Lessons a Dungeon Masters can learn from the way Icewind Dale built lore around its dungeons to make a more enjoyable dungeon crawl.
Before starting, I want to say I wish I could be reviewing Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes, but I do want to give it a good reading before I jump into reviewing it. From what I've seen so far, it does look sweet. Anyway...
The object of the Inspirations mini-series/subset of blogs is to look at other forms of media such as movies, books, TV shows, video games, etc. to serve as a point of reference or well... an inspiration for DMs out there trying to craft their games and worlds. This will be the first in a mini-series/subset of blog posts.
Hopefully you've played this game. If you have not, there may be some minor spoilers. Also, this post is a bit lengthy, so try to stick through it. Thanks! Now let's continue.
I was driving home from work and thinking the other day. A lot of content I have seen lately for DnD was about running epic dragon encounters. I mean it is fair. It is part of the title, but then I got to thinking. Good dungeon design and dungeon lore is something I feel has not been discussed much lately, and well... IT IS THE FIRST PART OF THE NAME OF THE GAME! Sorry. Then I got to thinking... My dungeon crafting in DnD was greatly inspired and influenced by an old ass video game based on 2ndADnD... ICEWIND DALE.
Icewind Dale holds a special spot in my heart. Sure, it wasn't Baldur's Gate, but I enjoyed it for what it was, and I have fond memories of playing the game with my brother, the two of us making half the party from whatever characters we had come up with at the time. Not being Baldur's Gate wasn't a weakness for Icewind Dale, in my opinion, but rather made it a different experience. I'm not here to review and compare video games though. This isn't the blog for that.
Baldur's Gate focused on the story of your character. The story was great and praised. Icewind Dale's story is serviceable, but the game is often considered an action Dungeon Crawler over the sprawling epic that Baldur's Gate was. And that is where the Dale shines. The dungeons of the game were always something that stood out to me. For a game that takes place in the northern, cold expanses of northern Faerun, you spend very little time trudging through the snow. Instead, you spend most of your time crawling through the likes of an old crypt filled with undead creatures, the inside of a volcano, the haunted ruins of an elven fortress, and the ruins of a dwarvern kingdom to name a few.
What can we learn from the designs of the dungeons of a cRPG? More than just "make Morrowind dungeons, not Skyrim dungeons." Let's take a look. We are going to look at the dungeon crafting of Icewind Dale and take away three major components of it.
1) The tone of the dungeons
2) The theme of the dungeons
2) The lore of the dungeons and how they tell their own story
Let's talk about tone first. Setting the mood of the dungeon is important. It is what will create the expectations for the players, create tension, and be the frame of the dungeon itself. Icewind Dale does this to great effect with the beautifully hand painted, rendered landscape, the sound, and the beautiful soundtrack by Jeremy Soule, of the Elder Scorlls fame.
Now as a Dungeon Master, we cannot rely on pre-rendered images or sounds for our players to traipse about in, but we can offer the next best thing. Description. We can describe what the players see. What do the walls look like? The floors? What are they made from? Are they man-made or natural? We can also describe other things the players would experience in our dungeon.
" You find yourself at Wyrm's Tooth. The freezing chill of the north winds cut through you like a sharp blade that cuts through to the very bone. Around these snow covered mountains, the cliffs, waterfalls, and mountain sides glow in the sun.. You head into the cavern before you.
Deep within, the ice walls of the mountain are crystalline and the cold, hard stones upon the ground still sting with the cold you felt outside. These caves do little in the way of comforting you and bringing you warmth. Your breath still puffs in clouds before your faces. Any sort of odor this place would have are frozen from the very air. All you can hear is the echo of the howling wind outside your footsteps carry throughout the massive cave. You venture deeper into this almost lifeless, place.
You venture deeper passing great chasms and ice spiking up and down in stalactites and stalagmites until you come upon the massive, frozen corpse of what appears to be a mighty dragon. It's scales glisten with a sheen caused by ice. It is frozen in time, with only protruding ribs and its still, lifeless eyes betraying its state of death."
That description I just gave was inspired by looking at the above screenshot and from what I remember from the area in the game. (Those who have played know this specific screenshot is actually from one of the expansions and not part of Wyrm's Tooth, it was just one of the better ones I could find.) I sometimes will peruse screenshots from the Infinity Engine games while crafting my dungeons to help give me ideas for descriptors and layout.
The description sets the mood. Playing the game, I actually would feel cold in areas like the giant glacier caves of Wyrm's Tooth, even if it was a summer day outside. The creaking sounds inside a crypt reminded me to be creeped out and be on the lookout for traps and the undead. If you use music at your table, be sure to choose a soundtrack that fits the area you want very well. On top of that, find good ambiance tracks to add to the feeling, allowing you to do more description and allowing the noise to help imaginations along.
Next, let's explore the theme of the dungeons. We have set the tone for our dungeon. Let's look at one of the earlier dungeons in the game, the Vale of Shadows. It may sound familiar in Stranger Things, but us true Dnd players know the Shadowfell or Plane of Shadows was never referred to as such. Rather it is an area in the game that serves as the first real dungeon the player encounters.
It starts out as a beautifully crafted area of natural land bridges and crypts built into the side of the mountains, and then the player comes upon the main catacomb.
It gets the tone part we just discussed right, but the theme is also handled well. It is a crypt, so what do we fight a lot of here? Well I can tell you it isn't owl bears or orcs. We fight the undead. A lot of it. So much so, that having a paladin or cleric in the party is almost recommended for every playthrough. The Enhanced Edition gives access to the Undead Hunter paladin and it is almost a no brainer to grab it up as one of your six party members.
