[Dungeons/Dummies] Dungeon Design 101

[daMoose_Neo]

[Dunegons/Dummies]Rough Draft 1: The Imps

Fairly comfortable with the way the Imps and basic play as them are handled, tis time to turn attention to one of the other core concepts behind the game: the Dungeons.

Constructing a Dungeon

Abandoning an earlier idea of just having the Imps build the whole thing in-game, initial Dungeon construction is to be performed same time as chargen, after all, the thing will have as much 'stage time' as a charater~
Anyhow:
Players begin with an Entrance Room (where they may not have any traps, monsters, etc) and 100 points.
They will also begin with additional items and what not based on the team they have:

Smart Imp = 1 Free Puzzle
Devious Imp = 1 Free Monster
Tinkering Imp = 1 Free Trap
BDI = 1 Free Room
Crazy Imp = Choice of Above

Multiple Imps equal multiple freebies. Players can also suggest other freebies based on different, original Imp archetypes.
Items for the dungeon break down as such:

1 Room (20ftx20ft)- 3 Points
1 Treasure Item - 10 Points
100 Gold - 5 Points
1 Puzzle - 4 Points
1 Trap - 5 Points

Monsters have variable costs based on their abilities, power, Reputation, ect. An example would be:

Dire Rabbits - 3 Points per pair - end of each scenario roll 1d6 for each pair. On a 1 or 6, nothing happens. On anything else, that many baby Dire Rabbits are 'born'. At the end of the next scenario, assume all to be Adult Dire Rabbits.
0 Reputation, 1 Power

Each Dungeon will have a Reputation Level, which indicates how well the dungeon is doing. What adds to this reputation include:

- Reputations of Monsters within Dungeon ("That Dragon is the scourage of all of the Black Mountains! Lets Kill it! Wait...its in that Dungeon! Lets Go!")
- Reputations of any special treasures in the Dungeon, which may be purchased, stolen or sought after in Impish quests.
- Number of scared, maimed or killed Adventurers.
- And, of course, any lies spread by the Imps

The higher the Rep of the dungeon, the more favorably the officals at DEVO look upon it, and the more materials they will grant for expansion (Thus raising in Rep levels allows the Dungeon to be expanded even more).

Running the Dungeon

A significant portion of play for this game can easily deal with maintaining the dungeon and having adventurers running through it while the Imps watch gleefully from a safe distance and their Master's crystal ball as the 'heroes' get toasted!
Detail on the Puzzles and Traps are an optional thing. Should the players decide to actually construct traps and puzzles for the dungeons, excellent! Otherwise, each will have their own Difficulty Rating, against which the Adventurers will have to make a Challenge Check, just like the Imps. Their own abilities can raise it to make it easier, though initial traps and puzzles will be fairly easy any how.
Thus, when 'watching', the DM narrating the Adventurers plight can either gloss over it ("Ouch! They failed to disable the trap in time and died!") or go into more detail ("Eric the Thief scambles with the switches, trying every combination possible. The clock in the room ticks each second down as the spiked ceiling keeps lowering and the floor continues seperating until...the last bit of floor beneath Eric is pulled away as he lands on a bed of spikes, followed by being crunched by spikes from the ceiling!").
The Imps will also have the option of trying to rush in and reset the dungeon, especially if the Adventurers bypass it on their way through the first time. On coming back through, they will then have to face off against the trap once more.

What I'm looking for at this point is tying all of this together.
I'd like to know what kinds of things you expect out of a Dungeon, any thoughts on how it should operate etc. I've got some of the pieces, just not sure how to fit them all together or if I'm missing something...

[Edit] Forgot to mention, I'm looking at the classic Legend of Zelda for some inspiration on Dungeon construction ^_^ On a first level thus, at 3 points per room, a group can easily have a 15-16 room dungeon. As for the rest, there would be enough for a couple of puzzles (hidden Keys, trick doors etc), a couple of traps, hordes of cheap monsters and a nice, bright, shiny, alluring treasure.

