The subject line in this post refers to many adventures which include a full map of a location and different encounters/rooms within that location containing monsters. Usually rooms with combat encounters are tailored to give the PCs a decent battle. I have a big problem with the way dungeons like this are designed.
In certain settings, especially castles and other dungeons where an alarm can be raised and the entire population of a fortified stronghold can be set against the PCs, this model really breaks down. If the PCs try to be stealthy at first, it can work, until the first battle, during which usually enough noise is made to attract attention. This also occurs if the inhabitants of the location know, by some other means, the PCs are coming.
So what I end up doing is taking a census of the entire dungeon and think ahead about where the most likely ambush spots would be for the dungeon inhabitants, who know the terrain better. I'd like to propose a change in thinking for designing adventures with these types of locations.
#1 Tell me the total population of the dungeon in a separate section, preferably at the beginning of the dungeon description.
#2 In the text of each room, tell me the number and kind of each inhabitants that would be found there on any given occasion and/or at different times throughout the day. Usually mature adventure writers will do this.
#3 Give me some ideas if knowledge of the PCs is discovered. Do all the inhabitants move to a certain location? Are there any tactics that the inhabitants planned out ahead of time for these circumstances? Are there any rooms in particular, beyond the obvious, that the inhabitants will try to protect? Are there certain inhabitants which will stay where they are?
I can usually figure all this stuff out, but as a DM, I have rarely seen a group successfully, and stealthily, move through these types of locations without the entire population being alerted.
Thanks, comments?
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Providing a breakdown of the dungeon inhabitants is a great idea. Reminds me of when I had to tally up all the goblins in the Temple of Elemental Evil because the PCs attracted their attention.
Ended up with a huge battle, with some lucky sleep spells winning the day. But it sure was a pain putting everything together.
It's always problematic, of course, since things can quickly turn quite nasty for the PCs: In a bigger location, you can easily have enough enemies to kill the characters three times over if they ganged up on them. And even if only half of them decided to band together, it can become a death trap.
Of course, they can try to be stealthy, but it's quite easy for the enemies to raise an alarm. And if the defenders have a half-decent plan on how to deal with intruders, this can result in a wiped out party pretty quickly.
Therefore, some suspension of disbelief is often quit helpful.
That having been said, many PF adventures do have information on the denizens' behaviour in case of an alarm. The fact that enemies are often selfish bastards works in the players' favour, as they're often not too eager to storm in to help their comrades if they can instead hope that the enemy will be weakened by the time they enter this room. Others are ordered to guard a certain location and won't budge.
Therefore, some suspension of disbelief is often quit helpful.
I'm empathetic to that point of view. Usually when the alarm is raised in the dungeons I run, the inhabitants assault the PCs on different occasions in different rooms. I try not to overwhelm the PCs, but to wear 'em down.
And yes, I agree that the Paizo folks are definitely better about thinking about dungeons holistically, but again, I have yet to see a dungeon work the way it looks on paper. I feel like having the monsters hang out in their own rooms breaks the feeling that you're in a "real" fantasy world.
I guess this is a problem with all types of adventures. The description has to be a kind of status quo. I usually use the locations of monsters as starting locations. When the alarm is raised, the monster groups arrive at different times, depending on their distance from the combat location, or they barricade themselves somewhere.
I have got the same problem with event-type adventures. My players tend to run ahead of events, so I continually have to shift the order of events and sometimes redesign whole events.
Director of Brand Strategy
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Writing a dungeon without doing this would be much harder, I imagine, and certainly more work for a GM to run. As it is, everything's in its own section of the adventure and you can easily reference a specific room or monster's stats. If it were a listing of every monster in the dungeon and complex scenarios of how they would react to a given situation, that's gonna add a lot of extra text that I would personally rather not sift through when running a mod.
I feel like having the monsters hang out in their own rooms breaks the feeling that you're in a "real" fantasy world.
Real-time adventures would be a real b&@~% to run. Tracking time by the second, to see whether it's 15:34:22 when the characters arrive, or 15:39:01, because that's when the BBEG is going to take a huge dumb and can't respond to attacks? ;-P
Just think of adventures taking place in the Ever Flowing Now. The adventure shows what the rooms are like just as the characters enter them. The monster was roving around earlier, but now it's here. Whenever "now" is. Same for the guy you do find in the corridor, roaming.
The information where they were earlier, or where they would have gone later had they not been killed by the PCs isn't that interesting, and thus not really worth the huge amount of space it would take up.
I think Yoda and KaeYoss are misinterpreting my intent. My suggestions from above are not about adding needless description into the module and are certainly not about tracking creatures minute to minute.
At the core of what I'm suggesting is to streamline adventures for the way they USUALLY play, in my experience anyway. Streamlining because instead of a lot of text for each room in which you have to describe what the monsters are doing in that room, you only have to describe what inhabits the location and what likely encounters to have.
I don't think I'm being unclear and I don't think it's a stretch to think of locations in this way.
EDIT: And specifically, if I did run the adventure with monsters being in the locations as described by the adventure, I feel this leads to predictability and a lot more metagaming on the players part.
As far as dungeon naturalism goes, If you've ever read Three Faces of Evil from the AoW AP, I feel that's a really good example of a 'living' dungeon complex (at least as far as the Hextorian cultists went) Basically there was a 'battle plan' for the entire temple in case of intruders, which honestly led to it being one of the toughtest encounters in the path so far.
