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The loot should depend on how difficult the dungeon is to players. So an easy dungeon drops crappy loot while a difficult dungeon will hold epic loot. Or maybe the loot is just "purchased" from a dungeon Lord (but the DM cannot use any of it as they cannot enter their own Dungeon in a real way. (They can practice but they get nothing out from it than just testing.) I still am unsure about this as they could make an easy dungeon with high loot and have their friends go through with no trouble. But if I make it depend on the difficulty, how can the actual difficulty be tested? What's to keep this balanced so that you don't get people don't make dungeons too hard to too easy? Or if having a dungeon which is hard for a mid-level character and having high level characters help them every time which means they don't die. that turns into a loss for the DM.

I find this whole idea interesting, and I have a few suggestions.

First, the sytem "advertise" the loot in every dungeon (Classsic Tavern style: "Did you heard? they say the famed Triton Sword is in the Cave of Reckonning. Who will dare brave it?"). Thus, if you dont place enough loot, no one will come in your dungeon.

Second, what happens if no one comes in your dungeon? Your minions will leave, of course. You must provide juicy advendurers to feed them and keep them happy and increase the size of your dungeon. Can't have a red dragon protecting a tin can no one wants. You want the most people to come in your dungeon, but you want every one of them to die. The number of adventurers that dies and the size of your loot determine the number and strength of the minions that will live in your dungeon.

Third, to prevent *impossible* dungeons, you must walk from the begining to the vault of your own dungeon before opening it. With the exception that your own minions will not attack you. Most of them.

Fourth, to help prevent abuse, you cant place and controls minions directly. You place what they need to live in the dungeon, then minions come to live in your dungeon. Think populous or similar game: You completely control the environment, but your minions are completely automomous agents. Of course the minions first and foremost goal is to kill adventurers. Good AI is needed, but minions are typically dumb.

I never played Dungeon Master or Evil genius, sorry if those ideas are common knowledge...

One thing I always got annoyed with, (except for Dungeon Seige), was the limit on what you could hold. When you ran out of room, you had to drop the items which normally destroyed it. DS had transmute which could at least turn it into gold.

One idea is that any item on you can be transported to the dungeon. That way if you fill up your bags, you can send a few items to the dungeon.

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Well if part of the penalty for dying was a huge hit to durability of all items, which need to be repaired, the money for repairing goes to the DM. basically it would work as once the player dies, a calculation is done on durability and the cost to repair. That gold is immediately deposited to the DM and it's up to the player if they want to repair the item.

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Original post by Anonymous Poster The aspect of having the DM (player) actually run a dungeon is generally impractical in the MMORPG games. 99% of dungeons will HAVE to be self executing as most DMs wont be around to run their dungeons (and many wont feel like running their dungeons all the time they are online).

I think I stated that the dungeons may have DM's control certain aspects, but it's not necessary. I do envision that dungeons are self automated.

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Guest hosting of the 'dungeon'. There may be yet another 'skill' mechanism -- that of running a dungeon (seperate from creating one).

Intriguing...

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A system of letting players play monsters (and/or direct monsters) in a game would go a long way to improving the game. A pool of players would get assigned roles on an as needed basis to dungeons or random encounters. They would control the monsters and be restricted to only what the monster could do. Flexibility in assignment will be needed because of the freedom the players have to decide on their actions (many dungeons will be inactive at any point in time and suddenly a scenario with a multitude of monsters will become activated).

I had something similar in mind but it was unrelated to dungeons. It would have been a selected few chosen by Game Moderators who would get a chance at being a super elite monster which could terrorize communities until it was defeated. But having just the regular mobs in a dungeon, let alone a player created dungeon, it something I over looked.

I'm thinking of this:
Sort of like in ghost form which could possess mobs. A monster which doesn't attack could "reject" the possessor which would incure a penalty to the ghost like inability to play for a few minutes. Deaths or leaving a mob also incurs penalties but are much smaller than rejection. (At least leaving a mob). This ensures that the player makes it easy for the adventurers by not attacking. And also having multiple mobs rush in because they were all controlled by players.

