Lessons to Learn from Minecraft Dungeons

I said in my review of Nethack and other rogue-like or near-rogue-like games that, although I’ve enjoyed Minecraft Dungeons a little, it has its problems. But there’s something it gets partially right. You can always complete a level without worrying about the secrets at all. Most of the secrets are revealed automatically rather than requiring special action. There are flaws in the level design, many of which you’ll see in bad tabletop dungeon-crawl design, too. But since the age range includes young kids who are easily frustrated, the game tries to avoid things that are frustrating.

We could learn something about tabletop RPG module design by thinking about the Minecraft Dungeons level design.

Good points:

• The level consists of special areas connected by plain, randomly generated routes.
• Special areas are visually interesting, inviting players to come explore them.
• Routes sometimes contain loops, allowing choices on how to proceed to the next goal.
• Routes also sometimes contain branches that either dead end or lead to sublevels, some of which may be shortcuts to another part of the map.
• Secrets are usually discovered automatically when an area is entered (not as good for video game level design, but a much better idea for tabletop level design.)
• All “rooms” are decorated in some way, and there are multiple variants on the decoration theme to keep the level from appearing too boring visually.
• Traps (minecarts, lava pools, pits, blades, crushing walls) are almost all clearly visible, giving players plenty of warning.

Bad points:

• Decorations are almost always non-interactive… except when they aren’t.
• Too many branches are dead ends rather than leading to something interesting, like a sublevel.
• There aren’t enough loops, leaving the levels too linear.
• There aren’t enough kinds of special areas, especially those that are puzzles or goal areas.
• Some things aren’t clear, such as when water is safe to enter and when it isn’t.

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My Favorite Games, Part 3: Nethack

Besides Skyrim and Minecraft, another of my favorite games is Nethack. Sort of. I haven’t played much Nethack since discovering those two, in fact I think it’s been several years since I’ve played it. I’ve played some other rogue-likes and dungeon-crawl computer games since then, though, including one for the last couple weeks. It might be worthwhile to examine the genre and share some opinions.

The fundamental features of these kinds of games are:

• An obviously D&D-inspired aesthetic, fighting hordes of monsters to get loot.
• Procedurally generated dungeons, so no two playthroughs are exactly the same.
• Randomized loot with different abilities that can be used to improve combat odds.

Rogue-like games are often distinguished from later dungeon-crawl games by their use of turn-based combat instead of real-time combat and very simple ASCII-based or tile-based graphics. These take their name from Rogue, the first of their kind. Nethack is like a grandson of Rogue, and I’ve played some others: Doom Roguelike, Local Area Dungeon, ADOM, Angband/Moria, Pixel Dungeon. I’ve also played some other dungeon-crawl games that aren’t necessarily rogue-like: Diablo 1 and 2, Torchlight, and now Minecraft Dungeons. But there are certain elements in Nethack that I find much more satisfying, even if I’ve never been able to ascend.

1. A Broader Variety of Monsters to Encounter. Nethack tries to include practically every monster in the AD&D Monster Manual, plus a few more. Modern dungeon-crawlers try to fake this by adding extra traits to a handful of basic monsters, but it’s just not the same.
2. Better Dungeon Variety. Modern dungeon-crawlers may look better, but the fancy tiles are often no different than standard tiles in the same game… if you see an altar with candles on it, that doesn’t necessarily mean that the altar is usable in any way, or that the candles can be affected (extinguished, relit, removed.) And there are substantially fewer special rooms compared to Nethack’s vaults, shops, throne rooms, room full of statues, or other special areas.
3. Modifiable Dungeons. If you make a change on a Nethack dungeon level, the change will always be there (unless a monster changes it to something else.) This includes pushing boulders around, breaking statues, stashing items in chests, engraving words on the floor, or using a pick or wand of digging to make tunnels. Other than a few limited changes triggered by solving puzzles, games like Diablo don’t allow such modifications, and levels typically reset either every time they are visited or after they are solved. There is no persistence.
4. Mysterious Loot. Items found in chests or dropped by monsters may have unknown features that must be identified. Some games (Diablo) implement a crude version of this through a scroll or spell of Identify, but in Nethack, there are ways to identify via experimentation or process of elimination.
5. Non-Keyword-Based Loot Generation. Modern dungeon-crawlers typically “cheat” to get more loot variety by randomly selecting one or more keywords that add effects to an item. So, a “Blazing Sword of Shivers” might set a victim on fire and cause fear. There are actually very few “keywords” in Nethack (Blessed, Cursed, Rustproof, Fireproof, Rusty, maybe a few others,) so most of the variety comes from having a large number of available items. I find the keyword approach pretty boring.

