Short blog post—having a lot of inspiration and want to keep the magic rolling!
Today I want to highlight the usefulness of using hallways that are only five feet (one movemenet square) wide.
The first time I built a dungeon that contained a long narrow hallway with a few attached rooms (ala The Raid), my more tactical players were very very frustrated. They didn't feel they had room to maneuver or make "interesting" combat decisions. Instead, they fought a mind flayer in an exceedingly awkward manner. The door to a room was held by a corpse piloted by an intellect devoured corpse and the mind flayer comfortably stayed back—firing psychic blasts. The Party was overwhelmingly melee based and were blocking each other from attacking anything. It was chaos.
One character died and it was the closest I've even been to having a TPK.
Afterwards, some of my players commented that they wished the hallways were simply 10 feet wide to allow them to have "options for tactics." Oh, and the doors should have been 10 feet wide. That way the Party could just pass through and hit the mind flayer.
I disagree.
Not every dungeon (read: space where combat could occur) was designed for combat. Think about how many narrow hallways some buildings have. There are numerous reasons that those hallways were built that way. This should signal that this area is something different. Something that just doing the bog-standard attack action will place you at a disadvantage. It is akin to fighting during inclement weather, in an anti-magic sphere location, or other obstacles that force a tactic change. The Party should never be able to use the same operating procedure in every fight. There is no drama to be had there.
One way to prevent that—is to prevent their movement.
This fight is made much more tense because of the narrow cramped hallways!
Sometimes you want the Party to be cramped. Create the feeling that progressing forward means marching order matters. Sure this can be handled through traps, but fights also spice things up.
Monsters should also take advantage of this. After all, the dungeon is their home. It should reflect their lifestyle. For example, a dragon whose breath comes in a line may have a hallway of similar dimensions to pre-attack the Party before they reach its lair. Just a opening salvo. To scare away (or potential kill) intruders. Sure the Party could heal and recover from any damage taken. But a message is sent. The dungeon is hostile.
All that said: use narrow hallways! Make the dungeon space hostile to force tactic changes even if the players may initially feel frustrations thier standard operating procedure is disrupted. Finally, keep in mind that whatever dwells in that space should use it to their advantage!
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