If you could make a dungeon how would you do it?

[Shurrikhan]

Anyone up for suggesting a setting or scenario? I'll go from there to add mechanics and encounters.

For my own part:

I. A more lore-driven dungeon.

Phantom Train, but it's the real deal instead of a recreation. Let's say it... conveys souls between shards, but with an emphasis on shards that have collapsed and been rejoined or are soon to do the same. (Yes, it hints at incoming futures, though said futures are of course mutable.) Your objective is to swap to the intended line. Think of it's opening like that of Westworld mixed with the train scene of Spirited Away. It is by no means a traditional dungeon.

Most souls on the train can be interacted with, gleaning lore hints. In the initial, story-based run, the dungeon is run largely via a multi-step quest rather than simply sprinting to the end, with non-skippable (though speed-able) conversations and so forth, with much of the feel of exploring Amaraut. The souls assume you are like them: you await the end, and are --if in some reluctant way-- happy to be conveyed to it. These souls are in some way like you, "warriors of light", though some have retained their memories between rebirths and others have retained only fragments between reincarnations or being hosted anew (waking up, the next day, having been a fisherman all their lives, who had merely dreamed once of having been a cavalry scout); each alike has grown weary. The story-run proceeds by trying to figure out how to escape, essentially hijacking the train so that you can again reach your intended world. There are, per usual, boss fights, but the rest is predominantly investigation, with a surprising amount of side-content coming in handy. Apart from a few central bits, the pertinent clues gleaned and their relevant mechanics change per run; you cannot merely learn the run to devalue investigation.

In the hard mode, however, all the machinery of death here, so to speak, knows that you've committed taboo and will attempt to stop you. Rather than subtly wrong, the world seen outside the train is obviously shattered. Flooded, with broken floating earth in the distance and water pouring down, up, left, and right. Looking down, one can peer through the water into a mirror world. The previously passive mobs and the train's staff will now fight you, and they are difficult af. That said, the dungeon has a unique pathing or mob-skip / fight-selection mechanic. You can fight in, atop, or on the sides of the train, and pass through to the mirror world by walking down the side of the train and through the water below when the train is slowed, or... upon death.

Mob strength and mechanics scale with role count; a split Tank-Healer party, for instance, would see different attacks and schema from mobs that a lone healer or a DPS pair. Until one attacks in the mirror world, they will not be noticed automatically, but each will attract attention, making it nearly impossible for the team to simply all die, mob-skip, and continue through. As the lone member on the other side, one can peer back through the mirror to see what's going and sense what's going on in the other plane via the Duty Action, and will primarily act as a saboteur. A conversation with someone in the mirror world, before they were yet wary of you, can change the positioning of a guard in the other, etc. The boss fights themselves are incredibly difficult, and while they do not quite scale like the mobs, the clues and sabotage from the other side can make up for the difference.

There's a lot to manage here, so the dungeon does not take part in typical Expert roulettes (at least as they stand now), but does have its own further weekly reward (e.g. a Fragment of the Interstice, used for upgrading any piece of gear -- such as via 1 per accessory, 2 per armor, and 3 per weapon).

II. An exploratory dungeon.

In this one, you're piloting your own airship, attempting to find a Garlean supply ship and retrieve from it... (name your MacGuffin). The dungeon is reiterative and allows you to offset eventual difficulties with further exploration. It can mostly be split into three phases: (1) find the key airship while surviving against anti-ship and boarding attacks from other ships, (2) board the key airship and seize the MacGuffin, (3) escape back to the airbase. In a premade group, the ship can be steered manually; otherwise, you just yell orders at the helmsman (who is also a decently strong combatant whose power scales with party and who swaps with him in premades). The first boarding attempt will count as the first "boss fight", but its mechanics vary greatly. The second is on the enemy ship. The third is in the escape. There's a further 5 optional bosses in the dungeon. The premade experience is, in essence, the intended one, though the fights themselves can still be damn fun even when the dungeon is streamlined.

