Yora
2016-05-21, 07:36 AM
Given that people have been creating dungeons and ruins for RPGs for over 40 years, and that lots of people have been writing GM advice on the internet for at least 10, I find it quite interesting and strange that there is very little material around that deal with dungeon design. When you look over to videogames, there is quite a lot that has been produced about analyzing and understanding great level design.
So let's talk about this subject and see what kinds of wisdom we can discover.
While videogame level design has to account for the player interactions of videogames, and RPG dungeon design needs to be based on the interaction between players and GM, there's still a great amount of overlap where we can learn a good deal of methods and tricks. I've been watching two half-hour videos about the level design in Dark Souls (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZ9_RJ2EPo0) and Half-Life 2 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRBisIZvl24), which I think are full of great ideas how a ruin or a dungeon could be designed for an RPG. Stuff that I've never seen any GM manual or Homebrew designers talks about.
One big thing mentioned in both videos, is to provide spots from which the players can get a rough look over a good section of the area. Not good enough to make out any details, but good enough to get a general idea of the overall layout. In HL2, the idea behind this is that you show the players the position of their goal and they have to find a path to reach it. The game tends to be super linear with pretty much no branching paths, so you can't really get lost. But it still creates a sense of progress.
This is quite different from the usual dungeon design I see, where every door and corner is a comple surprise for the players. Which doesn't matter so much when it's expected that the players will have been to every room by the end anyway. But having information about what lies ahead enables the players to make meaningful informed choices. And meaningful choices are the very essence of agency.
Something mentioned in the HL2 video is the use of "fences". You can see through them, hear through them, and shot through them, but you can't move through them. Earlier on there's windows, which you can only see through, but not interact through. Both of them allow players to anticipate what lies ahead and prepare themselves for what they expect to encounter. This is completely different from "You open the door, there's 8 zombies, roll initiative." You don't have to use this method for every encounter, but I think just using it on some encounters could greatly enhance a dungeon or ruin.
The Dark Souls video talks about shortcuts. Which is something I've seen in a dungeon in an RPG only once, because the unspoken assumption is that the players will be through every room once, movement over longer distances happens instantaneously (because of the way the GM narrates the game), rooms that are cleared once will remain cleared forever, and there are no enemies moving around. Under those considerations shortcuts are pointless.
Now in Dark Souls shortcuts are great because you constantly die or rest, and all enemies respawn. As a GM, there is absolutely nothing preventing you from making cleared areas unsafe again. If you're doing a megadungeon (and the Dark Souls games are basically that) and there's a town or base camp where players return to for supplies, healing, and selling stuff; they will constantly be going back and forth and could run into annoying enemies that will take resources (spells, hp) to deal with. The one example I've seen was somewhat boring though, as it's basically a magic elevator shaft that only the players and a small number of NPCs can use. It's a fast travel system that can be accessed from the main entry of the dungeon and not an alternative route that lets the players avoid some of the dangers. It just skips past all the dangers.
Going into game design for a moment, this is most effective in games where there is very little gain from fighting random monsters. If they give only minimal or no XP and treasure, they are just a (good) annoyance to the players that makes them want to avoid these encounters. If fighting these enemies provides just as much reward as reaching new areas they might even be welcome sources of easy XP and gold. When the player say "Let's take the long route so we can collect some rewards along the way", something is going wrong. That's farming.
The way Dark Souls makes shortcuts possible is by using a kind of spiraling tower level design. As you progress through the level, you eventually find yourself just above or below a spot you've been to before, and from that location you're able to open a shortcut that you didn't even see before. Lower a rope, remove the bar from a door, stuff like that.
Almost the opposite of this is a cool thing done in many of the areas of Shadow of the Colossus. Often you come to places that turn out to be much bigger on the inside than their simple and unassuming entrances made you think. It looks like just a small door cut into a hillside, but when you explore it it turns out to be a tunnel leading to a huge hidden valley with a whole ruined city in it. I think this could make for great moments in an adventure. As a GM my experience might be different from that of people who almost always play, but with most dungeons I've seen, it seems that you almost always get what you were expecting when you reached the entrance. Either because the entrance implies it, or because the party is knowing what kind of place they are looking for.
Those moments when you come out of a small tunnel and into a huge valley or cavern are also great opportunities for letting the players get a look of the area they'll get to next.
Going from the very big small to the very small, one of the first points in the HL2 video is that every room has something to do in it. Even if it's tiny and seemingly pointless. Just something that makes the players stop and think. Say the door is blocked and it needs to be forced open. Or there's a hole in the floor. Or a stack of crates behind which something might be hiding. Even if the very first action the players attempt results in telling them that everything is clear, they still did something. There was a moment where they had to worry if there might be a danger. Even if it turns out there wasn't.
Movement can also be obstructed by tiny obstacles. Say a window is very high and the players have to push a table over to reach it, or giving each other a lift.
And another small thing that I was thinking off watching the HL2 video is how much more interesting a fight can be if the enemies are not all coming from one direction. Now a lot of players never consider the possibility of retreat (because most published adventures are written so it won't ever be necessary), but if the path through which they entered becomes blocked, the fight can get a lot more tension. It doesn't mean that they have to fight to the death and there could still be other paths to escape, but those would be paths the players have not cleared yet. (Or cleared recently, if you have enemies moving around in the area.)
