Workshop: No Sense Makes Sense

Going back to when I was starting the game, I was particularly fascinated with the dungeon random monster tables that were included as part of the dungeon generation in the original DM's Guide.  I recognize this won't have much value for a lot of you ~ hell, I don't know if most readers have ever actually seen the DM's Guide.  But I'm going to talk about this because these tables were formulative to my thinking processes today.

To catch you up.  The tables were standard encounter tables, with the monsters selected according to their experience points as determined in the DMG.  1st level monsters, according to the book, are those with "up to 20 x.p."  Monster levels range from 1 to 10.  The first three columns of the table on the right repeat the DMG's table.  I've added the X.P. value (base rate for hit dice + x.p./h.p.) and the total average X.P. to be expected per encounter.

First, a little errata.  The DMG disagrees with itself in several places.  The experience table on p.85 clearly states that rot grub and ear seekers should get 5+1 x.p. as shown, but the monster index at the back of the DMG shows both getting "nil" h.p.  The index gives no totals for dwarf, elf, gnome, halfling or human, but I've calculated this out for the table above.  The shrieker has 3 HD, so it should have a base total of 35+3/h.p., but the monster doesn't attack at all so I have used the number given in the DMG index, p. 211.  I know this stuff drives people crazy about AD&D, but this is what happens when a bunch of publishing amateurs produce a book by committee.  It got no better when the modules then completely failed to maintain any consistency with the books.

The experience per encounter swings wildly from creature to creature.  It is plainly heaviest with the humanoids, who were also liable to provide the most treasure.  Potentially the most dangerous creature on the list is the manes, as they're the only ones that need a magic weapon to hit; encounter four of these right out of the gate with a brand new party and the only option is to run.  But the total value of an encounter with them averages only 56, with four of them giving only 90.

Halfling are heavily skewed because the average number appearing is the highest on the list; and elves, with 1+1 hit dice, get 10 more X.P. per individual than do dwarves, who have 1 hit die.  We have only 2-8 hobgoblins appearing, but 3-11 elves (which can only be generated by 2d5+1).  I always assumed the absurd numbers of dwarves, elves, gnomes and halflings took into account that these were not "evil" and therefore more likely to parley with/trade/help the party rather than try to kill it.  Humans only had 1-6 h.p. in AD&D, which makes them slightly less dangerous than goblins, thus the comparably lesser total.  Orcs, on the other hand, are more dangerous than goblins; but we gave a lot more goblins than orcs, making the goblin the most dangerous aggressive race on this chart.

Okay, what does any of this have to do with anything?  Who even uses this table any more?

Once upon a time, I did.  A lot.  I ran five or six NPCs through a totally random dungeon, as generated by this system, and completely ignored reason.  All I wanted was to set up battles between my people and the generated numbers here, basically using them to play chess with myself.  At 16 and 17 years of age, I played two or three hundred hours at this, not realizing I was giving myself an education about how to master the memory-work needed to remember weapon damage, hitting, spells, monster ACs ... and most important of all, can five characters really fight 5-15 goblins in an standing battle and win?

If we stick to the monster manual's armor class of 6 for goblins, and all the goblins have 1-7 h.p. (no special leaders), and we don't worry about rules relating to how much space a weapon needs in a narrow corridor, and the goblins don't use missile weapons, and the players don't skimp on taking heavier weapons that do 1d8 or more damage, as opposed to 1d6, then yes, most of the time the parties will win.  This doesn't allow for a second encounter, as the win is usually very close, particularly if the number of goblins is 12 or more ... but the benefit is that the players are almost always facing the goblins in narrow corridors, where the numbers are even for most of the fight, until the goblins are worn down.

I did these fights without my stun rules, using the standard combat initiative system; and I fought them on maps drawn on large white sheets of paper with a ruler and without squares or hexes, using basic Tractics Rules for movement.  I had played a lot of Tractics in the late 70s and I was comfortable with the idea.  People play it with complex terrains that they build, but we used to play it in my parent's rumpus room, a space about 18 feet by 25.

Apart from the range of experience, and the numbers of the combatants, the real table breaker is that 50% of the results are humanoids.  And more than half the results that aren't humanoids are either giant rats or shriekers.  Basically, 3 out of 4 encounters are three basic creature types ... and one of those is just a gimmick that will call humanoids or rats.  I would endlessly muck around with the table, trying to produce better results ... but of course, if you remove humanoid results, what remains gives very little X.P.  At the time, I couldn't figure out how to fix it. The answer, of course, was a better experience system.

I learned a lot from these tables.  In the end, I came to the conclusion that these tables are garbage, at least in the sense of, "here is chance of individual monster."  With just two rooms generated in the workshop, we've already eliminated the logic of most of these.  If there were giant rats, we should see droppings everywhere.  If there were shriekers, how did they get through the door?  If orcs, why haven't they cleaned up this place.  And if not orcs, if something intelligent, how come they haven't posted guards, spiked doors, set up alarms or otherwise sought to protect themselves?