III. A strategic assault.

So this one's actually an 8-man, along the lines of Praetorium or Castrum Meridanium, but this time with a pre-entry strategy session that will, at player choice, determine how one goes about progressing through the dungeon and in what groups. That said, the circumstances in the base change each run. While these patterns, too, can eventually be optimized by veteran runners, this offers a further degree of variety. There's a fair bit of behind-the-scenes work that goes into determining player weights in these deliberations. For instance, the more clears a player has, especially if as leader, and weighted by the 'quality' of those clears, the more likely they are to be picked as commander, lieutenant, etc., giving them further weight in that decision making. The fewer people joined together, the more these prior deliberations are simplified, while larger premade portions make for more freedom and precision.

The mechanics involved can go anywhere from creating distractions, stealing key cards, turning off sentry lights, stealing mechs, stealing an airship, raiding the armory, blowing holes in walls, sneaking in via the train, killing the ceruleum lines, etc., etc. This, too, will be side-content for weekly rewards, not a mainstay dungeon.

IV. RNG-ish-pathed dungeon.

Imagine a large Monster Hunter World-esque Jungle Ruins area with four distinct regions and a final boss that swoops down to the center area after most of the other bosses are dealt with. You'll start off in one corner and depending in part on how you fight the boss of that corner, different paths will appear. For instance, if you have the... let's say it's a triceratops boss... crash into a pillar, you can have him open up the way across the chasm, but then his death animations won't lead to him opening something up later, etc., etc. Each boss's defeat grants you a boon or upgrades a preexisting one. These can be used via the duty key, either under different conditions, or where the last one acquired must be used first to then reveal those beneath (where the new don't simply upgrade the old). For instance, the triceratops-ish boss might grant a tackling charge, driving enemies back while being used for mobility, while the... (spitball) one-winged harpy might grant temporary casting while moving alongside quick bursts of movement to your left. There's obvious faction warfare, so to speak, between the minions of the different boss zones, so managing that plays a bit of a part, too.

Basically, pathing semi-choice, gameplay augmentation, macro-level mob management, and an optional fourth core boss to make the final boss easier.

[Shougun]

Anyone up for suggesting a setting or scenario? I'll go from there to add mechanics and encounters.

Two ideas I've been kicking around for various bias reasons were:

a) Taking back Sil'Dih from the zombies- the few survivors were locked away in closed off sections of the city underground and without any way to escape and dwindling supplies imbued themselves into advanced mammets to fend off the starvation and disease (Vivi/Yuke race - doesn't have to be exclusively lala yukes), with perhaps some of the lore backing to the urgency (beyond saving those trapped below) is the zombies with the help of Ascians begun to summon a dead primal from all their collective broken despair. The undead primal haunting Ul'Dah, coming with unique properties allowing it to bring despair to the city (like if you go to sleep in the city during this part of the quest your character will have nightmares). With a bit of a Dante's Inferno theme as you descend into the depths of Sil'Dih- would be cool if the story of how the city fell was told a bit in the bosses (with hints of the layers of hell told throughout, though I imagine having to combine the layers a bit or skip some).

We know the basic outline already, how the plague begun- but might have some intrigue and corruption with the master of waters accepting bribes and such. Instead of Satan at the end of course it would be birth of the undead primal (could be the primal fight but that might make a fun content of it's own). FFXIV's Anima sort of. I mentally picture the place having a sort of cavernous, wonderous, center piece that is lush of water and grandeur. Of course now messed up from all the lala zombies. Plague waters pour from the place now. Imagined part of the dungeon might have a bridge section where you're crossing through a grand open area (where normally you'd get Altissa vibes of FFXV) but instead its like a sea of moving blobs filling the water, and as you move cross the bridge the shadowy zombie forms begin to turn the sea into a physical shape and surround you- here you have to fight your way cross as a Tsunami chases you. The party having to fight the back to keep it back and the front to move forward. Perhaps an npc has to create a dome at a certain point as the liquid like mass covers the party (can see through it as it'll be transparent on top) and zombies start breaking through the dome and so then you have adds inside your fight sphere. Thought it might make a really neat Ishgard 2.0, where you get to restore Sil'Dih. Start of the content could be pretty peaceful with a few zombies coming out of the caves/rubble and attacking Ul'Dah, few nightmares, but in the end it'd be all out chaos and might even have some phasing of broken / sieged Ul'dah. At the end of it all you'd get a opulent, water theme'd, desert city.



