CAGD 270 DnD Map 2 Feedback

My group tested a game called “Critical Error.” In this game, the players are boarded in their space ship and were forced down into the basement cell. Their objective is to escape from confinement and retake the ship from their hijackers.

My group when they played, seemed to like the concept and the gameplay. I set up camera’s that the crew would have used to watch that cell, but in this situation, it was used against them. They had to strategize their movement routes to avoid the camera's line of sight. They could also disable camera’s which they liked, they also liked having to strategize around the camera’s lines of sight, it gave them something to worry about along with the alien intruders. There were also chests in the map, these rewarded the players with one of 6 unique items you didn’t know what item you had until you rolled a die.

I had a few things that went wrong in this map when my group was traversing the map to escape, the cameras were an obstacle which you had to roll to disable…I made the number way too high for it to be fair. When they fail to disable a camera, a guard was alerted to their position, this caused frustration and a loss of time. One major problem was when my group made it to the start of my 2^nd map, I realized that the map was taking too much time so I had to skip them straight to the boss to save time. I tried to make these items as strong as possible, because I made the boss really difficult because I made the items really good to offset this. The items weren’t enough for the boss fight, and since they were random, some of the items that I hoped they would have they actually didn’t. So, my group didn’t beat the boss that I set up and it was purely because of the difficulty scale. It’s like I designed a boss for experienced veterans, but the people actually fighting it are rookies.  

I was given some great feedback from my group about what to improve for the next iteration. I was told to reduce the amount of camera’s, it just seemed a little too unrealistic and got repetitive over time. I was also told to lower the roll to disable the camera by a large margin because I made it way too high. I was also told to balance the boss better since it was very powerful. They almost killed it, but I made the attack really high with no real way to block it, besides one of the six items which negated the damage.

When my group fought the enemies in my level, they had a tough time but didn’t take damage so I believe that it was a stating problem on my end.

Players were taught the mechanics of the level before being thrown into it, like how to disable cameras and how to open chests among other actions.

I believe that I put appropriate challenges for the group as they progressed through the ship. The only thing that I will say again, is that I didn’t provide a really fair challenge for the final boss.

There were plenty of guards blocking the path to the next area so it made the flow of the game very slow paced and not enjoyable.

The critical path was very obvious to the players as they progressed through the map.

The map was mostly hallways and a few open rooms, so there was plenty of conflicts that happened in the tight corridors.

It was very obvious where my players were supposed to go because it was a linear spaceship. They went straight up to the elevator and then went back to the front of the ship to confront the big bad boss.

I wanted to balance the enemies in this map more, and that’s what I’m looking forward to doing with my group.

CAGD 270 DnD Map 1 version 2 Feedback

DnD Map 1 Version 2 Feedback. (February 14^th, 2019)

The second test of The Temple of Fury was the polar opposite of my first test. The map this time is a two-level temple with a chasing sequence at the very end.

I was the second level to get tested again, and this time things went very smoothly. When the group played through my level, they ended up liking the variety of enemies. They liked that they were taught how to do most of the mechanics and that it utilized the mechanics that are covered less, like the float mechanic. My party didn’t die to the boss that I set up this time which is a better sign of success. They liked the chase sequence at the end because they were convinced that they won, but then had to backtrack through the rest of the level while avoiding falling debris from the ceiling. This forced them to jump over spike pits that they avoided otherwise.

When going through this tutorial level, I made it like a whole dungeon again rather than making a simple straightforward level. There wasn’t too much that went wrong this time, they were confused on how to start the level because there were vines in the way and I assumed that they would know how to attack, I had to quickly intervene to continue the story along.

If I were to improve my map in a future iteration, I would attempt to implicate a better tutorial for the vines portion, because if your players can’t understand the first part of the level then what’s the point with the rest? I wanted to add more enemies to this level, but I was afraid of killing the players (previous experience) so I went lighter than I should have with the enemies. I wanted to make the space a little bigger for the players to navigate through, my first floor was 3x3 rooms, this made movement a little harsh in nature, but it also limited my ability to put enemy spawns.