Of course, they could be a wandering troop of goblins, that just happen to be here at the exact same time as the players. That's pretty unlikely.  It could be the guard posts, alarms, etcetera, are just past the door, particularly if one door leads to a hall, a stair, another hall and then a room with goblins.

It paints a pretty solid picture that a dungeon has to have some sort of logical continuity ... which I know is not at all news to anyone here.  But, I would argue that the continuity that most before this workshop would suggest would be as logical as the random table above.  The tendency is to create some huge unifying theme for the whole dungeon, something along the lines of there being 12 special rooms which each have a particular special clue inside that gives the final solution to the 13th room, yada yada yada.

Oh my gawd, stop.  Who made this dungeon, Disneyland?  I'm firmly of the belief that a huge amount of dungeon-design thinking ~ and adventure thinking to ~ has been polluted by the principles underlying Myst and adventures like it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myst

Myst is an awful game.  It provides passive interest for a single user who has all the time in the world to wander with vague purpose inside an enclosed, static, finite space.  For those with the tenacity to keep at it, there is an innate knowledge that eventually, all the clues and pieces and puzzles will be sorted and overcome, and the game completed, which will give a small dopamine rush, most of which will be the knowledge that now it is done, the player can play a new game.

It is the passivity of puzzle video games that is the killer where interactive table-top gaming is concerned.  The knowing that the puzzle is meant to be solved ~ and if we sit back mentally and go through the steps, all will eventually be revealed.  We can argue that it's not technically "railroading" ... but the assuredness of success, plus the knowledge that if we all die, well, that's the DM's fault or the die's fault, certainly not ours, since we got into this ride in the first place, kills tension.  "Look," say the player at the end.  "We went through all the rooms and opened all the doors and we did our part, now come across with the compensation."

This sounds like a job.  Ech.  As DMs, we would do better with a completely irrational dungeon rolled with an irrational die, since we would absolutely never know IF we should keep going, or IF there was an end result, or IF there was even treasure before all the dead ends stopped.  And those ifs create a pit in the stomach that makes people struggle between hope and despair ... which is what we want players to struggle with.

There's no despair in a dungeon that is so perfectly arranged that every door creates a specific purpose for more doors.  There's just the plodding certainty that the doors will end eventually and we will finish this thing. Which we knew going in.  So the only real rush at the end is yay, we get to start a new dungeon.

These last two weeks, I've not been trying to create a random dungeon.  I've been trying to crack this thinking that randomness is always a sin, and that planning is always a virtue.  D&D is a game.  Video games are not really games, they're planned exercises that teach you all the intricacies of a particular space, which are then barely of value when the space is complete.  Unless you take that experience and apply it to another, similar game, it's useless.  But then you're playing another similar game, and another, and another, and jeez, all we ever play is this one damn game.

Because D&D, and role-playing, doesn't require the knowledge of code or the endless months necessary to write code, we can blow the doors off contained spaces and make plans for randomness that video games can only dream of.  Encounter tables that specify specific monsters are faulty and useless.  But this doesn't mean that random encounters are wrong.  They're only wrong the way they've been presented.

We know, given the two rooms we've seen, that there is something behind one of those two doors.  Something alive and dangerous.  No matter what it is, no matter what we might roll on any table, if we wanted we could make a justification for it.  So the actual logic of the thing doesn't matter.

Sorry.  It matters that there's logic, yes.  But which logic doesn't matter.  Get it?

Getting this across is brutally difficult.  The players want to feel ... scared.  Anticipation.  Tense.  The motivation to step through the next door is the process the players have of making something happen.  They want to be attacked.  They can't progress if they don't get treasure and they can't get treasure if they don't fight.

[though I know, much of this pure, brilliant game structure was gutted and hamstrung by morons who minimized the importance of level and removed experience for treasure ... which removed the player's agency and ... but that's another post]

Make the dungeon into a format where the players have to open the next door, knowing they'll be led inexorably to the final combat, and coddled until then, obliterates that player privilege of not knowing whether or not the next door will contain a bunch of monsters they can't fight, or beat.  It transforms an active game into a passive one.

Recently, I watched Moneyball.  It is a terrible film, full of dead air, and contrived conflict, and dull filmography, with a whole side story to the main character and his family that adds nothing whatsoever, but it focuses on about 25 minutes of mindblowing economics that shatters baseball history ... that should have been the whole film.  In that vein, I'm arguing for the underlying arguments of D&D.

Puzzle-solving is a passive activity.  Shelby described the dungeon so far as a "contemplative" experience ... which, for all the satisfaction that provides if we sit by the side of a river and listen to the burbling water, is something that's passive.  Is that what we're trying to provide here?  To paraphrase Moneyball, there is an epidemic failure within the game to understand what is really happening.  And this leads people who run dungeons and design dungeons to misjudge their players and mismanage their games.  People who make dungeons think in terms of rooms and groups of monsters.  But your goal shouldn't be to make rooms, your goal should be to award experience.  And in order to award experience, you need to create violence and rewards.  When I see game dungeons, I see an imperfect understanding of where player success comes from.  D&D thinking is medieval.  They're asking all the wrong questions.  And if I say it to anybody, I'm ostracized.  I'm a leper.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMJ2IcD_fFc&t=188s

Look at a first level party, the one I've given: cleric, fighter, monk, mage and druid.  Together, they need 10,750 experience to level.  How many rooms are we going to make them walk through in order to get that?  How many times are they going to have to swing their weapons?  What's the distribution between numbers of times they will have to retreat from the dungeon to rest and come back, determining how many total spells the players will have to use against monsters?  What's your treasure to monster ratio, if you're going to require the players hack through, say, six rooms of encounters to obtain a sufficient amount of experience to reach another level?  Ten rooms?  Twenty rooms?

