So, as a retroclone, ACKS is built with the assumption that the PCs will do a lot of dungeon delving. Do you guys generally actually follow through on that assumption? I ask because prior to ACKS, running dungeon crawls was actually something I only very rarely did.
As such, I have a few direct questions for the forums, but I’d also really appreciate your general insights and philosophies with regard to dungeon design, just to help me get a better feel for the general sphere within which DMs fall.
Also, as usual, when I say “Questions” I actually mean “Guesses at how the rules are meant to be”
So, as I understand it:
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Treasure is added to the map one of two ways: Empty/Trap rooms have a chance of simply possessing treasure, and Lair rooms have treasure per the monster type.
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Lairs can happen one of two ways:
A. Each time a monster room is rolled, there’s a chance it’s a lair room
B. If many monsters of one type are present, then they can reach critical mass and form a lair.
Questions: Some monsters have Lairs that consist of multiple Encounters. For example, A Gnoll Lair is occupied by a Gnoll Warband, which is 1d6 Gnoll Gangs, which are each 1d6 Gnolls. If I’m stocking my dungeon, and I roll a monster room that’s a Gnoll Lair, should I then roll 1d6 to see how many gangs occupy the lair, or should I just gather all the Gnoll Rooms previously rolled in the dungeon around the lair?
If I should roll to see how many gangs there are around the lair, are these gangs all in the lair, (Meaning the party potentially opens the door onto a single huge room with 36 gnolls) or should I distribute them around the lair?
If I should distribute them around the lair, do I create new rooms, or just plop them into the empty rooms previously generated?
Also, while I’m on the subject of humanoid monster encounters, they all seem to come with champions. Are those part of the number rolled, or in addition to? (That is, if I roll my 1d6 for a Gnoll Gang, and I roll a 1, is that a single gnoll champion, or is it one normal gnoll and his champion friend?)
Also, what kinds of things fall under “Unique Rooms?” I mean, I get that it’s meant to be a bit of a wild card, but are your uniques generally good? Bad? High treasure high danger? Tricky puzzle blocking access to the next level of the dungeon?