DUNGEONs: class structure
0.
Spatially, a dungeon is a set of rooms arranged in an order.
Gameplay-wise, I want the dungeon to feel like a gestalt: a dungeon-challenge that is more than the sum of all room-challenges.
1.
I think of two components for DUNGEONs:
Static: rooms and their contents.
- Mostly fixed in space.
- Usually hard-prepped in order to optimise interaction potential (toyetic-ness).
- Running them benefits from familiarity.
Dynamic: moving parts of a dungeon1.
- They are movable.
- Can be soft-prepped because they might not even show up in play.
- Running them benefits from improvisation.
The tools used to define the dynamic component of a dungeon gears.
2.
By hard-prep I mean devoting more time to define elements that 1) are likelier to show up during gameplay; 2) that have a higher truth-value; 3) serve as the main gameplay elements.
By soft-prep I mean spending less time defining elements that 1) are not as likely to show up during gameplay; 2) have a lower truth-value in the fiction; 3) serve as inspiration and theme-reinforcement.
All prep should be short, loose and inspirational.
But some prep is shorter, looser and more inspirational than other.
3.
A DUNGEON is a set of ROOMs and enhanced by GEARS.
Random encounters, NPC names, escalating dangers, clocks and locale-specific mechanics are all parts of the dynamic component. Not every dungeon needs all of them, and the list is not exhaustive. They often involve, or are part of, procedures.↩