The spaces between those rooms are a break in the action. The spaces between those rooms are carefully planned rest stops for the party to gather strength, emotionally restore themselves, change their tactics, decide upon retreat vs. advance ... and generally, for the party to run the game.  If we can go back to video games for a moment, we all hate it when we can feel the hand of the game designer forcing us to fit some preconception about what the game is.  Your players feel this from you all the time.  But they put up with it, the way we do with video games, because of those time when you let them run the table.  That's why the players are in your world.  To run.  Not to follow.  Not to wait.  Not to be passive.  To be active.

The more sense you add to your structure, the less sense you add to your structure if your goal is to empower your players and make them level.  In pure mathematical terms, they have to hit a certain number of times, regardless of what they're hitting, to produce a certain number of deaths, while failing to lose a certain number of hit points that would mean their own deaths.  EVERYTHING else is the tactics and techniques used by the players to produce enemy deaths while conserving friendly lives.  Food, equipment, wealth, number of spells, types of weapons, all those other resources they can expend and preserve are only managed in order to give themselves the capacity to kill enemies and preserve their own lives.  And what paint you throw on the walls and what contemplative art you put on top of the paint is meaningless if it doesn't also clearly contribute to the game the players are playing ... which is not, evidently, the game the DM's are playing with the sort of game designs I'm seeing.

The second room.  It's a guard room, empty.  There are fresh crumbs of bread on a table, the fresh odor of tobacco in the air, footprints in dirt on the floor with clear lines, a cup with a half-inch of ale in the bottom.

That's enough.

Consider the difference in the reaction of the party from what I suggest, and what the reader suggests.

This is NOT to downplay.  But if we're going to learn how to DM, we've got to see the game for what it is.  This isn't Myst, a game designed for a single, bored person to play in between moments of working and sleeping, over several days or several weeks, when they are at the bottom of their interest cycle.  This is D&D.  We have four hours once every two weeks to make shit happen, now, so the players will advance, now, and not when some distant moment comes around after the solving of a puzzle.

Let's not waste it with an art exhibit.

[my sincerest apologies to all readers for my language and my blunt rhetoric]

The Second Room Finalized

Calling a stop to the voting (although only six ballots were cast), the final count is statues, scars and urns.  I'll adjust a little of the description to remove anachronisms.

Inside the room we find 5 more orc statues, shorter than the initial one. One of the statue's head has been smashed; the pieces lie on the floor. These are statues of Bashag's most loyal servants.

In the southern wall is carved a series of stone shelves, upon which once stood a series of clay urns. These now lie on the floor in front of the shelves, smashed, revealing the funerary ashes inside.

The stone floor around them appears scarred and eroded, as do the walls around the right-hand door. The scarring seems to reach out from the door towards the urns.

I've let this last week sort itself out, and I have encouraged the participants.  I meant what I said about creativity and tightening your descriptions, which is important.  But now I'm going to have to be a little rough.

Here I am as a player.  Hm, statues.  I look at the shelves and the urns.  I don't have detect magic or malevolence, but the funerary ashes suggest some sort of undead or curse may be up.  I would ask if something animated created the scars, but I expect the answer would be that a tool made them.

How interactive is this?  I don't mean to disparage.  But as DMs, I do want the reader to be considering the fundamental purpose of these descriptions.  The room seems to be junked.  So, no one is maintaining it.  These doors, logically, should go somewhere.  I can't imagine that there are active humanoids about, else some of this would be cleaned.  The ashes of the dead would be attended to.  But they're not.  I'm not going to touch them, nor anything in the room.

I would guess there is some single entity in this dungeon; something that has torn through this space and removed the inhabitants.  That would suggest going to the right door, to follow the scars and see if it lends a clue as to why this is empty.  I would expect to find non-intelligent creatures, until I reached some maintained part of the dungeon, suggesting I was closing on the top entity's lair.

Now, deconstruct my interpretation.  Does this seem like a rational interpretation on my part?  Would you change your dungeon design if I said so at the table?  And would that change be ethical?  I don't ask you to say what you would make the design, I am only asking if my statements would sway you to alter that design [assuming, of course, this wasn't your exact intention].

Let me see if I get any response for this post, before I apply myself to expanding the dungeon further and continuing the workshop into a 3rd week.

Voting on Workshop, Week 2

This should have been done yesterday evening, but yesterday became a sort of spontaneous holiday as the govt, after ten weeks, finally decided that Patreon was not a sufficient reason to suspend my employment insurance.  How nice of them.  And not in any way inconvenient.  I applaud them for making a sound decision.

