The 'Creative' dungeon

I posted this here first, but it warrants repeating (and yes, once again I'm in the habit of posting elsewhere then treating my own blog as the secondary place for my material - nuts, eh?)

I used to try and make gameplay about 'creative dungeons'. It burns you out when the entirety of the fun rests on your shoulders, with the game not carrying any of the effort of being fun itself. Sure it's great to add creative things, but it's not great to add it simply because if you don't there wont be anything fun at all. When a system kinda focuses on XP, levels and gold, it's best if you have players who enjoy collecting XP, levels and gold. That way they enjoy play whether you add a creative thing or not (being creative adds to the game, rather than makes the game). It's just the advice I wish I'd run into years ago.

Safe but Interesting?

I was reading people talking about 'what makes a dungeon interesting' today.

And it struck me as incredibly pompous. Like a rich man picking over incredibly expensive food - bored with the lot, had it all before, looking for something interesting amongst it all.

I'm tempted to preach the virtues of characters who can die, instead of the usual 'Oh, I want to develop my special character!'.

Things taste better - they taste more interesting, when you may not taste them for much longer.

But then again that's the thing - alot of people think their character is the only interesting thing in the world and they focus on that, before a world even exists.

How can anything else in the game world compare?

Anyway, there's kind of two layers of interesting - one is where you are desperate for something, or something you are desperate for hinges upon something.

The other is where you're like a couch potato, channel surfing, wanting entertainment.

In the latter case, it's the position that undermines the interest, basically. Like playing poker for nothing, rather than for some money.

Safety undermines.

Spine of a Dungeon, Part 3

Next is a simple chart (a sort of simplification of the random dungeon generation charts). Roll a D6!
1-2: Monster. Treasure: 3 in 6
3: Trap. Treasure: 2 in 6
4: Trick. Treasure: 2 in 6
5-6: Empty. Treasure: 1 in 6 (treasure is either hidden or is itself trapped)

Spine of a Dungeon, Part 1

I upped the contrast on this a bit to make the path clear for ye, adventurer...

Doing AD&D recently, I've kind of struggeled with room layout. Fact is, as a human you can't really just 'randomly' assign rooms. To make the next room you always rely on some line of reasoning/thinking/vibe/theme, whatever. When really what I want for now is to be entertained - currenly I don't have a big urge to develop a big line of thinking/vibe/theme of dungeon design. Which makes it a bit hard to be entertained when the only generator is you.

Well actually the DM manual has a dungeon generator, but - it appears to produce things I wouldn't find entertaining (oh, another 60 foot corridor? Bliss!). Maybe I'm wrong on that and should give it a try one day to see atleast one result of it.

So what I ended up doing was to narrow it down to the basic structures...

More after the fold...

Is there a demo for Torchlight?

Torchlight looks rather nifty and is going around as the latest fun little game. It seems their model is to bring out a single player game then bring out an MMO latter, based on profits. If you think about it, world of warcraft worked from much the same model with it's RTS games (admittedly they were multiplayer, but like just a handful, so not an MMO).

It sounds like 'Fate', as in it has a pet which fights for you and also sells loot for you, which is exactly what fate had. I'm not sure if the development teams are the same.

But there appears to be no demo? Or have you heard of one!? Please leave a comment if you have!