As I said above, I’ve been playing Minecraft Dungeons for a couple weeks now. I enjoyed it a little at first, but it has its problems. I agree with maybe 60-75% of the complaints made in the Honest Game Trailer, but the one that really stands out as a missed opportunity is that there’s absolutely no mining in Minecraft Dungeons. Or crafting, but the mining complaint really stands out, since as I said above, Nethack allows mining. They didn’t necessarily need the effects to be persistent (Minecraft Dungeons levels reset each time they are visited,) but it would have been nice and in keeping with their brand if there were at least some areas that could be mined with a pick to create shortcuts or uncover secrets. And really, the level variety is so low, it becomes pretty repetitive very quickly, especially after beating the Arch-Illager the first time.

So, playing Minecraft Dungeons has just made me want to play Nethack again. I’m spoiled now, so I may wind up going with Vulture, and even cave in and pay for the Steam version instead of learning how to compile it myself for free.

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My Favorite Games, Part 2: Minecraft

In my first post on which video games were the most like old school RPGS, I said I had one answer that would probably surprise people. The game I think has more of an old school feel than Skyrim?

Minecraft.

It’s surprising to some because Minecraft doesn’t seem to follow any of the rules people associate with D&D, tabletop RPGs in general, or even computer RPGs. There are no classes. You don’t gain additional powers or fight better when you gain levels. Monsters are pretty simple. There are no stories to unravel, no NPCs sending you on quests. There are plenty of monsters to fight, but fighting monsters isn’t really what the game is about, and even on the hardcore setting, it’s possible to avoid monsters almost entirely.

But anyone who closely read my post on Skyrim probably isn’t surprised at all. I said that what I liked the most about Skyrim, and what makes me feel it’s closer to old school tabletop RPGs than many other video games, is the immersion, especially immersion in the world. When you combine Skyrim with a mod like iHUD, you can pretty much ignore game stats and quest pointers and just play as if you were a person living in this fantasy world of Tamriel.

Minecraft actually feels way more immersive than that, to me.

First, the world is huge and procedurally generated. It’s not designed to look like a carefully-crafted adventure area that funnels you towards various story goals. You can play it any way you want.

People who play in survival mode often play it like a wilderness exploration and settlement simulator: find a good spot for a camp, build temporary defenses, and then start setting up farms and planning your house. The recent upgrade to villages helps to expand this playstyle, turn it into a colony-building game.

Other people focus more on treasure and trophy hunting. Dungeons and temples in Minecraft are no where near as elaborate as in computer RPGs, and the much larger and varied mineshafts, strongholds, and fortresses lack built-in storylines, but there are also no limits on what you can do in such dungeons and locales. Aside from the fundamental limits of the game as a whole, you can do anything you imagine: find the entrance and explore in a linear fashion, dig shortcuts, clear out the dungeon or leave it intact, even take it over and rebuild it. When oceans were expanded, shipwrecks, sunken ruins, and buried treasure expanded the treasure-hunting options. And there are some random dungeon and structure mods or datapacks that add even more variety to the kinds of adventures you can have.

Can’t stand to play a game that’s so open-ended? Need that story line to guide your roleplay? There are people who have made adventure or puzzle maps that work more like what you’d expect. Which leads to another point: Minecraft is easily more mod-able by the average player than almost any other video game. Not just with mods written in a computer programming language… the game keeps expanding its data-driven features, making it extremely easy for people to load in their own custom structures, trigger events, or alter the way existing game features work.

I played something like 1,200 to 1,500 hours of Skyrim over the past six or so years. I have no hard numbers for Minecraft, but I started playing almost five years ago and have pretty much played every day. I’m certain I’ve played way more Minecraft than Skyrim.

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My Favorite Games, Part 1: Skyrim

In a thread elsewhere about which video games were the most like old school RPGS, I had two main suggestions, one of which might be surprising. I thought it might be worth it to discuss them, starting with the less surprising one: Skyrim.

I don’t think Skyrim is the most like old school RPGs because there’s a lot of dungeon crawling, or because it’s so dangerous. I think it’s the immersion. Not in the usual sense of immersing in a character, but in the sense of immersing in a world. That’s why I like OD&D. It’s the most immersive of the RPGs, and that’s why I enjoy Skyrim.

It’s not as immersive as it could be. There’s the on-screen compass pointing to things you haven’t discovered yet, and the annoying HUD. I fix that by using the iHUD mod. There’s the annoying on-screen notifications that you’ve “begun” a quest, whether you actually chose to start it or not. I hope I find a mod to suppress that as well. But at least you do start in a world where you can choose to head in almost any direction and just react to what happens around you.

There are other elements relevant to old school play. For example, Skyrim follows the empty room principle of dungeon design. It may not seem like it, because there’s a lot of clutter in each room: debris, embalming tools, linen wraps, ruined books, furniture. But there are several rooms that have no monster in them, and some even with no treasure, or no significant treasure… perhaps too many with no significant treasure, actually; almost every locked chest I open turns out to have a handful of coins and some cheap items rather than something worth taking.

I’d also say there are more puzzle traps in Skyrim than in other video games. And a lot of non-puzzle traps that you can avoid or be prepared for if you are observant.

But for me, there’s another video game even more immersive than Skyrim… but I’ll talk about that next week.