Origins 2009: Monte Cook “Designing A Better Dungeon”

Our last bit from Origins 2009: guest of honor Monte Cook, in addition to his seminar on game mastering, also did a seminar on designing dungeons. Here are my notes from that event.

Before the event started, an audience member asked if he was going to be writing anything for 4e. He replied that he had mostly retired from game design, but the Dungeon-A-Day project was just such a cool idea that it brought him back for it.

Dungeons are often maligned as an old fashioned way to do a D&D adventure. Monte loves dungeons, and thinks they are a great way to tell an adventure.

As stated in the 3e DMG, dungeons are cool because if you step back from them and look at them in the abstract, they’re just adventure flowcharts. “You go to hallway to room 1, and then it forms to room 2 or room 3.” These are decision points that branch, and PCs can make decisions off that, etc. Another way to look at it is that the dungeon as an abstraction for how we tell stories in role playing games. RPGs tell stories in very different ways than books and movies, because they’re ongoing- they’re more like TV series or comics. Stories are broken down into small bits, but lumped together to form a story arc, and story arcs form campaign. Dungeons are like that as well: a bunch of rooms or encounters, themed together into a level. Then put levels together and you’ve got a megadungeon.

It’s a very interesting way to explore and stage and pace an RPG, even if you’re not dealing with a traditional “ruins labyrinth” setting. You can think of any kind of adventure location as a dungeon. You can have an adventure where you go off into the woods, and the paths branch there as well, and really, you’ve got a dungeon, but instead of walls you have trees. That idea can be applied to urban adventures as well. In an investigation, you come to a clue, have two options to follow up on. Not talking about hallways, but paths of inquiries, but it’s the same structure.

One of the cool things about dungeons is that they’re good for beginning DMs because they’re spatially limited. You only have to prepare for those choices.

You can take the dungeon as an adventure design module and apply it to just about anything.

Talking about a traditional dungeon (as in “& Dragons”), the most maligned aspect of dungeons it that they’re not realistic. Monsters living next to each other with treasure, etc. Whenever he uses the term “realism” in games, I put quotes around it. To an extent, it’s an impossible goal to reach. Nothing in RPGs is truly realistic. As soon as you abstract damage to HP, you’re talking about an abstraction. As a game master, going for realism isn’t necessarily a laudable goal. Instead, go for believability, and for that, context is important.

When players sit down, they have a willingness to believe. When you give them something they can’t believe, it breaks “realism.” Give them a sense of believability, give them a sense that it’s real without any glaring, obvious problems. “Why do these gnolls live next to this dragon?” If there’s a death trap in the way, how do the residents get there? (or go to the bathroom?) As long as you can avoid those big, glaring errors, they’re willing to go along with you. Realism isn’t a big a problem: if it is, they probably should be playing some other game.

The key to any kind of RPG is that the players need to be able to make real decisions. When they can’t make any decisions, it’s a railroad game. Good example of dungeon design is that the dungeon is not design linearly. You can make a railroad dungeon, but it’s boring (and map is boring). A dungeon is a great opportunity to make decisions, because it’s a bit more challenging. It has to be an interesting decision as well: do we go left or go right is not that interesting. You might as well not give them that since it’s random. If you can, give them information they need to make informed decision. One pretty straightforward way to do it: if they look left, it’s entirely black. If they look right, there’s flickering flames. On the right, something intelligent down there that needs light to see. A somewhat informed decision. A more informed one could be: screams of torment and pain down the left, nothing down the right. More dramatic decision: the paladin goes down that way.

It all comes down to description. The players see the game world through the game master’s decision. The only conduit is through the game master. The more description you can give (without being pedantic and boring) the better. Dungeons can get boring (30×30 with 2 doors), but give them more information so they have something they can go on.

One idea been lost since the earliest days of D&D: the idea of discovery for its own sake. In the earliest days of D&D, everyone’s adventure was to go down into a dungeon and explore. It was all about “what’s beyond that next door, what’s down this hallway, what interesting things will happen when a lever is pulled.” That can be really fun and rewarding by itself. Not part of a giant quest to save the world. Not part of a complicated storyline. It’s a story in and of itself: what’s in this chest, what’s behind this curtain. It seems small and unimportant, but can be fun around the game table.

