May 31

RPG Blog Carnival May 2015 – Unusual Dungeons

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This month the subject of the carnival is Unusual Dungeons, hosted by Enderra.

I’ve never really done much dungeon delving as either player or gm, so I found this a bit of a tricky subject to write about.

I’m all for making a dungeon an interesting environment rather than another 1o’ by 10′ room with an Orc and a pie in it, although it is an interesting concept adventure by Monte Cook and I have the t-shirt to prove it 🙂 .

The only real dungeon that appealed were those constructed within a tesseract, a strange construct that can defy logic and also cause insanity as everyone tries to get to grips with exactly how everything connects.

Given enough time, graph paper, inspiration and a book like Central Casting Dungeons I suppose I could create a believable excavated dungeon for the players to explore.  There are also other books which can help you stock a dungeon with monsters and treasures or even create an organic realm like How To Host A Dungeon does.

If you’re really stuck for time, use a crossword puzzle for a dungeon map, now that’s an interesting design as crosswords are designed with a degree of symmetry in them and if you throw in a teleport trap or two you could move them from corner to corner without them realising what’s been going on.

 


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Posted May 31, 2015 by GeneralTangent in category "fantasy", "RPG

About the Author

I've been gaming on and off since about 1989 and during that period have played with numerous game systems. I'm fluent in a few, have a basic understanding of quite a few more and can get by in others. Somewhere along the way I found time to be a playtester, contribute to an unpublished game supplement and be associated with another gaming magazine written by far more talented people than I. This lead to one infamous article being written in which I followed the letter of the adventure and torched the parties river barge. I'm also listed on http://rpggeek.com as a game designer.

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