The idea that dungeons NEED to be super well thought out in terms of world building (Like every room having a purpose, oh where do they sleep, where do they shit?) results in dungeons that are less fun yet harder to make.
More people should follow Zelda when it comes to dungeon design- Work on making a dungeon mechanically fun and engaging to solve, then worry about world building after.
>blatantly trying to justify your own laziness
I'm playing a roleplaying game, not Zelda.
>super well thought out
>everyone room having a purpose
The fact that you categorize "basic verisimilitude" as "super well thought out" really says everything we need to know about you.
>less fun
>harder to make
Fun is a buzzword, but no, it's not "harder to make" a reasonable "dungeon" just because monsters take shelter there; it in fact becomes easier because you can use almost everything from the real world as an outline.
spbp
Or just be even more terminally lazy and roll for the contents of each room. Cause prep work is for gays.
Ah yes, because everyone loves playing slots instead of dungeon crawling. Zero preppers get the rope.
But what was Zelda's electoral platform? and tax policy
>Zelda's electoral platform?
Isn't Hyrule hereditary monarchy?
I thought it was a federation of ethnonationalist monarchies, with the notable exception of gerontocratic gorons and rito and anprim koroks
>anprim koroks
Kokiri/Koroks are not anarchist, they are a simple tribal despotism led by the Great Deku Tree. The GDT gives edicts (like 'no entry' to a specific place), command the Koroks or Kokiri, etc. This might even be a theocracy since the health of the GDT seems to correlate to the life of its subjects in 2 games. Notably, the Kiwi do not have a GDT and may be elder-led. In the absence of a GDT, it's possible that koroks would form a monarchy like deku scrubs (MM) if their life is not dependent on a GDT. Some great trees - Maku Trees - serve as guardians of lands without a specific subject race (Oracle of Ages and Seasons).
Gerudo are arguably a theocratic state in which they serve witches (OOT) or a queen (BOTW) until a male appears who immediately takes rule by divine right.
The Rito appear to worship Valoo the Sky Spirit in Windwaker as their "patron deity", but they still have a separate chieftain. Valoo is given offerings and can communicate some demands, but only in a ancient Hylian.
Koroks are neither a tribal despotism nor a theocracy, and they're also no anarchism. They're like sovereign citizens of Hyrule who claim the supremacy of natural fairy law over the laws of man (or Hylian at any rate).
So basically native americans
It's an rpg, not a platform.
You should ask that to Mario instead.
Literally who says this. You're making up a guy to get mad at or pretending one guy is speaking for everyone.
he does not game so shitposters on /tg/ are his only frame of reference
>You're making up a guy to get mad at or pretending one guy is speaking for everyone.
>Literally who says this.
these guys
If you want a zelda type dungeon, watch boss keys.
If you want plausible dungeons, it's actually easier. Just start collecting blueprints for different types of buildings. Especially historical ones. And then populate them however you want.
Verisimilitude is a defining feature of the genre. Mr btongue had a pretty good video on why is important to a setting for a role playing game, but basically Zelda is a single player action RPG and that's different than a tabletop rpg, where we have rules for any action, as in if you want to blow through a wall that's doable, if you want to fill a dungeon with sheep setting off all the traps, that's doable, if you want to poison your enemies water supply or set up some kind of complicated illusion, go for it. Spells and the ability to climb over anything means we deal more with situations than physical/item Zelda puzzles.
Are you looking for something more like a board game? Board games are fun too.
?si=3UIrpuybmO1ai7RK
>spend your time and energy refining gameplay aspects that players interact with.
Yes
>spend your time and energy refining setting elements that players might never interact with
No.
Verisimilitude morons will spend 100 threads and countless man hours running "/tg/ makes a setting" threads without ever actually playing a fricking tabletop game. For every Fallout 3 or Mass Effect we also have ten thousand passion projects which will never see the light of day because the authors convinced themselves to bite off an impossibly large task, and even if that product does make it to the market, the base gameplay elements will be just as shit as those from Fallout 3 or Mass Effect.