[Nathan P.]

Anything about changing the dungeon? I'm thinking of the movie Labyrinth here, where the little dudes would switch Sara's marks to face the other way and such. Maybe an Imp could spend some number of points to change a trap to a monster, or make a door into a wall, or something while the Adventurers try to make it through the dungeon? This would also give Imps something to do while watching through the crystal ball, which could be fun (i.e. "Lawrence! The thief figured out the secret door!" "Ok, master, I'll go activate the crushing-wall room.")

[daMoose_Neo]

Couldn't be anything *major* changing, but yea...hmm, Labyrinth, hadn't thought of that! Been years since I've seen that movie...I know what tonight's rental is!
Also added the Imp Ability "Teleport", so popping in and out of the rooms is easy enough to make little changes w/o getting caught (though that should be a viable possibility too...*grins evily*)

[Walt Freitag]

Gold and treasure items are "fuel" for the heroes who invade the dungeon. They motivate the heroes to persist, and by obtaining them the heroes will get better weapons, healing, and other resources. Hence, the presence of gold and treasure weakens the dungeon. The imps should get points for the gold in their dungeon, not have to spend points for it.

- Walt

[daMoose_Neo]

Ehhhh...I've got to beg to differ here.
The point for D/D is to increase the Dungeon's Reputation.
Dungeons earn reputations based on:

- Difficulty (no one talks that much about Indian burial tombs and what not, but everyone knows the Pyrimids were boobytrapped), which would relate to Puzzles.
- Number of people killed (If everyone walked in and out, its a cave. If three hordes of villagers and countless Adventurers walked in and never came back THEN people would start talking), which would relate to Traps
- If a Salamander lived in a cave, no one cares, but if Blackmoor the Demon-Dragon of Night lived there, people would talk, which is the mosnters.
- If cave contained a platter of cupcakes, oh well, grab a few and thats that. If a cave contained billions of gold coins, on the other hand, people would talk about THAT, which is the treasure.

And all of this goes into the Reputation of a Dungeon.
No one storms a Dungeon because it has death traps or because it has cool puzzles, but there are some who brave those for the treasure, which is more Bait than it is anything. The others can factor in other ways- ie a Brother died storming the Dungeon so the Hero(es) are out for revenge, while another team learned the greatest mystery of all is contained in the Dungeon and go seeking knowledge and enlightenment, or, again with the vengence, a certain Monster dwells within the Dungeon, they're there to kill the Monster, regardless of the treasure.  

In *my* 'setting', DEVO (Dungeon Engineers and Villians Organization) wants to kill or maim as many adventurers as possible. Thus, the more bait, the more Heroes, the more kills, the better the Imps 'score' on inspections.
According to whatever reasons players might cook up they might have a different reason for wanting heroes dead.
Now, in a case where you DON'T want heroe's lured to their death but rather want to protect something, THEN scads of Gold is a detriment, which is something that could be reflected as well in the system I suppose.

[Tobias]

I like it.

Which stuff do you think still needs connecting the most?

The 'teleport' ability could be handy, especially as plot device.

[daMoose_Neo]

At this point...I'm thinking it just lacks some way to formulate the Rep level, if everything looks good here. Thats certainly the stumper for me...no one portion of the dungeon (design, difficulty, traps, puzzles, monsters, treasure) really would make one dungeon more reputable or  feared than another...
Maybe I'll go back and start playing with a few more specifics, see where that gets me...

[Tobias]

Why not straight-up sum the following things:

1. Explorers dead in dungeon
2. Monsters in dungeon
3. (non-spent) traps in dungeon
4. Rooms in dungeon
5. treasure in dungeon

?

You dungeon starts at 100 rep (points spent on dungeon) + possible imp presence (since they enhance the dungeon as well). Something from that list will draw the adventurer. In the process, he'll trigger some traps, slay some monsters, maybe loot some treasure (dropping the reputation), unless he dies, in which case the reputation increases.