So, let's get to this.  We're not on any crucial schedule, so we'll say that voting for this ends midnight Sunday.  I'll still try to get the third workshop class up Monday.

Here are the seconded concepts, each tagged with a single word.

Engravings: The walls are covered with engravings depicting Orcish warfare. In the center of the room is an altar dedicated to the Orcish god of war.

Urns: In the southern wall is carved a series of stone shelves, upon which once stood a series of clay urns. These now lie on the floor in front of the shelves, smashed, revealing the funerary ashes inside.

Webs: This room was once a guard room; table, a couple chairs, some weapon racks. It is currently filled with the thick spiderwebs of a giant spider. Though the spider isn't here, if one hacks through the webs, one will find both the northern and eastern doors open, allowing the spider easy access.

Statues: Inside the room we find 5 more orc statues, shorter than the initial one. One of the statue's head has been smashed; the pieces lie on the floor. These are statues of Bashag's most loyal servants.

Spike: The N door has been spiked shut.

Skeletons: The left-hand door is closed, but near the right-hand door (which is ajar and hangs crookedly on its hinges), there are several small skeletons of varying sizes, which could be rats or foxes. The skeletons are bare, but whole; the bones have not been scattered.

Scars: The stone floor around them appears scarred and eroded, as do the walls around the right-hand door.  The scarring seems to reach out from the door towards the bones.

Paintings: The north, east and south walls are covered in plaster painted with depictions of warfare, stylistic, with orcish warriors, led by an increasingly powerful looking figure, having the upper hands on goblins (north wall), hobgoblins (east) and humans (south), in this order of progression, and each time the army grows with the fallen race's warriors.

Rubble: While those walls don't show any defacing, the western wall has its plaster in a shattered mass on the ground, clearly removed by tools and blunt damage. The rubble contains some pieces where elven warriors are still visible. On the wall, the raw stones show, with dryed blood spattered everywhere.

Please let me know if I missed something.

I just want to say that, once reduced to one word, we are somewhat in cliche territory, though the descriptions themselves are creative and NOT cliched.  But I would encourage the readers to consider: when being creative, we humans tend to fall into thinking habits.  The first thought that leaps into our head often does so because it is the most obvious thought.  When creating a dungeon, we often leap to "orcs" rather than "butterflies," because long association with D&D produces this idea front and center ~ and while the second room was forced in some degree by the first room, the orc statue that was voted on in the first room could well have be anything else.

Not that this is wrong.  The argument for why an orc statue was sound: because it tells the party what to expect.  This does not change our self-awareness that "immediate" ideas are often immediate because they are cliches.  I say it only to make the reader take an extra moment to second guess their instincts.  A great part of creativity is recognizing that an instinct often "sounds" like a really good idea ... but then too late we find it's really not.  That's how Jar-Jar happens.

Voting

Let's try for three motifs, though if the reader would prefer just two, then write "blank" as one of your choices.  Give your first, second and third choice.  I'll count the votes as 3 pts. for 1st choice, 2 pts. for 2nd choice and 1 pt. for 3rd choice.  If "blank" gets enough votes to get into the top three, we'll go with two motifs.

The image is not to adjust your vote.  I just needed a nice pic.  Please vote your conscience.

Second that Work

I also wanted to drop a note today to express my liking for the responses that have been made to this week's Workshop.  There is a great deal more focus this time around than there was last week, though I am concerned that many are understandably reticent to step forward and make a suggestion.  That's not at all unusual in any course on any subject, as the class quickly understands that the teacher is serious about the material and is unhesitant in offering criticism.

My opinion of most teachers has not much improved

since 1980-84, when the above was a familiar meme. And

I'm not that fond of the level of education demonstrated

by many of the "students" of that era, either.

I had it pointed out to me last week that I am "not a professional instructor."  To me, this has always been one of these strange, querulous things about human prejudices.  We were most of us, as members of western society, subjected to a magnificent parade of spectacularly poor instructors, by far the balance of teachers and professors whose acquaintance we shared, and every one of these accredited and counted as "professional."  Any honest memory that we have about our experience with the education system tells us that the bar for becoming a professional teacher was very, very low.  And yet, because a few teachers greatly excelled, and gave us a reason to care about some subjects, the whole profession is raised up and put on a pedestal that we are all supposed to pay lip service towards, as though the very fact of being paid somehow transforms these prickly, ill-humored, ill-natured petty classroom tyrants into pillars of society.

As I've written 11 years of material for this blog, most of it in a vicious, iracible tone, and all of it being instructive, reaching a point where I am, in fact, paid to write, I'm unable to specify any difference between myself and a so-called "professional instructor," except that my readers have the agency to stop attending my classes, they have the freedom to stop paying me, or some have the freedom to take part without paying at all, and I'm not actually in charge of helpless, policed children who I am sure would gratefully take part in a classroom with me than they would with any of the Mrs. or Mr. So-and-So's that I was exposed to as a four-foot-tall defenseless boy.  Teachers who, I might add, successfully polluted my subconscious with a considerable number of neuroses and paranoias that I will likely take to my grave.

