Natural 7

Machines

I'm on a quest to design better dungeons, and in particular that means better rooms. What does a "better" room have? Interactable elements with both threat and utility. Should every room have one of these elements? No.

Machine Examples

Chapter 6 of the Designing Dungeons course talks about Experiments and Surprises. In this case, I want to take their advice on creating the best dungeon features: ones which have both positive and negative effects. I like to call these types of features "machines" because you can poke, prod, and pull their metaphorical buttons and levers.

The example in the article is a hydraulic press. If you stand under it, you'll be crushed. If you put other things under it, you can use the press to break them open. This presents a threat and an opportunity for player creativity.

Another example of a machine is a pool of acid. If you swim in it, you'll melt. If you dip things in the acid, you can remove their outer layers. You can also push monsters in the acid. This is a fairly obvious threat, with subtle opportunities for player creativity.

Creativity in Both Directions

I think that by including a pool of acid in your dungeon, you also introduce an opportunity for creativity in yourself, the dungeon designer. Now that you've said the acid can melt things, what if you incorporate that into your dungeon design? What other things could you place throughout the dungeon that could benefit from being melted?

An ancient key so rust-caked that it no longer fits inside the keyhole to the next level could work well. Players may learn, or know, that the acid could help break off the rust (and maybe the key is made of a material that can't be acid-melted). Players might also come up with another solution to un-rusting the key or opening the lock it's useful for.

If we really want to encourage a particular type of gameplay, we can go overboard and theme our entire dungeon around using one or two machines to solve different problems. You might recognize this type of dungeon design from Legend of Zelda style games.

Return to the Feature

Something I want to get better at is making these interactable elements interesting to return to over time.

Suppose you encounter a mural in a dungeon and learn something new about the dungeon's history. Unless that knowledge is useful later on, and you forgot it, you probably aren't likely to ask about the mural ever again. Been there, done that, let's move on. I like these elements, but I also like encouraging repeated journeys through previous areas.

What if, instead of just learning something new about the dungeon's history, you notice something odd about the mural. Let's say there are two holes where a character's eyes are supposed to be. Those holes indicate that some creativity can take place here: we could peek into the holes, try to fill them with gems (like a key), break down the mural, and so on. If we add a threat to the mural, or room in general, it becomes risky to linger here and players can make a choice each time they pass through: "is now the time for us to check out that thing with the mural?"

The first time you encounter that mural you'll be interested in the knowledge it presents. All future times you encounter the mural you'll be wondering if you can do anything with those holes in the eyes.

I think to make a dungeon feature really stick out to players you can try adding an element of interactivity that keeps that feature in the back of their mind, especially if you hint at a reward.

Final Thoughts

I'm interested to see where this line of thinking takes me. For more on designing dungeons, I recommend checking out the Designing Dungeons Course (ENNIE Award winning), Tricks, Empty Rooms, and Basic Trap Design, Hilander RPGs Dungeon Creation Procedures (check out the Index > Procedures: Create for more on the topic), and Let's Make a Forest.

Making interactive elements to your dungeon relies on your players having the initiative and interest to actually interact with them. More on this in a future blog post. Quick tip for players: take initiative and interact with the game world!

As always, thanks for reading, and have a great week!

Things on my radar: