2015-03-16 Writing a Dungeon Key

Ramanan Sivaranjan recently wrote a blog post about Dwimmermount’s Room Descriptions and started a discussion about room descriptions on Google+. The things that got discussed:

Dwimmermount’s Room Descriptions

on Google+

• If you like to read a dungeon in order to get into the groove, to get a feeling for the thing, you might want to like long and elaborate room descriptions—but not I!
• If you had studiously extended your vocabulary into ever more eclectic subject areas as a child reading Gary Gygax, you might like fancy words in your room descriptions—but not I!
• If you liked traps and wanted your players to detect and disarm traps by interacting with the environment instead of rolling dice, you need more information about traps—and I agree
• If you have noticeable things (large statues, dangerous monsters), make them stand out, put them at the beginning—and I agree (I like to use bold or color codes to make paragraphs and pages easy to skim)
• But that doesn’t mean I need more words, such as the material of the floor or walls, unless it’s relevant
• But I do agree that generic things are worse than nothing: “mystic symbols” is a wasted opportunity—alchemical symbols? astrological symbols? elven symbols?
• Sometimes a bullet list works well, but recently I stopped using them in adventures I type up because they take up a lot of space; I want dense text with important stuff highlighted by bold typeface or color highlighting. I also think rooms should not contain more than three or four “things”. This is too short for a list.

Ramanan said that D&D modules needed to be written in Hemmingway’s style. That’s something I totally agree with. Rafael then proved the point by providing this gem:

That summer, we journeyed into many dungeons. We went down into the Crypts of Khaxa’Muuanda and the Forgotten Tomb of King Rheghrad and the Ossuary and the Cave of Dragons that was neither truly a cave, as it was a cleft in the mountains, nor did it have any dragons inside it, for the demons had driven them all out, and there was no gold in there either, damn it. That summer we visited them all, and we drank our healing potions in the sun and we slept on thin sheets on stone floors and thought ourselves lucky.

There are brave adventurers and there are foolish adventurers, but there are no old adventurers, because it is the kind of job that puts a man in the hot seat and then he makes a mistake, which is his last.

I walked away from that life, and I think of it every day, and my life now is no good, but then, what is?

– Rafael Chandler (ibid.)

ibid

In the same thread, Gus provided a very long description of a room and asked us all to rewrite it (ibid.). Here’s mine:

ibid

3 *thouls* (_stats here_) will attack intruders; *one more* (Gorzog) will drop from above with +4 on the second round. Gorzog may *surrender* and tell enemies how to activate the dry *alabaster fountain*.

Amidst cracked bones stand five *sarcophagi*, four smashed, one still intact. Above it rotates a *blue jewel* in a shaft of magical light (1000gp). The intact sarcophagus contains the mummified remains of *Buffo the Stuntysmasher*, according to its goblin inscriptions. The jewel is a treasure of the *Mold Mountain Dwarf* clan and they will take offense if the jewel is sold instead of being returned to them.

The *walls* of this burial chamber are covered in chartreuse grave moss sigils; *read languages* reveals prayers to Yeenoghu in his guise as overlord of ghouls.

When the conversation turned to other megadungeons, I said the following:

• As its editor, I really liked Stonehell’s terseness and felt that the intros at the beginning of levels were too long. (Review by Bryce Lynch.)
• As a referee, I’m enjoying The Castle of the Mad Archmage’s terseness.

Stonehell

Review by Bryce Lynch

The Castle of the Mad Archmage

The reason I think I like terseness is because I don’t care about long descriptions when reading, when playing or when running the game. At the same time, the joy I find at the table usually involves monsters interacting with players, the things they know, the things they say, the friends they have, and so on. I haven’t yet seen a megadungeon that takes much of this into account in its descriptions…

​#RPG ​#Megadungeon

Comments

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Some nice tips here. It is indeed a challenge to create a key that is both robust enough to be of value at the table, and yet economic enough to be usable.

– Tad 2015-03-17 16:30 UTC

Tad

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Thanks. 😄

– Alex Schroeder 2015-03-18 07:02 UTC