A Dungeon Master does not merely draw a dungeon. Not if they care at all about actual, good game design. I’ve already showed you how to plan out a pretty good Dungeons & Dragon dungeon adventure. Now I’m going to show you how to make a pretty good dungeon map. And, as a bonus, how to turn a realistic floor plan into a good gameplay experience. It’s all to do with a trick called blockout.
In this series, I’ll show you homebrewer Dungeon Masters of any skill level how to use actual, good game design to build a pretty good dungeon adventure for Dungeons & Dragons or your system of choice.
It’s time for the last piece of the four-part intro to the project that will eventually lead to a good, fun dungeon adventure. So let’s learn about path-depth and checkpoints.
Now it’s time for the third and final short essay laying out the underlying design approach for our pretty good dungeon. Except this isn’t the final one and it isn’t short. This one’s all about how players decide where to go next.
Continuing my series of short, conceptual articles to set up the building a pretty good dungeon, here’s one about the idea of explorable space.
In the first of three precursor discussions to building a pretty good dungeon, let me explain why critical paths aren’t what they are and golden paths are better.
Hey! Let’s make a pretty good dungeon together. How about that?