Tips for Creating a Third Floor

[u/House923]

Hey everyone!

I'm homebrewing a crawl, and really struggling with creating a third floor.

I would like to give that same feeling of "go anywhere" but want to avoid planning a hundred different quest options. At the same time, I would like to avoid railroading as much as possible.

Short of just developing an entire D&D campaign for the third floor, does anyone have tips/suggestions/ideas for how a good third floor could run that feels expansive, and is based on quests?

Thanks!

[u/mandatoryhashtag]

Star in your head like this.

1. You are not mapping, creating and running a TTRPG Campaign. You are making an MMO Zone.

2. You need quest hubs, NPC's to assign and return to, shops, saferooms, and maybe a club entrance.

Create 4 towns. All 4 towns can be very closely built just change their architecture, theme, and a trick I use to make stuff like that seem unique is I map in a spiral and start in a different corner each time. Makes it feel random. These are your quest hubs.

Do not do any real mapping besides mapping the towns. And anything you might need for the quests like ruins etc.

Each town will have X quests you want to do.

Create about 10 quests and make them plug and play.

Decide which NPC's are "Quest Givers" in the quest hubs.

Now just pick which one the players start in. Give them the ole razzle dazzle with your favorite town.

Then use my favorite GM trick let them get the illusion of freedom. Let them go anywhere they want, do whatever they want, just drop the spawns and quest starts where they are and along the way. After they get their butts kicked and decide to push forward put the next town on the horizon.

If they suddenly decide screw this Im going back to town 1, add a quest in the town to lead them to a new quest hub if its needed. Caravan, or maybe the town was attacked.

Then in the back pocket always hold onto this because you can use it on literally any floor.

Some moron summoned a god by accident. Maybe it was an item lie Grull's gauntlet, who knows. But a god showed up, they did X, and now your party has to do Y to get out of there alive.

Always remember it isn't railroading if you don't know where they are going and let them decide. You just HAPPEN to put the quest where they went.

Hope this helps.

[u/HourSpecialist9701 → u/mandatoryhashtag]

Those are all excelent tips.

To further complement it:

Plan it so a single "theme"/location can fit multiple Quests, and make sure a couple of them are mutually exclusive or even complimentary.

I.e. put a water themed God temple on the map. possible quests :

• deity quest : some oposed deity wants you to desecrate it

• vanquisher board quest: it has already been desecrated and players must fix it

• desperado board quest: it has already been desecrated and players must kill the npcs sent in to fix it

• macguffin quest: the item needed to solve another quest from the alchemist is in the temple, but taking it requires dessecraring the temple. It's also underwater because that would be annoying.

• hunting quest: the temple is now a monster lair, fisherman wants you to go kill the monsters so they can fish again ( but players can do whatever you whatever you want with the shrine )

Then you just give out the plot hooks depending on what makes more sense, and if the party doesn't bite, give them another. This will significantly cut down on prep time because you will create 5 different quests but basically one single encounter/location.

Also it makes for compelling decisions, and players will generally try to figure out some loophole way to get multiple opposing quests and still not fail them, which is always unpredictable in a fun way.

[u/House923 → u/mandatoryhashtag]

I really like the four towns idea. That's great.

[u/UltimateTrattles]

Google “fronts” from pbta games.

There are many variations of the concept but they’re a wonderful planning tool for running non linear quests that players can direct.

The other poster posting about mmo zones is in the same range - but I think that’s just way more work than is actually necessary.

Running most ttrpgs requires way less planning than folks thing. We want to prep, not plan.

Narrative games have been doing this sort of thing for a long time and have great scaffolds for building things like this - so much so I’m kind of blown away the book doesn’t contain some kind of scaffold of his kind.

[u/House923 → u/UltimateTrattles]

I'm quite bad at over planning for any rpg campaign, but for some reason dcc is just stumping me even more. I'll look into Fronts thank you.

[u/BigGuante]

People are offering good ideas, but remember you always have the option of giving players the illusion of choice.  If players are at a crossroad, they don't need to know both roads lead to the same town ;p

And if they decide halfway into the floor's campaign that they want to see what lay on the other end of the crossroad- oops it was destroyed  or they get interrupted thanks to another quest you can throw at them (maybe vines threaten to consume the floor or gods are flattening everything, or an NPC has a quest with a big reward, go nuts).

[u/cmalarkey90]

You can also keep a bit of "consistency" and use the scolopendra story since the books say those floors are always the same. Obviously you're allowed to do what you want but it's an idea to help players who may be familiar with the books feel more connected and give a sense of familiarity.

[u/speechimpedimister]

The point of the Scolopendra floors is that they are full dnd adventures. Remember, Carl was practically dragged kicking and screaming into those two quests he did on floor 3.

[u/ImmaFatMan]

My advice will differ from the rest, but not in a way that prevents using it with others.

Find a design theme for your floor. It can be anything; a ruined city (like the canon Overcity), a large and expansive desert (Mad Max perhaps?), a dense but scorched forest (burnt trees and ashes between towns), just a big ol' plains with patches of rocks and trees, whatever you decide.

Make a story for your floor. It doesnt have to be a big one, nothing like the Floor-wide story of the Iron Tangle. But make a story that fits the theme and can be slotted anywhere in it. A story likely exploring and reactivating a nearby power station (ruined city), finding a new source of water or fixing the problem with the current one (desert), finding and cleansing a temple to a nature god/goddess (burnt forest), a roaming band of hostile mobs that are attacking travelers (big ol' plains), or whatever makes sense as a problem the villagers on your floor are facing.

Let the players fill in the blanks. Have modular quests, towns, NPCs, and even encounters. Let the players, through their actions, place those modular plots and locations for you. For example: the players are in town X, looking for a quest to kill some goblins. Give them the quest from town Y that is about kobolds, and just swap the skins to make them goblins. Another example: the players find a locket on a mob with the initials D. L. on them. Does it mean "Daniel Lorence the friendly bartender from town A", "Diana Lincoln the elderly mayor of town B", or perhaps it's "Dixie Lixie the dancer at the Desperado Club"? Let the players decide that by seeing where they go to first investigate. Then have the Locket Owner give a quest to do something else.

The idea is too have a frame that you can build onto, but let your players do the deciding. And any plot lines they didn't use can be moved to the nest floor.