-) but the cerate worms hit me so heres a little some thing for those interesd!

(Also new tag 'dungeon building' for world building :D)

[dungeonmalcontent]

I really think that detecting illusions is a heavily underused mechanic in ttrpgs.

So try this. You make a dungeon. Everything in the dungeon is positioned and behaves as if there are walls. In reality, there are no walls. There are incredibly high level illusions if walls. The doors are real, the floor is real, all the items in the dungeon are real. Some of the doors are even locked. But there's no walls.

And the trick is, unless a player specifically says they touch a wall or they lean up against a wall or anything like that, you say nothin to give them even a hint that the walls aren't real. Because they're going to assume that there are walls, even if you don't have miniatures, or a VTT map, or you don't describe them. It's unreasonable to poke around at every aspect of your surroundings to see if they're real or not.

With perceptive skill alone, a player requires an absurdly high check. 35 or something along those lines.

So there are really only four ways to discover the walls aren't really there.

1) player touches the wall and realizes that it isn't there.

2) player uses magic to detect or see through an illusion. I'm considering extrasensory ability in this category as well, but sensory still has to be mostly intentional because they have to have a reason to distrust their eyes.

3) skill check. They try to look around them to find something. They might notice a slight improbable repeating perfection to the illusion.

4) they beat the dungeon and the illusion fades, revealing how silly they've been this whole time.

[silver-spider-art]

I made this deck to make random dungeons for collaborative play. Letting the players and Game Master alternate building out the dungeon as they go. The room cards come with a variety of entrances, with and without doors, and there are a variety of hallway connections. With the symbols on the room cards, they could do used to represent specific rooms chosen by the Game Master or a type of random encounter rolled from a table. Endless possibilities and creative rules used to play with them.

I hope other people have as much fun using these at there table as my party has had with them. <3

Available on my Patreon and Ko-Fi

[nextleveldnd]

Sunken Druid Circle - 3/? Unique Dungeon Settings

Click HERE to see the rest of my Unique Dungeon Settings Series!

Artist Credit - https://www.deviantart.com/niksibaksen/art/Mushroom-Forest-335731694

[dungeonmastersconsortium]

Dungeon Building Tip #1

(Please keep in mind that your dungeon doesn’t have to be a literal dungeon! When I use dungeon, I really just mean an enclosed location that can host an adventure/series of encounters.)

So, let’s start from the beginning! How is your party going to find the dungeon? Are they given its location, or do they seek an artifact and they find the dungeon because it holds something they’re looking for? There are many ways that you can guide players to a dungeon, but it should be thematically appropriate. If your dungeon is full of horrors and is a psychologically unsettling place, you may not want to spring that kind of thing on your players. (Unless you’re me, running the DMC game. But more on that later.) They should hear murmurs about this place well in advance. Not only does that psychologically prepare your players, but if they’ve heard about an identifying mark about this place, (”I heard that the mansion with an eye above the door is...”) when they find that mark they get a very satisfying moment of dread and recognition. If it’s a classic “hack, slash, ‘n loot” kind of dungeon, maybe they got the heads up from a group of merchants that got raided moving by it!

If you’re going to intentionally switch the tone, make sure that there’s a reason to do so. For instance, as soon as the DMC crew finished their first arc, they decided to travel across the continent. On the way, they stopped at a village for supplies, and the village turned out to be trapped in a Lovecraftian nightmare sequence, which was slowly revealed to the players. This dramatic tone shift did multiple things: it turned a party of confident adventurers into a group of people that realized not every challenge could be beaten, only escaped. It foreshadowed events to come. And it served as a vehicle for character development. Important: When planning a campaign tone shift that dramatic, consult your players first. Get their consent. Otherwise if they don’t like it, you’ve spent all that time to, at best, give them an unsatisfying session. You may even cause some players to not want to play with you anymore. 

Last thing: How do we set the tone from the get-go? This can be done in a few ways.

1. Have NPC’s talk about what they’ve heard about your dungeon. Their attitudes toward the place can go a long way toward setting the tone. (This won’t work for all groups.) If even guardsmen are afraid of heading to a certain place, this should warn your party that they’re in for a fight. 

2. The physical environment. Describe in detail what effects the dungeon’s occupants have had on the area. If monsters are congregating in a massive network of caves underground, perhaps the surrounding landscape is riddled with blood, bite marks, or claw marks. If undead infest a mountain, perhaps the weather is always dark and gloomy.

3. The opening encounter. Your opening encounter will set a tone for the players no matter what. If it’s a tough fight that knocks a player or two out, many groups of players will back off right away. Those that don’t will be very cautious throughout the dungeon trek, knowing that since one of them died already, the chances of it happening again if they are careless are quite high. You could subvert this as well. If you want to build up false confidence, make some encounters that seem like a cakewalk until they reach midway through the dungeon. Some players, again, will NOT appreciate this. Get to know your players before doing something like that. 

I hope this was helpful in working through ideas for dungeons! My next tip will likely be building dungeon themes as a whole!

[nextleveldnd]

Floating Fortress - 2/? Unique Dungeon Settings

Click HERE to see the rest of my Unique Dungeon Settings Series!

[briarpatch-dragon]

I’m back at it with designing new dungeons for Fun and Profit

I really liked the name for my previous attempt, The Descent of Hours. I also liked the initial conceit of an innocent location leading to a dungeon much deeper and more sinister than expected…

So we’re taking those ideas and combining them with a different conceit: a Soulslike dungeon centered around a hub level that you return to each time you die! This will hopefully allow for nonlinear exploration and more JRPG/MMO style fight mechanics where experimenting with strategies against powerful bosses is a part of the gameplay loop.

This is the main floor of our hub level, a tavern known as the Eagle’s Rest. The bartender is, of course, an eagle aarakocra named Qraik.

[guywithbeer]

Check my gaming channel for the playthrough videos of levels 1 to 10 of DUNGEONS 4. More levels will be out as soon as I get a chance to play some more.

#dungeons4 #playthrough #gameplay #videogames #gaming #dungeons #dungeonbuilder #fantasy #rts #xbox