Quote from: Cave Bear;883671It could be really fun to try and model the ghost behaviors using D&D monsters.

A maze full of magic fruits and wandering-monster regenerating undead.

Quote from: Cave Bear;883671I've used Doom maps in the past.
Just make sure your players aren't already too familiar with the maps you are going to use.

It doesn't surprise me that you'd use Doom maps, IIRC the main level designer for Doom was Jennell Jaquays of Caverns of Thracia etc. fame.

Yeah, the Alexandrian blog mentions that, and even had a link to Jacquay's "Halo Wars" video game map design essays. I found them on Wayback Machine:

https://web.archive.org/web/20120301111442/http://jaquays.com/paul/gamedesign.htm

Quote from: RPGPundit;883969A maze full of magic fruits and wandering-monster regenerating undead.

A glass maze with blind undead which can only hear (but not see) the characters. Priestly Potions, when imbued, grants the characters high-level Turn Undead for a short period of time. Continued use of Priestly Potions gives the character a magical tolerance reducing the duration of the buff.

Quote from: Crabbyapples;884018A glass maze with blind undead which can only hear (but not see) the characters. Priestly Potions, when imbued, grants the characters high-level Turn Undead for a short period of time. Continued use of Priestly Potions gives the character a magical tolerance reducing the duration of the buff.

Fruit found growing in the dungeon contains seemingly harmless bugs with a reality warping effect; the 256th level of the dungeon drops off into oblivion!

*edit*
Also, the fruits bounce around (and can pass through warp tunnels) and award experience points when eat.

*edit2*

Quote from: Daztur;883995It doesn't surprise me that you'd use Doom maps, IIRC the main level designer for Doom was Jennell Jaquays of Caverns of Thracia etc. fame.

Doom even started as a D&D campaign gone awry!

I'm more of a Metroid-vania style of dungeon builder.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;884068I'm more of a Metroid-vania style of dungeon builder.

Wealths of inspiration those!

So I'm starting to form an image of a dungeon in my head right now.

I'm still going with the idea I had earlier, but now I see it as more of a Pueblo-indian style type-of-deal carved into the walls of a colossal cavern. Ladders and rope bridges abound.
'Levels' of the dungeon are vertically oriented so that you have to climb to explore them, and climbing is basic challenge of this dungeon.

There will be monsters that hide behind obstacles and hurl rocks, spears, and flasks of burning oil. You can't get around the obstacles, but you can get over or under them.

There will be tough, but sleepy monsters you can bypass with stealth. These monsters are often found guarding rope bridges lined with bells and chimes. Walking across the bridges awakens the sleeping monsters, initiating combat against terrible beasts with the adventurers fighting for their lives on precariously swaying choke points. Stealth, here, can be accomplished by bypassing the bridges I.E. climbing/swinging/jumping.

There need to be enemies that intercept our heroes whenever they try to climb, swing, or jump across obstacles. Giant bats seem like a good choice. Maybe stirges for the later levels.

Flying magic-users are a problem. There need to be traps and monsters to intercept them. Maybe giant spiders with large, silvery webs to ensnare flying creatures? Maybe the humanoid monsters of the dungeon harvest webs to make their ropes?

Falling down pits will be a common hazard, but the earlier levels shouldn't have such a steep penalty as 50' deep pits with poisoned punji sticks at the bottom.
Earlier levels should have deep pools of water at the bottom. There should be monsters in those pools.
I'm thinking:
Flying sting rays that leap out of the water to intercept people
Giant man-eating hermit crabs that wear treasures or treasure chests on their backs and fill the same role as mimics.
Carnivorous carp with a taste for dwarven flesh.

Later levels should have magma pits. These can be populated with fire elements.

There need to be undead monsters so clerics have something to do. Maybe skeletons that leap down cliffs on top of adventurers below, or desiccated zombies that fall out of spider webs. These would fill the same role as piercers.

The main hall should have some kind of huge, ponderous monster that the party can't kill right away, but that they can avoid easily enough. The purpose of this monster is to keep the party on the move.

I meant in the sense that you can have backtracking, and areas opened up when you do something in another part of the dungeon/maze, not whether or not it's 2 or 3D.

Ha, awesome ideas in this thread. I love the hermit-treasure-crabs!
Here's a flying stingray (a "Shadowmant") from Earthadwn for some concept art:
http://i.imgur.com/cs0gBWh.jpg

Quote from: Christopher Brady;884071I meant in the sense that you can have backtracking, and areas opened up when you do something in another part of the dungeon/maze, not whether or not it's 2 or 3D.

Definitely!

