Dungeon Idea

[Giradius]

Hello again folks

I had an idea for a HUGE dungeon, that will appeal to fans of the original game as well as the RPG types out there.

The premise is this...

The Hall of heroes is the trophy room of Lord Chaos, the souls trapped in the mirrors endured a horrible half existence until Theron revived four of them and they defeated Lord Chaos.
However, Lord Chaos is insidious and as well as his backup plan (which is thwarted in CSB) as a last act of spite and malice before his defeat "tainted" the Hall of Heroes through dark sorcery and evil artefacts, driving the trapped souls contained within the mirrors to become corrupted and driven to madness, he then released them to wreak his revenge against the world for him.
Even the four who defeated him were not spared, for although Theron was able to grant them flesh and bone, he was not able to sever their links to their vacant mirrors, and they too became corrupted.

And so after the final defeat of Lord Chaos, and the withdrawal from mortal affairs of Grey lord, Theron was left with the difficult task of saving the world from those who had once saved it.

And with that Theron set about sponsoring a quest to either heal or destroy, the corrupted heroes of the dungeon.



That's the basic story, it would be a very large set of dungeons of different types (rather like skullkeep) with sections based in forests,swamps,dungeons,cities,tombs etc.

This is an idea I am throwing out to the community, I am still new to RTC and so my skills are very much those of a neophyte

If you are not able to help out with graphics, sounds, etc, then even advice on story and concepts, for instance what did each of the heroes do after their corruption? did some of them team up? do some of them fight amongst themselves?

I see Halk going off and becoming a savage barbarian warlord, who threatens civilized lands.
Gothmog returns to old and dark schemes, maybe rising to power as a fearsome necromancer or dark wizard.
Perhaps Stamm returns to the city of his dwarven kin and usurps the throne, (an evil dwarven city is a good idea for a dungeon).


I have hit upon the idea of using WOW model viwer (to produce custom made screenshots of world of warcraft characters to make anims and bitmaps, the graphical style is cartoonish, but so were some of the original DM graphics).

[Trantor]

I'd probably prefer a dungeon with a unique, new plot that is not based on the existing games, but this sounds like it could be fun. It also sounds like an awful lot of work, though; you might want to start out with a smaller dungeon for your first time in order to get a feel for dungeon-building and the time it consumes. If you want to include it in the plot of your big dungeon, the short one could be some sort of prologue.

I'm not a fan of WoW (found it incredibly boring from the get-go), but your proposition sounds like an easy and quick way to get decent graphics. Just make sure they fit with the wallsets, items and monsters; I don't care much for graphics, but if some of them stick out and feel completely out of place, it feels confusing.

As for what the DM champions have done after CSB, I think you should settle on just 4 heroes, and I would like if the four professions get one "specialist" each, like Halk as the fighter, Gothmog as the wizard, Nabi the priest and Leyla the ninja or something. Having Halk, Stamm, Daroou and Sonja as the antagonists doesn't seem as interesting to me.

All in all, the most important part of a dungeon is gameplay. You can have a great concept, but it won't do you good if your dungeon has lots of dead-ends or illogical puzzles.

[Trego]

I like the idea, but then again i had a similar one with Horcruxes (from Harry Potter, evil parts of Lord Chaos) that are tainting the land also with sections of different wallsets: forests,swamps,dungeons,cities,tombs.

I was going to (try and) have the main heroes start, after selection, in a boat setting (...it will be a big boat) where they would choose to go to different areas, finishing one area will unlock other areas, and of course mean i could just complete one part and see how if goes. Problem being no boat wallset.

I can try to help where I can, but my skills are at neophyte and pre-neophyte depending on the problems or what's needed

[linflas]

i remember that kind of project been discussed when we met in London and i still think that it cannot be a one person work.

[ian_scho]

I like this idea, of using each of the heroes as a tortured and corrupted soul. After having saved the world they are yet tainted by the touch of chaos.
Again, Trantor adds a dash of common sence saying that you can be modular in your approach, and set yourself an initial goal of just 4 of the champions.

gl

[Ameena]

Or maybe, in this hypothetical version of the future of DM, decide for yourself who you want the four "winning" heroes to have been (that is, those who got Rezzed by Theron and went and dealt with Lord Chaos - presumably they were Rezzed rather than Reincarnated, otherwise they'd be different people rather than having the names of the original heroes), and have those as more powerful than the others because they were given a proper physical form, properly brought back to life while the others are in some kind of halfway state because they lost their original bodies when they died but drew in essence from around themselves, or something, to shape themselves new bodies based only loosely on what they remember looking like (and of course looking all cool and twisted with, I dunno, horns and spikes and stuff because they're all freaky now ). The Uber-Champs (the main four) might assume greater dominance over everything else, with the remaining twenty champs acting as generals or minions, even slaves to them. Maybe their greater strength gives them power over the will of the others so they 9the others) don't mind being ordered about and stuff. Then you could have them as either tougher-than-normal mobs or even lesser bosses, to be defeated en route to beating the Big Four (whom you face each at the end of their own realm - swamp, underground caves, forest, fortress, mountains, whatever).
Errrm...well, that's an idea that I'm already starting to get carried away with (always happens ) - I'd better stop there or I'll end up writing a whole bloody back story that won't even get used, lol .

[Gambit37]

Sounds fun. Definitely start small though! I can attest to the folly of big ideas and not enough time...

[Giradius]

Thanks for the comments :p

I was not thinking of having separate dungeons for each "hero", (that would take a millennia) however I have noticed that the heroes can be divided into subgroups, such as barbarians, eastern, monsters, elves.. etc.

