Dungeon Day 344 to 462 - Continues
Out of all the events he had made so far, the event for The Rocky Caves would be the most game-like event Dan had yet to make. Of course, all of Dan’s zones had some aspect or another of a game-like system, but he felt that The Rolling Hills and now The Rocky Caves came above most of the other areas in his dungeon, at least in terms of their gamification. For the hills, it was a controlled process of forcing the adventurers to follow a set scenario by progressing from camp to camp. It had been a completely different approach than all the other areas before it since adventurers didn’t really have many options.
So far, all of the zones Dan had made gave adventurers some semblance of choice. Furthermore, most areas let adventurers roam about and explore as they wished, even if it was at the detriment of that area's quest. Meanwhile, with The Rolling Hills, adventurers were met with one goal from the beginning, and deviating from that task was much more punishing than anywhere else. Dan placed the hills area akin to a very strict game, which made you do the main quest line and gave little or no benefits to exploring or doing anything else.
For The Rocky Caves, Dan had thought of a much more intricate and game-like system that everyone would surely love. In the hills, it was get to camp one, beat the boss, unlock the next camp, then beat that boss, and move on. However, for gnolls and kobolds, Dan would make a good old-fashioned capture the zone or zones.
The plan was to use the previous rivalry of the gnolls and kobolds and give it a new twist. Of course, it hadn’t been lost on Dan that he already had so many different faction fights in his dungeon that it was all somewhat repetitive. Thankfully, that was how games worked too, and it was truly their setting, graphics, and actual gameplay that had put them apart. Otherwise, every game with a boss would have been considered a semblance of a soul like or every stealth game, an assassins creed.
To begin his plan for the capture the zone event, Dan first divided the gnoll and kobold area into a multitude of smaller zones, 119 zones, to be exact. Each zone varied in size and would be worth a certain amount of points based on the category Dan gave them.
Two of the most important zones and the ones that wouldn’t be so easily captured were the two areas that held the caves to each of the two faction’s bases. These two zones could only be captured once other criteria were met and a final confrontation between the two factions came to an end. As such, these two zones were considered the base areas for the factions and their main seat of power.
The base area for the gnoll was located in the northwest section of the zone while the kobold’s base was in the southeast. Effectively putting them at two opposite ends of the map. Following the main base areas in placement, the other two largest areas in The Rocky Caves were also placed opposite from one another. One was placed in the southwest and the other in the northeast. These two larger areas were able to be captured by gnolls and kobolds and would be worth 35 points each. It was a large number of points, but it would really be a question of whether it was worth it to capture and hold the two large areas compared to the rest. After all, it wasn’t a matter of capturing and receiving the points for the remainder of the event but one of capturing and holding the area in order to maintain said points. Meaning that if one of the two factions lost an area, they also lost the points.
The two larger areas would be blue areas for mapping purposes because Dan planned to give the two factions a version of his earlier illusion map. Each map would show the areas available for capture and how many points each area was worth. So, outside of the two bases, which didn’t grant any points since holding them wasn’t possible to the end, that meant so far, Dan had a total of four areas. This meant there were 115 areas left.
Of those 115, 54 would be green areas worth one point each. These areas were worth less because they were in the outer area of The Rocky Caves, where there would be less conflict. Following the green areas were the 43 yellow areas, which would be worth two points each. Again, this was because they wouldn’t be directly in between the two main caves where Dan planned to place the red areas. There would be 18 red areas, each one being worth five points because they were smack in the middle of the entire zone, right between the two factions.
So, in total, there were truly 117 capturable areas, with a total of 300 points. And, of course, since adventurers would be given the choice to join one faction or the other, they would also be tasked with leading the charge against the enemy. Naturally, the question was which areas would be the best to hold and to what end. Even then, it was also a matter of how areas were captured.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
See, Dan wasn’t going to make capturing an area as simple as placing down a flag, otherwise, things would get rather boring. Instead, to capture an area, the faction had to build a tower in said area and then hold said tower. This went doubly so for the two blue regions worth 35 points each, where it would be multiple towers. To further complicate things, only the kobolds could build the towers needed to capture the areas. Of course, that didn’t seem fair to the gnolls, and Dan had a way to fix said issue.
