Date: Wed, 1 Jul 1998 21:35:53 -0500
To: Blades Help <krizsan@spidweb.com>
From: Wendy and Ben Frank <wendyben@idt.net>
Subject: Comment on scenarios

I know you occasionally post comments regarding scenario design and 
such, and have been helped by several of those posted to your web site.  Here 
is a general musing based on the half dozen or so scenarios I have played.
Please post if you deem it worthy.

There is a tendency in many scenarios to have dungeons that may be neat 
but make no conceptual sense.  For instance, a dungeon with many rooms 
linked one to the next with monsters in each and nothing of substance at the 
end. Or, a dungeon with a nice final encounter with the big nasty where you 
have to go through a gauntlet of traps, tricks, and other rooms and beasts 
to get there.  Why would any intelligent creature build such a place?  If 
you came home at night and had to go through every room of your house and 
your neighbors' to get to the bedroom would you still live there?

In this vein, many dungeons are too large.  Sometimes it is the number 
of rooms which serve no purpose except to contain monsters to fight.  Some
times it is the length of the entry corridor to a dungeon, which can be 
so long as to take up the a significant part of the length of the map.  
Again, if you had to walk down a long corridor after going through your front 
door just to get to doors at the end which allowed you to get back to the 
front of the house, wouldn't you knock down a wall and put a door close to 
the front to make the trip easier?

Similarly we have the overtrapped corridor phenomena, where there is
treasure in a chest or such and the floor is "trapped" to do damage as 
you walk on it.  Traps are one thing- presumably the occupants know about 
them and can avoid or disarm them.  But forced damage (or a pool of lava, 
etc.) that the owner would also have to pass through makes as much sense as 
the long hall or extra room.

Keep in mind- the monsters have to live where you put them.  They need 
to have a food supply, place to rest, and easy access (at least for them- 
lava is o.k. if they are immune to fire.)  You are building a home.  That
doesn't mean you can't have many rooms or a long corridor, but if you 
do there should be an easy way for the homeowner to get in and out.  
Keeping that in mind in dungeon design will be more logical and make the 
scenario more fun to play.

This perspective will also help avoid the "Monty Haul" effect of too 
much treasure which has crept into many of the scenarios.  If you were an
intelligent mage, would you keep a wand of fireballs and steel chain 
mail in a locked, trapped chest?  No, you would be using both or would at 
least have them easily accessible.  You might have gold, gems, or something 
small stored away, but the big stuff you would wear/use yourself.  Big 
treasure should not be easy to find (unless you stumble upon an armory or 
magician's lab, in which case shouldn't the owners or guards be nearby?)


Thanks
Ben Frank

                            ****
  Intelligence sees how to.  Wisdom sees when to.
___________________________________________________
       Benjamin and Wendy Ann Maislen Frank
        45P Edison Ct., Monsey, NY   10952
        914-352-9652;  wendyben@mail.idt.net
___________________________________________________

