Annotated Map Reflection

Shattered Githyanki Stronghold

A giant fortress in the starry skies of the astral plane. 

Area 1: Outside the stronghold

 Inspiration: 

Ref 1: Architecture and floating buildings. 

Ref 2: Space and asteroids/space junk 

Summary:

The party finds themselves transported to the astral plane to one of the few safe 

places you can find yourself, inside of a rock. As they emerge they must learn to overcome 

the alien environment and traverse the giant stronghold before them.

Features:

Force Currents: 

A powerful current that pushes players. While in many places this is a hazard that 

players should avoid so they can keep their footing, they might also be used to move 

elements of the map, or enemies. They can be blocked off by big enough objects. They 

can go in any direction, and can even form a loop.

Destructible environments:

There are breakable walls throughout the landscape. These will reveal extra paths,

 resources and items. The players may have to use the force currents to get enough force 

to break the walls.

Game play:

Mark A: Inside the asteroid

The players will start inside of an asteroid. This asteroid must be broken out of in 

order to progress, this acts as a skill gate for players as they must learn how to break 

open walls with blunt weapons before they can continue.

Mark B: Heart shaped asteroid

While all of the asteroids floating around the main path can be broken with blunt

 weapons or spells, the heart shaped asteroid has some healing potions to reward players 

for breaking things randomly.

Mark C: Wind, in space?

A current blowing upward (relative to the player as there is no direction in space)

 leads to the next hunk of rock the players can traverse. This railroads players into using 

the force currents and finding out that they do no damage while traveling through them, 

and that they cannot resist their push.

Mark D: A little overboard

The party will be pushed past the next rock formation that they’re trying to get to. 

While this would normally spell out being stranded in space or just death, thankfully 

there’s another rock formation to jump from to get to the next rock formation.

Mark E: Rocks in the current

Out in the distance, the party will be able to see some rocks being pushed by the 

force currents. This shows the player that rocks can be pushed through the currents if 

players need them to be. These rocks are also breakable with some gold to reward the 

players’ ferocity towards rocks.

Mark F: More rocks

At the highest platform, there are some rocks. Some of them are big and round, 

and some of them cut like slabs. And more in the middle, there’s a force current that’s 

going in a loop.

Mark G: Blocked door

        The party will find their way blocked by a huge mound of boulders. While they 

could just thug it out and break every single one of them, they can also use the 

environment. The looped force current can be blocked by the rock slabs to make the 

current blow into the door, and then the big rock can be put through the current and 

knock the whole thing down. This teaches them that by blocking them off, force currents

can be manipulated to their advantage.

Mark H: Setting the stage

Inside of the stronghold, the party will immediately be met with a single guard. 

Shouldn’t be an issue for a 4 person lvl 6 party… right. These enemies are designed to 

be super strong and take a lot of resources from the players to beat. This is incentivize 

the players to avoid combat as they go through the fortress.

Area 2: Inside the stronghold

 

Inspiration

Ref 1: Interior design and warm colors

Ref 2: Statue that will definitely be intact by the end of this.

Summary:

Now that the party is in the stronghold, they will find it strangely quiet. However, 

even dealing with the small chance of a powerful githyanki soldier finding them, they will

have to keep the place quiet if they don’t want to get annihilated.

Features:

Stealth:

    Githyanki are patrolling the fortress and the players will run their resources thin, so

they will have several opportunities to be stealthy. They will be able to maneuver stealthily

with cover, and use the element of surprise to end a combat encounter before it can begin.

Game play:

Area A: The coast looks clear

The party emerges, barely alive from their fight to find that the coast is clear… for 

now. If they want, they can take a rest, but it will have to be brief.

Area B: This seems important

         If the party ventures to the little bit of room that broke off to the left, they’ll find an 

extra health potion, and a potion of invisibility.

Area C: Pretty, but precarious

Without even having to go towards it, the party will be able to see a golden statue of 

some gith warrior, and many arrows that must have been shot into that area. Someone 

may have a vantage point of these rocks.

