Sunday, February 22, 2015

Major Map Features & Cliches of Felltower

Just thinking of things I've put into my megadungeon.

Major Mapping Features I've used in Felltower include:

- sections of levels only accessible from below.

- dead-end levels (you can get to them, but not usefully anywhere else from them)

- semi dead-end levels (you can get into an otherwise isolated group of levels)

- sub-levels

- partial level changes. (That is, level changes that aren't so deep that I change sheets of mapping paper.)

- caverns

- underground river

- caverns verging on worked dungeon space.

- hidden rooms and hidden areas only accessible with special gear, items, or at specific times.

Megadungeon Cliches I've used in Felltower include:

- Flooded level.

- evil temple area (in fact, the evil temple)

- feuding factions.

- Overpowered monster nodes. (As in, monsters well about the difficulty of the surrounding area.)

- entrance from underwater.

- giant staircase (rumored, not yet seen)

- entrance from a hole in the ground.

- teleporters.

- trick statues.

- 5 degree slopes. (Okay, not 5 degrees.)

- unopenable doors.

- anti-magic zones

- room of pools

- levers with unknown function.

- ridiculous monsters. Lots and lots of ridiculous monsters.


I think although I haven't tossed in a Ye Olde Magic Shoppe, a monster arena, or a gambling den run by kobolds, I've hit some of the key notes I've admired in the published adventures and published tales of adventures from old school gaming. And not a little bit of new-school video gaming, too. Not bad. Now I just need a (secret) list of stuff I need to ensure I put in.

2 comments:

  1. That's a solid reference for the big ideas. The entrance from underwater is one I haven't seen too often.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I'd be riffing off of Nethack a lot if I ever ran a dungeon crawl.

    ReplyDelete

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...