Rampant Games - Dungeon Design Part 2

The Rampant Coyote has posted part two of his Frayed Knights: Dungeon Design Principles.

This is a multi-part series describing my level-design guidelines for Frayed Knights.  You can read part 1 here.

Many of these guidelines have been with me for a long time. They evolved even when I was designing dungeons on paper for friends to play through. They were certainly inspired by the early dice-and-paper RPG books and computer games I’ve played over the years. Some evolved from advice given to me by others, and many evolved as I developed the first game in the series – from personal experience, and from feedback.

For Frayed Knights 2 and 3, I’m getting a little bit of help designing some dungeons, and so I felt it necessary to put these guidelines down on paper. I jokingly refer to it as my “secret sauce,” but it’s really not secret. While some of it applies only to Frayed Knights, some of it can be applied (or stretched to apply) to other games. In the interest of encouraging discussion – which will hopefully improve the genre as a whole amongst indies – I’ve decided to share this information in the blog, a couple of principles at a time.

I’ve elaborated a little on them and edited them for the blog, but this is largely ‘design doc’ stuff. It’s not about how all RPGs should be made – just what we’re doing for Frayed Knights.  Also – as a warning – there are a few minor spoilers for Frayed Knights: The Skull of S’makh-Daon.