Steve Jackson Games Forums - View Single Post - Pros and cons of dungeons for hack and slash roleplaying

DeadParrot · 07-02-2019, 04:30 PM

Most dungeons I have seen have been a mish-mash of random rooms with equally random monsters. They work for mindless hack and slash as long as everyone doesn't try to make sense of it. Many of the occupants, if played as written in the Bestiary/Monster Manual/etc should be more interested in killing each other then they are in fighting the party of adventurers wandering through.

One way to avoid the self cleaning dungeon problem would be something along the lines of a large den of Orcs with each room being a separate family group. Some are good at melee fighting, others are good with magic, and some are really good at surprise. You could set it up that the different families normally squabble a lot with each other in a mostly non-lethal fashion so the band of adventurers killing off a family unit wouldn't automatically cause great alarm in the adjacent rooms as they would be used to frequent noises of fighting.

But if one DID escape to warn adjacent families, things could get very bad for the adventurers in a hurry. I don't really have a problem with a TPK or TPC(total party capture) if you warned them ahead of time that retreat is sometimes advisable. IMO - too many players these days just assume they are supposed to win.

07-02-2019, 04:30 PM	#16
DeadParrot Join Date: Apr 2012	Re: Pros and cons of dungeons for hack and slash roleplaying Most dungeons I have seen have been a mish-mash of random rooms with equally random monsters. They work for mindless hack and slash as long as everyone doesn't try to make sense of it. Many of the occupants, if played as written in the Bestiary/Monster Manual/etc should be more interested in killing each other then they are in fighting the party of adventurers wandering through. One way to avoid the self cleaning dungeon problem would be something along the lines of a large den of Orcs with each room being a separate family group. Some are good at melee fighting, others are good with magic, and some are really good at surprise. You could set it up that the different families normally squabble a lot with each other in a mostly non-lethal fashion so the band of adventurers killing off a family unit wouldn't automatically cause great alarm in the adjacent rooms as they would be used to frequent noises of fighting. But if one DID escape to warn adjacent families, things could get very bad for the adventurers in a hurry. I don't really have a problem with a TPK or TPC(total party capture) if you warned them ahead of time that retreat is sometimes advisable. IMO - too many players these days just assume they are supposed to win.