Warlock of Firetop Mountain - Dungeon Structure 1
Alright, now with all the encounters in the dungeon looked at, I'll start looking at the other aspects of the dungeon. In this post, I will be taking a look at the structure of the dungeon as a whole.
There are a number of great maps of this dungeon online, and it is clear that the structure of this dungeon is not exactly what you would expect from a typical dungeon in D&D. D&D dungeons tend to be fairly interconnected, and are much less linear than the dungeon of Firetop Mountain. To analyse the dungeon in a bit more detail, I will look at the encounters of Firetop Mountain as a flowchart, since the specific layout of the dungeon is not important here. This is a rather large dungeon, and I wouldn't necessarily expect players to finish it all in one go. Considering the size of this dungeon and number of encounters, your players will probably have multiple short rests within the dungeon, with a high chance of returning to the nearby village for a long rest being necessary, considering that the Dungeon Master's Guide recommends 6-8 Medium or Hard encounters and 2 short rests in an adventuring day (page 84). This adventure is very much a large dungeon crawl, and will probably take quite some time to complete. I would also like to state that all of these structural changes will be totally optional, and you should still be able to run this dungeon with the original map.
Now, this first section is extremely linear, essentially consisting of a single path with some rooms coming off it as optional encounters, giving the possibility of missing a lot of the dungeon. This would be disastrous, there are also a number of important items and features in these rooms, like the Dragonfire spell, one of the keys and the Invisibility Potion. Comparing it to small dungeons designed for D&D, most of them have a lot more compulsory encounters, with only a few optional encounters branching off. I'm going to rework this section fairly heavily. I'm also planning to merge some of the encounters together, since there are a large number of Easy encounters which could easily be combined. I won't be moving any encounters into or out of this section though, to maintain the fairly cohesive feel of this section. Here's my first draft of the reformed Section 1:
With this new layout, the players are practically guaranteed to find the Dragonfire spell even if they ignore all the optional rooms in the dungeon. I also added a small store room as an alternative way to get into the dining room, partially to add a bit more internal logic to the dungeon, but also to include a potential stealth entry into the dining room. I combined the Snake Box and Sleeping Orc rooms, since both were fairly sparse, and I also enjoy the implications of having a snake in the same room as a mouse. I also moved the Armoury into an earlier part of the dungeon, and plan for the Sentry to be sat right outside this room - let's let them actually guard something! Additionally, I combined the Prisoner and the Torture Room, with my current plan being a sort of large torture room with various cells branching off, one of which contains our Prisoner. I think this both thematically fits, and adds a bit more urgency to the situation - if the players wait too long, our Prisoner may be the next victim.
Help I've totally lost my writing structure and it's totally fucking me up AAAAAAAA. In the next post, I'll take a look at the structure of the last areas of the dungeon, finishing up this mini-section of development for now. I'm probably going to work more on these ideas behind the scenes before the conversion is complete, though.
There are a number of great maps of this dungeon online, and it is clear that the structure of this dungeon is not exactly what you would expect from a typical dungeon in D&D. D&D dungeons tend to be fairly interconnected, and are much less linear than the dungeon of Firetop Mountain. To analyse the dungeon in a bit more detail, I will look at the encounters of Firetop Mountain as a flowchart, since the specific layout of the dungeon is not important here. This is a rather large dungeon, and I wouldn't necessarily expect players to finish it all in one go. Considering the size of this dungeon and number of encounters, your players will probably have multiple short rests within the dungeon, with a high chance of returning to the nearby village for a long rest being necessary, considering that the Dungeon Master's Guide recommends 6-8 Medium or Hard encounters and 2 short rests in an adventuring day (page 84). This adventure is very much a large dungeon crawl, and will probably take quite some time to complete. I would also like to state that all of these structural changes will be totally optional, and you should still be able to run this dungeon with the original map.