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I think the loot is the thing that must be controlled well. As far as gold drops, it shouldn't come from the DM. taking the Dungeon Keeper view, all gold dropped is the product of the gold the DM used to buy or rent out a mob. Since in DK, all mobs came and were paid, the gold they drop could be their own.

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What you want to look for is a system that will reward dungeon masters by creating interesting, rewarding dungeons that are challenging and FUN. Give rewards to the DM based on how many people play his dungeons. Reward the DM for dungeons that are challenging, but not too hard. A possible system would be to reward the DM according to the percentage of deaths/failures his dungeon causes. Too many and it´s not fun, too few and it´s to easy.

I'm wondering if having the rewards to DM's take at least a month or so before the return is evident. After that the rewards are huge. But if a dungeon doesn't last that long, all the investment goes away. They lose a huge chunk of money. I remember playing Roller Coaster Tycoon. One of my favourite things to do was to build amazing rollercoasters. The challenge was to make it exciting, while making sure it's not too nauseating or too intense for people to go on. Same should apply here. If a dungeon is too difficult or looks to be intended as just killing dungeons, people won't go, and the dungeon collapses. Too easy and either people stop going cause it's not a challenge, or it's a drain on the DM.

Tying the DM's reward to an increased variety of mobs or dungeon options is definitely an option. I don't really want players who have tons of gold to just instantly create the largest known dungeon.

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It seems the biggest controversy over this system seems to be having uber levels walk into easy dungeons and drain everything from the DM. To reclarify, Gear is not necessarily a huge loss. I'm hoping a sword is a sword is a sword. There are no bad swords. I want all level's stripped from items. Just make using the item class available / unavailable. Good swords have a few extra stats than a plain sword. Plain weapons are available for free as the "army" will supply them. The rarer items are the ones that could give that extra edge and therefore sought after. But should it be lost, it doesn't mean the player is now useless without it. It is my goal that a skilled player can use a toon with plain equipment and beat another player who isn't necessarily skilled but has uber items. But in most cases, two equally skilled players, one with plain one with epic items, the epic will win most of the time.

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Original post by Anonymous Poster Now you can have some small 'secret' place (bank) to stash small items (keepsakes, weird artifacts, dungeon momentos).

hidden walls... I even wondered if having artifacts that would release the item if the riddle was answered.

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Original post by Steadtler Third, to prevent *impossible* dungeons, you must walk from the begining to the vault of your own dungeon before opening it. With the exception that your own minions will not attack you. Most of them.

that would do the trick. but what about dungeons which require a group? The Dm would have to find a group and walk them through... which could give away secrets on how to beat it. Another way to defeat the impossible dungeon is if there's an advertising / rating that players can look through. If a dungeon is rated as impossible and has bad comments about it, players may stay away which should be enough to collapse the dungeon.

FYI. Dungeon Keeper and Evil Genius worked on a similar matter. You didn't really control the minions. You could pick them up and place them elsewhere... or slap them :) You directly affected the environment, carved tunnels and rooms. In DK you could control a minion if you researched Possession. By doing so, you controlled the minion but lost all knowledge of anything else. You couldn't see what was going on elsewhere. And when you released the minion, there was a time penalty before you could do things again.

I've updated the first post to summarize the topic up to now. While, you can, it may not be necessary to read the entire post. If I've missed something let me know. But this way people just joining just have to read the first post to get what we've talked about so far.

First off, great idea, I'd love to play something like this. Second, I think the focus on 'traditional' MMORPG style advancement is causing more problems than it is worth. You bring in all sorts of balance and game-world-stability issues, as well as having to worry about all kinds of exploits. Why not keep it to a simple system like you see in games like america's army or battlefield, where the points you get for playing have only a minor impact on your character's abilities in the game. I think those games demonstrate that people will play for abstract 'points', even if the actual payoff from those points is subtle or even non-existant.

