How big is too big?


Homebrew and House Rules


I have an original aventure I've run twice now for two different groups. The adventure has been pretty popular, and I plan to release it here for free in summer after some modifications.

The adventure takes place in and around a castle inhabited by a suspicious baron and his paranoid underlings. It's a bit of a horror parody.

I'm just curious to know: Do you think it's possible for a castle to be too big?

I'm thinking about if I should redesign the castle. Right now it has about a hundred different numbered locations.

I want to make this a discussion on the size of homebrew locations. Is it better to be compact and to concentrate everything in a few rooms?

In my adventure, all locations have complete descriptions, but many locations are not ultimately that important and the players will end up wasting their time if they decide to search through the entire castle. I use NPCs to guide the PCs if their search provides futile.


I think it's nice to have some areas that are there for "real-world" reasons as opposed to "game/plot"reasons.


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Ganryu wrote:

I have an original aventure I've run twice now for two different groups. The adventure has been pretty popular, and I plan to release it here for free in summer after some modifications.

The adventure takes place in and around a castle inhabited by a suspicious baron and his paranoid underlings. It's a bit of a horror parody.

I'm just curious to know: Do you think it's possible for a castle to be too big?

Yes, but this is more a principle of adventure design and writing than it is of castle design. I mean, the map of Golarion is bigger yet, and far too big for any one party of adventurers to explore. This doesn't bother people, though, because the adventures are restricted to a relatively small area and they are tightly enough written that you don't end up saying "well, we've been in Cheliax so far, so let's head to Absalom."

Think of a James Bond film. Bond can go (literally) all over the world, from Somerset to Siberia to the Sahara, but he always knows where he needs to go next, why he's going there, and how to get there. Warwick Castle (Warwick, UK) has something like 1200 rooms, but as long as the adventure doesn't involve something like "there's a key to this lock hidden in one of the bedrooms and you don't know which," or "somewhere in the castle is the matching earring" that shouldn't be a problem.

ETA: What kills plots is the exploration phase. "The hallway goes forward 40' and then ends in a T-intersection." "We move to the T." "To your left, the hallway goes 20' and then turns south; to the right, the hallway continues as far as you can see, with doors every 20'." So don't do that.

But there's no reason you couldn't ask a servant which of the thirty bedrooms holds the Count de Money.


Thanks for your replies.

The Golux: Yes. A balance is necessary so that the adventure is playable.

Orfamay Quest: Yeah that's something I've been thinking about a lot for this adventure. When I run it it ends up being quite NPC driven, because I can use them to roughly guide the players to explore particular places of the castle.

That last part about exploration is so true. I try to avoid just plain transport areas without details. Every room that is traversed has at least a few objects of potential interest (even if they're irrelevant to the "plot").

The whole idea of the adventure really is that the PCs have been invited to meet this baron, in his castle, about a "problem" he has, but when they get there they discover the baron is away on "business".

They're essentially free to roam most of the castle and talk to the staff, who are all quite suspicious. I tend to discourage searching every room of the castle, and they generally don't do that either because through the NPCs I point them to potential exploration destinations.

Shameless plug: This is the bottom floor of the castle
http://www.update.uu.se/~kgs/castlefloor1.png


Put more clues without NPC interaction into the castle. When thinking of the big clues that push the plot forward, I never require a roll to discover. The clue is still up to player interpretation, and if they want to know something about it or gain an advantage, they need to roll. Secondary clues must be searched for and need a successful roll.

Scarab Sages

Rooms that PCs go in are typically pretty large on a 5'x 5' grid. Your average bedroom would be 4 to 8 squares (100sqft to 200sqft) in real life. Your average privy 1 to 3 squares. Try to keep that in mind.

(I also want to give myself props for making a joke about the title)


B. A. Robards-Debardot wrote:
Rooms that PCs go in are typically pretty large on a 5'x 5' grid. Your average bedroom would be 4 to 8 squares (100sqft to 200sqft) in real life.

Well, it would be today. Minimum bedroom sizes are spelled out in building codes (for health and safety reasons). I think the first building code that specified minimum room sizes was London, in the 19th century.

For most of medieval Europe, a 10x10 bedroom was the kind of luxurious room where you put the HIs Grace the Duke of Southumberland. His manservant Chumley would be lucky to get an 8x5 chamber with a bed the size of a modern army cot. Even the Duke's son, Lord Susan, probably stayed in a room of 70-80 square feet or less.


Irontruth wrote:
Put more clues without NPC interaction into the castle. When thinking of the big clues that push the plot forward, I never require a roll to discover. The clue is still up to player interpretation, and if they want to know something about it or gain an advantage, they need to roll. Secondary clues must be searched for and need a successful roll.

Yeah, this. You never want the game to stop because someone failed a roll. If the consequences of a bad roll are "everyone go home," that really means you shouldn't be asking for a roll at all.


Provide a labelled map in the form of a bird's eye view of the castle. Rather than knowing the actual floor plan, it would be helpful to have a sense of scale. For example, the group would know how to get to the northern, eastern and western wings of the castle, the dungeons, the kennel/stables, the gatehouse, the baron's tower, the old tower, the astronomy tower, the kitchen and servant's quarters, the abandoned portion, the grand ballroom, the village, etc. Once they get there then exploration can begin. You could allow Knowledge (nobility) checks when the players want to find really specific locations or get to a place by the fastest route. Or maybe Diplomacy/gather info checks to get somewhere for the first time.

