Dungeon Room Index

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Dungeon Room Index: Sewers and Water Rooms

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Sewers! And other watery places. At the very beginning of this series I specifically called out water and how I think it can elevate a dungeon. Today, I hope to vindicate that idea. Here are the rooms: ...and this sneaky devil that I missed on my first pass transcribing my rough notes Sewers as a category I  love  sewer dungeons.  I think there are a few broad archetypes for dungeons out there: "cave" , "prison" , "tomb" --many of the room types I've covered so far can readily be expanded into a whole dungeon concept. (Some more readily than others--I'll be impressed if you can make "kitchens" into an entire megadungeon.) For many of those, I think when you pick the broad archetype you can readily come up with actual rooms  to stitch together (even if there are just a lot of rooms with more coffins in them).  I think sewers, on the other hand, are kind of the opposite: I don't really think of a "room" when I think of sewer...
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Dungeon Room Opinions: Mapping at the Table, Part 2 - Abstract Mapping Toolkit

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In my last post I established my preference for Abstract Player Mapping. The summary is this: making players draw the map yields lots of fun benefits, and making sure the map they draw is abstract and minimal prevents player mapping from becoming so burdensome as to overwhelm its benefits.  Today I'm going to give you some tips on how to verbally deliver such a map with as few hitches as possible. Classes of detail The first idea I want to acknowledge is that certain details (and levels of precision) are suited to specific needs. As a game master, you should always be tuned into what your players want to accomplish, and by paying careful attention to what level of detail is needed for that purpose you will save time and attention in the long run. For our purposes, there are at least three classes of detail: Visceral.  The aesthetics of a space--what do the players see, hear, smell, etc? These details focus players on the world , and are therefore the most important for immer...
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Dungeon Room Appendix: Secrets, and Hidden Things

One of the great joys of exploration in a fantasy adventure game is the chance to discover secrets. For myself, I love  the feeling of "double clicking" on a scene and learning more; it's something about the way my mental picture slowly fades into color and detail. Much of the reason I play TTRPGs is for that very experience. You might enjoy that process in and of itself, but generally the standard incentive to engage in this sort of behavior is because it will yield something  of use, whether that be simply information, or treasure and magic items. As a player this is good fun, but as a game master, this is work , frankly. It takes work and thought (or a very  good content generator) to come up with hiding places for these sorts of secrets (not even to mention coming up with the secrets themselves!). So, in the interest of serving this need, today I want to explore secrets (and where to hide them). Setting the scene Before diving into good hiding places for your secrets,...
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