![]() The theme of a dungeon is its mood, its flavor, and its soul. Caves, castles, canyons, mountains, mines, monasteries, battleships, airships, spaceships, towers, towns, tundra, wells, waterfalls, and whale's bellies are all potential settings for dungeons. they aren't the same thing! The setting of a dungeon is its physical location. A successful dungeon will keep the shape and structure of the dungeon within the realistic confines of its setting (more on setting below), and will offer a path that is interesting to follow. Thus, the skeleton of a dungeon should give you an idea of how it looks from space. However, you could justify having secret passages or dilapidated rooms in a haunted mansion that would serve the same purpose as aforementioned dead ends. A haunted mansion wouldn't consist of twisting passages and dead ends because mansions aren't designed with twisting passages and dead ends - they're designed with hallways that branch off into individual rooms. ![]() At the same time, the shape of a dungeon should be logical. Remember in the original Zelda how the rooms in the levels were put together in such a way that each level had a distinctive shape? When the mysterious old man said "SECRET IS IN TIP OF NOSE", awful Engrish aside, you knew where to hunt for the secret because you could see where the nose was on the map. The shape of a dungeon can be used to enhance the experience as well. A non-linear skeleton is really just two or more linear skeletons ravelled up inside each other, and the hero has the option to jump back and forth between bones. With some clever twisting of paths, any part of a non-linear dungeon can be linked to any other part. You have these same options with a non-linear skeleton, except on a looser basis. You can even require the player to cross a previous path, effectively creating a loop allowing the player to explore the dungeon in both directions. You can put an early part of the path enticingly close to a later part. You can loop the path around and through itself. If you're using a linear skeleton, remember that lines don't have to be straight. However, there are ways to make the skeleton more interesting. There's not a whole lot of flexibility to take advantage of here. Either there is only one path or there are more. In some ways, they are your only options either your dungeon is linear or it is not. Either of these dungeon layouts is acceptable. For an example of the former, play most any Final Fantasy game for an example of the latter, try Suikoden 1 or 2. The other skeleton is more freeform, with many branches and multiple paths. One skeleton is linear the PCs follow a path from entrance to exit, collecting treasure and fighting progressively difficult enemies along the way. To the casual observer, it looks as though there are two kinds of dungeon skeletons. Maybe with some notes off to the side about puzzles and such, but a skeleton nonetheless. Strip away the music, visuals, monsters, and story cut scenes from a dungeon, and it looks like any other lines on paper, connecting areas. spooky! The skeleton of a dungeon is what it looks like before you add the graphics. The goal of this article is to examine why that is, and to offer some examples of how to remedy it. For something that is so important to the genre, it's a shame so many RPGs don't give much love to dungeon design. You don't have to think of many reasons to justify having dungeons in your game - the genre already justifies them for you. RPGs are geared towards dungeon exploration. But I challenge the reader to find an RPG that is an exception to all of the rules. There are, of course, exceptions to every rule. Why do bosses exist? To provide the player with the final, most challenging step in a dungeon. Why do towns exist? To give players a chance to recuperate from the last dungeon and prepare for the next one. Why do save points exist? Because otherwise you couldn't save in the dungeon. Why do heal spells exist in RPGs? Because otherwise, the PCs could not conveniently heal themselves in dungeons. Dungeons offer the player a series of challenges, which must be overcome they must enter prepared before entering and they must sustain themselves until the end. Dungeons are populated with enemy characters, are the source of the bulk of an RPG's treasures and secrets, and are where most of the bosses are encountered. A dungeon is defined as a place that is hostile to the player characters. Dungeons must be the focus, the star, and the cream-filled center. Dungeons cannot be viewed as a perk, or a bonus, or the icing on the cake. Because of this, any successful RPG must practice good dungeon design. Dungeons make up a large part of the gameplay, second only to actual combat. Dungeons are integral to a traditional RPG.
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