Dungeon Design: EAT3 Area Design

Determined to design a dungeon, having decided on a rule set and setting, and listing what I wanted out of the game, next I had to design the areas the adventurers would interact with.

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The Concept

I knew I wanted a sensible ecosystem where multiple types of creatures interacted with each other. I also wanted the humans living near by to be accidentally disrupting this ecosystem with their looting. This already defines some of the areas, there has to be a village near by, and there have to be areas for the different creatures living there. Looting also means there has to be something to loot, so it can’t just be monster dens.

First I described the village, adding a few details about its surroundings. Since EATs has a dimensional travel twist on it I decided the reason the village was looting the nearby dungeon was to sell the items to thugs from the other dimension. I wrote a quick list:

The village

1. Several small houses with a peasant population
2. Wooded environs near the foot hills of the “Forbidding Mountains”
3. Hidden over one of the hills is a secret portal used by the men with cars
4. At the end of a valley between the hills up against the mountains is the entrance to an old dungeon.

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I wanted the dungeon to begin with an easy threat where the Adventurers could start discovering the mayhem caused by humans. The goblin dens were a good choice.

The goblin dens

1. Small scraped passages and caves clearly used by goblins
2. bones from hunted deer and sheep as well as the dried up stems of mushrooms litter many of the rooms
3. There is a looter being attacked by a small posse of goblins.
   1. The looter if he survives the attack runs into the caverns to warn his friends about the adventurers
4. Small looter traps hidden in the darker passages leading further in.
   1. The escaping looter may have triggered one of these and killed himself or the players can track him through the trapped hallways to get past

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Then the adventurers could start exploring the dungeon proper and see the looting. I played around with whether the traps were from the old dungeon or if the looters were leaving them to scare off other potential grave diggers. I ended up changing it so that the looting had uncovered old traps. In later sections the adventurers could use what they’ve learned from looking at the looting holes to bypass traps that haven’t been dug up.

Excavated dungeon areas

1. Crumbled areas where they’ve been digging
   1. Several of the broken walls can reveal mechanical trap elements inside the walls
   2. Teach players where secret treasure might be hidden
   3. May have murder holes or other ways for the lotters to attempt to scare or kill off dangerous adventurers
2. Untouched areas that looters want to return to
   1. They would want to leave traps here
   2. Too dangerous for looters to go into
3. New excavations
   1. Looters if warned will wait to ambush and attack adventurers
   2. If not warned they are digging away and are unprepared

Looter’s Hidden Camp

1. A secret area where the looters are staying
   1. Lots of weapons
   2. Stash of magical items
   3. Supplies
   4. A battle with looters
   5. Gas masks aplenty

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Once the adventurers are in the dungeon they should have plenty of chances to run into the bigger and badder monsters inside that are being riled up by the looting, the Ogres! While the players travel through the dungeon they can choose to use magic items taken from the tombs. This would make it easier to fight the harder ogres as well as facing the looters.

Ogre den

1. The dungeon connects with the large tunnels of the ogres who have been getting braver and braver while hunting for food.
2. They should be big and bad and hard to kill.
3. Use of mushrooms to defeat them would be cool.
4. Having this in between the mushroom and the looted bit would be more fun.
   1. Too hard of an enemy to face normally in the excavated bits
   2. Easier to defeat when using mushrooms to blow them up

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Following the advice of The Angry GM I wanted to build “gating” into the dungeon. In short, areas that are available early on but are sealed off until the players get to a certain point. In this case I combined the ecosystem with the gating. The goblins used to eat mushrooms that create a very poisonous gas.

Since the humans have killed most of the goblins the mushrooms have grown rampant and filled areas with gas. The looters use dimensional imported gas masks to explore these sections but the players will have to overcome the looters elsewhere to get the masks before they can explore those sections.

Mushroom filled dungeon

1. Only accessible with gasmasks
2. Mushrooms blow gas that is poisonous. The mushrooms also violently explode into spores if something collides with it at high speed.
   1. Can be cut carefully which will stop the reaction.
   2. This can create interesting reactions/extra dangers in fights.
3. Of course the old dungeon traps are still around here.
   1. With enough time to see the ruined versions in the excavated areas they know what to be suspicious of
4. More looter fights
5. Ogre fights

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Next time I will start describing the actual details of each section.

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