Imps hauling in new treasure, monsters, digging new rooms, etc., will increase the reputation automatically - but if you're not in the public eye, your reputation will fade, so you've got to keep luring in those adventurers (thus keeping the ecology going).

An important thing for drawing adventurers would be to draw the appropriate ones - weak ones will not really help your reputation, too strong and they might vanquish your dungeon - but of course, the same thing would go for adventurers - if they visit too strong a dungeon, they die, and if they visit too weak a dungeon, they themselves gain little loot (or reputation of their own).

[daMoose_Neo]

Maybe break that into three:

1. History (Noteable Adventurers killed, number of wanna be Adventurers Killed)
2. Difficulty (# of rooms, traps, puzzles, & monsters)
3. Lure (Treasure, weapons, items etc)

Actually, this might work:
Vengence Parties - would focus on History; who the dungeon has killed. A High History (or Maiming/Death?) rank would mean more Vengence Parties.
Adventurers - Those looking to get a rep of their own would go after the most difficult dungeons (not to mention the rep of clearing out the dungeon that killed Sir Baldric the Great)
Treasure Hunters - The lure, of course, is all they need. High enough rank there and Pow! You get treasure hunters in droves.
Average-Heroes - Your average typical, saturday night D&D party raiding the local Dungeons for treasure. These, being average, would come in under an average score.

So: Give Dungeons three scores:

Maiming: X
Difficulty: X  
Treasure: X

Each monster is worth X points, Each Treasure is worth X points, each 100 GP is worth X Points etc. Possibly average them together then for a DEVO Ranking (Deaths over like a 1 Month period would affect that 'fading from public knowledge').
Now time to construct a point-table!

Also, at the end of the scenario, players roll say 1d6 per each DEVO Rank (or 1d6 * Devo Rank) to see how many adventurers attempted to storm the dungeon, and inflict certain "problems" upon the dungeon based on the Different levels:
-If the Maiming is higher than the others, more vengence parties would have stormed the dungeon, likely killed more Monsters.
-If the Difficulty were higher, more Adventurers would have stormed the dungeon, meaning sprung traps and solved puzzles.
-If the Lure is higher, more treasure hunters showed up and got some gold (or left some, if they died ^_^)

I'd say anything significant (A team making it all the way through to the Big Treasure, a Great Hero or relation of a slain Great Hero, or even Adventurers dying with Important Items or Adventurers surviving!) should be played out with the Imps, but there is bound to be a lot of traffic through the dungeon. Assume, for the most part, the average Adventurer dies (Hey, I still die once in a while attempting the first level of Zelda, and I'm good at that game!), possibly on a return trip, and leaves behind a few goodies.

[daMoose_Neo]

Update here as well!
Here is the tenetive breakdown on Reputation:

Monster Reps x.25
Treasure Reps (including 1 pt per 1000 GP) x.25
Difficulty (# of Rooms + Diff of Traps + Diff of Puzzles) x.25
# of Deaths (Not sure if this is accumulated...) x.25
= Total Reputation

Now- I dunno about the rolling mech for determining how many visitors. My initial idea was to have the Total Rep equal the number of dice rolled for 'visitors'. Assumption is all 'visitors' die, successful Adventurers being the subject of an actual adventure/scenario.

Glossing Rules Draft 1:
Total HP of Monsters + Total Diff of Traps + Total Diff of Puzzles / # of Rooms = a per Room difficulty (TN for Glossing).
The team of Adventurers get to roll against that per room. Specific Rooms with Traps can also add their own Difficulty to the Check, the over all difficulty taking into account things such as in-experiance, wounds, lack of equipment etc while the Trap itself is the matter at hand. Monsters can also be handled as such as well.
On a successful roll, the room is "Cleaned out", those monsters killed and that treasure missing. On a failure, the Heroes finally die, amounts 'left behind' TBA, possibly by DM or at least by some kind of formula (Half?).