Monday, August 12, 2019

Jayquaysing the Caves of Chaos

That's a lot of little linear maps!
I just finished my first pass of another dungeon entrance - the Caves of Chaos. But I couldn't leave well enough alone. The original Caves are pretty cool in their layout, but it still has some issues.  For one, it's weird having a dozen different sentient species, some of whom are enemies, all living in one valley together. Another is that the caves don't interconnect as much as I prefer.

The first issue is easy for me to address. This is where the beast-men disciples of the Horned One live, so while it seems like there are a dozen different sentient races here, they're really just one big group. That coordinate. That should amp up the difficulty for the PCs.

The second required some redrawing, adding, and tweaking. That required drawing the entire map into InkScape for further manipulation.  Thankfully, once that was done, I moved a little bit around, stuffed in some secret doors in reasonable looking places, added in a corridor or two, and made the minotaur's labyrinth well, more of a labyrinth. I may also need to stat up David Bowie with horns. Finally, I am adding at least one more level below the caves that will lead to the main body of the megadungeon.

So as it stands, the PCs can access the Caves the normal way, and once they are inside, they can get to any other room on the entire map without going outside, if they want. This is as much for the monsters as it is for the PCs. Since the factions coordinate their defenses, this lets the monsters shift forces to reinforce points of attack, pass information, and move supplies in ways the PCs might not expect. It allows for a far more flexible defense of the caves, and that should make this less of a cakewalk.

After all, my job is to provide problems, not solutions.

No comments :

Post a Comment