Dortherdoreft: Initial Thoughts and Lessons

Spoiler: the Derro babies in cages totally stole the show...

So, Thomas and I ran our two session, same dungeon, themed New Year's D&D, Dortherdoreft. First he ran a party of all Dwarves through and then 48 hours later I ran a party of all Drow through. We wanted to both have some iconic player character class choices, like Dwarven Cleric and Drow Priestess of Lolth, and also to feature some icon Underdark features. We also decided to try and provide both some challenges for the PCs but also some places where their iconic abilities could shine. Here are my thoughts about how it went and lessons learned, both as player of a Dwarf Battlemaster Fighter and as a GM. We're hoping to tweak and write up the adventure for everyone to take a look at, but for now, here's some initial thoughts. You can find Thomas' thoughts on Dortherdoreft on his blog.

Thought of the Day... #1 - Traps with consequences for Disarming

Here is a "Though of the Day" that's completely unrelated to any Death Trap Dungeons I'm currently designing (I swear), but wouldn't a clever/evil/spiteful creator of a dungeon make traps that have secondary traps that are only triggered when they're disarmed?

Like, if the flame nozzle trap is disarmed, part of disarming it releases Rust Monsters digestive juices ruining the specific thief's tools being used?

I really like this idea because it makes use of a couple good Dungeon World moves:

• Give an opportunity that fits a class’ abilities (The thief gets to find and disarm a trap, like a badass)
• Use up their resources (Even bypassing the trap has a consequence)
• Offer an opportunity, with or without cost (If the thief realizes that disarming the flame nozzles might mean not disarming a trap later in the dungeon, will the thief/party decide that they're going to try and figure out the timing and dash through instead of disarming the trap?)

Traps are one of the things I struggle most with in Dungeon World, so this realization, while it might not fit every trap, does give me an option for when PCs are deep in a dungeon designed by an insane and powerful spell-caster or his followers.

Donjon Design: More than Just a Cellar Full of Monsters

So after a six month hiatus, I'm getting ready to dive back into running Fourth Edition D&D, albeit on a limited basis.  I'm taking over one of Citizen Ben's three D&D games for a brief spell and I'm also planning a massive weekend long mega-dungeon in celebration of the 30th anniversary of my escape from the womb...   As as I get together my notes and actually start the design process, I've started keeping a list of goals for how I want to design these two dungeons. **Note, for the purpose of this post, consider Dungeon to be synonymous with Adventure.**

(brainstorming for Iskender's Tomb)