To begin with, the kobolds couldn’t build towers all willy-nilly; they had to bring lumberjacks and carpenters out to get the towers built. Naturally, the building process would be augmented by magic, but it still meant that adventurers and kobold soldiers had to protect non-combatants. Furthermore, they also had to make sure the tower wasn’t burnt down before they could even finish building it. Of course, that also meant that the gnolls had to play a careful game of letting kobolds finish their towers before capturing them, otherwise, they wouldn’t be able to advance their war effort.
Another way Dan planned to even the odds was by giving the gnolls ten items they could use within a certain time limit. These items would quickly build their own towers, letting the gnolls have some breathing room at the very beginning of the conflict.
So, all in all, the event was a balancing act, and Dan had to make plenty of preparations to ensure the various mechanics weren’t taken advantage of. Like always, the main problem would be the adventurers, who would no doubt try many things. Dan could already see gnoll-aligned adventurers trying to capture kobolds to build them towers. He could also see kobold adventurers trying to place towers in odd places in order to make it so the gnoll adventurers couldn’t easily find them. Honestly, it would take time for Dan to truly track down all the problems, but it was something he was happy to do. It did help that everything would be on a timer, stopping many exploits that adventurers could possibly do.
In total, adventurers would have about two weeks to capture as many areas as they could while denying their opponents as many territories as possible. After the first two weeks, the faction with the most points would gain certain boosts, and the next phase of the event will begin. This next phase was something Dan would give about a week and would consist, hopefully, of the winning faction slowly pushing back the losing faction. From there, Dan hoped the winning faction would use the last week to assault the enemy base and win the event.
Of course, depending on who won the event, it would affect the next reset. However, it was important for Dan to mention that he had some contingencies in place in case the losing faction managed to hold on until the very last minute. One thing that Dan wanted out of his dungeon was to make sure that not all things were set in stone. It was a lesson he hoped to teach adventurers. Dan knew that sometimes everything looked like it was going right, but then some last-minute bravery, foolishness, or otherwise could tear down a perfectly good plan. It wasn’t a lesson he had all his zones teaching but one he left plenty of wiggle room to naturally occur on its own.
When it came to missions and adventurers, Dan didn’t have much variety, though he was striving to add more missions to all his dungeon areas. He had been adding different things like capture missions, where adventurers had to capture enemy combatants. To be specific, capture non-adventurer combatants. Otherwise, things would get more annoying than he wanted. Other missions involve giving adventurers other unique missions, which include doing all events in all areas or accomplishing certain tasks within events.
Many missions were random things he had made up, which didn’t even come from npcs but sometimes were just given to adventurers. These were things like fish in the lake or finding Ozzy the gnoll. As for missions specific to The Rocky Caves, well, it was the usual. Dan had adventurers gain missions from actual military npcs, which involved capturing a certain tower or escorting people to build a new tower. There were also a few scouting, stealth, and assassination missions. Honestly, the event in the gnoll and kobold area was such a large event involving so many facets of war that it let Dan create a multitude of different quests not available in previous areas due to the rigidity or simplicity of their events.
The best part, at least for Dan, was that even if the capture the zones event was widespread, its entire setup had been relatively easy. In all honesty, both of the factions were rather balanced, at least in how they worked, since their spawn points were in their respective bases. This meant Dan didn’t need to worry about creating new spawn nodes. Additionally, both factions would be brought into the mess as functional societies, albeit with different values. Still, that meant that once he had finished creating all kobolds and gnolls and had properly programmed them, the rest would or should hopefully run smoothly.
Of course, Dan still had a lot of general programming to do as to how the system would function with npcs, adventurers, quests, drops, and all that, but it was something he had slowly become an expert on and could do without much issue. If anything, Dan needed to hurry up and start spawning the gnolls and kobolds so he could properly finish everything else.