So let's talk about this subject and see what kinds of wisdom we can discover.
While videogame level design has to account for the player interactions of videogames, and RPG dungeon design needs to be based on the interaction between players and GM, there's still a great amount of overlap where we can learn a good deal of methods and tricks. I've been watching two half-hour videos about the level design in Dark Souls (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZ9_RJ2EPo0) and Half-Life 2 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRBisIZvl24), which I think are full of great ideas how a ruin or a dungeon could be designed for an RPG. Stuff that I've never seen any GM manual or Homebrew designers talks about.
One big thing mentioned in both videos, is to provide spots from which the players can get a rough look over a good section of the area. Not good enough to make out any details, but good enough to get a general idea of the overall layout. In HL2, the idea behind this is that you show the players the position of their goal and they have to find a path to reach it. The game tends to be super linear with pretty much no branching paths, so you can't really get lost. But it still creates a sense of progress.
This is quite different from the usual dungeon design I see, where every door and corner is a comple surprise for the players. Which doesn't matter so much when it's expected that the players will have been to every room by the end anyway. But having information about what lies ahead enables the players to make meaningful informed choices. And meaningful choices are the very essence of agency.
Something mentioned in the HL2 video is the use of "fences". You can see through them, hear through them, and shot through them, but you can't move through them. Earlier on there's windows, which you can only see through, but not interact through. Both of them allow players to anticipate what lies ahead and prepare themselves for what they expect to encounter. This is completely different from "You open the door, there's 8 zombies, roll initiative." You don't have to use this method for every encounter, but I think just using it on some encounters could greatly enhance a dungeon or ruin.
The Dark Souls video talks about shortcuts. Which is something I've seen in a dungeon in an RPG only once, because the unspoken assumption is that the players will be through every room once, movement over longer distances happens instantaneously (because of the way the GM narrates the game), rooms that are cleared once will remain cleared forever, and there are no enemies moving around. Under those considerations shortcuts are pointless.
Now in Dark Souls shortcuts are great because you constantly die or rest, and all enemies respawn. As a GM, there is absolutely nothing preventing you from making cleared areas unsafe again. If you're doing a megadungeon (and the Dark Souls games are basically that) and there's a town or base camp where players return to for supplies, healing, and selling stuff; they will constantly be going back and forth and could run into annoying enemies that will take resources (spells, hp) to deal with. The one example I've seen was somewhat boring though, as it's basically a magic elevator shaft that only the players and a small number of NPCs can use. It's a fast travel system that can be accessed from the main entry of the dungeon and not an alternative route that lets the players avoid some of the dangers. It just skips past all the dangers.
Going into game design for a moment, this is most effective in games where there is very little gain from fighting random monsters. If they give only minimal or no XP and treasure, they are just a (good) annoyance to the players that makes them want to avoid these encounters. If fighting these enemies provides just as much reward as reaching new areas they might even be welcome sources of easy XP and gold. When the player say "Let's take the long route so we can collect some rewards along the way", something is going wrong. That's farming.
The way Dark Souls makes shortcuts possible is by using a kind of spiraling tower level design. As you progress through the level, you eventually find yourself just above or below a spot you've been to before, and from that location you're able to open a shortcut that you didn't even see before. Lower a rope, remove the bar from a door, stuff like that.
Almost the opposite of this is a cool thing done in many of the areas of Shadow of the Colossus. Often you come to places that turn out to be much bigger on the inside than their simple and unassuming entrances made you think. It looks like just a small door cut into a hillside, but when you explore it it turns out to be a tunnel leading to a huge hidden valley with a whole ruined city in it. I think this could make for great moments in an adventure. As a GM my experience might be different from that of people who almost always play, but with most dungeons I've seen, it seems that you almost always get what you were expecting when you reached the entrance. Either because the entrance implies it, or because the party is knowing what kind of place they are looking for.
Those moments when you come out of a small tunnel and into a huge valley or cavern are also great opportunities for letting the players get a look of the area they'll get to next.
Going from the very big small to the very small, one of the first points in the HL2 video is that every room has something to do in it. Even if it's tiny and seemingly pointless. Just something that makes the players stop and think. Say the door is blocked and it needs to be forced open. Or there's a hole in the floor. Or a stack of crates behind which something might be hiding. Even if the very first action the players attempt results in telling them that everything is clear, they still did something. There was a moment where they had to worry if there might be a danger. Even if it turns out there wasn't.
Movement can also be obstructed by tiny obstacles. Say a window is very high and the players have to push a table over to reach it, or giving each other a lift.
And another small thing that I was thinking off watching the HL2 video is how much more interesting a fight can be if the enemies are not all coming from one direction. Now a lot of players never consider the possibility of retreat (because most published adventures are written so it won't ever be necessary), but if the path through which they entered becomes blocked, the fight can get a lot more tension. It doesn't mean that they have to fight to the death and there could still be other paths to escape, but those would be paths the players have not cleared yet. (Or cleared recently, if you have enemies moving around in the area.)