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View Full Version : DM Help Transition between mapped areas in a giant dungeon



Yora
2017-06-10, 02:39 PM
I love giant caves and colossal castles. I also like adventures to progress at a relatively brisk pace without large amounts of time being spend on going through abandoned rooms with fine brushes and tape measures.

A good solution to this seems to run huge dungeons as grid map/pointcrawl hybrids with only special points of interest (like alchemist's lab, torture chambers, gatehouse, and so on) actually getting mapped out in detail and time jumps being made when moving between those areas. With normal overland travel this is pretty simple. You just make the cut from leaving the city gate to standing at the entrance to the dungeon. But if you're in something like a ruined city, how would you best handle the transition between maps, so to speak. How do you indicate the players that they have reached the edge of the area and that from here on there will be only empty halls until they reach the next area of interest. Walling off each area and placing two gates that are clear fast travel connections would go counter to the illusion that it really is all a single complete ruin that is the reason behind the whole approach in the first place.

What method could I be using to telegraph to the players in an unobstrusive way that they are "leaving the mission area"?

FreddyNoNose
2017-06-17, 01:47 PM
I personally would let them leave the area. But if you have to prevent them from accessing an area you could use something like a magical barrier they have to take down before they can enter. To take it down, they need a magic gem. Guess where the magic gem is located?