| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| Arravis |
Posted - 05 May 2004 : 14:40:03
Our games tend to be very role-playing intensive, with combat and such taking a secondary role to the interactions between players, and their interactions with NPC's. Anyway... my upcoming game will be set in a dungeon-esque setting, a Cult of the Dragon hideaway beneath Yulash. I'd like to include more then just combat in this game, but I'm not sure how to do so.
The only thing I've come up with so far is to have several holding cells with prisoners, and that will give the players a chance to interact with those within. And of course the required main-villain's speech :).
What have you guys done, in either games you've run or played in, to have some interesting role-playing encounters in a dungeon/bad-guy compound? I'd love to hear your experiences and advice, thanks guys! |
| 14 L A T E S T R E P L I E S (Newest First) |
| Cult_Leader |
Posted - 07 May 2004 : 13:37:29
If you have not started this game yet. Then I have a very easy way for you to pull this off. Have the party make all male drow. Not even nobles. And out casts. This to you might seem like an odd thing or a bad idea. However look at it this way. Tell your party that you want them to be of a good or neutral alignment. Now. To tell the truth most groups will want to not do this. A reason for this is because they will probably think, hey we are drow.... drow do evil. If im good then im going to have to try and stop someone else's drow from doing something evil. Thats where they are wrong however, Even a lawful Good Drow char can do evil. The reason for this is because to them being drow is life. D might have seen his people as evil along with their ways, however that was a specail case. Anyway, moving along. Sooner or later your all male drow party will want to try and start their own house. From there on it's easy to plot out. This works quite well and I know first hand that it does. I was a cave druid of Grumbar, We had a Caver (underground ranger) and a fighter (our weapons master, since the ranger gave up the title to my chars half drow son). As for were to start this off at, why not on the surface? A way to get them back under ground might be beholder hunting. Hey that works really well.... since thats how we ended up back in the underdark. A good source for that might be to read the eye books. Eye of Death, Eye of Doom, and Eye for and Eye, Three good old Gary made mods. Look them up they could giuve you some ideas. |
| Salabasha |
Posted - 06 May 2004 : 23:51:52
Doesn't mean that he can't use it.
In this one campaign that a group of thieves used an abandon temple as their fort. PCs had to go in and rid the temple of the bandits. However, the campaign had to do with stuff outside of the temple. The temple was, more or less, the showdown. |
| Bookwyrm |
Posted - 06 May 2004 : 23:42:32
 Salabasha, I think Arravis' question has to do with roleplay, not constructing the dungeon. |
| Salabasha |
Posted - 06 May 2004 : 20:23:37
Before you do anything at all, get your dungeon set up.
If you want to add stuff to make it more interesting, here are some suggestions.
- A shrine to a deity, perhaps a long lost one thought to have been destroyed.
- Traps, traps and more traps! Why make it easy for them? Make them earn their exp. Don't over do it though, cause then everyone will be dead.
- Perhaps it is a base to some marauders, and the PCs are there to stop it (If this is the case, then I got a helluvalotta stuff I can give you that I used in an old campaign)
- Enemies that fit the dungeon. Make remarks that include stuff like "In the distance <insert> could be heard> Make it so that they hear the enemies before they see them.
- Make it dark en dank. But the dark vison to use, or perhaps items that illuminate (or spells) Since they can only have some many, it would be interesting to see how they use them.
- Multiple levels. Make it so that there is more then on level in the dungeons. Perhaps, on each level, and new design it set out in front of them. Different layouts per level of dungeon, same with enemies.
- A boss. Make him level according to the group, but there has to be a boss. Make him Vile, make him crazy, do whatever, but make him cool. Also, there can be some "Stronger then most creatures, but not main boss strong" characters that can be in the tunnel, that are like the Bosses "generals"
- Back the campaign up with a legend or a mystery that is of the dungeon. Perhaps no one returns? Perhaps the last people to return died days after?
Most importantly, make sure there are surprises all the time. To make it to casual. There can be traps and enemies anywhere and everywhere. |
| Arion Elenim |
Posted - 06 May 2004 : 15:56:31
My experience is that characters tend to be more fleshed out in dungeon situations....fears, ideas about death, etc. come to the surface...
It's always interesting to discover which characters really care about each other and which don't....this can come out wonderfully in high-stress, combat situations like dungeons....as a DM you just have to remember not to move quickly with combat, so that the PCs have opportunities for roleplay. |
| SoulLord |
Posted - 06 May 2004 : 15:24:26
Some Ideas
Walls could depict scenes about the history of the cult of the dragon
From the man realizing that everyone else was wrong in the translation about dead dragons ruling
To perhaps future plans for the cult.
The images can be explained by a pc or perhaps by an npc as they travel the dungeon |
| Israfel666 |
Posted - 05 May 2004 : 18:03:08
My advice is: don't feed your players faceless opponents, ever.
If the enemies are intelligent, they will talk to you, even if just to insult; more importantly, they can become prisoners, which guarantees a lot of interaction (or they can take a PC or two as prisoners). They also have links to out-of-dungeon society (eg. one of the evil cultist may come from a wealthy family, and his father may have offered a reward for bringing his disappeared son back alive).
