Scripted Dungeon Rooms

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gedweyignasia
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Scripted Dungeon Rooms

Unread post by gedweyignasia »

While exploring some ruins you hadn't visited before, you came across a small room in surprisingly good shape.
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It was a small, unremarkable room with no decorations or treasures, but it had some arcane equipment that still appeared functional. Two portals in adjacent corners caught your attention, but they weren't open and it wasn't clear how to activate them. On the wall between the two portals you spot three consoles which appear to be linked to the glowing crystal at the center of the room. Encircling the crystal are three alchemical stations.
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You make your way over to one of the consoles and fiddle with the controls, eliciting a few small sparks from part of each portal.
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It appears to have insufficient power. You examine the crystal in the center of the room, concluding that it must require more energy, and that the purpose of the alchemical workstations are to recharge the crystal. You've no talent at alchemy, but after several minutes of blindly mixing chemicals (and a few unfortunate accidents, resulting in some unpleasant burns) you manage to combine the correct reagents to fuel the crystal. Repeating the process several times, you power the crystal up to its limit.
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With the crystal fully charged, you return to the consoles and once again try to activate the portal, but you're only one person and there are three stations to be manned. Sighing in frustration, you return to town, gathering a party of several hardy adventurers, and return to the crystals. Working all three consoles at once, you are able to activate the portals, which open in a flash of light!
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All manner of abominations start surging out through the portals without hesitation, eyeing your party ravenously. You back away from the consoles, drawing your weapons. After fighting what seems like an unending tide of monsters, the portals finally flicker shut, and your party breathes a sigh of relief. One of the three locks on the door ahead slides open with a loud CLANG. You give your party a grim nod and return to the alchemical workbenches, knowing the fight isn't even half-finished...

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Let's talk level mechanics!

This room is designed to help combat-oriented players RP away from the campfire and reward some less-chosen skills like Craft Alchemy. It's not exactly a puzzle; the two usable items in the room make it pretty clear what they're for when the PC tries to interact with them. Still, there's a little work to be done to get to the monsters.

The workbenches are the first step. The player has to use those to power up the crystal. That's a step that takes just a second to click, but puts the player into some work that takes a minute or two to complete. Since the PC can't go anywhere or cast spells during that time, they've got nothing to do but talk to one another. This could take a few attempts (with potentially injurious results!) if the PC doesn't pass a Craft Alchemy check, but once they eventually pass the check they'll remember the right ingredients for the next time they use the workbench. The key design points here are:
- Give the players forced downtime where they can RP
- Reward players for taking a non-combat skill
- Don't make that skill a barrier to progress; you can get by without it

After powering up the crystal, players need to man the consoles. This continues the "forced downtime" where players aren't actively fighting anything, buffing, or walking around. A benefit to having downtime where players aren't going anywhere is that this makes it easier for them to talk to one another, since they're not focused on trying to make their walking formation look natural. The consoles also require three players! So you can't run this dungeon solo. It's not meant to punish solo players, so much as to guide them somewhere else. When you have a lot of forced downtime in the design, that can get pretty boring by yourself; if you're walking around, you at least feel like you're doing something. (This is a trick they use in airports! People don't like waiting for their luggage for 15 minutes, but if the luggage takes 15 minutes to get off the plane, they can design the concourse so that 10 minutes is spent walking to the baggage claim and then folks are only waiting for 5 minutes. It still takes them 15 minutes to get their luggage, but there's less boring wait.) The key design points again:
- Give players forced downtime where they can RP
- Require players to be in a group so the wait isn't just torture
- Make sure there's some interactive task between spawns so people can't just AFK grind the portals

