Badfreednd

I've been thinking about stuck doors, what we get from them and what they cost.  The Benefits: Pacing:  I've run dungeons where the doors just open and in my experience, the party wanted to open as many doors as they had people to open them, so that they could peek in to see if there was anything obviously valuable inside. This led to me describing several different rooms and their encounters to several different people, all split up and spread out.  Using stuck doors serves as a clear end markers for dungeon turns. Strong characters have a much higher chance of opening a door quickly, and so doors require some commitment from the party in regards to where they will send their door openers. The time delay also gives other party members space to investigate seemingly minor elements of the environment that interest them while the party as a whole maintains a sense of forward momentum. And even if the party does spread out to open multiple doors, the fact that some might fai...

  The First Floor I ran a megadungeon a couple of years ago, and while I had fun running it, and my group had some fun delving into it, it was pretty clear by the end of the campaign that my players were done with it. The campaign ran for about a year and a half of weekly sessions and by the halfway point of the campaign the party was spending the majority of its time exploring the region around the dungeon. I don't think that the impulse to explore the surrounding area is uncommon, and I have come to learn that it is an activity that my players really enjoy, but I do think that there are some elements of the dungeon that made exploring it less satisfying than it could have been. The Size: Megadungeons are supposed to be big, that's their whole thing, but I think the dungeon I made was big in the wrong way. Above is a map of the first floor of the dungeon and it is enormous. At around 350 rooms the floor was probably too big, especially considering that it was only being explor...

I'm running a small sandbox game and the map has several old battlefields as points of interest. I wanted discovering a battlefield to be an opportunity to explore and find interesting and valuable things, but it wasn't really a dungeon and I didn't want to leave it to a series of random die rolls. I wanted it to be interactive and quick and standardizable so I used blackjack as the resolution mechanic.  The Process Cards are dealt face up by the DM to all players involved, the DM only deals themself one card initially.  The DM goes around resolving players hands one at a time before dealing themself their second card and resolving their own hand The DM plays to 17 The results of the excavation depend on the results of the hand and the hands value The players can excavate their own site or team up to excavate sites together, allowing each group to use their best hand when determining the results of the dig Each dig requires 4 people and takes 2 watches (8 hours), if excavat...