Dungeon Room Appendix: Darkness, and Light
I had some thoughts that don't fit in the template of "variations on a dungeon room", yet which are quite pertinent to the larger goal of thinking about and conceiving dungeon rooms. Today, that topic is darkness . Into the dark In a dungeon crawling context, darkness is practically a given. Just look at the success of Shadowdark , a game whose conceptual premise is that dungeons should be dark scary places. I largely agree with this sentiment, at least in spirit. Undeniably, darkness adds something both aesthetically and mechanically to RPGs. First, it creates that classic (or shall we say "old school") mood of the horror-survival game, where encounters are often deadly, and dungeons are mysterious and threatening. Second, it creates an actual incentive structure around a particular form of resource management. Players need to track torches, always making sure someone has got one, and that it never goes out unexpectedly. This may or may not be terribly hard, b...