Finally, the portals flick on, an onslaught of monsters appear, and people finally get their excitement! A whole slew of monsters come out, a few at a time so that players don't get overwhelmed. Fighting ten zombies one at a time is much easier than fighting ten zombies at once, so it's important not to throw too much at the player all at the same time. Still, you want to pace the spawns so that they stack a bit, letting casters use their AoE spells like Ice Storm or Fireball. Making two portals in different corners and requiring three players means you might not have your resources evenly split between the two, adding some interesting tactics to the situation; whereas players wandering into monsters in the woods might just get mobbed from one direction. Another bonus is that when stuff comes out of a portal right into your face, there aren't many ethical questions about whether or not you should have trespassed into these creatures' home. Key design points here:
- Players love killing stuff; give them stuff to kill
- Make players fight on two fronts to mix up the tactics a little, maybe they'll use some traps
- Try to remove RP barriers to combat
- Give lots of XP at once so that players can level as quickly as they would by grinding

There are some downsides to this design, however. It's not super clear why there's a room with portals that spawn monsters connected to the lock here. No matter who you are, you generally don't design your door so that you and two friends have to fight three waves of monsters to get into the room beyond; that's just bad architecture, and you're probably opening yourself up to a lot of lawsuits if you ever host a dinner party. It's also not as flexible as other dungeon designs. It facilitates RP when players come in a group, but it doesn't provide the option to sneak past combat, it doesn't allow solo players to play through this dungeon, and it doesn't allow the party to split up. Those are some pretty big concerns, and it means that no matter how well this design accomplishes its task, it doesn't belong everywhere.

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Your turn!

I'm looking for more designs like this, where you have a few simple scripted elements that help nudge players in a certain direction. My focus right now is to help players RP with their party without slowing down their leveling grind, but I'm interested in any mechanics that could create new experiences for players.
bharring
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Re: Scripted Dungeon Rooms

Unread post by bharring »

From an RP perspective:

This is the first lock/gate that seals away unspeakable power.

The monsters are to dissuade any curious explorer. Obviously, nobody is going to sit around and keep investigating in the face of waves of monsters. So only those with purpose will stay. So the system need only defend against those who know what's inside.

The two consoles are to make it impossible for a lone individual to accomplish the task. Might even ward the user's mind from control or something. Because what's locked away is unspeakably powerful, but can only be wielded by an individual. This protects it from any delver who seeks to use the power - two people who want the power would never work together this far. To that end, the power should be Chaotic Evil in nature, and very overt.

So designed, a powerful delegation of protectorate could pass the test, but random travellers or power-mad villains would never pass.

Unfortunately, the builders didn't reckon for powerful adventuring groups with more curiosity then sense.

(And the next challenge requires knowledge or items not available in-game, so only that challenge is available. And gives a narrative reason to add more challenges).

What do you think of that archetype of lore for that event?
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gedweyignasia
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Re: Scripted Dungeon Rooms

Unread post by gedweyignasia »

That's some solid lore! Make the dungeon a prison for the boss instead of his lair. Clever thinking!
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Re: Scripted Dungeon Rooms

Unread post by bharring »

I love throwing together lore. But dont want to derail your thread. So here's a partially-fleshed-out concept:

The stronghold of a major-ish cult or power.

For a lvl20+ party, it'd be quite a challenge to roll through.

But there are a lot of side challenges.

If you can sneak into the basement and do some challenge, you can remove some arcane bindings, making it easier. And maybe you have to hunt down some patrols for uniforms or keys to do so.

If you defeat their ally's cheiftan, or make it look like they ambushed their ally's patrol, their ally abandons them, making it easier.

If you can brew a particular antitoxin (Alchemy), easier.

If you figure out the ritual being performed on a nearby mountaintop (Lore Religion and Geography), you can stop or corrupt it, removing or reversing its boons, making it easier.

If you notice how unstable parts of it are (dungineering or artifice), you can cause massive parts of the ceiling to collapse, dealing massive damage, making it easier.

The idea being, if you manage to find enough of these effects, the encounters would be doable by a lvl10 party, whereas normally it takes a lvl20+ party.

It'd take a lot of building, and after the first few runs what to do would be obvious, but it would encourage RP, and even make the same zone relevant to some very different parties.

