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Post by Ahrek on Mar 30, 2017 5:24:28 GMT
In my group it has become a running joke that as soon as I mention the word door more than once in a description there is a loud groan from my players. This comes from the first homebrew dungeon we played after playing the Starter Set. There were some corridors with multiple doors for the players to investigate. How do you guys go about describing dungeons or even any large buildings the players are in where there are a lot of options like this. "You enter the next room, its a long hallway with 2 doors on each side and one at the far end. What do you do? just ends with "we check door 1" "we check door 2" etc I later on used this map with some slight moderation which again led to the same problem.  |
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dmtreat
Squire
Posts: 48 
Favorite D&D Class: Ranger
Favorite D&D Race: Dwarf
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Post by dmtreat on Apr 3, 2017 23:41:09 GMT
The only thing i would say is if the room they are going into is supposed to be interesting, make it interesting. If you want someone to spend time in a room, you have to add flavor text to the room otherwise its just bare walls with doors, so of course the first place you would go is the door. Lets use your sentence for example, just adding more to it. "Entering into the next room, a smell of rotting wood mixed with rust assaults your noses as a long hallway with a tattered blue rug on the floor stretches in front of you ending in a large double door. Buttressed by dilapidated tables on either side of the hall are 2 more doors, seeming to reach for their own hinges as they slowly crack away from the walls." Things like this make the hall more interesting, while this is a weak example, there are many more things you can do by just adding a bit of detail. What I always like to do is take a post-it and put it on your DM screen that sais Taste, Sound, Smell, Touch followed by Rule of 3 Besides that, if the room just isnt meant to be interesting, no harm in your characters carrying on. Hope this helps some,  |
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Post by joatmoniac on Apr 4, 2017 7:00:22 GMT
The other thing that you could potentially do is spice up rooms from either a negative perspective or a positive one. The other option would be both options, haha. If a player says, "we check door 1" you can ask "who checks door 1" and then that is the person that stumbles their way into a trap of your own devising. The other option could be that they find a hidden door in the floor, and that could come at the price of falling damage, but that's totally up to you, haha. At the bottom of wherever the secret door leads could be any number of cool thing for them to find. Essentially creating continued buy in from seeds planted both good and bad, or whatever combination of the two you think would work for your players.
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Post by 00dlez on Apr 5, 2017 3:31:08 GMT
I like to pick out a unique skill for each PC, any knowledge or craft skill is best, but things like appraise or survival work too.
If I don't have anything specific to point out in a room, I'll grab some d20s, 1 for each PC, and highest roll will notice something. The alchemist might note that some mushrooms growing on the door can be used to make poisons. If the knowledge nature buff's number comes up, or the survival expert, maybe those mushrooms are edible ones instead.
The appraisal expert might notice that the knob is brass like the hinges, but far less tarnished and of newer make... Perhaps it's been replaced recently... A trap?
I'm a pretty big advocate of letting PCs roll most any skill in any situation, especially knowledge skills. Info gained might not always be helpful, but it keeps players engaged and curious about the world.
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Post by Ahrek on Apr 5, 2017 10:04:54 GMT
You all have good tips but I might not have been clear enough about my actuall problem.
The problem is rather that it feels dragged out or excessive with the amount of options the players have when exploring. Having to hear "you enter a room/corridor and there are x doors" several times while exploring the same place gets tiresome for my players (and me). However, I don't want to take choice away from the players. I could go
My problem is that I'm torn between doing it this way to speed up the session since there would be nothing of interest in the side rooms. But at the same time I'm telling my players what their characters are doing without letting them make the choice. I very much want the dungeons/houses in my world to feel real. Using the map I posted as an example the second floor has many rooms and there is no way there would be something worth finding in every room but just telling the player that you look around and find nothing in the rooms and then to suddenly start focusing on one room will make the player go "Oh there is something to find in here. I want to look for anything out of the ordinary or maybe a key to the door in the cellar. I rolled a 13 on investigation. Oh I didn't find anything well there must be something in this room or you wouldn't have started describing it the way you did. I look for hidden doors. etc etc."
For example in one of my games I have one PC whose flaw is that he is "too curious for his own good" and he would definitely want to search the rooms for things.
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Post by 00dlez on Apr 5, 2017 15:30:14 GMT
I guess you and the players need to have a conversation about what everyone wants from a play pace/PC autonomy/linear dungeon standpoint.
If they don't like having "useless" rooms to explore, would they rather you gloss over them (ie. "there are three doors in the hallway, two are just large closets with old clothes - what do you do with at the third door" - it could be a trap, it could lead to a fight, it could be treasure, etc.) or that you eliminate them entirely and just stick to more basic, straight forward layouts. Inorganic? sure, but if it gives the players a higher level of pace and interest that they want, is it a sacrifice you as a DM can make for them?
If the problem is more that there is a perception that "useless" rooms are indeed useless, maybe take/tweak my suggestion above and remind them that there are little perks and treasures everywhere if they know where to look. If they pick up 100 gpld worth of unique trinkets, treasures, materials etc and the dragon horde at the end is 100gp lighter... but they had fun exploring the otherwise useless rooms, maybe that can help?
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Post by friartook on Apr 13, 2017 21:00:18 GMT
This comes down to a more meta discussion about how we run sessions/RPGs: are we creating a collaborative story or running a fantasy world simulation engine? The two do not have to be mutually exclusive, but most players and GM/DMs lean to one side or the other. I have found over my years of running and playing in games that I am much more on the story end of the spectrum. So, I follow a piece of storytelling advice I've heard batted around numerous places: If something is irrelevant to the story, don't include it.I've heard this referred to as the Chekhov's Gun convention; summarized as "Remove everything that has no relevance to the story. If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it's not going to be fired, it shouldn't be hanging there."So in your case, there are all these rooms in the dungeon/building that have no relevance to the story, and your players are groaning. Why are they groaning? Because they are bored. Seriously, I think that's why. There is an old school D&D dungeon crawl convention around building tension and nervousness in players by having them never know what may be behind each door. They open a door and get snapped by a trap, suddenly every door has to be checked by the rogue, buffs have to be passed out and weapons drawn, potions quaffed. Then they open a dozen doors and nothing is behind them at all. They use up resources unnecessarily, get complacent, open a bunch of doors in a row with no prep and no consequences then *GASP* the 13th door has a monster/trap behind it! Oh no! Except that in practice that sort of game is boring. Imagine spending 2 hours exploring a dungeon in a video game like Skyrim only to find 90% of it is empty and only one room has a monster/trap/enemy/chest in it? So, design your encounters/locations with Chekhov's Gun in mind. If rooms are irrelevant, leave them out. The players enter a room and one door is a broom closet and the other leads to an empty bed chamber, just tell them that as part of the room description. Because really, the only door they care about is the one with something interesting behind it, and the "What's behind door number 2?" game-show gets real boring real fast. |
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Post by Chickadee (DM Trish) on Apr 20, 2017 21:22:47 GMT
I have found over my years of running and playing in games that I am much more on the story end of the spectrum. So, I follow a piece of storytelling advice I've heard batted around numerous places: If something is irrelevant to the story, don't include it.Great advice!! I include all the doors/windows/etc in my drawing but don't bother mentioning them unless there might be something worth seeing (although, it could be fun to have a few dead ends once the players are used to every room being interesting) I started doing something similar because I have a completionist player in my group - he can't handle not looking in every single nook and cranny - so I stopped mentioning things so he wouldn't make the rest of the group completely insane. (He's a, "I carefully example each grain of sand in the rubble pile hoping to find tiny flecks of gold," kind of player.) |
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