Floor Plans and Forges

Goodbye, DnD! This was the last map I was obligated to make for tabletop games, this time including an annotation map and some form of art direction. Unfortunately, due to time constraints coming in from other classes, I couldn't make the best out of the art that I chose. It'd be an easy fix to improve it next time.  I came at this level with the understanding that enemies would have to be way more lethal than they were last time. I was already not impressed with the softballs I was throwing at the party already; and now they were going to have checkpoints; this is practically an invitation to kill players. I am relatively proud to say that of the three games my group played, mine was the only one where a player died and even then I felt like I did too little. I was hoping for every checkpoint placed to be used and I only had 1/3 used in total.  In general, I had to drastically change my approach to level design to accommodate the rule changes, which overall demand more from t...

After the first playtest, everyone in the testing group agreed that we pulled our punches too much. Over the course of the hour of playtime, three maps ran to near completion, no player lost any health. I thought up a few ideas to resolve this, but for the most part I focused on adding additional fights and making the enemies I did have more threatening. I insured they'd be bulkier, harder to kill, and respond to damage in unnerving ways.                                                                         Ex. An example of more dangerous enemy placement; check the corners or be ambushed.   The hope would be that harder fights would result in more lost HP. I also took the time to place enemies in areas where they wouldn't be wasting turns walking through clear s...

DnD, and explicitly simplified DnD is uniquely within my wheelhouse. I enjoy tabletop games and dislike rules heavy systems, so I looked forward to using a rules-lite system. I followed the five room dungeon model for this assignment; since I believe it can effectively communicate a dramatic arc and pack typical DnD challenges in a very small amount of content. I assembled the map using a small node graph to indicate where rooms connect, then built the map in Roll20 proper with a page of notes to the side to help me direct the game. Grant and Nathan were my players for this, with Grant playing a wizard and Nathan playing a ranger; giving them both access to magic and range attacks. Magic was key to problem solving within the level itself. Grant used his ‘Float’ spell as a way to functionally move hazardous items out of the way; while not available in the rules as written, I realized that if he was to describe physically moving an object, I’d ask him to make a rule indistinguisha...