Quote from: EOTB;1012258I'm not sure - Rob might know.  I don't know if it was Rob that was in the pre-KS PbP that James ran on ODD74 for a very short time before suddenly no longer responding, without any notice or final post from James, or if Rob was in a different game than that which James ran.  My personal theory was the PbP campaign ceased as soon as he ran out of pre-written material, his not being able to keep up with the pace of play as he expected, but this is 100% speculation.

That accurate, we only got a couple of level in. But it sure sounded like there was more.

On the topic of empty rooms:

If you're exploring any dungeon of significant size, empty rooms are almost essential if the players are to have any ability to play strategically. They provide room for manoeuvre, lines of retreat, opportunities to rest or regroup.

They also seem fairly necessary for versimilitude, to me.

Back when I was running a dungeon-centric AD&D 1e game, I stuck to the DMG ratio, and it seemed to produce ideal results.

It's also worth noting that "empty" doesn't necessarily mean "bare and featureless". It just means no monster, trick, trap or treasure.

Quote from: Sable Wyvern;1012304On the topic of empty rooms:

If you're exploring any dungeon of significant size, empty rooms are almost essential if the players are to have any ability to play strategically. They provide room for manoeuvre, lines of retreat, opportunities to rest or regroup.

They also seem fairly necessary for versimilitude, to me.

Back when I was running a dungeon-centric AD&D 1e game, I stuck to the DMG ratio, and it seemed to produce ideal results.

It's also worth noting that "empty" doesn't necessarily mean "bare and featureless". It just means no monster, trick, trap or treasure.

The project lead for Diablo was quoted as saying that the player should see blood or fire every 15 seconds.  When people weaned on that sort of crap turn to a TTRPG it's no wonder they find it slow.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;1012335The project lead for Diablo was quoted as saying that the player should see blood or fire every 15 seconds.  When people weaned on that sort of crap turn to a TTRPG it's no wonder they find it slow.

Here's the thing, it's a comment on how to always have something to SEE, not always something to do.  Blood splatter on the ground, or burning braziers in a pattern are things to see, not because monsters are throwing fire and/or dying.  Keep it INTERESTING is the message.

I never have any purely empty rooms in the few dungeons I've run, almost always there's something in it to look at or interact with.  In the time I did Undermountain, the first floor map has a MASSIVE section in which there's nothing in there, letting the DM do whatever they want with it, so I started to add stuff.

I had one monster filled room, but leading up to it, I had bodies of dead adventurers, writing on the walls in blood, a set of three braziers with faded chalk linking them to it and that was in the span of two rooms and a hallway.  I did a few more things, but I don't remember what.  Long story short, by the time they faced the monsters, which had they gone left instead of right (I think.  I just remember that there were several times they could have easily just walked on by) and found the encounter, they were so jazzed up about it that they went in with a massive story about how and why the monsters were there that I stole it outright and used it mostly as is, because it was pretty awesome.

And then the players called me a 'Magnificent Bastard', thinking it was my idea all along.

Quote from: CRKrueger;1012217A lot of small-batch RPG writers fall in this category.

We see this now and then with board game designers too. Ive seen some pretty wack-o to outright despicable behavior over the years from both board and RPG.

The road to game design hell is paved with the stillborn games and careers of designers with bad attitudes.

This doesnt even count the rare few actually out to rob you.

Re: empty rooms, I have zero interest in megadungeons, but in life there is seldom such a thing as an empty room. There may be rooms with no one in them but they can certainly still be interesting by way of furniture, wall hangings, graffiti, ornamentation, debris, detritus, etc. If you have an actual empty room in your dungeon, then you're just being lazy.

Good point, makes me think of the video game Dark Souls where the 'empty' rooms are often the most evocative.

As I already mentioned upthread, in this context, "empty" is meant to mean "does not contain a monster, trap, trick or treasure".

It can still contain furnishings, embellishments, detritus, miniature gardens, strange sounds, corpses or anything else the dungeon designer deigns to place there.

Quote from: Sable Wyvern;1012848As I already mentioned upthread, in this context, "empty" is meant to mean "does not contain a monster, trap, trick or treasure".