In a big quest, things won’t get resolved for 6 months to a year from now.But if you’re just exploring the woods, the question is raised, and then it is answered, and it’s immediate gratification. It’s a very valuable tool to keep people interested. It’s also fun for the DM to have things found by the players. For example, in his games, Bruce opened every door and pulled every lever. You need that guy in your game. You love him as a DM. If nobody opens the door, you’ve wasted the time to create that room (though you can always lift it and put it somewhere else).

Lots of times DMs put out interesting adventure hooks and time limits. “Go capture these kobolds in this dungeon to stop them” or “stop this ritual before the full moon” but in both those scenarios, you’re encouraging people not to explore. They’ll say they don’t have time for that. A lot of published adventures are like this too. A DM leads by the nose is bad, but just as bad is a DM pushing them ever-forward. In a dungeon environment, it’s cool to just let them go and explore, and people will find it entertaining, maybe moreso than you think.

Those are the big topics. What followed was a Q&A session:

Q: In shorter game sessions (3-4 hours), what ways are there to design a dungeon so they don’t lose their flow, and so they can be segmented appropriately?
A: If you have the ability, write notes on the battlemap as you go, and just keep it rolled, so that the text and what happened is preserved.

A good way to quickly drag players back into what’s going on is using the cliffhanger. Instead of just saying “you defeated the goblins and looted them, let’s stop here,” let them press on, and tell them “you see a huge looming shape with bat-like wings… and that’s where we’ll pick up next week.” After they have heard the description, they’ll think about that for the week. Tension and suspense can create memory triggers.

Monte runs two biweekly games. On the Thursday before a Sunday game, email will have recap of what happened. Do it in such a way that it’s both a recap, but their interest is piqued. Include information that didn’t come out in the previous session.

Q: About making informed decisions. When trying to avoid being linear and not leading the PCs by the nose, but the information they’re given pushes them towards one path. How to make the party have an actual choice.
A: Previous examples were clear and obvious, Make something interesting down both ways. They’re still making an informed decision, and you’re not showing any bias. “Clearly the DM wants us to go left, so we’ll go left.” That’ll happen a little bit. You can simply and honestly create situations where you don’t have a preference over which way they go. Give them two choices that are cool.

A lot of times, game masters will just create enough adventure for that session, so they say “this door is locked, can’t go this way, but THIS way…” The more you can honestly not have your own preference, the more of a choice it will be.

Q: When teaching video game design classes, the questioner takes D&D and puts them into level design. How do you nudge towards getting people to go one way, without being a jerk?
A: Very hard to do in a video game situation. As a DM, you know your players. If your players are interested in treasure, or weird magic stuff, or the ranger hates Orcs, it’s easy to tell how they’ll react. A DM has big advantage over game designer. A game designer can do obvious things like “screams of pain and torment”, but it’s harder to motivate in a generic sort of way.

Sometimes it’s character class and race, but most of the time it’s personality type. It would be interesting at the beginning of a computer game if they asked you what kind of game you wanted to play.

Q: Published adventures tends to be story driven and pull or push people. The questioner prefers old school where people make their own story. Even in a story driven game- modern players have less imagination.
A: Some players are motivated by helping the story along. They can be weaned away from that a bit by getting the point across that the players are in charge. That can be really rewarding. Not going to bash on games that are heavily story oriented, but it can be rewarding when the players are proactive instead of reactive. If you can set up a situation where the players aren’t just reacting to “town on fire”, but instead “we set up a thieves’ guild”, it can be very fun. Then the DM is the one reacting then.

In a dungeon, it’s easy to do. The story hook may be nothing more than “there’s a fabulous rod of whomever somewhere in this dungeon that grants magical powers” or even more story based like “a cure for the ailing king” it still can push them to be proactive in looking for it.

When talking to other game designers, or people who want to be game designers, the big thing he says is that you’re not a storyteller. The players and DM are the storytellers. The module is just providing a forum for helping other people telling a story. You can get some interesting stories by providing the dungeon and seeing what happens.

