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Post by sonicracer100 on Jan 9, 2020 8:25:26 GMT -6
How often do you incorporate mapping tricks such as slanting corridors, spinning rooms, and teleporters or whatever else meant to stump the mappers!
And to make areas even more complicated, how would you describe curved corridors and oddly shaped rooms to your players? |
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Post by Scott Anderson on Jan 9, 2020 12:50:41 GMT -6
I never try to trick the mapper. Players are bad enough as it is!
To me the key feature of a dungeon is that it limits choices to a small concrete number to facilitate encounter sequence. It’s a flowchart for adventure. To then mess up the flowchart ruins one of its best features.
They do sometimes miss an important secret door (or something) so I have to figure out how to give them another option so that’s something that would happen on the fly. But when that happens it’s a result of my poor design rather than them messing up.
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Post by Piper on Jan 9, 2020 17:36:45 GMT -6
I never try to trick the mapper. I wouldn't say I try to trick them, either. Nor do I use simplistic designs to make it easy for them. I let if flow organically but I also try to think of the purpose of what I'm designing. Is it to keep treasure safe or protect the resting place of a revered leader? Of course it will be difficult to find your way ... that's sort of the whole point! Adventuring is a difficult, dangerous profession in my milieu. |
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Post by makofan on Jan 10, 2020 8:27:15 GMT -6
As Piper said. Never to trick the player by the DM, more like the intent of the builder to foil outside robbers. My philosophy is also more to reward players with bonus areas to explore if they figure out tricks, rather than punish players who don't figure out the tricks |
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Post by Red Baron on Jan 23, 2020 7:35:49 GMT -6
I prefer mapping methods that trick the party (such as sloping passages) over trying to confuse the mapper via oddly shaped rooms.
A good map should get the party lost without being difficult to describe, and bogging down gameplay.
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Post by tkdco2 on Jan 26, 2020 1:36:24 GMT -6
Dragon Magazine once had an article about tesseracts and how to use them in your dungeons. I used it once in a Star Trek adventure.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 10, 2020 22:19:39 GMT -6
I like the idea of using things like penrose stairs, but I've never done it before.
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Post by doublejig2 on Jul 11, 2020 1:28:31 GMT -6
I'm running a DCC campaign featuring unexpected portals, drug trances, and deeper delves. All present mapping challenges.
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Post by asaki on Jul 11, 2020 12:32:41 GMT -6
Yeah, Idunno about that kind of stuff. I feel like it's more annoying than anything, and most players are already reluctant to play oldschool D&D, so I try to keep the annoyances as low as possible. But if that stuff's already in a pre-made adventure that I'm running, I just go with the flow. Chances are, the players will manage to avoid that stuff anyway. Or they'll get annoyed and go a different direction. They do sometimes miss an important secret door (or something) so I have to figure out how to give them another option so that’s something that would happen on the fly. But when that happens it’s a result of my poor design rather than them messing up. Yeah, big game design rule is never hide anything essential behind a secret door. One of the Ravenloft adventures did that (the one in the pyramid), and it was very, very annoying. Fortunately they had an Elf with them, so I just kept rolling that 6-sider every time they stomped around in frustration, and eventually they found it. The DM shouldn't have to say "Keep looking." in order to progress the game. Oh, sorry, TWO adventures did that. The one where they had to hunt down the Necromancer on the snow island...that adventure was just 100 shades of broken. I mean, we still had fun, but I let them cheat code almost the entire snow island portion. Worst part was definitely where the players were presented with a control panel with three rows of buttons, and they're just supposed to guess what the password combination might be, or get pricked with poison pins. |
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Post by makofan on Jul 11, 2020 14:52:22 GMT -6
Dragon Magazine once had an article about tesseracts and how to use them in your dungeons. I used it once in a Star Trek adventure. I did that once when we were in high school. Very confusing (but fun in a silly way) |
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