As far as dungeon naturalism goes, If you've ever read Three Faces of Evil from the AoW AP, I feel that's a really good example of a 'living' dungeon complex (at least as far as the Hextorian cultists went) Basically there was a 'battle plan' for the entire temple in case of intruders, which honestly led to it being one of the toughtest encounters in the path so far.
Yes! I immediately thought of that one as well. I'm not a big Mike Mearls fan, but in that case he provided an excellent description of how the inhabitants would reasonably react to intruders.
As far as dungeon naturalism goes, If you've ever read Three Faces of Evil from the AoW AP, I feel that's a really good example of a 'living' dungeon complex (at least as far as the Hextorian cultists went) Basically there was a 'battle plan' for the entire temple in case of intruders, which honestly led to it being one of the toughtest encounters in the path so far.
Thanks Lipto, this is exactly the kind of writing I was looking for. If I can get a copy of that, I'll check it out.
The end of the Age of Worms AP had a few examples of what I think you are looking for as well. There are descriptions in the main text of the very last part that said that if the PC's approach in this manner then they will face X,Y,Z monsters and NPC's from areas A,B,C, and if they do something different, then the situation changes.
If this is how people are playing, it stands to reason the Pathfinder AP encounters should support this. I have only played Runelords, but there is definitely some ambiguity as to the function of a "raised alarm" there.
Furthermore, the Pathfinder RPG should include this kind of thinking in its encounter building guidelines.
At the moment, it is too much effort for me to think in terms of alams, so I tend to give PCs the benefit of the doubt with stealth for anything that is more than one room away. I'm not happy with that, but it is too much work to keep things functional otherwise.
The whole 'the alarm is raised everyone runs' off doesn't make too much sense either. It could easily be a ruse (illusions, summoned monsters, PCs who then dim away) to draw defenders into a trap or away from an area. I generally take it to mean that when an alarm is raised, unless there's a good reason to leave their current area, they stay there prepared for trouble.
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Creative Director
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We do try to account for living dungeons in everything we print, which is why you never see monsters or NPCs mentioned in read-aloud text in rooms (we don't assume that the inhabitants of an area stay where they are). Often we'll try to put in a "what if the alarm is raised" sidebar, but unfortunately these tend to be among the first elements that get cut if an adventure runs long on the word count... and they tend to do just that.
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I tend to break big dungeons into zones. I'll mark on a map a zone of influence where a combat is likely to draw extra attention and then have denizens move in waves if it makes sense to do so (obvioulsy the ooze living in the basement isn't going to care if the hoblgoblins in the guard room above are being attacked).
This tends to lead to running fights with my PC's across a number of rooms with extra baddies being pulled into the fray. Works for my group and can really provide you the opportunity to step some of the challenges up. I usually give them a round or two of down time between the rolling encounters if there a series of really tough ones as this can let them get some essential healing in before hitting a big baddie again.
Something that would help this part of my planing as a DM is a simple list if critters in each room along with the room name (on the map maybe, where they write the room name next to the number in a simple list). I do this myself but it is extra time in prep, time that I find less and less of these days.
One thing Paizo does do well is wright down general tactics of the creatures they put in and usually have some sort of moral point. A hit point total at which the baddies run or surrender. Unfortuanately, by the time big nasty gets to this point there's still few actions on the parties behalf to really mess up their day.
Cheers
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If already wanting to talk about "real-feel" to dungeons, you want to consider some logistic troubles the defenders of the place will have.
first and foremost, not all the encounters are with inteligant, or even mobile foes. those should probably stay where they are regardeless of any alarm.
second, in cases of the PC's infeltraiting a well organized milattry location, such as a castle, it dosen't mean all possible reanforcments will rush to face them immediatly. most soldiers will take defansive positions around critical locaitions and\or castle gates and walls. also, soldiers attack in numbers. they will first have to randavouz with their fellow squadmates and officers before rashing into combat. all of the confusion and will almost surley allow smart PC's to hide themeselves and continue their exploration more descretly.
in cases of the PC's simly crawling through a dungeon filled with monsters... well, if you kill a tiger in the jungle, the elephants won't rush in to evange him.
when it comes to the bottom line, attacking an organized defending position is not recomendad for low level PC's.
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I was just thinking that the defense of a castle for instance would not be that strong for a bit. The PCs stealth in and manage to get a little ways in. They can make it past the first fight with a well placed silence spell. Eventually they will trip the alarm.
But most inhabitants will need to run back to their rooms or the armory to get their equipment, then report to the defensive stations. When you figure in all the choke points the traffic will take some time. Very likely several minutes.
During that time the PCs can capitalize on the chaos and take out guards and use their armor or use illusions to look like guards and move through the chaos.
In fact, if the PCs know where they are going it may make it easier to get there. Getting OUT will the harder problem.
Also something to consider is that after the alarm has been sounded, cleared rooms are no longer safe. The PCs cold be working down a hallway and are just as likely to run into guards from both directions as the groups are trying to meet up for their duty.
Even after the PCs deal with the guards in that hallway, more guards may be coming, going to another location.
Now that I think about it, illusions are really powerful in this situation. The PCs run into guards and hear more guards coming. They use illusions to look like the guards and make the guards look like adventurers and the newly arrived guards are very likely going to attack their comrades before they can figure out what is happening. A few rounds at least. And that can go a long way to helping the PCs.
lol This could be a LOT of fun. Some areas could be really tough, others super easy and funny almost. And every castle should have a harem for the PCs to run into, like Conan or the Scorpion King. Hey some cliches do work! In 20 years I have never included a harem! What was I thinking!? Hobgoblin harem anyone? lol