It can still contain furnishings, embellishments, detritus, miniature gardens, strange sounds, corpses or anything else the dungeon designer deigns to place there.

Running Stonehell level 1 recently, it certainly does a good job theming empty rooms in one line of text, eg 2 random ones:

Eternal Silhouettes: Sooty, man-shaped silhouettes on walls; ancient memorial inscriptions. If wiped clean, the silhouettes always return after 1d6 days.

Devil Gallery: Devils carved in high relief on walls; faint odor of brimstone; empty censers hanging on hooks; bloodstains on floor.


And one of my favourites from last session:

Chamber of the Mountains: Chipped mosaics of rugged mountain crags; plinth with only the feet and ankles of a broken statue atop it.


That's part of a sequence of themed hexagonal chambers, some of which do have monsters in them. The PCs can encounter them from 4 different directions, in many different ways. The 'empty' rooms serve to break up the monster encounters and allow for a lot more dynamism as creatures move around the complex, fleeing or chasing PCs or just going about their daily business.

Quote from: Dumarest;1012668Re: empty rooms, I have zero interest in megadungeons, but in life there is seldom such a thing as an empty room. There may be rooms with no one in them but they can certainly still be interesting by way of furniture, wall hangings, graffiti, ornamentation, debris, detritus, etc. If you have an actual empty room in your dungeon, then you're just being lazy.

My thought is actually if there really is intended to be nothing to do in a room, a bare room is fine. The purpose of the room may simply be part of the mapping challenge, or it may have multiple entrances so it creates a decision point. It may serve as a place where a random encounter might happen in a room rather than a 10' wide passage. Now if the purpose of the dungeon dressing is to help show the setting of the dungeon, or if it might provide clues, then that's also appropriate.

Bit just random description to have not an entirely empty room? I hate that, and I don't want to have to come up with it for every room. If players are trying to solve a puzzle and ask me, "hey, what's in this room", I could see rolling on a table, generating a rotting tapestry hanging from a broken rod, "Hey, can we use the rod as a pry bar?" Or "Hey, that rod might help us hang a rope down into the pit in the next room, will that work", "well, it's broken, it might not hold, let's say it breaks on a 1 on a d6".

But I don't want to constantly describe random crap...

Frank

Quote from: Sable Wyvern;1012848As I already mentioned upthread, in this context, "empty" is meant to mean "does not contain a monster, trap, trick or treasure".

It can still contain furnishings, embellishments, detritus, miniature gardens, strange sounds, corpses or anything else the dungeon designer deigns to place there.

This is really really important to understand old dungeon modules. Also, these are the rooms you get to fill "on the fly" with Random Encounter checks. I find pre-rolling a list of random encounters ("procedurally generating" them) and then using the top one and crossing it off when the RE check comes up positive is the fasted way to incorporate the new "thing" into the dungeon context nearby the players.

Also, Stonehell is a badass name; Dwimmermount sounds like sickly pony.

JMal presented Dwimmermount as if it was some great megadungeon he'd been running for ages, which of course was bullshit because he'd only even done any old-school gaming for a short while before trying to become the Pope of the OSR.
Then the early material of the product he created made that really, really evident.

Then he stole everyone's money and left Autarch to clean up his mess.

I don't do empty rooms either.

I gotta have something of note, even if its minor details that just add to the atmosphere.

Also, empty rooms is where the wandering monsters roam!!

Quote from: RPGPundit;1013896JMal presented Dwimmermount as if it was some great megadungeon he'd been running for ages, which of course was bullshit because he'd only even done any old-school gaming for a short while before trying to become the Pope of the OSR.

I think this is slightly unfair - I read his blog and it was clear to me he was only then getting into the OSR with the blog (started March 2008). Dwimmermount was presented as a work in progress on the blog as he sought to rediscover the roots of old school gaming.
Somehow people 2-3 years later got a different impression, maybe from the Kickstarter advertising. Dwimmermount was only 'legendary' to regular readers of his blog.

BTW I tried his Dwimmermount PBP but it was very boring. I think that was more his GM style than the content, though.