You don't need to exhaustively fill in every minute detail of things. Collect reusable assets and pull them out when theyre called for.
The players want to break into a mansion? Pull out one of the maps in your "mansions" folder. A castle, warehouse, prostitutehouse, guildhouse, factory? Same deal.
>Verisimilitude takes too long
It can be generated with tables and at the table if need be. We're not making modules as DMs. You saw the thumbnail and you're just trolling. The video I posted shits on Fallout 3.
It's fun to make a game, and you should be able to do it in the time between when you recruit a group and a week later when you run it. That's the timeline because until there are characters rolled you don't know exactly what you need. An outline is fine. The the rule everyone says is don't plan more than a session ahead.
OP should probably learn to DM himself and put his take on it, though he may want play some more tabletop games first so he doesn't get frustrated when everything he makes will get cheesed by spells. (Let them cheese at least once, it's why they picked the spells they did)
>though he may want play some more tabletop games first so he doesn't get frustrated when everything he makes will get cheesed by spells
I don't play 5e. Besides that, I like it when the players come up with outside the box solutions. It's still a solution, an answer they had to think about.
>Verisimilitude takes too long
It doesn't. You're the one that's slow, a brainlet or obsessing over details instead of the whole picture.
Verisimilitude is just the degree of logic and cohesion within the setting, it can be greater or lesser depending on what you want. If it's taking too long, then it's on you that's putting too much effort into it, or rather, you're making it realistic, which is a different, harder to pull of thing.
I have the opposite issue, my players, despite being theatre kids (or maybe because of it), loathe dungeons without verisimilitude. Empty rooms, boss arenas, puzzle rooms, etc... they don't like them, they ask what their purpose was and how it makes sense for them to be here. Over time, I learned to play with that, because the thing about verisimilitude is that it lets the GM guide or justify stuff way more easily, and allows players to deduce stuff, which makes them feel great.
In my experience, the only ones against verisimilitude are those too dumb to actually work with it. While I also think that Zelda dungoen design is great to a degree, the one player that vouched for it was also the one that hated verisimilitue/realism because "fun" is more important than everything else
Why not both? Dungeons are not natural environments; most dungeons are made by mad wizards, intelligent monsters and wild magic. Even less extreme dungeons are territory of bandits, humanoid hostile races, weird creatures and misterious ancient tech, lost religions, fallen empires, forgotten cultures, occupied by different factions for long periods of time. No dungeon should be a coherent place, otherwise it wouldn't be named dungeon, but temple, military headquarter, guild lair, etc etc.
What makes it a DUNGEON is the whole mess that only ADVENTURERS are bold and prepared enough to explore.
I had assumed he was referring to people wanting castles and warehouses and barracks and temples and such to make sense and not be like Halaster's undermountain.
If it makes sense, its not a dungeon. Is just what it is.
A dungeon is a dangerous, unpredictable unknown place that may have monsters, traps and treasure. Its such a mess that not even the local authority would deem wise to waste resources and personnel exploring it.
Its a place only those weird outcasts that call themselves "adventurers" would dare go. And most of them die there. If they're very lucky, they come out alive with some treasure, but the mistery endures.
Huh. I was inclined to think 'if it's a dangerous enclosed building with traps and enemies and shit to steal and more than 3 rooms it's a dungeon'.
I think that's how most people I know use the phrase. Which would include any fortress, any mansion with guards, a well defended guildhouse, etc.
dungeons can have fewer than three rooms though.
Can it? If it's only 1-2 rooms, that's just a hut with some enemies in it. No real mystery of what's on the other side if those doors.
Just put a LOT of things in that one room.
And lets not forget actual castle dungeons, where you break into to free your allies after they're locked up because the king (or some usurper) doesnt like them.
>The idea that dungeons NEED to be super well thought out in terms of world building (Like every room having a purpose, oh where do they sleep, where do they shit?) results in dungeons that are less fun yet harder to make.
Citation; you're ass.
>Work on making a dungeon mechanically fun and engaging to solve, then worry about world building after.
