Dungeon23/06/05: Ropers and Piercers

Along with yesterday's fungi, these sorts of creatures are routinely cited as among the cruelest tricks that can be played by a Dungeon Master. Ropers are tentacled beasts that, when stationary, resemble stalagmites, while piercers are essentially living stalagmites that drop themselves onto prey to impale it. I am inclined to include them mostly for the sake of challenging myself as a designer: in Determined, without the benefit of a "perception check" for warning, can I come up with good ways to telegraph the presence of such beasts, so that observant and cautious players are able avert the danger, while heedless players are caught in the trap?

Dungeon23/06/04: Shriekers and Violet Fungus

Another of the "classic" D&D tropes are instances of batesian or aggressive mimicry, where hazards display similar warning signs despite requiring different (or even directly opposite) actions in order for the players to manage them safely. Violet fungus and shriekers both take the form of large, purple, morel-looking mushrooms that feed on dead animal tissue – but where shriekers emit strange sounds in response to movement and light, the violet fungus instead reacts by lashing out with venomous tendrils. In this way, they actually exhibit a mutualistic relationship: the harmless shriekers draw in curious prey that is slain by the violet fungus, providing nourishment for both. Learning to recognize the subtle distinguishing features between the two is vital to negotiating a mushroom-filled cavern.

Dungeon23/06/01: Dragon’s Hoard

Well, it finally happened: a dragon. Of course the whole thing wouldn’t be complete without a giant, fire-breathing lizard – but I had to give some careful thought to the context in which such a beast would be encountered. It’s physically too large to easily navigate many of the dungeon corridors, so I needed to make sure the floor where it appears would be one that can plausibly support such a beast. Well, indeed: June’s theme is “volcanic cavern”, and the dragon is very much the centrepiece. Almost the whole floor is going to revolve around the dragon’s ecological presence in some way. It’ll be appropriately tough and deadly in keeping with their reputation in D&D, and the hoard that it guards is probably going to be the single largest cache of wealth in the whole dungeon.

Dungeon23/05/31: Whispering Reeds

The "enchanted forest" theme has created an unusually great need (as compared to other floors so far) for exposition, since there are so many more features of this floor that are either tricks or that are concealed. Near a boggy part of the forest (itself home to such delights as a frog-prince and a certain magical strain of purple pansy), players can listen to the wind as it passes through the reeds in order to learn some of the secrets of the floor.

Dungeon23/05/27: Mold Cluster

The mold cluster is a zone of the forest where various types of molds (including all of those I've described so far on the blog here) are all growing in the same place. Kind of the opposite of having the lonely troll hole, where that's meant to be the controlled introduction of a certain kind of obstacle, the mold cluster is what amounts to a "dungeon botany/mycology final exam" – hopefully the players will have encountered each of these molds elsewhere and recalls how to deal with each of them – or at least enough of them that the remaining types don't overwhelm them.

Dungeon23/05/21: Lonely Troll Hole

As simple as it gets: a rocky hole in the forest is home to a single, unhappy troll. It's a "lonely" troll because I prefer for the players to get a chance to encounter an isolated monster in a controlled environment, where they can potentially figure out how to deal with it before they also have to manage any added complications (greater numbers, environmental hazards, et cetera) – in this case, it's the need to figure out a way to bypass the classic D&D troll's incredible regenerative powers – I've also chosen to include a certain folkloric weakness of trolls as an option, there. Admittedly, it's certainly possible that the players will encounter numerous trolls elsewhere in the dungeon if they don't visit the May floor "in sequence", so this is maybe a hollow gesture – but I think it's good that the possibility exists.

Dungeon23/05/11: Ruined Hookah Den

This is a pretty simple room: what was once clearly an opulent lounge for smoking... whatever it is that fey creatures like to smoke socially... has since been ransacked. The shredded remains of tapestries, sheer curtains, and giant pillow cushions are strewn all about. This is technically a "monster lair" – meaning that depending upon when the players visit, they might encounter its current occupant: a gigantic, corpulent caterpillar that is covered in a rocky hide and venomous spikes.

Thank you for your kind words! That post was easily the most popular thing I've ever published on the blog here, and everyone who responded to it was really positive about it – even folks who disagreed with me. So I'll say this: if anybody wants to send me an Ask to request advice or an opinion about an RPG-related topic, I would gladly weigh in. I'm not a professional, and I have no real qualifications – but I've been running, playing, reading, and designing RPGs for almost 20 years now, and I guess that counts for something.

Spewage Litmus: The Fall Part 2: Unbound

Like its predecessor, The Fall Part 2 is a land of contrasts. The story now more closely involves metaphors for human psychology, which it absolutely nails – but this is not as mind-blowing as the evolving robotic perspective of the original. Also, some of the choices around sexual topics strike me as dubious – there were probably less lecherous ways to convey the same themes. The interface remains as terrible as ever, and the shooting combat still feels utterly pointless. The inclusion of melee combat ripped wholesale from One Finger Death Punch is a welcome diversion, at least. The puzzles now revolve around abstract psychological concerns instead of deliberate breaches of logic, so the solutions tend to be more coherent – but it’s no easier to work out which specific objects need to be clicked on in order to fulfill them. The overall impression, then, is that the worst qualities of The Fall Part 1 have been mitigated somewhat, and while the new story is still superb, it is far from having bottled the lightning of the original.

