DnD Map V3

 

By far the most developed of all the maps, the third and final iteration had aspects and improvements from both version one and two. Something I wanna throw out straight from the get go was the difficulty regarding the time restraint. For our first level, which was supposed to be a tutorial level, we were given 20 minutes for the players to complete it. This level, which not only was supposed to be difficult, have a brand new rule set, and have items; was also supposed to be 20 minutes. Both Tommy L, Anthoney J, and my map, struggled greatly to fit within this timeframe. Explaining my custom items and new rule set took 5 minutes by itself, and this was the shortest explanation of our group. All of us noted that if time duration was stretched to 30 minutes, all are levels would have been more enjoyable and the gameplay far less rushed.

Regardless, we worked with the cards we were dealt. I knew time was going to be an issue from the start, so I wanted to simplify and give visual identifications for all the items. I made them visible on the top right corner of the map. Each player got to give themselves 2 items. With the google sheet listing the items descriptions and uses. To signify which item each player had, they simply needed to drag it in the slots below. This worked insanely well, and made the items, and identifying who owned them, very simple.

Another thing I wanted to focus on was the aesthetics of the map. My map had two very clearly distinct sections. With the blue area being inside the alien compound and the green being the courtyard. Both the enemies, doors, and decorations were redesigned for each of these respective areas. I believed that this greatly aided in adding some visual diversity to the map.

As usual, I had all the enemies named, and their stats visible to all players. Giving the enemies names helped add lore, and seemingly excited the players. I think allowing the players to refer to an enemy with a pre-given name greatly assisted their immersion. Letting them see stats allowed them to better strategies how to defeat the enemies. Compared to the previous maps, the enemies here were significantly more difficult, so I had no issue giving them this advantage. The green circles with red outlines acted as respawn points. Clearing a room would allow you to use the respawn points in that room if you were to die.

Something that was brand new and had amazing reactions from the player was an event/cutscene. When entering the final room on the bottom left, the only visible entity to the players is a man named “injured wizard”. I gave the opportunity for the players to either immediately attack the man, or let him speak. If they were to let him speak, he transforms into the preset enemy that I had ready on the GM layer. Letting him speak also lets him say a chant that summons 2 skeletons also currently only visible on the GM layer until spawned. Attacking him instead, would remove ⅔ of his high health pool, and not allow him to spawn his skeletons. This was a scripted event per say, with two different potential outcomes depending on what the players decided to do.

Overall there was very visible progress between the 3 levels, with this finale being the highest quality of the trio. I enjoyed making it, and enjoyed even more seeing the play testers having fun running through it. My partners and I arranged to play our levels properly outside of class, as we all agreed 20 minutes was way too short to properly enjoy and experience the maps in a timely and unrushed fashion. Likewise, our experiences would of most likely of been worse, if we rated the maps based on a 20 minute play, compared to the 30 minutes we gave ourselves.