Doors, Gates, and Metroidvania Dungeon Design

Doors and Gates

A door is a obstruction to descending or progressing in a dungeon. A giant locked door blocking the way from level 2 to level 3 is a door.

A gate is an obstruction to an optional path in a dungeon. A underwater passage acting as a shortcut leading from level 1 to level 4 is a gate.

Soft and Hard Locks

A hard locked door or gate has exactly one solution to it, such as as the aforementioned giant locked door requiring the equally sized giant key.

A soft locked door or gate is one with an intended solution, but one where a variety of other solutions also works. The blessing of the water god might be the intended solution to the aforementioned underwater tunnel, but a water breathing spell or potion works just as well.

Tangent: What Even is a Metroidvania?

Some questions don't have answers, but I will attempt to do so anyways because I am nothing if not a fool.

A metroidvania is a type of video game that's kind of like Super Metroid and Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. Vague, I know.

Essentially, it's a genre in which you explore a large open map and unlock powerups over time that allow you to explore new areas, as well as explore areas in a new lens. A double jump might unlock the garden level, but it also allows you to reach that chest that's been taunting you since the start of the game. It also makes exploring areas easier, allowing you to easily perform once-difficult jumps with ease.

You might be seeing some similarities to the megadungeon.

What Even is a Powerup?

In a video game, the answer of "what is a powerup" is VERY easy to answer, even in the context of the extraordinarily weird genre that are metroidvanias. Samus' ball form is a powerup.

What about in a megadungeon?

This question becomes harder to answer due to the ephemeral nature of PC life. The fighter finds a cool ass set of boots that lets him walk on water? Damn it really sucks when he gets eaten by a dragon.

Games that treat players as a group of a great organization (like His Majesty the Worm) or where character's are much harder to kill (many modern games, but an OSR style game where the PC's are immortal would work too).

So again, what's a powerup? Simple: it permanently opens gates. A water breathing spell temporarily opens an underwater passage, but the blessings of the water god open it indefinitely. Draining it also does this, and as strange as this statement is, I would also consider that a powerup. Not having to treck through 3 dungeon floors to get to floor 4 is inherently a powerup to exploring the lower dungeons.

Ok But How Do I Make a Megadungeon?

Doors block progression. Gates block options. The point of a door is to stop the party from going places without first doing something else. You do this either to limit them from going too deep too fast and getting themselves butchered, or to prove that they have the mettle to explore something. 

In a hexcrawl (which is essentially a megadungeon), the areas that are filled with more dangerous random encounters are generally only explorable by parties that can handle said random encounters. Those encounters are acting as a door.

Hard locked doors are a sometimes treat. A door that can only be opened by its intended key is inherently limiting to the party. Use them only when it makes sense and only in rare circumstances. New players often appreciate a hard locked door encouraging them to explore what they can handle first.

Soft locked doors are great. You want to progress? Prove you have the smarts to go on. Like any OSR problem, soft locked doors shouldn't have simple or obvious answers. "How do you cross the undergrouind ocean" is a far better question than "can the rogue roll high enough to open the locked door".

Hard locked gates are for checkpoints. They're a reward for progressing to a certain point, an easy way back.

Soft locked gates are also for checkpoints, but where a hard locked gate is best for progressing deeper, soft locked gates are best for progressing sideways, though obviously both are effective at either task.

The Caveat: The Rule of Options

There should never be but one key.

You might have a hard locked door, but there should never be only one key. At least 2, 3 is better. You never want the party to be stuck, unable to progress because they can't find the only key to progression.

Even gates and soft locked doors should have multiple options. Yes, the blessing of the water god will get you past the underwater tunnel, but so will finding a way to drain the tunnel, or drinking the alchemist Damasc's permanent water breathing potion, or any of a number of other options.

There should ALWAYS be options. Options breed creativity, and creativity is good. If you take nothing else from what I've said, take this.

In fact, there should be multiple paths of progression anyways. There should never be only one way from level 1 to 2, but several. Perhaps there is the main intended path, but there's also a way from level 1a, and a secret route from level 1 to 2 that requires a bit of fenagling to find.

Again: options breed creativity. Options breed exploration, and metroidvanias are about: fostering exploration.

I have a million more things I could say on the topic of megadungeon design and what we can learn from metroidvanias, but I'll call it good for now. Perhaps if there's interest, I'll consider writing more.

His Majesty the Worm: First Impressions

 I return from the grave to discuss the best game I have ever read: His Majesty the Worm. Before we begin, allow me to specify a note on terminology: This is a first impressions, not a review. I have not played HMTW, and definitely not to a level where I could give a comprehensive review. This is simply how I feel after reading through the book a few times.