And so, as a teacher, I will speak this clearly to the participants in the Workshop thus far.  Well Done.

Well done on making some changes in your thinking and well done in taking a new tact with your ideas of dressing the dungeon room.  Well done in stretching yourselves.

Friday is fast approaching and I would encourage readers, including those who are only reading, to step forward and second, or "like," the material that others have presented, if you are inclined to do so.  It is very hard to put something out there and not have it approved of; let's be certain that if something falls short, it is because it deserves to do so, and NOT because a reader hasn't freely expressed their happy approval.

Give these workers some support!  They can use the confidence.

DM Workshop, Week 2

Empty.

Using Gygax's tables as written, there is a 60% chance of this result, once I've rolled that the door leads to a room.  If you follow the generator as written, you end up with miles of empty rooms, like this, one after another, frustratingly filling up map while NOT finding monster to fight and not finding treasure.

I shortened the likelihood for this occurring to only 25% ... and when I got the result I did, of course, I considered just fudging it and producing another result.  Thing is, however, I want you, dear reader, to recognize just how miserable this is for a players ... because right now my method robs you of the normal sense of "control" you have as a DM.  As a DM, you don't have to put up with this crap, if you think an extra room is boring and ought to be filled with half a dozen somethings.  And if you've DM'd for a long time, you're extremely comfortable and familiar with that sense of entitlement.  Sure, the players can deal with this shit, if you the DM think it "builds tension" when you feel like spattering out a series of empty rooms.  But now the shoe is on the other foot.

The problem is the same.  We have a 30 ft. square room, with two doors, one on the left and one on the right.  Once again, I'm asking that you fill it.  Before you do, however, let me explain that your first problem is to explain why this room doesn't have a monster in it.  Unlike a set of caverns, where emptiness is expected, or an underground ruin, where the doors are broken in and we might expect to see a bunch of vermin, these are carefully constructed rooms with working, solid doors.  And a place where anybody might "just walk in."  If this is someone's lair, they're awfully lax about security.  They don't care about interlopers ... or they happen so infrequently that no one worries about them.

No, that isn't easy.  And I apologize.  I'll add to it that continuing the theme of the statue is your second agenda.  The statue is your theme now ~ if you can elaborate on that theme, you can both solve the first problem and provide this room with a deeper sense of place and purpose.

I'd like to try something via comments.  Go ahead and get crazy with the descriptions if you like, it doesn't hurt to throw shit at the wall and see what sticks.  But, to see if it sticks, I'm going to suggest disregarding any item or motif unless someone else specifically seconds ("likes") that particular item.  Then, those items that are liked can be collected together and applied to a vote late this week.

Welcome to hell, ladies and gentlemen.

Exercise: the Space Beyond the Door

Problem the first.

A dungeon generation chart might seem fairly silly to some, but I'd like to pitch its value a moment.  You see on the right a copy of a table that appears on p.170 of the original DM's Guide.  It is plain to see that the table does not attempt to dress the dungeon in any way, but only tries to define the physical space beyond the door ~ whether it is a passage, a room (small space) or a chamber (large space).  The actual nature of the room or chamber, and its contents, is left for another table, which I hope we can discuss another day.

My request for the present is this: can you improve on this table?

Your limits are this: you can't include skins that alter or adjust the walls; you can't add aesthetic features, items or elements that are semi-permanent; you can't add monsters; and you can't create a dead end.  A room/chamber might be a dead end and a hallway might actually turn out to be a dead end, but these things are determined by other tables.  This is strictly about the space behind the door.  The door has to go somewhere.

I've produced my own version.  I built several whole dungeons with the above chart in my first 10 years of D&D, until I felt I'd moved past it ~ and the most annoying thing was always the passage turning back on itself 45 degrees, so I've abandoned that feature.  I've added vertical features.  And I've removed the need for the notes that Gygax had to add for his version.  I prefer to use "ft." instead of a single quote.

I'm certain that Gygax deliberately left stairs out as an option.  His conception was that stairs would always mean the dungeon progressed a level in danger, so his generation made them annoyingly rare, so that a party wouldn't quickly find itself facing monsters out of their capability.  I don't have any problems with a "first-level dungeon" spanning several physical levels.  I feel the cut-off between one level and another ought to be based on something less feature-driven.

My reason for the exercise is merely this: to make the reader think.  We see these massive megadungeons depicted everywhere, but the reader will note they are created of the same functional patterns, like the space beyond the door, again and again.  I'm asking the reader to deal with one small facet of the dungeon creation machine, to see if it can't be improved upon.  Like examining a car's head gasket, to see if it can be made more durable.

Workshop PCs

Creating this post separately as a convenience, with details relevant to the DM Workshop we spent the last week exploring.  I've rolled up five player characters for moving through the dungeon, with the most basic stats possible.  I want to emphasize the possibility of someone dying, so I don't want anyone to get attached to any of the characters as yet.