The massive size isn't a problem, but how you implement it could be.


Ciaran Barnes: That's actually a great idea. I can create a model of the whole castle to illustrate roughly what is where and how the buildings are in scale to eachother.


Orfamay Quest wrote:
Irontruth wrote:
Put more clues without NPC interaction into the castle. When thinking of the big clues that push the plot forward, I never require a roll to discover. The clue is still up to player interpretation, and if they want to know something about it or gain an advantage, they need to roll. Secondary clues must be searched for and need a successful roll.
Yeah, this. You never want the game to stop because someone failed a roll. If the consequences of a bad roll are "everyone go home," that really means you shouldn't be asking for a roll at all.

The adventure is written with no expectation that any actual clues will be found. If they do find them, it will help them work out what is going on, but in case they don't, they will be put in a situation where they definitely will figure it out in the end.

It's mainly laid out as a mystery with a LOT of sideplots and many red herrings.


A physical model?


Making a physical model is too hardcore for me, man! (or woman) (and I don't have a 3d printer anyway)

I meant more like a drawing to show the general idea of the area. I used the word model because I immediately thought this would be better to do in actual 3d, and then draw over it.


Good. A drawing is what I was thinking.

I assumed you made landscapes for war games or something like that. :)


If the baron is just paranoid, he may have spare crystal balls hidden under the floorboards in each of the clue's closets. They try to scry on the baron, and see him scying on them. Then they subdue a "goblin" only to find it's the groundskeeper's son in a mask, trying to drive out the baron. :)


Groundskeeper's son in a mask? Will the mystery machine be passing through?


Zoinks!


Are you hitting on me?


I was getting that Scoobie Doo vibe from this topic.
Paranoid Baron, not actually up to anything.
Huge castle with no 'real' monsters.
The original poster can make a module out of an episode of a cartoon,
because they're the GM!

Liberty's Edge

And if the players don't know it's a parody, then it sort of becomes even funnier when they end up going through the serious motions for dealing with what might be a fake or very inaffective monster.


Goth Guru wrote:

I was getting that Scoobie Doo vibe from this topic.

Paranoid Baron, not actually up to anything.
Huge castle with no 'real' monsters.
The original poster can make a module out of an episode of a cartoon,
because they're the GM!

Hahaha that's great, but a bit off :)

The castle has REAL monsters, not people dressed up as ghosts :)

The idea about the adventure is that the player characters are invited to help the baron figure out what happened to his wife. She's been affected by some kind of enchantment that can't be dispelled and is acting really weird.

When they get there, though, he's away on business (he was actually delayed by the merchants guild in some city, so its' very legit business). None of the staff at the castle know where he is or what he's doing, or even why the player characters are invited (though they do know that visitors are there on invitation from the baron)...

So they're basically let free to roam this enormous castle, with a few warnings from staff on areas to avoid.

EVERY time I have run this adventure, it escalates into a massive torrent of paranoia, because the castle is NOT harmless. There are places that will just plain kill the player characters or cause them severe problems.

And it will be in the nature of all players to keep exploring the castle, because they just want something to do while waiting for the baron. The players will seek trouble, and they will find it!

But I try to cram in as much horror themed stuff as possible:

1: A vampire
2: A flesh golem (frankenstein's monster)
3: A brain in a jar
4: Flesh eating trees and plants in the greenhouse
5: Gargoyles on the top floor
6: A lich (sealed in a vault undergroun)
7: Wights!
8: Ghosts!
9: Werewolves
10: Lovecraftian horrors
11: Crazy pitch-fork style villagers
12: Abandoned insane asylums

The adventure only comes off as parodic if you play it silly, which I don't. I play it seriously and that's why it works for my groups.

The first time was a total party kill, though :P


Try 10th level characters minimum.
Also, one of the guests might be a paranoid, necromancer, merchant. They insist on coming with the characters.

This is similar to the precautions I'm taking with the upcoming Cleaves playtest.


Goth Guru wrote:

Try 10th level characters minimum.

Also, one of the guests might be a paranoid, necromancer, merchant. They insist on coming with the characters.

This is similar to the precautions I'm taking with the upcoming Cleaves playtest.

That's actually very interesting. Do you have any particular ideas for the necromancer? I didn't even think of having another character come along for the castle.

The current setup for the adventure is that all the characters are waiting at a tavern for their transport, which turns out to be an extremely paranoid halfling and a very big half orc who both work for the baron.

It has so far worked for me to run it with level 7 and 8 characters (tried different levels the two times I ran it). Many of the encounters are optional, and for the players to turn the lich encounter hostile will require amazing stupidity :P


I think one of the city states in Glorion is pro undead. The Baron is trying to set up trades and alliances. The necromancer, merchant, is only here because his liege needs allies too. He's in unfriendly territory and doesn't trust anybody. Having to trust these delays are legit is hard for him.


It's actually a small country named Geb, after it's founder/ruler. Pretty nifty bit of history between Geb and it's neighbor. Also, it's near alkenstar, where guns come from.


Ok that's going to go into my new version of the adventure.

Previously I've run it in Eberron, in that country ruled by Queen Vol.

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