Section 1: Up to the Portcullis
Compulsory Encounters:
The Goblin Sentry (Easy)
The Portcullis (Trap: Setback)
Optional Encounters:
The Pit Room (Trap: Setback)
The Sleeping Orc Room (Easy)
The Snake Box Room (Easy)
The Drunk Orcs Room (Easy)
The Orc Chieftain (Hard)
The Dining Room (Hard)
The Torture Room (Easy)
The Armoury ( - )
The Prisoner ( - )
Now, this first section is extremely linear, essentially consisting of a single path with some rooms coming off it as optional encounters, giving the possibility of missing a lot of the dungeon. This would be disastrous, there are also a number of important items and features in these rooms, like the Dragonfire spell, one of the keys and the Invisibility Potion. Comparing it to small dungeons designed for D&D, most of them have a lot more compulsory encounters, with only a few optional encounters branching off. I'm going to rework this section fairly heavily. I'm also planning to merge some of the encounters together, since there are a large number of Easy encounters which could easily be combined. I won't be moving any encounters into or out of this section though, to maintain the fairly cohesive feel of this section. Here's my first draft of the reformed Section 1:
Compulsory Encounters:
The Goblin Sentry (Easy)
The Dining Room (Hard)
The Drunk Orcs Room (Easy)
The Portcullis (Trap: Setback)
Optional Encounters:
The Pit Room (Trap: Setback)
The Armoury ( - )
The Sleeping Orc/The Snake Box Room (Medium)
The Store Room ( - )
The Orc Chieftain (Hard)
The Torture Room/The Prisoner (Easy)
With this new layout, the players are practically guaranteed to find the Dragonfire spell even if they ignore all the optional rooms in the dungeon. I also added a small store room as an alternative way to get into the dining room, partially to add a bit more internal logic to the dungeon, but also to include a potential stealth entry into the dining room. I combined the Snake Box and Sleeping Orc rooms, since both were fairly sparse, and I also enjoy the implications of having a snake in the same room as a mouse. I also moved the Armoury into an earlier part of the dungeon, and plan for the Sentry to be sat right outside this room - let's let them actually guard something! Additionally, I combined the Prisoner and the Torture Room, with my current plan being a sort of large torture room with various cells branching off, one of which contains our Prisoner. I think this both thematically fits, and adds a bit more urgency to the situation - if the players wait too long, our Prisoner may be the next victim.
Section 2 - Up to the River
Compulsory Encounters (Path 1):
The Pit Trap (Trap: Setback)
The Troll (Hard/Deadly)
The Giant Rats (Easy/Medium)
The Giant Sandworm Beach (Hard/Deadly)
The Ferryman Beach ( - )
Optional Encounters (Path 1):
The Ogre (Medium/Hard)
The Narrow Passage ( - )
The Giant (Hard/Deadly)
The Gas Trap (Trap: Setback)
Compulsory Encounters (Path 2):
The Mosaic Room (Easy/Medium)
The Giant Sandworm Beach (Hard/Deadly)
The Ferryman Beach ( - )
Optional Encounters (Path 2):
The Ogre (Medium/Hard)
The Narrow Passage ( - )
The Gambler (Easy)
The Giant (Hard/Deadly)
The Gas Trap (Trap: Setback)
Compulsory Encounters (Path 3):
The Bench ( - )
The Mural Room (Trap: Setback)
The Fountain ( - )
The Giant Bats Beach (Medium/Hard)
The Ferryman Beach ( - )
Optional Encounters (Path 3):
The Ogre (Medium/Hard)
The Giant Spider (Medium)
The Iron Cyclops (Medium/Hard)
Compulsory Encounters (Path 4):
The Bench ( - )
The Barbarian (Medium/Hard)
The Paintings (Trap: Setback)
The Animated Rope (Trap: Setback)
The Ferryman Beach ( - )
Optional Encounters (Path 4):
The Ogre (Medium/Hard)
The Giant Spider (Medium)
The Iron Cyclops (Medium/Hard)
The Merchant ( - )
The Helmets (Trap: Setback)
The Cavemen (Easy/Medium)
Clearly, this section is much larger than the first, and makes up the bulk of the dungeon in volume. However, this section is also roughly split up into 4 paths, each individually being about the same size as the first section. To make better use of all these encounters, I'm going to concentrate these separate paths into a main path with some branching options which will rejoin later, as well as connecting the separate paths together a bit more.
Additionally, I'm going to remove some of the encounters from here, adding them back into the maze section later on, to make the maze a bit more interesting and full. The encounters I'm going to shift into the maze are The Helmets, The Gas Trap, The Pit Trap and The Troll.
As I mentioned before, I'm not really a fan of the Cavemen encounter here, since it feels out of place. However, I'm currently going to leave it in as an optional encounter which can easily be removed, so you can make your own decisions about whether to keep it or not based on personal taste. As for the Giant encounter, I think I'm going to jut cut it from this adventure at low levels, though it could totally be run with higher-levelled players.
The biggest challenge I had in designing this section essentially came down to what it was for. Understanding what a dungeon is for is really the most essential component in understanding how you should be designing it. This section is exactly full of peons for the Warlock to command, or powerful objects for the Warlock to use to their advantage. At the same time, it doesn't seem particularly defensive in the way some of the later dangers are. Eventually, I came to the conclusion that this section of the dungeon is a test. The Warlock is playing with their food, and wants to mess around any challengers before dispatching them. This really helped me with choosing which encounters to move around and forming the new structure.
Here's the first draft:
Now I'm less happy with this rework at the moment, as I'm not even really sure if I achieved anything in switching up the structure here, and as such I will probably change this again in the future. Any thoughts or opinions here would be much appreciated. I've mostly tried to make the section a little more linear with some optional side paths, but I don't really think the ordering here is how it should be. One thing I will definitely keep though is combining the separate beaches into one larger beach split up into sections, as I think it just makes so much more sense to be able to walk down the beach rather than jump into an icy underground river with no plans. It also has the added bonus of letting a group experience The Giant Sandworm, one of my favourite beasts in this dungeon, without forgoing the magic sword they could find at the Giant Bats beach.
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