I could use a go-between, someone willing to accept a direct email from me at the beginning of each week.  This should be someone who has no plans to take part in the workshop.  Perhaps Justin?  The idea is that I will create the bare features of the dungeon first.  Then declare in a private email the actions of my characters.  THEN the designers can work out the details.  When those are settled, the middle-person will unveil my answers and whatever needs to be resolved can be.

I based the characters on my rolls, being sure to include a cleric, a mage and a fighter.  Rolling the cleric, I got a 4, which I had to put under dexterity.  I got very lucky with one set of rolls and so I made a monk.  Monks are my favorite class.  I got very lucky with hit points, rolling in the upper range for every mass-hit point roll.

I don't know if we're going to have trouble with editions being run.  Combat is going to come up and we will have to deal with that, but the way I have it worked out, it will work just fine if each of you will translate the stats into whatever system works for you.

I'm endeavoring to make this as system-neutral as possible, as the actual worldbuilding is more or less universal.  To some extent, however, I'll need to be able to use the magic I have according to the way the spells are described in the wiki.  If that creates problems, we can resolve them.  I don't care about these characters so I'll be fine with making concessions.

For the present, I will be keeping with my statement as written, but elaborate it some.  My dwarven fighter Draedar will fully load his light crossbow and hold it on the door.  My mage Bergthora will not cast, but she will place herself at the foot of the stairs, with dagger in scabbard but her hand on the handle.   Albertus the druid will ready a dagger.  There's no room in here for a sling, especially with her dexterity, so Eleana will hold her mace.  Caspar moves forward and closes the door; he steps back and we all watch to see if something comes out.

Result of the Votes, 1st Week

The winners, with six and four votes:

"Broad view: Large statue of an orc in center, facing north, holding a broken sword, inscription at base that reads, 'Halls of Bashag the Proud.' "

"The second door to the right stands slightly ajar. You don’t see any light through the crack."

Fairly simple.  I would encourage the readers to consider how very little is actually needed for a party to get interested.  Because the room is closed, I'll give my own take on the description, and why I would go that way.

"The nearest right door is painted red.  The other four doors are normal dungeon doors."

It's not only that less is more; it is that the players are bound to fix their attention on one or two details, however we might try to pack the room full of interesting things.  By keeping it simple, we produce a more memorable experience ... and through the rest of the dungeon, the players are either thinking, "We should have gone through the red door," or, "We absolutely shouldn't have gone through the red door."  It doesn't matter what's behind the door; the red color is flexible, easily explainable, yet just enough to arouse the curiousity and attention of the party.

The orc statue is the same; at one time, it suggests the dungeon will be full of orcs; but the broken sword clearly suggests the orcs were cleaned out and aren't around to fix the statue.  The open door beckons ... human nature is inclined to go right to it, either to snap it closed and then stand on guard, to see if something boils out, or to kick the door in and hope for a surprise.

The bare description gives less impression that the DM has already created some massively complex scenario designed to trap us.  It's hard to see, but great detail is actually comforting; it suggests to the player, "Oh, doesn't matter what I do, the DM's got this all planned out."  Thus, a reduction in tension.  We're just along for the ride.

A bare presentation doesn't make its intention clear.  Are we in control or not?  We feel like we're in control.  We can argue that any door will do (and some players always say this), but the truth is that we're free to listen at each door, examine the first fifty feet beyond each door in turn and ultimately make our decision by steadily gathering more information.  Initially, yes, the doors do seem the same ... but that is a surface impression.

I haven't rolled up any characters yet.  I need to do that today, though I intend initially to create the bare minimum.  My inclination is to close the open door, step back, load missile weapons and see if something comes for us.  If not, we'll enter that room.  So tomorrow, I'll post a map, plus some other planned materials, and we'll go from there.

P.S.,

For those who haven't seen it, the DMG Dungeon Generation system creates spaces, stairs, includes some features and places traps, monsters and treasure.  So going forward, I'll be asking the players to avoid adding traps, monsters (including men and demi-humans), valuables of any kind and excessive features such as chasms, pools and wells at this time.  However, we will be discussing the expansion of these concepts in the weeks ahead, so there will be opportunities to brainstorm these things.

Remember, we're not trying to make the whole dungeon in one room.  We're not looking for a huge dungeon "theme."  We're training ourselves to imaginatively create an organic setting based on what's come before, and not what we expect must come after.  Think past, not future.

Making a Workshop Decision

The most fun I had today was writing about the Palaeozoic Era, as requested by a reader encouraged by this post.

The problem with any sort of discord or misunderstanding in a comments window, everyone else clamps down rather that being seen as ignoring the drama or participating in it.  That issue is now settled, so let's get back to the agenda at hand.

Several people seem to be getting the jist now, so I'd like to find a way to move forward.  Let's call a moratorium on new descriptions at this point and try and settle what this room looks like.  Monday, I suggested we should vote on someone's description.  That is very obviously not practical.  So let's workshop the problem, and try to settle an answer by Sunday, so I can upgrade the map and create a new situation come Monday.

I suggest the readers participating, and that means everyone, should express their preference for ~ let's say a maximum of two described dungeon facets ~ what they've seen from others so far.  Name one High Preference and one Low Preference; explain briefly why you prefer these, as a way of encouraging others to share your sentiment.  We'll give 2 pts. for your High choice and 1 pt. for your low, and see if we can find a winning motif.