You have the puzzle pieces right there, in front of you, half the work is done already in the realistic building that you've decided for some reason is boring based off of random shit that came outta you're ass. All you have to do is populate it, which is where the mechanical stuff comes in.
What, you think we didn't make traprooms? Motherfricker hasn't looked at a real castle have you? You're the kind of person who thinks trench warfare was smart.
yes, apostrophe r e, because your a newhomosexual who didn't read the rest of this post before replying.
I just declared that there dungeons and Dungeons. The normal ones are just ruins left after castles, cities and so on, when some monstrosity came and ate everyone.
Big D Dungeons are a collaboration between three gods - Thieves, Builders and Beasts - who make them for fun. Treasures are placed there so people would actually have an interest in exploring them. And god of Beasts is filling them up with his rejected projects that won't survive in the long run in the wider world but may have interesting abilities.
There's a tier above that, where you make every room have a purpose AND have that purpose serve a roleplaying purpose.
Why doesn't your dungeon have a bathroom that locks everyone inside with bars until they unclog the giant-snake-filled toilet?
Why doesn't your dungeon have a barracks with treasures hidden under the beds, and in the monsters' private lockers?
But yes, gameplay does come first. Don't be afraid to make the mundane fun though, that's how you get far more interesting situations.
I guess it's easy to justify your view if you ignore the actual arguments behind putting thought into your dungeons.
If your dungeons are designed with purpose and make sense, then the players can make informed assumptions and decisions. The environments can do storytelling for you, and they can figure out where there's likely to be traps or secret doors by function. For example, if a dungeon is a temple currently in use by a cult, there's not gonna be traps down the naves where they have their function, but maybe there might be one in the relics room. If the cult master has his quarters at the back end of the dungeon and there seems to be only one way in, then it might be worth checking whether there's a secret passage from there leading outside. And so on.
but i want my lore to be a world inhabited by psychologically unwell lemmings who trap their own corridors with unmarked explosives
then fricking do it
I usually just procedurally generate each room as my characters progress.
Why is the dungeon there, what's its purpose? Who cares, I'm playing a game about fighting monsters and demons, it literally doesn't matter.
Where do they shit? Nowhere, because as a fantasy game, I can make it so there's no such thing as bodily waste. Frick your scat fetish.
the only thing you NEED is to get your dick wet you moronic virgin
I already figured out half a dozen reasons why a dungeon is batshit insane and "gamey" to be fun while also having lore reasons why its like that in the first place, why can't other people figure it out?
>he doesn’t just go to large/old public buildings and map them out in half an hour then slap them on a grid and add a few traps and secret passages
>He doesn't pretend to go to large old private buildings in his imagination for a few minutes then slap them on a grid, traps and secret passages already included because all private buildings have government secrets in them protected by lethal traps in the walls and tiles.
>He doesn't use his paranoid schizophrenia as a tool in dungeon design.
ngmi
>He doesn't just search for blueprints.
https://www.startpage.com/do/search?query=historical+viking+longhouse+blueprints
https://www.startpage.com/sp/search?query=historical+italian+castle+blueprint
>startpage.com
What in tarnation?
Did you want duckduckgo? That works too.
All video games should be destroyed and everyone who has ever played one should be gassed
tabletop players too.
I understand your point but I feel like you are blowing things out of proportion. It is perfectly possible to pay attention to both equally and make a fun dungeon.
The best explanation for nonsensical dungeons is that the ancient peoples who built it were evil and insane.
Fact 1:
most people on /tg/ play 5e.
Fact 2:
5e is terrible for dungeon crawling.
Conclusion:
Most people here don't have any experience with a good dungeon crawl, and their advice should be ignored.
I seriously doubt most people on /tg/ play 5e. Most people on /tg/ are consumer slop enjoyers who play boardgames, wargames, and collectible card games. Among those who ARE RPG hobbyists here, I wager less than half have ever played 5e, and less than a fifth actually play it regularly. 5e dominates all the other RPG boards, thus, this place is the only internet refuge for all other RPG enjoyers.