Dungeons Are Bad Business

Neil tapped the wall of an otherwise boring room on Crestheart's first floor and said, “This right here is a perfect place to have an offering site like I was telling you about. Make a little statue or some other type of trinket, and give adventurers the choice to take it or not. Have it be something clunky, so that they’re off balance if they take it. Then you offer an extra reward for carrying it all the way down to the champion room even if they don’t win the battle. Let their greed do your work for you.”

“Would any adventurers actually take that deal?” Vee asked, raising an eyebrow. “Most of the people who come through here are doing so to level up; they’re not particularly interested in the monetary reward of winning.”

“That’s not going to be the case for the adventures coming with the circuit,” Neil said. “Money is the only thing those guys care about.”

He paused for a second, and his face darkened, but he carried on and said, ”Grinding dungeon clears for a living isn’t glamorous for most people, but it can pay the bills if you’re frugal and skilled enough.”

“That’s true for almost anything,” Vee said.

Neil shrugged. “I’m just saying. You might find yourself dealing with a much different crowd than you’re used to, and you should do what you can to be ready for it.”

The group walked deeper into the dungeon and stopped inside a wide open room that normally served as one of the dungeon’s swarm challenges. Neil pointed to the mostly bare floor and said, “The traps that you have in here aren’t in spots where they’re likely to be valuable. One of the things a good [Dungeon Master] does is anticipate the way adventurers will be inclined to go through a room to clear it. Then they stuff traps and hazards in the places that are the most natural for an adventurer to go and boom, they get tons of trap value. As it is now, it’s a miracle that you manage to get anything done at all with how sparse terrain elements are in here.”

Vee looked around, agreeing with the [Bellwether]’s assessment. The room was basically empty, so there was no way to predict where an adventurer would go after the minions appeared.

“I never really thought about that before,” the [Dungeon Master] said. “What would you suggest to fix that?”

“Make part of the room impassable,” Neil answered. “Or, barring that, make some of it extremely inconvenient to move around in. Normally I’d say get some faux magma or some quicksand, but since you kind of have an ice motif going on you should probably go ahead and just add some good old fashioned slippery tiles. If you introduce them early like this, you can have some interesting slider puzzles throughout the dungeon too.”

Slider puzzles were apparently dungeon hazards that utilized specially enchanted ice tiles. Since they only allowed movement in a single direction, adventurers were forced to travel in a straight line until they hit a wall, block, or other stopping element. From there, they could pick a new direction and repeat the process until they got to their final destination.

“Trust me, sliders are a great place to hide minions like your slimes and elementals,” Neil said. “Put them in a hole along certain paths and watch them end runs. Sliders and other puzzles like them are great at icing out adventurers – no pun intended – by forcing them to solve different problems than they’re used to. You’d be surprised at how many adventurers absolutely suck at using logic. Let’s keep going, eh?”

The rest of the walkthrough took the better part of an hour, and Vee was surprised by the depth of Neil’s suggestions. The adventurer had tips for every room, every hallway, and ideas for how to improve nearly every fight inside the dungeon.

“Mister Chills is probably the most interesting part of current Crestheart,” Neil said when they reached the mini boss’s arena. “But he needs some more oomph. Now, you mentioned that you have some teleporters laying around?”

Vee nodded.

“Perfect. I’d suggest that you go ahead and add them into this room, then do some tricks with the lights to serve as a tell and use the teleporters to send Mister Chills behind your challengers when they least expect it. Give him some good close range attacks, and you’ve got yourself a real fearsome mini boss.”

“It’s pretty impressive that you’ve got so many suggestions for the dungeon having only personally run it once,” Reginald said. “Ever thinking about working in a dungeon if the adventuring thing doesn’t work out?”

Neil shrugged. “Not much, but I suppose it’s an option. There are a couple dungeons back home that I could try and get involved with. It’s really not that impressive though. You just start to get a sense for these things when you’ve run as many dungeons as I have. Seeing the possibilities becomes something of a second nature.”

“Well, if you ever do decide to get involved in the dungeon side of dungeon sports, we could probably find something for you to do here,” Reginald said. “You’d be a big help! Right boss?”

Vee smiled. “Right. This has been super helpful so far.”

“I’m glad you’re getting some value out of it, but I’ll pass,” Neil said with a polite laugh. “No offense, but Oar’s Crest is, uh, not exactly my kind of town.”