Here's a nice fantasy image, encouraging everyone to feel warm and fuzzy.  Let's have fun.

Five Points on Displaying the Dungeon

The fundamental purpose of visual merchandising is to attract customers into the space, engage them, and motivate the customer towards purchasing items ... particularly those items which provide the store with the greatest profit.  The exterior display has, as its goal, to entice customers into the store ~ and therefore suggest that the store is a wonderful, phenomenal play space, where the customers can thrill themselves through shopping and the pursuit of materialism.

We'll talk about some mistakes that are made in setting up an exterior display, from a dungeon point of view.  The first room ~. and indeed, any room that must serve as a utility for beckoning the players forward with zeal and interest ~ IS the store's front window.  It is the first impression.  It falls on the DM to make that impression well.  And lest the reader think I'm speaking from bias, I offer this link, from people who know something about winning over customers.

1.  Too Much

"Displaying products in large quantities and without a defined priority, importance and layout makes the window “dumb”, unable to communicate.

"The truth is that the human eye seeks order, clarity of reading always, even when observing a window display. This doesn’t mean that appreciates monotony but that find it easier to be guided through lines and geometric paths."

As much as I respect the efforts being made to design a dungeon entryway with verve and excitement, right down to putting in the sounds of weapons being used nearby [which breaks the design framework that was set up initially, as we have no idea what's going on any next room], it's too much.  It is too many things.  Having read through a number, my eyes soon began to glaze over as complex descriptions followed one upon the next.  To state the problem bluntly ~ for which I apologize, but we must be clear ~ my thoughts become, "yeah yeah, dead bodies, what else?"  The detail, as a game design feature rather than the front paragraphs of a novel, is wasted.

This is not inviting the player into the dungeon.  Most of these descriptions leave me feeling immediately threatened; I don't feel in control.  Players want to feel like they've got this, so that the room tells them precisely what sort of lair they're in.  Empty vases, complex fountains, wet floors, gushed blood, vibrating hums ... these all say, go away.  A lit fireplace and a wicker basket may be welcoming at the inn, but down here, it says something very powerful lives here that doesn't need to lock the front door or post a guard.

2. Create Space

"Leave no space between the products creates a fast scan effect, very fast, in the minds of your customers who will compare your shop to a thousand others similar to ignore."

These descriptions are, in detail, very different and unique.  But as a body, read in sequence, they are all the same rhythm.  Noise, things, five doors, got it.  The descriptions simply meld into one another.  If you use this same technique to describe every room in your dungeon, the player's heads will quickly fill with non-descript, utterly unimportant details, leading you to say as DM at some point, "Remember?  I told you there were hexagonal tiles in the first room.  How could you miss that?"

There's only so much new, disconnected information that the brain will take in and remember.  As creatures, we're designed to look at a whole forest and miss all the trees, except the one with our dinner sitting on the lowest branch.

3.  Spotlight

"You must define which produces to prioritize time to time in the window.  Putting the window spotlight on a product that you don't sell a lot is the boost it needs."

In presentation and writing, there is a technique.  Pick one thing as the most important thing in the room.  Then relate everything else in the room to that one thing.   The large, faded rug in the center of the room is immediately below the open lantern hanging form the ceiling.  The rug is placed the same distance between the nearer left and right doors.  The weave of the rug includes the damaged image of a finch.  You see the same finch image on the back of the shelves.  A finch has been painted on each door.  The rug looks as though it has been used as a welcome mat.  The rug is brown, unlike the grey floor stones.  And so on.

One thing in this room is actually important.  One.  More than that, and you're over-reaching the player's attention span.

4. Not Dark, Dirty and Disordered

"I think the title says it all but to be clearer: dark, dirty or disordered are sad and useless displays.  In a display window [it] is not enough to take care only of the products; choose the right ones and make them look their best."

It is quite clear that many of you have tried to do this.  You've selected a specific door to draw attention to, or some item that might have potential; but these are not spotlighted and there is so much clutter and extraneous detail in the room that the point is missed.

I feel I should point out that I never said, "Present the room as though I, the player, were in the process of entering it."  I never said, "Run the room."  I said, "Fill it."  "Write your description."  In short, DESIGN the room.  The workshop is about worldbuilding, NOT presentation, and that message was utterly lost.  Forgive me for stressing it now, but I need to make this point now to address the disordered problem.

When designing a room, you should think of it in cold design terms, without the adjectives, the emotions, the extraneous effects of sound.  And without the mystery and "keeping us in the dark."  It would be perfectly acceptable for each of you, who tried to present something as weird and not fully understood, to just say what that thing is.  I presume you know it.  By "designing your game" from the standpoint of all this presentational clutter, you make it harder for you yourself to know precisely what's going on.  The players are not the only people here who will have trouble keeping track of all the darkness.