If the enemies are non-intelligent, PCs should be able to gather a lot of information from their habitat or their bodies. Monsters have puppies, which I'm sure some PC will refuse killing, and some other will refuse leaving alive to grow; or they live in a complex habitat, which may provide a key to victory (eg. you can find a surviving useful magic item among the beholder's petrified victims). Nonintelligent undead still can be linked to their mortal lives (eg. one of the skeleton bears a badge of office that identifies him as a city guard captain; the PCs choose to bring his wife news of her husband's fate, since she supposedly never found his corpse). Constructs are incarnations of magical lore; a manual detailing golem maintenance may reveal you that the construct you defeated earlier was partially fueled by a powerful wand secured inside his chest, which the party rogue will have a hard time breaking into.
The possibilities are endless. Battles should never resemble anything a CRPG can provide... there must always be something more. |
| Artalis |
Posted - 05 May 2004 : 17:25:42
A lot of it will depend on your players. If you have a bunch of sullen hardbitten bitter characters there isn't likely to be too much good conversation. On the other hand if you have a few reasonably normal folks in your crew it could be interesting.
I find it helps to screen the kind of characters you allow in to a game. If you want good rp you might not want to allow the CN psycho warrior from hades into your game. :) |
| Chyron |
Posted - 05 May 2004 : 17:07:09
Also bear in mind that dungeons in Faerun are much more colorful than the standard keep prison type....many have passages to the underdark and such. Yo uhave many options when setting encounters. But for me as a DM I like to make a few of my NPCs (even typically evil ones) have more depth. One example comes to mind from way back DMing in 1st ED.
Once the PCs found a goblin being held prisoner in a dungeon. They let him go and his reaction was so positive that he atually started to bond with one of the players and became a sort of page/squire. He had to learn to become more neutral over time, but the pc guided him, gave long lessons in manners and jus that small encounter led to long term role-playing and plot development.
try to think "outside of the box" for one or two encounters and good roleplayers can oftern run with it. Of course eveyone likes action...but some players like sub plots just as much.
If your using the cult of the dragon....maybe one of the newer members was best friends with a PC as a child.
Or maybe the PCs find out that this cell is vernerating a good dragon and all the prsoners are ex zhent killers?
put a few spins on things and you can really let the players do the rest. |
| Arravis |
Posted - 05 May 2004 : 16:55:05
Wooly, the kind of RP we tend to do is much more dialogue driven. To give an example:
Part of last night's game delt with the guilt, justice, and forgiveness...
We had recently taken a prisoner with us, an evil apprentice wizard, someone who had murdered a guard in the small town of Essembra. Part of the reason he was taken prisoner was that he has valuable information, the other is that one of the characters in the party feels that if perhaps this apprentice can redeem himself, maybe there's hope for himself. The character had commited worse crimes in his past. How can he simply kill the apprentice (or turn him in to be hanged in Essembra)? Would doing that not mean that he himself deserved the same fate? Did he deserve the same fate... He was given a chance to redeem himself (if such a thing is even possible), should the party take that chance away from the apprentice?
That's one example of the kinds of things that tend to come up during our games. They can be pretty emotional actually, and very touching. Anyway, thanks everyone for the ideas... I'm mulling over what to do and the ideas here are definately helping :). |
| Wooly Rupert |
Posted - 05 May 2004 : 16:29:05
Even in dungeons, role-playing is still quite possible. Two examples:
I had one character in 2nd edition that had 20 strength. So he didn't care whether or not the thief could open a lock door. If the thief didn't unlock it, my character just knocked the door down. Sometimes he did that before the thief could get to it. 
I had another character, a thief with the swashbuckler kit, who believed in traveling in style. So he actually commissioned a framework of metal rods that could be assembled or disassembled. When disassembled, it fit nicely into his girdle of many pouches. When assembled, he used it to support a hammock -- so even in a dungeon, he always slept comfortably.  |
| Bookwyrm |
Posted - 05 May 2004 : 16:28:23
On the face of it, it doesn't seem like it. But really, you can often talk about personal things more freely while resting between fights for your life than you can over a mug of ale. It's often hard to completely put yourself in your character's place, but if you work at it consistantly, you can actually roleplay attack roles in more depth than "In the name of Tempus!" or somesuch. |
| Faraer |
Posted - 05 May 2004 : 16:13:13
Very much so. First, intra-party talk and banter -- see dungeon scenes in the first and third Elminster books. Second, Ed uses dungeons as sites for intrigue like any other: what factions are in the dungeon (what do they want? who are they hiding from?), who's interested in what the PCs are doing there, who's opposing them. Third, dungeons are not just places of action but places of antiquity, where ancient civilizations (often dwarves or Netheril) survive into the present with relics and long-lost lore.
The idea that exists that roleplaying is achieved only by talking and not action is wrong and unfortunate. The story, and the roleplaying, is what the characters *do*. |
| Wood Elf Ranger |
Posted - 05 May 2004 : 16:02:30
Well it depends on your players but a lot of it could be between their characters, really getting to know each others characters backgrounds and personalities. Hmm you could also have some type of guide who is leading them through the dungeon telling them all kinds of stories as they go. It could even be a bad guy they catch up to him and have some dialogue, fight his underlings while he runs away then repeat every once in a while getting to know more of the plot as you go along. Conversing with prisoners like you said is a good idea too. |
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