I think at most you could have people unlock various dungeon 'modules' or rooms by exploring other people's dungeons. People should be playing (i.e. building & exploring) because the game is interesting, not just to get more gold.

On the explorer front, you could have the player choose a class/role, but the strength of that character could be dictated by some 'difficulty factor' assigned to the dungeon (either automatically, by other players, or by the DM)

I think making player ratings very visible will be sufficient motivations for DM's to make interesting, well balanced dungeons.


Although, as I look back, the idea I'm proposing sounds an awful lot like neverwinter nights

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Original post by snak_attack First off, great idea, I'd love to play something like this. Second, I think the focus on 'traditional' MMORPG style advancement is causing more problems than it is worth. You bring in all sorts of balance and game-world-stability issues, as well as having to worry about all kinds of exploits. Why not keep it to a simple system like you see in games like america's army or battlefield, where the points you get for playing have only a minor impact on your character's abilities in the game. I think those games demonstrate that people will play for abstract 'points', even if the actual payoff from those points is subtle or even non-existant. I think at most you could have people unlock various dungeon 'modules' or rooms by exploring other people's dungeons. People should be playing (i.e. building & exploring) because the game is interesting, not just to get more gold. On the explorer front, you could have the player choose a class/role, but the strength of that character could be dictated by some 'difficulty factor' assigned to the dungeon (either automatically, by other players, or by the DM) I think making player ratings very visible will be sufficient motivations for DM's to make interesting, well balanced dungeons. Although, as I look back, the idea I'm proposing sounds an awful lot like neverwinter nights

Well then maybe gold for the DM's should just be a side note. Gold still needs to be a reward for a well made dungeon as I want crappy dungeons to collapse over time. This may prove to be difficult as how is a beginner supposed to learn how to make a well made dungeon without it collapsing. The balance has to be just right as aspiring Dungeon Masters need rewards to keep their dungeons up with no cost to themselves (after time), but also poor dungeons to collapse and free the world of them.

There needs to be some grace otherwise people who have the potential for great DM's, will not become one if they keep getting frustrated or don't have the money. I wonder if having the cost to start a dungeon be quite low but the cost of maintaining it be much higher. This allows for it's initial creation but if nobody enters it, it will fall apart.

Oh as another note, I wouldn't mind having the server size as encompassing everyone. Maybe 3-4 unique worlds (server clusters) for a variety. I don't know if that's possible but I'd like to try it. Anyway. Even if it is not, Dungeons will be available even on servers you don't have a character. Much how like WoW either has or is intending (I'm unsure which right now) to do their PvP battlegrounds. A character on server Alpha (Boble) will never see the char on Beta (Shoney) but can still go into a dungeon made by Boble.

I can't say what happens to normal to good items when it collapses as how the loot got there hasn't been decided on yet. But for World Unique Items, one of two things should happen. Either it goes back to the player who was the DM....

I should also note, I would like to see what Dark and Light has done with characters when they are online-offline. At least from what I read, characters are ALWAYS in game. When someone logs off, their character basically becomes an NPC or resembles one. They don't disappear.

....so the World Unique Item will be directly on the player which should make it easier to loot. I'm not quite sure how this will work as the player may be within a city making it impossible for him to be attacked.

The other option was to have the item be lost and it goes back to the place the original finder of the item got it from. I don't care too much for this idea so it will probably be the first. I'm not quite sure how making sure the player is still attackable will work. I could use some suggestions on that.

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Original post by trapdoorI want crappy dungeons to collapse over time.

This would happen naturally if you rely largely on player ratings - look at something like ytmnd.com - the "creations" at the top of the ranking lists are pretty reliably the best

Here's an idea:

What if the DM can get other players to join his dungeon as monsters or "raiders".

The Monster player basically acts as a general or a guard, he can attack by himself or he can command lesser minions to do so. Since there is a player inside, he could give the DM hints on how to improve the dungeon layout... or if the dungeon is player-changable (i.e. you pull out a pickaxe and dig a hole in the wall, or bring in a bear-trap to set up somewhere) he can do things himself.