“Give it a few months or years,” Reginald said with a wide smile. “We’re going to turn this place into one of the biggest and best cities in the continent.”

He looked over at Vee, and the [Dungeon Master] gave him a thumbs up, feeling the now familiar shift of the Expectation on his shoulders.

When they left the dungeon, it took Vee and Neil a few seconds of blinking to readjust to the weather outside. The sun was out and it was pleasantly warm, with nary a cloud in the sky.

Vee reached out and shook Neil’s hand. “Thanks again for all the advice,” he said. “I’ll be sure to implement as much of it as I can.”

“Of course, I was happy to help. My party and I will let you go ahead and get some renovations done before we do the rest of our quiet runs, okay?”

Vee agreed, and after a bit more small talk, Neil went to rejoin his party, and Vee was left with Alforde and Reginald.

“That…was a lot to take in,” he said once the adventurer was out of hearing range. “I can’t help but feel that we’ve been doing everything wrong this entire time.”

“Nah, it’s not that bad boss,” Reginald said. “We’re just not optimized to beat competitive adventurers, which makes sense because we haven’t really faced many before now. So long as we incorporate the feedback we’ve gotten and do what we can to make Crestheart better, we’ll be doing the right thing.”

“I agree,” Alforde said. “The good news for us is that there are a lot of relatively easy things to fix, so we can dive right in. What do you want to start with first, Vee?”

“That’s a good question,” Vee said slowly. “Give me a second to think about it.”

Minions, traps, layouts, puzzles. There were so many places to start that Vee found the prospect overwhelming. What would be the easiest, or the best? He had both his notes and the inspiration buzzing around his skull clamoring for his attention.

He felt like a [Painter] staring at a canvas covered in old, dry paint that had all blended together and turned brown. He needed a fresh start; free from the decisions he’d made before. However, he knew all too well that such an approach wasn’t without its own risks. How many times had he been in this situation before, when he’d “restarted” a project that wasn’t finished to make it better, only to lose motivation and never touch it again? Too many to count. Was this going to be the same thing?

Vee shook his head; he couldn’t afford to let that happen here. Too many things – not least his kneecaps – were counting on him.

Once again since coming to Oar’s Crest, the [Dungeon Master] found the resolve that had so often been missing when he needed it back in Bardis and made the hard decision to start fresh. Tomorrow was Saintsday, so the dungeon would be closed. Vee thought that was as fitting a sign as any. He could wake up early and come to Crestheart, then pretend to be one of those [Home Restoration Professionals] who spent their time painting everything white and calling it “Farmhouse” from dawn to dusk.

Admittedly, he didn’t know why he’d ever really want to do such a thing, but it was an option available to him all the same.

More seriously, he’d be able to knock together a rough construction for the new Crestheart and get some more feedback from Neil and the other [Bellwethers] before the circuit started.

It was going to be a lot of work, but the prospect was exciting too.

Snapping his fingers, Vee reached through the bonds to his orchestra and got Do’s attention.

“Attend me, please,” he ordered.

A heartbeat later he felt the fiend’s affirmative reply.

“Master, I’m not sure I understand,” the [Dungeon Maintainer] said. “You want us to rip apart the dungeon?”

“I want you to take all the minions back to the menagerie and store them with Kai. Reginald should have gotten there and told him to prepare space, so you shouldn’t have any issues with that. Once that’s done, I want you to uninstall all the traps, pick up all the tiles, and put them in the tower where they’re easy to find. Take out the platforms and walkways too once that’s finished. Starting from the first room on the first floor, I want the dungeon completely emptied out. Does that make more sense?”

The fiend nodded. “It does…but may I ask why you want us to do this? Are you displeased with our work?”

Vee shook his head. “It’s the dungeon I’m displeased with, but the fault is mine and mine alone. You’ve done everything I’ve asked you to, but my requests leave much to be desired. We’re going to work on fixing that now though, so please keep working hard.”

“I understand, master.”

[Leadership +1]

Vee watched Do and the other fiends shuffle away, then turned to look over at Alforde. “Think you can give them a hand, buddy? I’m sure they’d appreciate it.”

“Of course, but are you sure that you’re not going to need me?”

“I should be fine for a while, at the very least. For now I’m just going to be working on conceptual things.”

“Got it. Just give me a shout if you change your mind.”