Thoughts?
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gedweyignasia
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Re: Scripted Dungeon Rooms

Unread post by gedweyignasia »

Uniforms for disguise are (unfortunately) very difficult to manage with the way the AI is set up. Similarly, a lot of other ideas here plug into many different systems and would require a great deal of work. One that stands out as useful and simple is the idea that with a dungeoneering or artifice check a player might be able to "cut a rope" or "break a beam" to cause a partial cave-in, damaging everything in a room. That's a great little trick!

I'm leaning away from lore and thematic stuff at the moment; I try to focus on the mechanics first, lay out the rooms, then paint them with lore-appropriate decorations and fill them with the right kind of enemies at the end. As far as levels go, we don't want these skill checks to make things too easy on people, we just want them to provide extra XP, save some time, open a new passage, etc. Keeping the CR in the right spot is pretty important, so we can't play with that too much.
JIŘÍ
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Re: Scripted Dungeon Rooms

Unread post by JIŘÍ »

Whatever room / dungeon you do, wherever you place it, could you make it accessible by both, surface and UD alike?
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Thaelis
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Re: Scripted Dungeon Rooms

Unread post by Thaelis »

More uses for Skills 😍

You know what I've always wanted? A scripted outdoor area that you can only pass through safely with a Ranger/Druid/Barbarian in your party! Be cool if you had to pass through a blizzard/sandstorm/impenetrable forest to reach a secluded area, where a challenge awaits 🥳

I can dream right....
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gedweyignasia
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Re: Scripted Dungeon Rooms

Unread post by gedweyignasia »

JIŘÍ wrote: Mon Aug 03, 2020 7:05 pm Whatever room / dungeon you do, wherever you place it, could you make it accessible by both, surface and UD alike?
Providing easy access between the surface and the Underdark is something I'd need to hear from DMs about, so any dungeons I create will likely be only for the surface or for the underdark, but not both. I haven't played in the UD yet, so probably just the surface for now. Sorry, I wish I could give you better news.
Last edited by gedweyignasia on Mon Aug 03, 2020 8:11 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Scripted Dungeon Rooms

Unread post by gedweyignasia »

Thaelis wrote: Mon Aug 03, 2020 8:06 pmYou know what I've always wanted? A scripted outdoor area that you can only pass through safely with a Ranger/Druid/Barbarian in your party! Be cool if you had to pass through a blizzard/sandstorm/impenetrable forest to reach a secluded area, where a challenge awaits 🥳
Class-based restrictions are pretty... restrictive. Something that requires a Survival check might appear in natural areas, however.
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Re: Scripted Dungeon Rooms

Unread post by JIŘÍ »

I am not writting about easy access but ability to gain xps and items inside. To give the option, so if someone is willing to cross entire server to visit some dungeon they would still gain something from it.
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JIŘÍ
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Re: Scripted Dungeon Rooms

Unread post by JIŘÍ »

Also some ideas does server already have a place where you need to send people into different wing of the dungeon, pulling a lever, having them locked inside and forced going second route. coming to the end as the other party trough one way doors (so no backtracking from the other half of party to save them).

Or place for evil parties, where you need to pick a party member and sacrifice him to open doors.
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Re: Scripted Dungeon Rooms

Unread post by gedweyignasia »

JIŘÍ wrote: Mon Aug 03, 2020 8:15 pmOr place for evil parties, where you need to pick a party member and sacrifice him to open doors.
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;)
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Re: Scripted Dungeon Rooms

Unread post by Thaelis »

gedweyignasia wrote: Mon Aug 03, 2020 8:10 pm
Class-based restrictions are pretty... restrictive. Something that requires a Survival check might appear in natural areas, however.
That's exactly what I meant! Sorry I wasn't clear. I'm not a fan of class restrictions either, I just meant those are the only 3 classes that have access to the Survival skill (without taking Able Learner).

Also I forgot to mention I really like the OP's detailed original idea! *Applause*
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