Dungeon Rooms : Location, Scene or something else?

[zazaodh]

So I am undertaking the rather large task of creating Rappan Athuk in Realm Works and have hit an early snag.

For each room of the dungeon floors, is a Location (Places: Location) or Scene (Events: Scene) more appropriate?

Location makes somewhat more sense logically, however it does not automatically have Hero Labs scene portfolio, scene statblock, challenge level, encounter type or rewards snippets.

Am I missing something and Scene is meant to be used for this, or is there an entirely different type that fits even better? What do you use?

 

[Farling]

I tend to use Location to contain the map of the dungeon, then Scenes for each individual room.

 

[Parody]

The original intent was to have a Location and a Scene, separating the description of a place (the Location) from any encounters (Scenes) that might happen there. Those lines get blurred in published adventures (especially dungeon exploration types) where most encounters are tied to a specific place and never move around, and most locations have zero or one encounters.

You might find that the best compromise is to create a custom category that fits your needs. Duplicate Location or Scene and add items from the other so you have everything in one place.

 

[zazaodh]

I tend to use Location to contain the map of the dungeon, then Scenes for each individual room.

Interesting, I am doing the same thing but with Adventure Area for each level of the dungeon (There are 48 dungeon levels in Rappan Athuk!).

You lose Profile (Customs, languages, rituals, ideology, faith, alignment, beliefs, aspirations, reputation) and gain a Smart Image (Map) in Description. This to me is preferable because each level has a map, and little use for the Profile snippets.

The original intent was to have a Location and a Scene, separating the description of a place (the Location) from any encounters (Scenes) that might happen there. Those lines get blurred in published adventures (especially dungeon exploration types) where most encounters are tied to a specific place and never move around, and most locations have zero or one encounters.

You might find that the best compromise is to create a custom category that fits your needs. Duplicate Location or Scene and add items from the other so you have everything in one place.

The thought of having each room as a Location and each encounter as a Scene would almost double my number of topics! As you mention, most rooms end up having an encounter, trap or similar.

It would also mean having to possibly flip back and forth between the two tabs. This could make it very easy to overlook parts of either topic, for me at least.

Creating a custom category is something I have no real idea what I am doing with. Once I create it, is it possible to switch over my already created Scenes to the new custom category? Or would I have to create new topics and manually copy everything over before deleting the Scenes?

 

[Parody]

Yes, you can assign a different Category to an existing Topic/Article.

 

[AEIOU]

I used Adventure Area for Rappan Athuk which contains a Location for each level which contain a Scene for each room.

I put a master map of RA in the Adventure Area which has history and overview of the dungeon and a table of each level with their major NPCs.

I put maps for each level in the Location as well as wandering monsters, common details, door details, and table of rooms and mobs/NPCs.

The tables with NPCs include not only the ones that have their own topics (and links ) but also the minor players that are embedded in the room descriptions so I have a single page to search on if necessary.

This has worked out really well for Stoneheart Mountain, the Abandoned Keep and material for Sword of Air as well.

 

[jkthomsen9]

I use Location tab for general information you would find in a gazetteer. Therefore my Places tab is set up in a hierarchy from planet to shop. In pathfinder it would look something like.

Golarion (Planetary Body) Planet

Avistan (Region: Geographical) Continent

Lands of the Linnorm Kings (Region: Political) Country

Kalsgard (Community)

Jade Quarter (Region: Urban)

Madam K's Perfumery(Merchant)​

Varisia (Region: Political) Country

Sandpoint (Community)

Rusty Dragon (Merchant)​

Crown of the World (Region: Geographical) Polar Ice cap

Outer Rim (Region: Geographical) Geographical region within the Crown of the Word

Iqualiat (Community)​

Then in my Events Tab I set up a hierarchy From an Adventure path down to an encounter.


Jade Regent Adventure path (Incident)

The Hungry Storm (Storyline)

Part Two: The High Ice (Quest)

(J) Iqualiat (Scene)
​

In this example in the Incident I put basic DM information for the whole AP. In the storyline I list the adventure summary and adventure background. In the quest I list the info for segmenting into the new part. In the scene in i put the info for running the encounter.


Notice That I have an entry for Iqaliat as both a scene and a community. This way you have a link to the city as a whole with entries for notable NPC and locations, and an entry for the specific events that occur when the party enters town in the Jade Regent AP.

