Darkfall Dungeon Design Competition - Human Area

As mentioned when Ole Martin Kristiansen's entry "Archaist" was proclaimed the winner of our first Dungeon Design Competition, we selected ten runners-up to his entry.

A little about our selection process: You will notice, when we publish all of the submissions, that several outstanding entries didn't make the final cut. The dungeons that we've selected here are not the "best" overall, but they are the best for Darkfall. We reserve the right to use elements from the remaining entries, giving credit where credit is due.

All of the following contributions contain elements or ideas which we want to include in the game.

In random order:

From Mars’ untitled contribution:

Inspired by this entry, we want to create an area near Dalriada where the Allegiance War is still raging. The area was the site of an obscure but viciously fought battle, which took place in the final month of the war. Now, the combatants rise as undead every nightfall, forced to continue their struggle. We are going to call the commander of the church forces Velctor, in honour of Mars’ original design. Whether or not the area will be a mine remains to be decided.

From Ross Stamper’s Monastery of the Lady:

We would like to make a cycle of quests in Sanguine involving an upper-class organisation conspiring against the crown. They have close ties to the church leadership in Dalriada, and more tenuous ties to High Priest Verana, though it remains to be decided whether this can be proved by questing players. The leader of the group will be called Theonia, as in Ross’s design, and she may or may not be an undead.

From Redsand's Ice City of Tor:

There is a wealth of good ideas in this description, and we’ll make sure to consult it when creating ice city locales. We especially like the the entrance section, which we might implement just as Redsand described it.

From Dennis Latz’ first proposition:

We’d like to create an an abandoned Mercian colony on one of Agon’s many small or medium-sized islands. The island should have a jungle climate and be inhabited by vicious and well-organised humanoids, like hobgoblins or minotaurs. The colony was overrun a few months ago, and while much has been looted or destroyed, some signs of the slaughter are still visible. Quests leading to the colony should involve worried relatives or investors.

From Jeremy Townsend’s Refuge of the Dead God:

We plan to make a dungeon buried under Dalriada which contains the ruins of an ancient Imric temple. This was the most important church in the central Imric kingdom, and Ardar, Rieda and Mayna were all worshipped here. Today only the underground levels remain.

From Josh Bauman’s Forest Dungeon:

There will be treetop dungeons in the mirdain homeland, Mirendil. We’d like to make them pretty much as Josh describes them, with dense layers of fir-branches creating a dark, claustrophobic atmosphere. I suppose it’s a bit of a challenge, graphics-wise, but if we can make cool and believable treetop dungeons, they should become something of a standard in Mirendil.

From Thomas Manhart’s untitled contribution:

A written statement such as this could be found in the royal archives, indicating the location and nature of a distant, hard-to-find mercian dungeon. Players who have read it should have a distinct advantage when preparing their visit.

From Francois-X. Sarrazin’s contribution:

The layout of this dungeon is wonderful, and we might very well create one that is identical to it or resembles it closely. The adventure within, however, could turn out to be something which is less ambitious than what Francois envisaged.

From Rand Elmquist’s Aur's Retreat:

We plan to create a lush, evergreen garden as an adventure area, perhaps in an arctic region, or deep within a desert. When creating this area, we might very well use elements from Rand’s description.

From Airius Droc’s The Buried Tower of Penshire:

There will be several cities on Agon where people with an ”alternative” alignment can walk about freely. One such place is Silvertown, an independent city-state and notorious pirate’s den off the Mercian coast.

We also like Airius’s ideal of having dynamic quests, which evolve and change with player actions, and we will strive to include this aspect in as many quest designs as possible.