b) Paprika (the anime movie) meets Cid stuck in a dream state. As we near Garlean's home Zenos puts Cid into a deep slumber (so he can't help us circumvent all the Garlean tech in a way we'd be unable to do otherwise, like if Cid helped design some key shield features for the empire and they're concerned he'll let us know the death star's blueprint), perhaps with the help of the consumed undead primal (via his echo). Chance to reveal some of Cid's childhood and perhaps some human touches to Zenos (young Zenos, or the fact current Zenos chose not to kill Cid but just put him to slumber), while also just going entirely nuts. It's a dream, and like Paprika logic isn't really a requirement. So like mess up gravity, things upside down, boss fights can be absolutely bonkers. Like our raid you'd be able to go through the content by yourself after winning to 'examine' everything and you could catch hidden rooms and moments that played in the background that tell a deeper story of both Cid, Zeno's, and other major characters for the Garleans (and hopefully adds some more character to Zenos than just 'ima baaaaaahhhd boi').

I've some ideas like a train ride that turns into bullet hell as the city launches all their siege at you (heading towards Garlean capital), then a giant magitek hand shatters into reality (like the screen shatter effect but in a 3d space) and lifts the train out into outer space carts flying and being crushed (the world shrinking below), some sort of fight with heavy musical beat influence you're skimming the world's atmosphere above Garlean city (boss fight here of course), and at some point Cid and Zenos fighting each other as giants (I imagine semi-nude like attack of the giants and Cid also with long glorious hair, his younger self here) in the background as players fight on the platform fighting smaller representation of whats going on behind (stage set up in such a way, or the two huge characters, that you can see them clearly occasionally as their huge bodies punch near your platform or what have you - like at some point cid's head may be near you as Zenos punches him in the face or his fist hits the ground near his head and it causes massive shock waves on your actual battle ground). As Cid wins the fight it plays a more western cowboy sort of sound (acoustic) and as Zeno wins it's more industrial / metal, and ideally if we could have them with some vocal lines both in fight and perhaps in the song... At certain peak points both would be playing together, occasionally in harmony and occasionally in opposition (answer / call). So the song would be a duel between the two.


Some vague ideas here and there for fight / gimmicks but is mostly just a shower thought still lol. No pressure if you didn't want to use either of those, but was curious what you'd do if you did lol. To be honest I feel both could work well as raids, especially the Sil'Dih since it could then be freeing Sil'Dih across the whole expansion (and allow for a fuller representation of the layers of hell, of cross not super literally but enough to add a story of the horror of people in a fun and interesting way and can include more than just Ul'Dah and Sil'Dih- like maybe some of the other city states had some unspeakable hands in what happened due to greed/bias, or at least certain people). Each raid opening up new restoration content as you go deeper, the final raid opening up huge amounts of work, and the end of the expansion rewarding players with this beautiful city (again sort of picturing Alitssa / Rivendale like features tucked against the backdrop of sand dunes, some oasis vibes and really go nuts with some high fantasy / contrast of visuals (like Clerya in FFIX was this giant tree in the desert lol)). And the dream Garlean fight because we can cause massive devastation to the Garlean capital without it actually being that in the real world (because I think it would be bad if we had to actually carpet bomb Garleans just because of some super bad apples at the head lol).

Maybe one day I'll put the ideas out in a less stream of conscious format and think through some of the holes / problems but you're the one that said 'scenario me' lol :P.

[Shurrikhan]

you're the one that said 'scenario me' lol :P.

That is fair.

Admittedly, I was expecting something more along the lines of "Um, robojungle?" or "I'd like something with Xenogears aesthetics," or "How about a mountain pass, or a dungeon that goes along some manner of great wall (instead of just ending on one, as per Baelsar)?" Yours are more interesting, though.

I'd do it in an actual city, like repelling an enemy attack.

Love this.
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Also, @Jirah
You can edit to bypass the character limit. I usually just write the full post, cut, type 10 .......... 's or so, post, then Edit and paste the original in their place.

[kaynide]

Love this.

Honestly thought that was what hero’s gauntlet was going to be (us defending Eulmore).

Still happy with the dungeon we got...more or less... but man we should be using the somewhat maze like design of city states.