This grouping of the heroes makes work easier as you can combine several heroes in one dungeon (All the elves in one forest based dungeon for instance).

The reason i put this idea to the community was simply because I am aware of my limitations as a dungeon builder so far, I don't intend this to be my first project, I will create some smaller dungeons first.

I don't see why it would need to be one giant map, it could be several in a series of chapter (which could include a text file or basic intro like CSB in order to further the plot).

I am not a fan of world of warcraft particularly, its OK in small doses but gets tedious very quickly, however the wow model viewer is very useful because you can dress up the models and make them perform all their animations (and so you can create screen shots in a variety of poses) the graphics are good enough to be impressive,but cartoonish and simple enough to still be useful.
This is only a suggestion mind you, my computer art skills are not up to much, and i felt it was a good (albeit lazy) way of producing decent graphics, maybe i can find graphics from elsewhere though.


one of things I LOVED about the original DM was the level of immersion, I hope i can create dungeons with the same level of depth, I want to create realistic dungeons, actual places that monsters could live in.
Mazes and puzzles are all very good, but the ecology of the dungeon interests me, and so i would want to create dungeons with guardrooms, barracks, armories.

I want to take everything I learned from Dungeon Keeper and apply it to my dungeons :p

Interesting characters are also a vital part of any RPG, and i think this idea will give a bit of flesh to the characters.

Maybe even a series of follow on dungeons could be made, based around what the characters did after they defeated Chaos, because surely evil existed in this fantasy world before Chaos, and surely it will still exist after him, after all there are still dragons, demons, and monsters.

maybe this could be something DM2 where you start with a single character and then recruiting 3 more characters.

A possible future dungeon could be...

Return to the North:
After the defeat of lord Chaos, Halk begins the travel back to his homeland in the north, he arrives at the foothills before the mountains and while staying in a border town he learns that his countrymen are engaged in a bitter war against the forces of the Troll king, Kuthgar.
Halk must find other brave souls to return with him to the north and defeat the menace of Kuthgar and free his people.

oh and before I forget...

Gambit37:

Sounds fun. Definitely start small though! I can attest to the folly of big ideas and not enough time...

I know, Bloodbane rising was one of the first threads I saw here, truly amazing, when i finish my degree, I will build a zippe centrifuge, enrich uranium, build a bomb, and if you dont finish it...well...my disappointment might manifest pyrotechnically :p

[Trantor]

You could have a whole universe of dungeons that interconnect, kind of like the episodes in Starcraft or Warcraft III. Halk's adventure that you proposed could end with Halk being corrupted and turning evil, for example. If you do this for every hero and build several dungeons to defeat the now-evil ex-heroes, one lifetime might not be enough to build all that... I know what I'm talking about, my dungeon has been in the making for aaages.

I'm not against using WoW graphics at all - if that is an easy way to produce good-looking graphics, by all means go for it! I advise not to spend too much time on graphics; though they can look fantastic, they will take an awful lot of time, and building an interesting dungeon is slow as hell anyway.

It seems you are motivated to build several dungeons, and I really appreciate that! I sincerely hope your desire to build dungeons will hold, we can never have enough of those!

[Sophia]

Sounds fun. Definitely start small though! I can attest to the folly of big ideas and not enough time...

This.

Start small. One playable dungeon is better than a whole bunch of unrealized ideas that never go anywhere.

[Ameena]

I've not used WoW, but the thing of using some kind of editor thing to view characters and get them to perform various animations etc sounds a lot like what's in Spore - you can view creatures from all angles and get them to do various poses/actions/dances etc too. It's quite a sort of cartoony look but if you didn't like that you might be able to edit an image in some kind of errr...image-editing software (Photoshop or whatever). From the sounds of it the WoW thing is limited to humanoid characters of the species found in WoW, but in Spore you can create pretty much anything, so I'll put it forward as a suggestion for monster design, maybe? And you can create buildings and vehicles and stuff too.
Btw you were asking if maybe anyone could help with designing stuff or whatever...well, I'm not much good at the graphical/techy side of stuff but if you need any kind of backstory or anything written, just let me know .

[Trantor]

Start small. One playable dungeon is better than a whole bunch of unrealized ideas that never go anywhere.

I cannot support this point strongly enough. There are way too many projects that got started and never finished.

[Ameena]

When I used to try making dungeons, I'd have a few sort of vague ideas for puzzles and stuff, and then no clue as to how I'd go about setting them up and stuff. I pretty much gave up dungeon creation as something I couldn't be arsed with any more, and just stick to writing stories and stuff about it instead (although the DM stories I've started I never got too far with either, lol).

[Jan]

Start small. One playable dungeon is better than a whole bunch of unrealized ideas that never go anywhere.

I agree too. Starting a large project, working years on it without any significant result, finding how all the labour piles around you - this all can get frustrating - especially when it's your first dungeon. If you start with something smaller, you can add it to the larger project later, as someone mentioned here. A smaller dungeon is also good for learning the craft.

[beowuuf]

If you need any idea for interconnection of characters, cows and a few contributers put some back stories up on his site (liked in the quick links above). You might get some ideas.

Definitely start small, perhaps hint at the idea with a single dungeon - perhaps the very intention of which is that you slowly reveal the main villain - an old champion - and the whole chaos tainting backstory. That might give you ideas for settings, set pieces and puzzles to start building upon.

That way, you will get a small dungeon done, you've already got the narrative drive for it, and it can act as a precursor to the next sets of dungeons and world if you desire

I would suggest on of the four or all of the four) manual champions. They have actual canon descriptions, and combined were a balanced party. Exploring one of their stories, and how they connect or came to part with the other three might give you some hooks for future dungeons