When Comes the Worm

HMTW is, ostensible, a game about megadungeons. You could do something else with it, but at its core HMTW wants you to play a group of a questionably moral adventurers and go dig through an ancient dungeon beneath your home city with the goal of collecting treasure. This is not a unique idea (not that that's bad), but unlike other games that have a similar gameplay loop, HMTW is so well designed, such an immaculately well crafted game I am not surprised it took 8 years to make.

Let's start with the biggest weirdness of the system: you don't use dice. You instead use a standard 78 card deck of tarot cards, dividing into a 57 card player deck (the minor arcana and the fool), and the 21 card GM deck. A lesser game would treat this as a gimmick. HMTW instead makes the most out of every card. HMTW uses a simple core resolution system: draw a card and add its number to your relevant stat. If it beats 14, you win! The keen eyed among you might know that a deck of minor arcana only goes up to 14, and thus the likelihood of any random card + four (your maximum attribute score) is not particularly likely, and the system knows this as well. Risk/reward is built into the fundamentals of HMTW, even in the basic resolution of actions. You can always draw a second card and add it to your total, allowing you to succeed when you fail, or fail far harder than you would've before.

I cannot stress the elegance of this design. Yes, all of this could be done with dice, but HMTW goes further. If the suite of your card matches the roll, you can critically succeed, but only if your first card is a success. Most interesting of all is that you don't shuffle cards back in until you draw the fool, so as time progresses you get better knowledge of what's in the deck and can make more informed decisions. You would not be doing that with dice.

I could go like this about every mechanic in this game, and perhaps I could be persuaded too, but not here, not now. Instead, allow me to gush about my favorite part of this game: the combat.

A Duel of Cards

During combat, each player draws a hand of 4 cards. They play one of these cards as their initiative (lower is better). Their initiative is also their AC (high is better), so going fast is risky, but that risk is interesting because initiative is played face down. You don't flip it over until you are either 1) attacked or 2) it is your turn.

On your turn, you can play a card from your hand to do one of a list of actions, ranging from disengaging to attacking to riposting, which (along with every defensive action) is also played face down. You can even play cards when it isn't your turn, though these cards must match the suit of the action being used and you never add your attribute to these actions.

This system is simple, yet amazing. The hiding of information allows for very interesting questions from the GM. Is that player bluffing? Are they riposting for 2 or for 11? Is it worth finding out? These kind of questions are so interesting and make HMTW's combat more than the normal affair of move, attack, pass.

I'm not scratching the surface here. Health is very low (you can take 5 hits before dying without armor), so not getting hit is valuable. Zones make combat fast yet still tactical. Each weapon type is incredibly varied and has a niche it excels in.

Combat is dangerous in HMTW, but unlike most games its something to look forward too.

Rapid Fire Likes

• Backstory matters, and is naturally built into character creation, but it also isn't overbearing. This isn't the story of what once was, this is the story of the dungeon.
• Ancestries are interesting and encourage you to play in a way befitting of what you are. Snooty and ethereal elves, arrogant and self centered humans.
• Asking the GM for stuff your character knows but that you don't know is a mechanic.
• Experience is based on the party agreeing to do something and then doing it: completely self directed.
• No hirelings. Yes this is a positive in my eyes.
• The party isn't just a bunch of random idiots, you are members of the same guild. You have relationships with each other. Playing into these relationships is actively rewarded. You want to be best friends with another guild member? Act like it.
• Characters don't get better at doing stuff over time, they just get access to more options.
• The game encourages you to play the way I think is most fun, where its less about what you do and more about how you do it. You don't find traps by rolling to check for traps, you find traps by describing how you'd find them.
• Slot based equipment.
• The GM advice isn't concerned with what an adventure is or anything trivial like that, it's about how to make an interesting game. Add that to the rules on how to make a megadungeon and you have everything you need to play present in the book.
• Alchemy: you can cook and eat monsters to gain their powers.

Conclusion

I know I spent this entire impression gushing over HMTW, but frankly I utterly adore this game. There are few things I can critique. Perhaps spells are a bit whatever.. I appreciate the lack of spell slots, instead using inventory slots to hold the spell reagents to cast spells. What I don't appreciate is that only one of the games 4 'classes' gets magic, and they get all the magic. I likely would have preferred it if magic was a toy everyone could get, but you had to earn (same with alchemy).

My other complaint is the price. I payed for this book and I don't regret it, but HMTW's pdf is a whopping 40 dollars american, and its book and pdf is 60. Now, while I hesitate to call this over 400 page book anything other than a tome, that's still a steep asking price.

But I recommend it regardless. A new school game made with old school sensibilities is what HMTW is, a game with unique ideas and amazing implementation of them. HMTW is a game designed to be your forever game, and it has to legs to stand on to do it.

Buy this game. Read this game. Play this game. I beg you, nay I implore you. And while you're at it, check out Rise Up Comus, the creator's blog, and peer more into his impressive mind.