A really fine series of articles I just found at Justin Alexander's blog site: "Jaquaying the Dungeon". This mostly concerns the kinds of complex and non-linear dungeon connection features seen in the work of Paul Jaquays, about whom I'm not alone in writing positively about in the past. Justin's series is highly recommended (and probably the verbing of Jaquays' name alone was enough to sell me on it).
This is a great article, and I definitely find myself agreeing with a lot of points. Often when creating a dungeon from scratch I end up using Dyson Logos' work as a starting point (easier to steal a map than draw a new one). I think he embodies a lot of these Jaquaysian ideas. For example, I recently stocked this map for a one-off game:
ReplyDeletehttp://rpgcharacters.wordpress.com/2011/01/25/one-hour-dungeon-map/
I absolutely adore his use of third dimension. Check out how the two entrances in the top left corner cross over each other. Not only does it feed into the elevation shift stuff to make mapping strange, it also makes for really interesting tactical combats. I had a group enter from the northern passage and the fight with the goblins on the platform above was glorious: full of running from archery, back and forth combat over the choke point at the top of the ladder, and hand-to-hand combat to try and utilize the sheer drop to advantage. I don't think I've ever run a combat with so many rounds spent trying clever ideas rather than just "I swing my sword".
I'll probably write up my own post about that one in the near future. I have another group running it tomorrow, some of whom read my blog, so I don't want to tip my hand. :)
Sounds great!
DeleteI think I've read these before, but thanks for reminding me. It puts me in the mood to design dungeons.
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