DnD Map v2 - ePortfolio Post 2

09/20/22

DnD Map v2 - ePortfolio Post 2

The people who played my game were Snick, Animaiden, and Shane J., and they picked the mage, knight, and rogue respectively. Compared to my first iteration of my cave tutorial level, this map felt a lot more intriguing and brought a lot more to the table for the players. Players are taught about traps very early on, and must use moves to avoid these spaces, and the first fight of the level is a very simple and easy to defeat enemy, with no armor and a measly 2 health, which helps introduce players to the combat mechanics very early on, without actually posing much of a threat.

First simple enemy

As they continue on, they are presented with a bit more of a challenge, consisting of 2 enemies, one with 4 health and one with 2, which gets them a bit more used to powerful enemies. From here, I used my idea from my first map of a continuously ramping difficulty with every enemy getting more difficult, but I decided to introduce items as well, since this level was a bit longer with more enemies, so I provided health in the form of food items such as bread and drinks. To keep it as simple as possible, I made each food item fill up the players health bar to max, and placed these items right after the first fairly difficult enemy, and right before the final boss fight. This gives the players security and relief after a difficult battle and prepares them for the fight ahead. One of the enemies just before the boss introduces a defense stat, which teaches the players how enemy defense works, since the boss had a defense stat as well. This enemy wasn’t ridiculously harder than previous ones they had fought, but was difficult enough to give players a bit of trouble, which in turn gave them a taste of what was to come from the boss.

First armored enemy introduced.

I decided to also introduce a sneak attack mechanic, where the players are attacked out of the darkness of the cave by a wererat, which is extremely weak and easily disposed of. I made the enemy weak so that the players would not feel terribly betrayed, but would rather learn that this is an option, and that they should keep their eyes out for other small corners or areas that enemies could hide in. Right after this enemy is defeated, as a reward and preparation for the final battle, the players discover the drinks I had talked about before, and their health is replenished. The final boss is much harder than previous enemies, but with what they have been taught from the level so far they should be able to take it down. What I think I did mainly wrong in this level, which actually differs completely from the first, is I made the level a bit too long this time around.

New v2 Map - Way too long of a starting hallway.

While we did have some issues in the beginning, taking up a few minutes of time, the party was not able to reach the final boss, and may have needed about 3-5 more minutes to have completed the full level. What I could have changed to make this quicker is to make the first hallway a bit shorter, since it is quite long, and removing one of the difficult enemies on the way to the boss, since there were two enemies who were very similar to one another, and probably did not need to be included to teach players about tough enemies. Otherwise, I believe I did a much better job at introducing mechanics, easing players into the game, and creating a fun and interesting game experience.