Of course, this being D&D, we can allow for a more free form approach where they improvise with new tools to find solutions to earlier problems rather than "This specific key opens that corresponding door you couldn't open earlier."

Tthe dungeon I'm brainstorming here should take a page out of Donkey Kong's book and feature 'power ups' that don't merely upgrade the players existing abilities but instead change the kind of game the players are playing (like how the hammer in Donkey Kong takes away your ability to climb ladders but allows you to destroy barrels, effectively changing the game from a platform game to an action game. The Super Mario games do this with power ups like the fire flower and the cape.)

New magic items:

Sword of Tactics; this magic weapon changes the game into a game of tactical grid-based combat. The sword of tactics can grant a variety of different magical effects depending on how the sword's user is positioned relative to monsters and other player characters on the battlefield.

Story Token; this magic item changes the game into a story game. To use the story coin, characters must first charge it by telling it a story about one of their past experiences. Once the coin is charged, the character may drop or throw the coin and expend its charge to alter the scenery in some way. The coin's magic may be used to make a chandelier appear, or a secret door reveal itself, or a river branch off, or anything else the player might imagine within reason.

(Sorry to antagonize the Pundit posting stuff like this, I'm just sketching out silly ideas.)

Quote from: Telarus;884101Ha, awesome ideas in this thread. I love the hermit-treasure-crabs!
Here's a flying stingray (a "Shadowmant") from Earthadwn for some concept art:
http://i.imgur.com/cs0gBWh.jpg

Is that the same game by the creators of Shadowrun? Or am I thinking of something else? Cool illustration in any case.

Yes, Earthdawn was a FASA game and the "lost history" of Shadowrun.

Currently there are no longer official connections between the games because the rights are held by different companies, but FASA Games (a subsidiary of the still existing FASA corp) is the current dev for Earthdawn 4th edition (after it had bounced around a few times).

This came up on RPG.net this week:

Quote from: Zeea;19879398Speaking of Sandy Petersen... he also worked for id Software on Doom and Quake. He made a huge number of maps for both.

You know what's awesome about Doom and Quake (and especially Heretic) levels? They use just enough architectural details and symbolism to give the idea of a location, but don't really concern themselves with realism. They usually have a plot excuse for why there's not as many buildings as there should be, or some normal areas are shaped weirdly, or whatever. But they just come out amazing, with lots of surprises and great ambushes and weird puzzles. And all three of them were heavily inspired by D&D (and Call of Cthulhu, in Quake's case, but the original plans for that were about a guy with a "belt of giant strength and hammer of thunderbolts.")

I really wish more published maps would follow suit. D&D dungeons are often a bit weird, but any other location? It's rather predictable in most cases, which would be fine except it seems like _every_ map is like that. That's a big issue with ruined city urban adventures in particular, since designers are usually more focused on practicality and realism than cool adventuring and surprises (but I do respect them for being able to work within the bonds of realism). Doom's E1M1 depicts a hangar, but it's a pretty weird one. Heretic's E1M1 depicts docks and a building next to them, and E1M5 is a small city, but while they're pretty and their theme is clear, they're not realistic at all.

I wish the old id Software and Raven Software folks would work together to make an OGL map compilation. Failing that, I'd love to just see Sandy Peterson's. He made "MAP 13: Downtown" for Doom II, probably one of the best urban warfare FPS maps ever made despite the buildings having utterly unrealistic interiors. I wonder what he could do with a D&D demon-infested warped city?

Anyway, overall, I just wish we'd see a move away from "dungeons should be practical and realistic" and "dungeons need ecosystems!" It was a bit eye-opening and clever back in the 90s when that started being a thing, but I keep finding dungeon maps and especially poster battlemaps with realistic layouts and I'm getting a little tired of them. Real places are great for reality, but I'd rather have twisting vine-covered spiral stairs up to portals (like one of Map 13's buildings) than a predictable apartment building.

(EDIT: Fixed some stupid wording on my part. Sorry about that.)

Quote from: Telarus;884220Yes, Earthdawn was a FASA game and the "lost history" of Shadowrun.

Currently there are no longer official connections between the games because the rights are held by different companies, but FASA Games (a subsidiary of the still existing FASA corp) is the current dev for Earthdawn 4th edition (after it had bounced around a few times).

I think I saw a discussion somewhere (Dumpshock forums?) about people converting Earthdawn's lizard men and mineral men (?) over to Shadowrun.

What about Candy Crush?

Quote from: RPGPundit;885173What about Candy Crush?

A trap door in the ceiling drops a flood of candy on top of any hapless adventurer who triggers it.

The next room contains a group of green-skinned, pig-faced orcs being terrorized by agitated avians...