APPROVED

Spewage Litmus: Moonlighter

Moonlighter feels like a tuned-up retread of Recettear with a simpler story and streamlined mechanics, but improved visuals, action, and gamefeel. Unfortunately, it also ends up feeling pretty shallow – and although it ends not long after the treadmill of exponential growth starts to get boring, it does get quite boring all the same.

REJECTED

Dungeon23/05/10: Tinker's Workshop

The other working title for this chamber is "Shoemaker Elf". As I have discussed before, finding ways to allow players to exchange treasure for actual useful goods is an ongoing challenge. The tinker is a friendly little gnome sort of fellow who likes two things: treasure, and making shoes. He'll gladly trade for things like food and fuel, and he can magically store his valuables in a bottomless "pot of gold" that is empty for anyone except him to discourage thefts and violence. But the biggest and best reason not to kill him is the shoemaking: he promises the players that he'll turn various odd items from around the forest (and beyond it) into enchanted shoes – something only he can do, and only if he remains alive and well.

Dungeon23/05/08: Glowing Garden

I find that I am becoming increasingly fond of "room with a bunch of similar objects in it that each do a different weird thing", much like the room of magic pools. I had one of these drawn up from an early test of Determined, so I am pleased to re-deploy the glowing garden: a collection of bioluminescent plants that each respond to a certain stimulus (noise, moisture, pressure, et cetera) with a unique effect (becoming brighter, secreting magical sap, changing in size, et cetera).

Dungeon23/05/06: Giant Spider Web

To me, arthropods and fey creatures go together like peanut butter and jelly. I am planning to have some non-bug-related encounters in the forest, but I tend to write the rooms in the sequence that the ideas come to me, and since spiders are among my most favourite animals, this one was obvious from the jump. I'm planning on the web being quite massive – something that calls for a bit of deliberate exploration. Honestly, I like spiders enough that I could envision an entire web-themed floor, but for now, I'll be satisfied with a single Shelob-esque encounter. Sheer size (no single blow will kill it, even in a critical location), chitin armour, venom, and – of course – binding silk are the spider's chief threats to the players.

Dungeon23/05/02: Apocrita Queen Chamber

I was kind of surprised by the paucity of giant, intelligent/anthropomorphic, eusocial insect monsters when I went sifting through the classic D&D monster manuals to find one. I'm sure they exist, but the formians are perhaps the only ones that I've ever encountered in an actual adventure before. Nevertheless, I believe that an enchanted forest needs a giant beehive, and so I've just decided to make my own. Besides its namesake occupant, the queen chamber includes valuable queen eggs, nutritious royal jelly, and apocrita guards who have armoured carapaces, venomous stingers, powerful jaws, and the ability to create a deafening, terrifying noise with their wings.

Dungeon23/05/01: Starry Twilight

Back in February when I hit on the false beach idea, I immediately realized I could have a number of fake outdoor environments based on the same concept (and that each one would let me tap a variety of ideas that are normally exclusive to environments of that type). So! May's theme is "enchanted forest", and the big chamber is an unhewn cave, speckled with cobalt ore that gives it a bluish tinge, and dotted all over with purple bioluminescent fungi. Perpetual soft violet light is actually ideal for the growth of leafy plants, so the chamber is dominated by a massive tree which has been hollowed out to provide space for a number of additional May chambers.

Dungeon23/04/30: Gallery Secret Room

This one doesn't make a lot of sense without knowledge of Room #29, which is a large gallery of different kinds of art. The secret room is an adjoining chamber, accessible through a door that is hidden in one of the paintings. It contains a pair of peepholes by which the gallery can be secretly observed – on the gallery side of the wall, the peepholes align with the eyes of a hieroglyphic image of a person. It's a little cliche, I'll admit, but the real reason I needed to make this post was to talk more about the overall state of the project!

Dungeon23/04/28: Hieroglyph Wall

A number of the rooms featured in this month's dungeon floor rely on passwords or secret information to solve, so I needed to plant the solutions where the players might find them. I've enjoyed concealing much of the info in plain sight, as is the case for the large hieroglyph wall that the players will find inside the pyramid. Key words are only visible if a certain tapestry is hung in front of the wall, or if the wall is viewed from a certain skewed angle. I particularly enjoy the idea that the players will get a chance to "decipher" the ancient writing, even if only in a rudimentary way.

Dungeon23/04/26: Trap Gauntlet

At some point I realized that, in addition to homages to all sorts of folklore, the "desert pyramid" theme gives me ample opportunity to pay homage to Indiana Jones. Enter the trap gauntlet – basically an amalgamation of various spear, dart, scythe, pit, and closing-door booby traps faced by Dr. Jones, all bundled into a "step only on the correct letter tiles" puzzle inspired by the "true name of God" scene from The Last Crusade.

Dungeon23/04/24: Giant Antlion Larva

If it's a desert floor, then it's got to have a "sarlacc". Real antlion larvae dig sloped pits into sand and trap passing prey that struggle to climb out. By staying mostly buried underground, the larva is relatively safe from retaliation, and a sufficiently huge one presents a serious danger to the players' avatars. This is one that they might have to kill from the inside after being swallowed whole.

Dungeon23/04/20: False Tomb

Since I've included a pyramid, I felt like I would be remiss if I didn't pay homage to the fact that real Egyptian tombs often feature fake doors or empty chambers that conceal access to the real sepulchre. While it's most often done for aesthetic, superstitious, or religious reasons rather than as a way of foiling grave robbers, this is nevertheless about as close to a "booby trap" as any real tomb ever gets, and so I had to include an elaborate version thereof as one of my rooms.