Weird motifs

On Saturday, I posted about the deep weird—that dungeons should get progressively weirder and more unique the deeper the characters delve. I've been thinking about how I can implement that as a practical matter, especially in so far as giving the whole dungeon a unique flavor while giving each level a distinct but related flavor.

Leitmotifs seem like a natural device to accomplish that. In terms of dungeon design, the use of a recurring image, sound, smell, event, or map element would serve to immediately characterize the level and orient the player.

 For example, if the big bad at the bottom of a dungeon was a group of mind flayers, all levels might have elements suggestive of tentacles. On this first level, there might be widespread tentacle-like vines, and kobolds who wield wavy-bladed kris. That level is ruled by an ogre who plays the bagpipes (which look a bit like an octopus). Throughout the level, the characters hear the playing of the bagpipes, long before they find the ogre. Bagpipes suggest a music motif, so the kobolds also sing rude songs. Stick a musical puzzle in there somewhere, and drop in a musical instrument as a minor magic item. As a bit of weirdness, the bagpipes can sometimes still be heard even after the PC's kill the ogre, and upon close examination the vines can be seen to twitch in rhythm to the music; the party may only notice this after they return from a deeper level. By dungeon level three or four, the carvings framing most of the doors (which were too worn-away to be recognized on higher levels) are a pair of tentacles that intertwine above the top of the door. If the players smell the stone tentacles, the stone smells faintly but distinctly fishy. Level five or six could have a sea theme (with the sound of water audible in certain places on the level above). The entire level smells of salt and seaweed. Most of the passages are natural twisty caves that lead to an underground sea overgrown with brain coral. A giant octopus lives there. Perhaps a room on this level is only accessible if the party approaches it using a peculiarly circuitous route they found mapped on a wall two levels above.

So, the overall motif of the dungeon is twists and tentacles. The motif of the first level is music. Both motifs should trigger associations that orient the players in your dungeon. These are off-the-cuff examples, but hopefully you get the idea.

The deep weird

I just had this (perhaps not completely novel) idea: the deeper the dungeon level, the less it conforms to the natural world known by the characters.

The first three dungeons levels might be quite naturalistic—vermin and low HD humanoids living sensibly (if violently) within the circle of life and whatnot. In one or two places, weirdness might peek through from the depths in the form of, for example, a magic well. Four to six levels down, weird elements become more common, and the relationships and behaviors of the inhabitants become less understandable. The dungeon, below level six, breaks down in terms of cause and effect. Fairy tale logic dominates the lives of inhabitants, and the structure itself sprawls in non-euclidean ways.

This could also differentiate one dungeon from another. Most dungeons, in the first few levels, would more or less resemble each other. The true and unique nature of a particular dungeon's weirdness would only be revealed within its depths.

Trading on design

In a reply to my post from yesterday, Scott of Huge Ruined Pile (who himself recently penned something of an apologia for nostalgia) predicted a move to "more modern-looking" OSR products. There's good design and bad design. Good design is aesthetically appealing and functional. In the case of game covers, the function is to communicate the nature of the content. What is the game about? Is it the sort of thing I would like? Here are a couple of current Swords & Wizardry products: The design of both these products effectively communicates what they're about. They're fantasy adventure games, with an old-school flavor. I also find them aesthetically pleasing per se, apart from the nostalgia factor. The boxed set has a clean, balanced design which does its job even when considered in isolation from the 1974 box. Granted, most of the people buying these products are familiar with the earlier works they reference. But that's true of any package design. You sell an unfamiliar product by creating associations in the minds of consumers. Leaving aside whether they are good or bad design (relative to the S&W covers or on their own), what associations do these "modern" Frog God Games covers evoke? These covers capitalize on a design aesthetic that was popularized around 2001 with the boom of 3e products. No doubt the designs create the desired associations in their audience. My concern is that—however much we would like to see Swords & Wizardry realize the volume of sales 3e publishers saw—the design aesthetic of the Frog God Games products would less effectively communicate the appeal of S&W than the existing Mullen cover. If you think the Swords & Wizardry packaging is derivative (I don't—it's nostalgic but not derivative), is it better to jump from one derivative design to another derivative design of slightly more recent vintage? I don't ask that rhetorically. (In case you haven't seen it, the art for the new Swords & Wizardry cover is shown in my last post.)

Melan diagrams

Justin Alexander recently made several posts about the dungeon design methods seen in Paul Jaquays' adventures. Those articles are worth a read in themselves, and they use an interesting analytical technique which visualizes a dungeon as logical flowchart rather than a floorplan. I'm going to start making such flowcharts as a quality control measure after the first rough draft of my dungeons. (This reminds me of Stefanie Posavec's sentence drawings, which are worth a look if you're a fan if visualizations.)