I've been working on this weird dungeon/prison/asylum for Zak S's Secret Arneson Gift Exchange and it's much harder than I thought. I have the ideas for some encounters and rooms pieced together, but every time I get the graph paper in front of me, I suddenly freeze up and have no idea what the hell to do.
It took me until today to realize this, but I have never created a dungeon before.
The first RPG that I bought was Shadowrun 2nd edition. I know, I know, probably not the best game for a completely new player. Hell, I don't think I ever played it right. I just looked at the pretty pictures, read the fluff (which I became enamored of) and tried my best to figure out how much a 6L pistol shot really did. I'm not sure I ever figured it out. The first version of D&D that I ever ran/played was 3.5, which involved a group of pardoned prisoners fighting against a necromantic plague controlled by evil wizards; a sort of sword and sorcery Suicide Squad. In all the games I've played since then (which have been relatively few, compared to how many books and Mead notebooks I own, but more on that later) dungeons have never really been a priority.
I am super thankful for ChicagoWiz's One Page Dungeon template, precisely because it's giving me some constraints on how I want to build this sucker. Albeit, I may exceed some of these guidelines, with flavor text and similar wankery, but it feels good to have a goal. Now I just need to figure out how many rooms are a good amount and how to tie the concept of a dungeon meant to keep something in, rather than keep adventurers out together.
I've found that 3-4 "meaty" rooms--with encounters or other time-consuming obstacles is about enough to fill one evening.
ReplyDeleteThrow 2 or 3 times that many less-interesting rooms in and you've got enough for one day's dungeoneering.
so that's like between 9-16 rooms per day.
Thank you! That's kind of what I've aimed for with what I've sketched out so far. At the moment, I've got about 9 rooms or so with discernible encounters.
ReplyDelete