 

[zazaodh]

Sorry for taking a while to get back to you, but thank you ever so much for the detailed reply.

It is really thought provoking to see how you go about laying this out!

 

[Pollution]

Personally, I like having the rooms be locations. Just keeps the dungeon separate from the plot. So if a player goes, "what happened in the Emerald Spire?" they can go to locations (what they'd think of first), and then find out.

You could also interject scenes in the location if you want. I've done that with a few events in my games. There's nothing stopping you from putting a dungeon crawl under Places, and then on Level 3, Room C4 they find a quest...Under C4 there's a scene.

You can mix and match. If you wanted to (don't reccomend it) you could put the shopkeepers under their shops in locations. So you'd have:

Town
------Shop
----------Owner
------Shop 2
-----------Owner
-----------Employee
-------Shop 3
etc...

Not the best way of doing things, but you could.

As to rooms in a dungeon? I use Places. I have standardized Challenges = Mobs, Obstacles = Traps, Valuables = Treasure, Additional Details = Stuff (like to the next level, or XP for finishing a story in this room, etc...) When I want a hero lab portfolio under Challenges, I just right click the text box explaining the overview of what they're facing, and add snippet below>hero lab portfolio. Then load up the port. I find that when I mess with category definitions for a published Pathfinder adventure, I get confused and things vanish. I'd rather add custom to each topic, and then remove empty topics and snippets.

I find that works best for me. Everything is in one place.

(currently working on the Emerald Spire Superdungeon, so trying to keep EVERYTHING neat so I don't go mad)

 

[Exmortis]

You can mix and match. If you wanted to (don't reccomend it) you could put the shopkeepers under their shops in locations. So you'd have:

Town
------Shop
----------Owner
------Shop 2
-----------Owner
-----------Employee
-------Shop 3
etc...

Not the best way of doing things, but you could.

So far I have found it is better to have the shops and owners on the actual town/city/village topic. In fact I am now working on a new population centre topic category, and one of the sections is just for shops, owners, another for notable NPCs (thse are NPCs they will from time ot time interact with, but are not story based NPCs worth their own topic). One thing I am trying to avoid is going topic crazy.

Until the new version of CC3 I am not mapping at moment I am working on things already mapped, mostly adventure conent and the campaign story itself. Once CC3+ is released I will map out my world and do alot of the flushing out of the locations.

 

[jkthomsen9]

There are many ways of doing things. I run AP's in Pathfinder game setting. I have found it easiest to use people, places, for entering campaign settings, player companions and Gazetteers. In this way I set up the broad strokes of what's going on any given sunday across the world of Golarion. But the AP is the current event and is what is moving and shaking right now....so I put it in events. In this way the entire AP, with the exception of the appendix/gazetteer info in the back, can be put in storyline/Quest/Scene format. In this way I use RW for both the Macro and the Micro view of my campaign world.

As for where to put people, I have also found it easier to place most NPC's in the location they are most of the time. Shopkeepers in their shops, rulers in the capital ect.

 

[FreakFire74]

For Dungeon Rooms I first experimented with Locations but I ended up with lots of surplus information that I didn't really needed so I have created a very short 'Room' category under locations set up like this:

Room:

Function: Short description of the function of the room inside the dungeon. Example: 'these are the kitchens where the ogre cook Sully prepares the Killer Fish being brought in by the goblins)

Player text: A short flavor text for the players that I read aloud when they enter the room. Can be customized like one descriptions with monsters and one without (if the party has drawn the monsters from the room or alerted them before entering).

DM information: Important information about the room. Basically all the text I need to run the room. Traps, information about the occupants, points of interest, challenges etc.

Monsters and NPC's: Monster profiles, NPC setup. The monsters all have a little snippet with their profile/stats (which I have entered before) so I can easily run them during a combat. Minor NPC's which will most likely not reappear are entered here. Major ones will be created and put in the room (as a container).

Valuables: Treasures, loot that didn't end up in DM information.

I'm still experimenting with it. Currently building a dungeon (and designing it with Dungeon Designer) and this will be the second dungeon area I will run with RW..

The only thing about categories that I really don't like is that the tree options are pretty simplistic and everything completely opens up once I start RW..