Friday, June 5, 2020

How Jaquaysed is Gatehouse on Cormac's Crag?

I wasn't planning to write another of these for a while. The dungeon and main floor of Castle Xyntillan are big endeavors to tackle, and I need to give those the time they deserve. Luckily, Gabor turned me on to another module, Gatehouse on Cormac's Crag by David Bezio. It takes a simple, pared-down approach to creating an 130-odd room, 7 level megadungeon. It's the platonic early D&D adventure we all thought existed from looking at the Skull Dungeon map. For $3, it more than delivers on its premise.


You can read Gabor's review here. I'm planning to run the dungeon soon for my little cousin and his parents, as an introduction to RPGs. I'll be examining the dungeon's first six levels (the seventh is less traditional) using Melan diagrams. 

Level 1-1.5


The first level of the dungeon is the gatehouse proper, and half-level above it on the roof, occupied by an organized, but largely incompetent, crew of kobolds. The first level offers some choice in early exploration, but descending further into the dungeon requires going interacting with an encounter, a shot at some good early treasure, and puts you next to an objective, one of the missing girls. There's two entrances, but these 

There's little in the way of secret areas here, just a bit of extra treasure if the party can bypass the kobold chieftain and his concubines. Still, this is a solid, short intro level for the dungeon that introduces basic concepts in dungeon crawling.

Level 2


The second level underneath the gatehouse is where the dungeon opens up. From the adjacent rooms of the gatehouse, the party now enters a traditional room-and-corridor dungeon layout, with lots of loops and crossroads. 

This level also boasts a substantial set of secret rooms, with many possible entrances, where the 'boss' as well as the greatest treasure and another of the missing girls are held. Further, it gives the players a peek at the teleporters from Level 3, and gives them a chance to access the next level by accident. Woe be unto the player who teleports to the next level, and can't teleport back!

Level 3


Here on the third level, the scope of the dungeon expands even further. Below this level, the dungeon splits; Levels 4 and 5 are accessible only by a hidden passageway on this floor, while the way to Level 6 is behind some boulders. These obstacles might be the end to a party's delve, although the quest to recover the third missing girl will likely keep them pushing onward. 

This floor also introduces warring factions, with the Tiger Beetle and Gecko goblin clans, and themed sub-areas of the dungeon with the fungi forest. The increased freedom of choice in spatial exploration is matched by the ability of the players to take sides, join factions and pursue multiple goals on the level.

With a staircase from the above floor, a guarded entrance from the surface via the troll's lair, and access via the second floor teleporter, there's a great deal of approaches one can take to explore this level. It's not only the largest, but probably the most jaquaysed of all the levels. 

Level 4-5



Levels 4-5 are thematically connected, the tomb of an ancient sorceress and the last chapel of her chaotic goddess. There's only one way down to this level 4, and only one way from there to level 5, and the place is littered with nasty traps. The way down to the chapel in particular is a tough obstacle, but becomes easy to pass through if you've thoroughly explored the areas above and dealt with a tough encounter. 

There's no real looping here, totally unlike levels 2 and 3, just short side paths with occasional secret closets or rooms. Level 5 is built around a hub chamber, but only with very shallow spokes. This is to be expected, as the whole level might collapse later on, so putting too much treasure or interaction here would be somewhat pointless.

Level 6


Level 6 returns to the heavily looped pattern of 2 and 3. This time, there aren't factions, but there are several objectives to find and recover, three stat-boosting magic gems, plus the final missing girl. After exploring this level, one might expect the party to turn back, thinking the exploration done. There's just the one access to the seventh level (which I won't map, although I'll say it's more linear and cinematic feeling) and besides curiosity or the desire to find out what happened to Lego, there's not an obvious reason to go there. 

Unlike the previous levels with their carved tunnels and rooms, the sixth level is a cave system, featuring windy passageways and great, rounded chambers and vertical trickery that makes mapping (including drawing diagrams) a mess. After crawling through stone corridors, this is a reminder that not all dungeons are artificial structures.

Takeaways

You can predict substantially different experiences for different levels of looping. Levels 1, 4 and 5, which have little-to-no looping, lend themselves to a style of exploration in which the party goes down a path and either finds it to be a dead end in short order, or else finds themselves on the central path to the next level. This is most emphasized in Levels 4 and 5, which have numerous side paths, but they're quite short, usually only 2 rooms deep with no further branching. These also lend themselves to a more cohesive and curated experience as one delves into them. 

Meanwhile, in the more jaquaysed levels, the approach by the party will most likely be to go down a path, and keep going down it until they decide to retrace their steps, and explore the alternative paths next time. With the looping nature of these levels, one can barely predict what the sequence of play will look like. This is, of course, a less curated experience, but when paired with high interactivity really gives the players a chance to make the level their own.

Another pattern I noticed is that the toughest fights, especially in levels 4 and 5, aren't paired with great treasure. Treasure is more often guarded by weaker encounters or traps. The big, tough enemies the party might stumble across are generally on their lonesome, and can often be avoided without penalty. 

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