Area D: No talking in the library

Before the party leaves the main room, they can hear someone shuffling about in the 

room to their right. Thankfully there are some bookshelves so the party can sneak up and 

take them down without too much of a fuss. Looks like he was reading a pretty interesting 

book too.

 

Area E-1: Walking right into it

If the party immediately proceeds north, they will find a soldier who was positioned 

on a shabby pillar. They can take down the pillar to help beat them down, but it will still 

be a difficult fight.

Area E-2: Jumping right into it

If the party looks through the library a bit more thoroughly they’ll find a book 

written in a different language, and pulling it will reveal a secret tunnel with some 

goodies in it, and a force current that leads right to the guy on the pillar.

Area F-1: Surely there wouldn’t be more

If the party immediately goes into the next room, they will find 2 more guards. If 

they’re sneaky going forward they might be able to take a peek and get out of there, but 

if they say, send a 300lbs heavily armored fighter through the hall, they’re in for trouble.

Area F-2: Surely, they won’t be missing this

Now that the archer is out of the way, the party can go onto that little asteroid to 

find a golden statue, and a force current that leads directly to a wall with a suspicious 

crack on the outside of it. Pushing that statue into the current will have it smash through 

the wall and the gith soldiers won’t even know what hit them.

Reflection

        When designing my level, I first designed the mechanics I was introducing to the system I already had in place. Destructible environments are fairly easy, but the currents were a little bit trickier as I wanted them to move the players along without it feeling like they were losing control of their characters. After that, I tried to think of ways to mix the mechanics in a final puzzle. This can be seen with the puzzle to get into the stronghold and the statue instant kill in the final part of the level. Once I thought of how to mesh the mechanics together, I tried to think of how to introduce the mechanics to the players in a way where the more intricate ways of using them would make sense. This wasn't too hard since my mechanics were fairly straightforward, but I did have to create a lot of visuals to convey how the mechanics would work together (like the rocks flowing through the force current).

 

        For the first area, I made level progression make sense by making it a straight line(just about). But for the second area, I did have to put a lot of visuals to lead players in the direction of more information, advantageous positions, and secret ways of dealing with enemies.

        I used the specific environment as this is an actual map that I ran through with my dnd players. Originally this was going to be a cave dungeon, but through a... complicated series of events, they ended up in the astral plane. This environment supported the mechanics because the astral plane is full of breakable space junk, and very hostile green people that the players didn't want to get into fights with (the githyanki). The force currents were an original idea, but I feel like they worked pretty good in the setting (aka my smartest player didn't question why the astral plane had wind all of the sudden).

         On my original map, I mainly received criticism on my implementation of force currents as they were more a tool for the players and weren't really perceived as a hazard to the players. I responded to this criticism by making the second force current the players went into almost send them flying into space to put the fear of god into them. As for the second iteration of the map, most of the criticism I got was to add more visual indication for things like how to break walls and how to know where enemies are, but I didn't feel like drawing that on the actual map, so I just threw them in the text descriptions. This feedback was crucial to designing the level going forward because these were things I kind of overlooked because I was stuck in my own vision of how the level worked, which wouldn't have been properly explained/executed on if it weren't for the other perspectives.

        As for circulation patterns in my level, the beginning was made to be completely linear to introduce the party to a completely new dimension. Meanwhile, the second part had the party looping around several times, as taking care of one enemy would open up opportunities that were previously locked away that would expedite dealing with the next enemy. It wasn't quite a circle or a spiral, it was more the players returning to a central area after dealing with the first 2 enemies to use the statue (unless the players had bum rushed through).

        Speaking of the statue, I feel like that was a fun point of interest that ended up becoming a tool that the players could use. A big golden statue in the middle of a space castle would certainly be eye catching, and the arrows surrounding it gave the players information on what kind of enemy was in the area. And then it had the finale of being used as a blunt force weapon, which is always fun.