The Raider players are basically Adventurers who have a boss. They might go to another dungeon and attack it to bring loot back. But if they fail, they lose some of the weapons they went to attack with. Also, when they come back to the dungeon, they have to head all the way to the "throne room" or the end of the dungeon to properly deliver the loot.


Also, you could allow players to run towns instead of your regular dungeon. Let them designate an area where players can come and not be attacked by monsters. give permission to some merchants (or hire NPC merchants or whatever) and build little rooms for them to be in.

With a proper setup, the DM could get money from the "town" on the top floor, and if adventurers want to they can venture down to try their luck against the monsters. If the Dungeon also has a resource (such as mushrooms that randomly grow in dark caves, fish that appear in rivers, a fountain that creates 10 gallons of Healing Water a day, Dragons that lay dragon eggs after every player they devour, etc...) you could have a mini-economy where the DM gathers stuff for himself while fighting off parties that come in to take it.

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As for the idea of randomly generated maps... perhaps each dungeon has several layers and each layer is connected via portals. The DM can configure the portals to act in certain ways:

Always send people to one other portal.
Send them randomly to one of several other portals.

Basically, allow for either straight-forward movement to a destination or randomly sending them to another spot. But each portal must allow the person to return back the way they came (even if they have to try several times to randomly go back) so you can't just send everyone into the jail cell on level 3 with no way to escape.


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Well, as for a way to draw players in, You could have each dungeon be an environment that attracts certain resources (fire levels can spawn obsidion glass, lava monsters, fire essence crystals etc. while forrest levels spawn wood and fruits) each environment has its own stuff whish is darn near impossible to collect the best of everything. So it encourages players to visit a variety of places to get the resources to craft things.


As for having "weak" dungeons... would it be possible for such places to be captured by another DM. Or there could be some infestation monsters (like giant ants or termites) that invade weak dungeons (instead of them simply collapsing) and dig it up to create an ants nest where they live and may send attack scouts to other dungeons, the DM can't control them if he is inexperienced so he may need to ask adventurers to come and clear them out, or give his dungeon away.

The ants could be a sort of NPC adventurer to keep the DMs monsters occupied if they arn't getting enough regular traffic (just a thought).

As the AP some replies back already pointed out, Neverwinter Nights already had a fullblown Dungeon Master system. It allowed someone to log in with a modified game client that supported all kinds of nifty things. A DM could spawn monsters and NPC's, change player/monster/npc disposition, award loot and other rewards and -with proper scripting- trigger various nice effects. The best part was the a DM could 'posess' any monster or NPC to convey some storyline to the players or to spice up combat.

I've been helping out on a NWN server quite a lot and I thought Bioware's implementation was very nice. The community made SQL database extension was a blessing to relieve us of all the 'token systems' and really opened up a world of things you could do with the NWN server. Unfortunately the database thing and decent tools to link servers over the internet (allowing for x*64 players) only came about when NWN was already overwhelmed by other games, so I don't think it reached its full potential. I'm holding out for NWN2, but I'm afraid it may be a bit disappointing after the shiny new experience brought about by NWN and the fact that most would-be NWN players are now absorbed by MMORPG's.

Anyway, back to the gameplay issues around DMing. It's a great feature in any game and it can certainly spice up the gameplay, but good DM's are hard to find and even harder to keep. Our NWN server ran for several years, so it's hard to keep DM's motivated and happy with their voluntary, unpaid jobs. Also players can be a pain, since they know that there's another human they can blame for losing in a dungeon, not getting the loot they want or other disappointments.

I don't really have a point here, but I thought I'd share my experiences on DMing and helping run a DMed online game world :)

So what about this then: Making Dungeon Mastering a very low profit profession but also easy to pick up and little cost to maintain. So should there be farmers out there, that would be the more profitable profession and keep the dungeon mastering to good DM's. I'm trying to find out what will keep people who are simply making dungeons for money at the cost of making a good dungeon while making sure the true good DM's are not hindered from making great dungeons which the community loves.