Q: Questioner created an NPC/Location-based game. Detailed a dozen NPCs with goals, motivations, etc. And location where different things happen at different times. Have players choose a story.
A: “Generally called a sandbox.”

Q: …but when he tried to run it, it wasn’t enough direction for the players. It worked fine from session to session, but it was challenging to keep it going.
A: Best way to handle that kind of setup is to do it either way. Say “here’s the world/setting/dungeon” and you can explore and do whatever you want. If you see them floundering, you can drop some adventure hooks in, and once those ordinary quests are done, they can investigate stuff they were interested in. They can bounce between reactive and proactive.

Some discussion followed on running a sandbox, providing information to the players, and doing a scavenger hunt-style game.

One of the hallmarks of the “old school” dungeon is that the deeper you go, the harder it is, but the greater the rewards. It seems simplistic, and maybe not “realistic”, but it’s interesting from a game play stand point. It gives information when they come to stairs. It creates risk/reward scenarios, with resource management. It seems simplistic, but if you embrace it or develop similar tropes, it empowers the players to make decisions.

Q: How do you prevent the dungeon from feeling like a feedback loop? Get more stuff to get tougher to kill more stuff…
A: “You’ve described the majority of role playing games.” When you break it down to the basics, that is often what it’s about. He doesn’t know how to avoid it, because that’s how the game is played. Give the players other goals and flavor that are less game mechanic based (and more story) and those things become less glaringly abuse.

One thing lost in more modern games is the weird character sheet: notations of weird stuff that has happened throughout the course of the campaign that doesn’t fit into the specific boxes. People in pre-published modules are afraid to be way too outside the box. If you’re creating a module for levels 7-8, you don’t know what’s coming before or after, so you can’t account for that. TSR always said “do whatever you want as long as you put the toys back at the end.”

With something like Dungeon-A-Day, since it’s a whole campaign, you can be more free to have interesting things happen to the characters, because that’s fun and interesting. In a weird way, no matter what edition you’re talking about, the options in the book are the least interesting things that can happen to your character. The most talked about and remembered are the ones that go outside the rules.

One of the characters in his campaign has a magic ring that he has no idea what it can do or what it does, and is intelligent. It can absorb magic items and produce magic effects. If it absorbs armor, it provides protection. Monte has no idea how it works either, narrating on the fly. Something like that couldn’t be in a published product, but can put in your own campaign as long as your players trust you. Another weird thing about the ring is that it telepathically taps into the mind of someone in our world, and someone who plays D&D and video games.

Q: How do you deal with different types of players in the different dungeon scenarios?
A: Sometimes players complain that they have too many options. Every time Monte shows up to a game, there are 5-6 new cool things to do, and the players haven’t finished the previous 20. Many DMs who play things linearly have time constraints, and don’t have time to prepare more or come up with stuff on the fly. Linearity comes from timidness. The ability to come up with a lot of different options is challenging for a DM, so when a path is forced it shows nervousness to go outside the box.

Q: What if you are someone with time constraints?
A: There’s no problem with pre-published adventures. But if you don’t like them, you have to do more with the time you’ve got. Come up with more choices, but less details, and become more comfortable with developing on the fly. Don’t tell the players, but you can do a dungeon entirely on the fly. No matter what they choose, you add something. He’s not a big fan of that approach, but it works if you’re pressed for time.

“This is the kind of place where Monte would put a trap”- that’s bad metagame thinking. The more you expose yourself to other adventures, the better. We all develop our own boxes, and breaking out of those is really helpful. Originally started Dungeon-A-Day as stand alone encounters, but started to link them into campaigns or arc, with the idea that they could also stand alone. He takes published adventures and rips them out (sometimes literally). None of the players know where they came from (or really cares)… no matter where it’s from, it all works.

Q: When running a published adventure- what if someone has run it?
A: You need to have trust with your players. Tell your players “don’t read Dungeon magazine” if you’re planning on running from them. You can change pieces of information. People who have written or read a lot can’t remember everything.

Q: Favorite dungeon monster?
A: Beholder!