Re: Dungeon Fantasy: Dungeons now available
 

One thing I'd like to implement more in dungeon crawls is that 'what enters the dungeon stays in the dungeon'. It often happens that a group will enter a dungeon, go all out with every encounter, realise their resources are running low, go back to their homebase to recover and replenish, return and start hacking away again.

Basically, I'd like for the PCs to have to consider and conserve their resources more by not having the option to simply bail out as easily.

What hooks and tips would you use for achieving that when designing dungeons? The obvious one is having time working against them due to an imminent threat waiting to be unleashed from the dungeon that they are there to stop, but this is far from the aim of all dungeon crawls. So how to make them stay in the dungeon?

Re: Dungeon Fantasy: Dungeons now available
 

It does? In years playing in fantasy campaigns in various systems I've never seen that happen. Sure, we occasionally hole up in a room and take a rest well before the intended time, but actually leaving the dungeon to resupply is new to me. But maybe my group is just too old-fashioned.
I can think of a few things that will help. Let the dungeons be more than a single day's worth of travel from the nearest village. Use random encounters during travel. Let the dungeons be populated by enemies intelligent enough to use the time to get reinforcements, flee, or at least reorganize and set new traps (the party is basically ceding the advantage of surprise at this point; against an intelligent foe that'll come at a price).

Re: Dungeon Fantasy: Dungeons now available
 

Or collecting the different pdfs in a single DF volume, as collectionable installments.

But I think to put some effort changing pagination numbers could be worthwhile. After all, isn't this a top noch product?

Re: Dungeon Fantasy: Dungeons now available
 

Looking at some of the replies from people who prefer grids. I made a compromise layout using offset squares to make a pseudo hex grid. Again it is quarter inch

http://home.earthlink.net/~wilderlan...ex_quarter.pdf

Would people prefer true hexes or offset squares for their dungeon maps.

Enjoy
Rob Conley

Re: Dungeon Fantasy: Dungeons now available
 

As a professional publisher ourselves, we cater to our own standards. After 25 years, we're pretty sure the path to additional sales is "doing it properly," not cutting corners.

Re: Dungeon Fantasy: Dungeons now available
 

Which products have this issue? This is the first I've heard of it, and I agree: it's something we shouldn't overlook.

Re: Dungeon Fantasy: Dungeons now available
 

Uh, many? For example, the GURPS Powers PDF has three splashpages before getting to the TOC on the PDF's 4th page, which is numbered 2 in the bottom-left corner. Innate Attack is on the page numbered 53 in the content, but is actually the PDF's 55th page. All page references are two pages off. You get used to it. You could move some splashpages to the end to fix it.

Re: Dungeon Fantasy: Dungeons now available
 

Hmm...

"the doors swing shut behind you, and won't open without the McGuffin at the end" is much too heavy handed, although I've known GMs who use it.

"There are other adventurers who might get the loot if you leave the dungeon" works, in moderation.

"There's some sort of dastardly resetting trap at the entrance we don't want to have to bypass more times than we have to" also works.

Myself, I favor "The dungeon is far enough from civilization that restocking would require a very long hike, and who knows what would happen in the meantime".

Re: Dungeon Fantasy: Dungeons now available
 

One method that worked for me was to have the King's representative inspect all the loot that had been gotten so far and determine what the PCs were allowed to keep and what they had to turn over if they left the dungeon without the McGuffin. If they didn't leave until they had the McGuffin, they got to keep everything they found. Obviously this only works for certain types of dungeon crawls though.

Re: Dungeon Fantasy: Dungeons now available
 

This is basically you best solution to this. I know that Dungeon Fantasy is not really known for being the most logical type of game out there (like having the big moster locked in the treasure room), but not letting the Dungeon exist in isolation is the key.