I introduced many mechanics in this level to the players, I demonstrated how to unlock doors, jump spike pits, attack, defend, and use heal spell. This gave the players useful information to progress through the map. I had a tutorial door at the start of the level and right before the boss room, I had them roll to open a higher security door.

The challenges that I gave the players I believe accurately represented a temple in South America, I put traps and locked doors, also enemies the players were forced to kill. They were correctly punished for trying to risk shortcuts across spike gaps. If they attacked the boss first, then they could consider their run done. The boss wants a fair fight, but his minions don’t so he orders you to kill them, then you could square off with the boss, if you attacked the boss first without him saying anything then he will order a direct offensive against you making it an unfair 2 vs 5 battle.

The path to the next floor was very obvious because my level this time is very linear. Players saw where the map ended and started making their way towards it. Challenges awaited them along the way, but they never lost the direction of the goal.

There weren’t many hallways this time around, it was mostly open rooms that the players went through, so I’d say that there aren’t any circulation elements.

Overall, I’m very happy with how this playtest went compared to the last one, I feel like I took the feedback given to me and created a whole new level out of it. My new goal for this level is to refine the teachings of this level. My first level was a joke, and this level was an improvement, and I want to improve it even more now. 

CAGD 270 Simple DnDMap Feedback, February 7th 2019

Simple DnDMap Feedback, February 7^th, 2019

·         My map was called The Temple of Fury, it is a 3-floor temple where players fight to retrieve a long-lost gemstone from a temple in South America.

·         I was the second map to get played and I had a plan on where to guide them. I had one major problem, which was actually introducing the players to do things they were supposed to do. I printed out blank boards and was going to guide them like a dungeon master, but my map was a bunch of squares next to each other so it would get very confusing very quickly.

·         Not too much went right, but they liked that it was a multi-floor dungeon, and they liked how I would describe the rooms but that’s about it. When I was telling the story to the area, before I even got to fully think my players made their turns and they bypassed some squares that were walls and sometimes doors, this made it hard for me to speak up and say your doing it wrong, so I let them progress. 

·         Now for the things that they think I should improve next time. When going through the dungeon there were no enemy pieces, I had a copy map with the enemy spawns. This was a bad idea on my part because once I moved these enemies, I quickly lost track of them because I was engaged with my group. I wanted to play this map like a campaign so I tried to recreate an actual DnD match with the rules that we had. There was a major problem with that kind of idea, most DnD maps don’t do tutorials and when I made this map, I didn’t push the tutorial first even though that was the whole assignment, this overall screwed my players because I didn’t teach many things to them because I assumed. My 3 levels were not linear in the slightest, I always gave the players a few choices when they entered a floor, but this overall confused the players to the point where I had to tell them where to go because of the time restraint.  

·         So overall my map was pretty bad, I’m looking to improve it by adding in actual rooms and not just have lines of tiles. This would clear up the confusion problem and allow me to recreate my level to be very linear. This would allow me to actually create tutorials for everything without too much trouble.

·         Not all rule mechanics were covered inside of the playthrough, the only one I remember not putting in there was a use for the float rule.

·         I tried to introduce my group to new enemies on each floor while also mixing the old ones in. So, this was one thing that went right, I have enemy diversity with tanks and attackers. With their diverse stat pool, it made for an interesting fight, except it wasn’t because my group one hit everything up until the boss because of lucky rolls. I’ll need to balance my enemy stats more. Overall, I introduced them to a variety of encounters that scaled in difficulty, unfortunately, I didn’t balance the boss enough and my group died in the boss room.

·         The next floors entrance wasn’t really a clear goal to the players, because of that they explored until I had to tell them where to go, once they were told where to go, they found the rest out right away.

·         There were many corridors which caused many battles, but there weren’t really any open rooms besides the boss room. Because of this, it was battle after battle for the party, but because of the lucky dice rolls that they got, they ended up making it to the boss with no damage taken.

·         My map to put it bluntly really sucked, with a rework of the 3 boards it would be a great level, but I missed the mark by a good margin. My goal is to teach the players how to play in a fun interactive level.