Back tracking and dungeon design

[Lea Plath]

So I'm going to be running a lot of XCrawl variant Dungeons and Dragons one shots over the next few months, and part of the conceit of XCrawl is that dungeons are designed to be run by adventures so it can be filmed and put on TV as a pay-per-view extravaganza. This means I can go kinda deep on theme and concept dungeons that I might not otherwise get to run, such as a factory where how the players do in each room determines what type of golem chimera they face at the end.

So one of my ideas is a 4 Level dungeon consisting of 4 rooms. The general idea being this dungeon was designed by someone a bit up themselves (so what does that say about me), so they gave it a silly high concept. The end result is you have four levels, from top to bottom called The Heavens, Nature, Civilization and Monsters. And every time you go up or down a level, you "advance" time from Morning to Noon to Evening to Dusk to Midnight to Twilight and back to morning. And on each level, depending on the "time of day" it is, something different will happen inspired by what is going on and how each part of the world reacts to different times of day. So if the players reach the top floor during the "Midnight" stage, they have to fight the boss of the dungeon, where as if they are wandering around "Nature" at dusk or twilight they have a high chance of running into say, a group of wolves or a bear.

So my question is, should I expect players to think to back track at all, or use it to their advantage? Say something they can't sneak past during the day, they could try advancing it to night to see if that is more favorable? Or does that go against the way a lot of DnD is set up, where there is space to explore but not really backtracking in the way a zelda dungeon might? Or if the idea is salvageable, what sort of things would I need to do to set up fair player expectations?

[Epimethee]

I think it is doable. You have to choose carefully how you will proceed with your description to give them the right clues. Most players tend to follow them so if they feel they have something to discover, they would certainly try.

So I have a few questions: how big (roughly) are the rooms/level? How much time do you need to explore them? Does the time change during the exploration or is it the same time of day for as long as you stay on the same place?
That would be the easiest way to draw the attention of players to the passage of time, like a never-ending dusk or dawn, the most striking clue of something strange. You have to be careful then because 4 rooms and 4 times of day mean that if the players take always the same path they will find always the same conditions in each rooms.

As long as they discover soon that their path influence the time of day, I think they would play around that and try to understand how it work.

You have a strong concept there, the difficulty is to make some elements clear enough for the players to draw their attention to the specificity of the concept.

[Segev]

One way to guarantee some backtracking is to have keys to one floor's puzzles be on the floor below. Another is to take advantage of the second conceit of the dungeon, and have the key to getting through Nature to Civilization be in the Evening of Heaven. So they enter in Heaven's Morning, go down to Nature's Afternoon, and to get through, need to go back up to Heaven's Evening.

Make sure that there are points of advancement to each floor's puzzle along the way, but by hiding things in each of the four floors' four times of day, and making the puzzles lead on criss-crossing paths through the times of day and the floors, you should be able to get them going back and forth a lot.

Just make sure that they can't exit without going back up, so they see that the floor has changed rather than just giving up.

[bc56]

This is actually a really cool idea, but it has to be well telegraphed to the players. If they can't figure out how the rooms change in response to their movement, they will just think the dungeon is strange and too complicated.

[Epimethee]

Also I like the idea and would enjoy to learn more about the actual way you decide to play it.

[Chad Hooper]

I like what Segev said (or at least implied). Make certain aspects of the dungeon (keys, treasures, monsters) be specific not only to the level but to a time of day. Morning in Nature there might be a dryad but Night in Nature maybe there's a pack of velociraptors or some Shambling Mounds. More work in prep, because you need four (or possibly more) versions of each area, but it could work out to be a very entertaining, complex, and at time frustrating adventure for your players.

I think there were some adventures in Dungeon magazine that played around with temporal and or spatial shifting (Ex Libris for one, don't remember what issue). Maybe you could find some sparks to refine your inspiration there.

[jayem]

The Heavens, Nature, Civilization and Monsters. And every time you go up or down a level, you "advance" time from Morning to Noon to Evening to Dusk to Midnight to Twilight and back to morning.

I think on odd numbered places (Heavens&Nature) you can only get odd numbered times (Morning, Evening, Midnight) and similarly for the evens unless there is a way to skip a level (or the two are co-prime) or advance time on a level.

This may not need be a problem (it does simplify it, you only need 3 'times' for each zone, as long as you can play it ok).

Also given free movement you have reasonable predictability for the first few moves as to when they arrive but they could arrive at the further levels at a wider time and out of order. Though there is also a limit at the end level transitions. This seems a good thing.

[AceOfFools]

I mean... if the conceit is "dungeon crawling as sport", you have every excuse to have a producer come on the magic PA and tell them to stop being boring and try backtracking if they do get stuck.

You can also drop a major hint in the "walking on stage" intro. Something like "Welcome to Hour and Season, where you can walk from Spring to Winter and back again, but you can't stop time moving foreward."