Scripted Dungeon Rooms
Posted: Mon Aug 03, 2020 10:42 am
While exploring some ruins you hadn't visited before, you came across a small room in surprisingly good shape.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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...
---------------------------------
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.
------------------------
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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...
---------------------------------
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.
------------------------
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.
