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From: stassen@spp2.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.games.frp
Subject: Re: Dungeon planning
Message-ID: <357@spp2.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 11-Jan-85 16:16:48 EST
Article-I.D.: spp2.357
Posted: Fri Jan 11 16:16:48 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 14-Jan-85 04:42:18 EST
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Organization: TRW, Redondo Beach  CA
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[]

	A friend of mine came up with a rather neat kind of dungeon planning.
Unfortunately, you really can't use it for all of the dungeons in a 
campaign.

	Problem:  in order to pose neat and intriguing puzzles to the party,
you often have to break the puzzles up into pieces and scatter the pieces
throughout the dungeon.  There are always items you want the party to find,
or monsters that you want the party to encounter before some other encounter.
However, this method is almost always doomed to failure, as the party will
never visit the right places in the right order.  Of course, a *really* well-
planned dungeon will not have these problems, but *really* well-planned
dungeons are difficult for a lot of people to make.

	Solution: "the dungeon of predestination".  With the exceptions
of a few alcoves and special rooms, this dungeon was carefully designed
so that all rooms were approximately the same size.  Then, the DM wrote
out the descriptions for the first room the party should get to, the second
room the party should visit, and so on.  The DM *did not*, however, assign
specific places for the rooms on the map.

	Then, no matter where the party travelled, or which doors they
opened, they would always get to the "right" room next.  Of course, once
a door was opened, that room becomes "assigned," and will always be there
if the party returns in the future.

	I know it sounds like the DM is taking away all of the "free will"
of the party, but I can tell you from experience that it was one of the
most fun dungeons that we have ever explored; and we didn't notice the
"predestination" at all -- the DM admitted it at the end of the game.

			-- Chris