You will encounter every type of undead from skeletons to shades to mummies, to zombies, to more skeletons to more zombies. You get the idea. And this fits with the idea that the party is in a crypt. The undead are explained in the lore of the dungeon, but we touch on that in just a bit. The game doesn't just throw random baddies at you. Sure, you fight yetis outside, in the mountain pass, but that's about it. They still feel like the fit, especially when later you find them in the service of an Aurlite priestess. Likewise, when inside the volcano, you are fighting the lizardfolk that inhabit it, and when the theme shifts, the enemies change as well. The monsters can help create that tone and serve as a way of helping show what the dungeon is. What I'm trying to say is I never felt like the monsters were "out of place" or made me scratch my head, but if they did, it was explained or shown to make sense later. And that is important while crafting your dungeons.
Also, how many traps your are filling your dungeon with can contribute to the theme. The ancient crypt might be full of traps, but maybe not so much the abandoned elf fortress. Along with that, you have a huge bonus outside of the constraints of an action RPG video game. You can toss in all kinds of cool puzzles, environmental hazards, and allow encounters to be resolved without combat that can really contribute to the theme and tone you are trying to build.
Finally, we are going to look at the lore of the dungeons. This is the part of the dungeons in Icewind Dale that really stuck with me. Inside the main plot and overarching story, while trying to solve the main quest, each dungeon had its own story that may have been separate from the main story, and I often found the fluff of the dungeons to be one of the more enjoyable parts of the story telling in the game.
You reach the end of the Vale of Shadows crypt mentioned before, and before you stands the ghost of a mighty warrior named Kresselack. A wonderful voice performed by one of my favorite voice actors, Tony Jay, gives some insight into the tomb and why it is there. He describes how he was a great warrior and conqueror, but feared death for the things he had done. He had the catacombs built and sacrificed his workers, warriors, and himself to Myrkul, god of death. He was punished for this by the gods, and his other sacrificees became the undead guardians the party had to cut down just to reach him.
The areas of the Severed Hand (the elf fortress) and Dorn's Deep (the dwarf kingdom) tell the story of a once strange, but grand alliance between elves and dwarves to fend off the orcs, goblins, and other nasty critters of the area, until that alliance broke. The Severed Hand was over-run and the shadows of the battle still fight to the day the party arrives, and the dwarves of Dorn's Deep are nothing but a distant memory. It is these little stories from these areas that make them grander than the main story sometimes, even though the story felt epic in my opinion.
Hell, even one of the items in the game has awesome fluff I recite to this day. I'll just let the in game description do the talking here:
“This sword was made with one purpose: to destroy evil. Though a powerful weapon, Pale Justice has humble beginnings. The plain sword was crafted by a devout worshipper of Tyr named Renold. Renold spent thirty years of his life perfecting the metalworking techniques that allowed him to craft an almost flawless blade. As soon as Renold had completed the unadorned weapon, he turned it over to the church of Tyr. The priest who received it placed the naked blade on his monastery's altar. He asked his brothers to join him in praying to Tyr to ask their god to bless the weapon with holy power. The brothers never touched the blade, nor did they speak of it. After ten years, despite the fact that all of the other brothers lost faith in the blade ever becoming enchanted, the original priest, Edan, continued his prayers in silence. Another twenty years passed, and there was still no sign from Tyr. Visiting priests of Helm scoffed at Edan's blind devotion to the blade. It was then that, without warning, Edan walked up to the altar and gently removed the dust-covered blade from the altar.
The priest of Helm asked Edan if he had finally come to his senses. Edan replied that he had, that he had been expecting the wrong thing from Tyr the entire time. He stated that Tyr had done his work long ago.
The priest of Helm laughed out loud at Edan's claim and asked his bodyguard to draw his sword. The magnificent weapon in the hand of the Helmite had a gilded guard set with pearls. Runes were etched along the blade, with a small cluster of fine rubies set in the ricasso. The priest of Helm laughed again and spoke. "This is truly a sword blessed by the gods. Your weapon looks like an ordinary soldier's blade. It pales in comparison."
Edan calmly grabbed the blade by the tang and swatted at the guard's weapon. The priest of Helm's laughter cut off quickly as he stared down at his retainer's broken weapon. He stood there speechless as Edan set the blade down and began to reply.
"Justice always pales in comparison to vanity and ostentatious displays of power. I expected Tyr to manifest his divine will in this blade with lightning and fire. I should have remembered how the blade was given to me... with simple charity and humility. Justice is the right of every man, no matter how rich or poor, no matter how educated or ignorant. It should be found as often in the fields of farmers as it is in the fields of battle."
Edan took the blade to a local weapon smith and had him put a wooden, leather wrapped grip on it. He then gave it to a fledgling paladin and asked him to always remember the potential for charity and kindness in the human race."
That little bit of fluff for the weapon has no consequence on the story, but damn is it cool. Not exactly part of the dungeon, but I feel it helps the point I am trying to make. Your dungeons don't have to always have a direct story connection, but they can tell their own story, and that can be entertaining. You can use it to do more world building to give the players an idea about the realm they are exploring and its history without the dreaded expository dumps. You can show instead of tell them about the beautiful world you have crafted, and the players will enjoy digging up more details as they are revealed to them.
I hope even if you just skimmed the post you were able to get something out of it. I feel a lot of players enjoy a good dungeon crawl, and for those that like exploration, narrative, roleplay, or anything other trapping that isn't big in a dungeon crawl, well crafted dungeons with the lessons learned here can help make them more enjoyable. If you already have a good grasp on dungeon design, at least take away that the soundtrack is amazing and can spice up any DnD session, and considering this game is not as widely played, it won't be recognized. (I'm weird where if I recognize a soundtrack piece, it may pull me out of the game for a few seconds).
Sorry for the long post, there was just a lot to be said. Until next time...
Happy dungeon crawling,
Puddins