5.  Have a Plan

I might have said a lot of this Tuesday, but I'll be honest.  I hadn't identified the problem myself on Tuesday.  I said this would be a learning curve.  I was going along with what I was seeing, concentrating on the creativity.  The creativity is great!  But it needs to be washed clear of the sentiment and written out in clear, harsh terms.  If you will each go back and review your descriptions, I think you'll find that much of the fill you've added doesn't actually go anywhere.  It is just dressing.  And as the fellow who wrote the linked post would say, nothing in a well dressed window is put there casually.

Who here had a plan?  If so, let the rest of us know about it, since we will ALSO be designing the dungeon.  That way, we can decide on the best plan, rather than the best descriptive paragraph, and then hone and finesse that plan into a truly interesting dungeon.

Description is Easy

The Devil in the Details

When I went to bed last night, I feared that today I'd be writing a post encouraging readers to be brave about the workshop, and willing to put their ideas out into the world.  But several people essayed to create a description, so that post can go hang.

It falls upon me to examine the content that was proposed ~ and to say first that I have very little criticism to offer.  There is a small point to be made about Ozymandias' statement, "As you move through the room," that technically violates the player's agency; more correctly a description should read, "When someone moves," but this is a small point.

this post will be about what we have to consider.  Allow me to produce a list of the highlights, as I see them:

Ozymandias describes a series of impressions that appear upon four of the room's doors, that apparently change as the doors are approached.  The impressions are a large sword, an hourglass, a balance scales and a flask.

Kees describes a large fountain, with streams that run from the fountain across the floor and under each door.  The fountain has five demonic visages ~ thoughtful, wizened, zealous, aggressive and lewd.  The room includes two corroded bronze slabs.  As these are "hanging," as a player I want to know by what, how heavy the slabs are, how corroded, etc., because that's potentially value there.  In email, Kees confirmed with me that the fountain is more or less in the center of the room.

Haggis emphasizes emptiness, to potentially fine benches and barred holes that are bound to be taken for potential murder slots.  But it is deathly silent.

Danielle describes an inch of water, decaying barrels, and a moldy writing desk and a chair.  She presumes we have torches [likely these are attempts to predict the party, but do try to resist the compulsion].

Shelby places a stone block in the center of the room, similar to a font.  He changes up one of the doors from the others, to give it special value.  Again, as a player I'm looking at the bands, wanting to know if I can strip them, particularly if they're brass.  Shelby also assumes we have torches, and predicts that our hearts are thumping.

All of these are just fine.  The descriptions are promising and comprehensive.

I encourage the use of sound, smell, light, surfaces and the like in your descriptions, to create interest and draw the players in.  But you give your game away when you tell me my heart is thumping.  It is strictly panto, it foils the rule of show, don't tell, it's awfully cliched and it is bound to create an emotional break at your game table, as some players says mockingly, "Oooo, my heart, my poor heart," followed by laughter and other jocularity.  If they can feel any tension at the start of the dungeon, let them feel it; don't tell them they feel it.  Relax.  The description is working.  Don't pound the drum for it.

Beware of the dangers of overthinking here.  Oz could watch half an hour of game time vanish as the players uselessly draw out theories regarding each of the impressions.  Kees is less likely to get this with the faces, but that danger is still there.  Since I did say there were no monsters here, Haggis' bared holes in the ceiling, so long as they're large enough for an arrow, could tie up a distrustful party for a long time.

I'd want to know if Danielle's water is moving; what is, or was, in the barrels; the material of the writing desk, and the chair.  Since this is at the front of the dungeon, it's a strange place for it.  Did someone sit here and keep accounts of materials coming in or going out of the dungeon?  That would be my guess.

In each case of the above, the DM has given themselves a very definite problem.  What is this thing, or these things, doing here?  Sometimes, as in the case of Shelby's font or Haggis' benches, it can be very simple.  This was a waiting room.  People blessed themselves (or some religious equivalent) as they entered or left.  The water table rose, drowning the room.

I always want to know.  If a torch burns for only 20 minutes, who is
coming around three times an hour to make sure this crumbling,
smashed hallway is well lit?  Torches do cost money, you know.

Kees and Ozymandias, however, have given themselves more difficult troubles.  The fountain is working.  So is the magic behind the four doors.  We might manage the logical arrangement for either of these things, but I'm going to be rolling this dungeon randomly.  [*hah*].  That's going to make quite a challenge, when the sword door opens and I roll something behind it that makes no sense in that regard.

I did suggest water as an option, but as this is the top level of this dungeon, always remember that once you add water, you're stuck with it for awhile.  The water has to go somewhere.  And it has to come from somewhere.  It's easy enough to use magic to explain these things away ... but I have to tell you, I've never had players find it particularly intriguing when I've handwaved stuff like this.  I've been stuck having to do it now and then, but it never works out.

Even if we describe things as corroded, irregular, moldy, dull, sturdy, musty, hard-packed and rotted, those adjectives can make the difference between the thing's legitimacy in this place.  Before saying something is rotted or irregular, or whatever, know why you're describing it that way, ahead of time.  Trust me.  It matters.

This absolutely should sound positive.  I only want to stress that when the players do find out what this stuff means, and where it comes from, the response isn't a bland, "oh."  We want a long, profound, "Ahhh ... cool."