The Dungeon's Front Door

Yes, I have a book with this title.  Yet it seems appropos for this post.

Our party has come to the entrance of the dungeon they were seeking in the last post.  This is a critical juncture in the player's experience.  The moment of committing, as it were.  We would do well to examine what happens within the game at this point, and how best to exploit it as a dungeon master.

Let's review first.

1) It's the players' agenda.

2) The player's agency is constrained by what the players have control over, and what they do not.

3) Everyone is bound by the rules, players and DM alike.

The player's are here at the dungeon's door — whatever it looks like, we'll come to that — because they wanted to be.  They asked to be here.  They deliberately sought out the entrance ... and because we've identified this as something that's within their control, they have a right to be here.  Let's give some thought to point 3.

There is a trust issue here.  The players don't know what's behind the door, yet the game dictates they must commit.  The DM ought to know what's behind the door ... and knowing it, properly should respect that content just as rules are respected.  If I imagine the entrance way leads into a forward guardroom of some kind, with three goblins whose role it is to warn the rest of the community if something bad comes in the door, then I'm resolved to put three goblins there and not seven or nine or fourteen.  The only reason to change the number of goblins would be if the players killed them "too easily" — which shouldn't matter a damn to me because I'm impartial.  It shouldn't matter any how, because the other goblins in the lair are also there, anyway, no matter how easily the front three die.  Frankly, I don't understand a lot of what motivates a DM to mess around with dungeon contents, but the principle should be that whatever's there is there.  The party can always find something else to kill later, if they still have an appetite.

To be clear, I'm not saying this dungeon starts with a three-goblin guard room.  That's just an example.

In any case, as long as the party is outside the door, there's another bit of duality at play.  There's a distinction at this point between what the party believes and what's true.

Moving back in time a moment, the party ought to have been given some information about the dungeon before starting out for it.  We tell them there are goblins in these mountains, or that the dungeon was originally sought 25 years ago because a princess was kidnapped and taken there, and though there was a rescue planned, no one of the rescuing party ever came back.  We don't know what became of the princess, or the rescuers.  We know there have been other parties who set out for the dungeon, but the party doesn't know if any of those groups even found the entrance — as none of them came back.  These bits of information are floating in the party's consciousness, and we can be sure some of them are going to be hashed out by the party before they commit themselves to first finding the dungeon, then entering it.

Physically, the dungeon entrance takes space.  This space is exception in the game setting.  It's the doorway between two worlds: civilisation and, as I said in my book The Dungeon's Front Door, a dystopian unreality that exists below ground.  How we depict the crossover matters.  It's best if we don't make it look like a traditional Gygaxian front door, which might just as well have a neon sign out front stating, "Dungeon, -- Vacancy," for all the ambience most modules offer.  And note, giving the entranceway "ambience" matters to the player's mood when they arrive at this point, before crossing the threshold.  We can do better than a plain little hole in the mountain fastness, or a benign little concealed door.  Early D&D subscribed to the "less is more" motif, which may have worked when the game was new and the players unjaded, but we've got to do better.

We can provide ambience by fixing the players' imaginations with intense flavour text, as James Raggi perceived and had a great deal of success with.  Of course, that's become a trope also, and in reality there's only so much that text can accomplish.  It's been over-used since the mid-00s and is apt to leave any experienced party cold ... though it probably will still enjoy effect if the players have only 2 to 3 years of gaming experience.

A better approach is to mix said text in moderate doses with the visual qualities and aesthetics of film.  The strongest benefit of film is that it shows movement ... and so, when introducing the entrance, try to think of some element of the scene that's shifting, stirring or flowing.  Drift snow into the scene, which greater distinguishes the outside, where the players are, from the inside, where it's dry and perceivably warm.  Roll steam or cold air out of the entranceway, with an explanation the players can't know without investigation.  Allow voices, or noise of some kind, to drift out; perhaps unseen creatures are having an argument, or there's an inexplicable rattling or booming sound.  Have a creature actually step out of the entrance, then go back inside before the characters have time to fully react.  Tease, tempt, taunt the players with such.

It's fully in the rules to make the entrance seem more dangerous than it is.  Although the party wanted to be here, it's in our interest to make them question that intention as much as possible ... to force them to push past a legitimate reason to fear and actually BE brave.  In all the various make-believe elements of the game, one thing that is not made up is the real emotion possessed by the players.  It's this real emotion that makes the game so satisfying.

The emotions offered by a video game are frustration, exhaustion, sometimes boredom, occasionally relief and, after a long time, a sense of accomplishment, self-esteem and even triumph.  But rarely can a canned experience, like a pre-programmed game or a movie, or a book, offer an emotion like bravery.  It doesn't make you "brave" to willingly sit through a movie, or buy a game, or finish a book.  Deliberately choosing to enter a dungeon run by another human being who is under no obligation to make that dungeon "popular" to a vast audience IS a legitimately courageous act.  For myself, I carefully cultivate the attributes of a demented, somewhat unwholesome sociopath who could conceivably put something in his dungeon that would be, well, very wrong.  My players sense that about me.  They know that whatever's lurking in there, it doesn't need to sustain itself against a focus group, it doesn't need to answer to a market's whims and it definitely doesn't have to fit a politically correct model.  I might very well include something so upsetting that it takes a few sessions to get over it.  It's one of the reasons why my partner Tamara has decided to stop playing.  She prefers to hear about it, before I unleash such a scene upon the players.

And so, as the players stand outside the entrance, remembering the stories of other parties, remembering how long this dungeon has been "known" without anyone properly cleaning it out ... and knowing that once they commit, getting out might not be so easy — it stands to reason that they'll hesitate.  I want that.  The more time it takes to screw up their courage, the more satisfying it'll be, for them, when they marvel at their boldness to take this chance.

For that's what this part of the game is.  Commitment and chance.  They've invented stories, letting their beliefs get the better of time ... but it's the truth they'll find, that they can't know without first finding it, that really discomforts them.

It's ridiculous when some director like J.J. Abrams makes an argument that what we don't see is the more frightening thing.  What a soft, pampered life Abrams has obviously had.  Numerous film directors have shown us things plainly on camera that shake us to our core ... because we're SHOWN these in their full horror.  Abrams makes scary films for children.  Scary films made for adults are terrifying.

I run adults in my game.  For adults, the yawning maw of a waiting entrance is a passage to hell.  Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.