Alforde hurried off to join the fiends, and Vee pulled out his notebook. One of the things Neil had said in passing – “Dungeons are built from the bottom up.” – stood out in his mind, so he started brainstorming a better story for Crestheart in the hopes that it would help guide his designs.

He consulted his notes, resting his finger on the question a couple of the [Bellwethers] had asked: “Why are there so many ghosts?”

That was a good place to start, Vee thought. Especially since it’d probably be pretty easy to tie to Alforde.

After a couple minutes of pondering, Vee clapped his hands together and started writing. What if Crestheart was the long lost lab of an ancient [Ghost Maestro]? That might be kind of interesting, though it would probably be understood better if it was a [Necromancer] instead of a [Ghost Maestro].

Shaking his head, Vee scribbled down some rough notes. He wasn't sure if he'd end up putting all -- or really, any of them -- to use, but it was good to have his thoughts organized:

Alforde is the [Necromancer]’s final assistant, tasked with the solemn duty of protecting his lost master’s treasures?

It’ll probably be impossible to get Alforde to go with that

Solution: bribery? Books?

Champion battle thematics probably more important for spectators than challengers

Alternative: Make Crestheart a dark laboratory buried deep within the earth and filled with the broken remnants of its former master.

Use workrooms, supply closets, testing sites, and other things like what I use on a regular basis as inspiration for room layouts? Are those interesting enough, though? Will people get excited about clearing out a broom closet?

Is it right for a dungeon to be something mundane turned into something more? Or should it strive for grandiosity at the outset?

Vee rubbed his chin, underlining that last thought and tapping his pen against the page. While he’d never much cared about dungeons before opening one up, he’d always thought of them as existing on a spectrum between climbing a tower and slaying a dragon for the right to marry some disgruntled member of a royal family and a boring slog through a sentient murder cave that was home to a snarky pixie for reasons unknown.

This new version of Crestheart didn’t really match either of those extremes, but maybe that was okay?

Without a clear answer, Vee shook his head and turned his attention to things that were easier to contemplate.

Like traps, and monster packs.

[Devious Mind +1]

Main Character Sheets:

Vee Vales

Primary Class: Ghost Maestro (Locksmagister University), Level 32

Secondary Class: Dungeon Master (Oar’s Crest), Level 23

Tertiary Class: Guy-Who-Takes-Things-WAY-Too-Far (Self), Level 6

Might: 15

Wit: 38

Faith: 26

Adventurousness: 7

Ambition: 15

Plotting: 19

Charisma: 15

Devious Mind: 26 (+1)

Leadership: 22 (+1)

Guts: 14

Intimidating Presence: 10

Citizenship: 23

Public Relations: 8

Determination: 4

Persuasiveness: 5

Bargaining: 3

Patience: 2

Competitive Spirit: 1

Pragmatism: 1

<3<3 Infatuation <3<3

Alforde Armorsoul:

Primary Class: Hammer Specialist (Self), Level 5

Secondary Class: Right-hand man (Vee Vales), Level 18 (+1)

Tertiary Class: Dungeon Champion (Oar’s Crest), Level 18

Additional Class: Glaciernaut (Sacha Silverblade), Level 10

Might: 56

Wit: 15

Faith: 29

Adventurousness (Bound – Vee Vales): 9

Endurance: 29

Intimidating Presence: 14

Heart of a Champion: 14

Citizenship (Bound – Vee Vales): 9

Vigilance: 10

Vanity: 2

Reginald:

Primary Class: Core Spirit (Unknown), Level ??

#$&Q#$)(@#$#@#$%!@#$##%#%()@#$**@@##

Secondary Class: Loudmouth (Self), Level 41

Tertiary Class: Majordomo (Vee Vales), Level 19

Additional Class: Announcer (Vee Vales), Level 11

Additional Class: Hyperthymesiac (Self), Level 5

Might: 1

Wit: 37

Faith: 17

Ambition: 28

Greed: 24

Deceptiveness: 27

Manipulativeness: 42

$#&*!@!!: !!!

Loyalty: 46 (-1)

Patience: 11

Irritability: 23

Remorsefulness: 17

Expository Prowess: 23

#%$Pragmatism*#$: @#61$5

Hop@#!! @#$@!@#

@#$@%%^

#4^5#*&_!+++#(@$#

Citizenship (Bound – Vee Vales): 9