Nice thoughts regarding towers; probably haven't used enough of them myself to reach this conclusion, but it's a good one. Last tower adventure I wrote had two ground level entries and (IIRC) a way in through the top. Didn't matter much, because the PCs had their noses bloodied badly on the first floor.
Oh I am definitely in the minority opinion on towers. Probably even more so than holding tombs in pretty high esteem. The main rub for me that towers need to do one of two things to be interesting. Either they need to be part of some greater structure (a castle, city, anything to give some variety) or they need make their interiors interaction heavy enough that the inherent linearity doesn't matter. The towers that tend to get held in high regard usually do something to completely subvert the entire structure. Tower of the Stargazer comes to mind, lots of ways around inside, highly interactable and dense etc etc. But towers that don't do this tend to get a free pass to "acceptable", even if the map is actually kind of boring and sparse. The reasoning being "It's a tower, of course it's linear." Whereas if a tomb dares to have a symmetrical layout, it's straight into the trash bin for it. Even if the rooms of each side are completely different and interesting in their own right.
It's a pet peeve, and one I doubt many people share. But it would be dishonest not to bring it up in a format like this.
Nice thoughts regarding towers; probably haven't used enough of them myself to reach this conclusion, but it's a good one. Last tower adventure I wrote had two ground level entries and (IIRC) a way in through the top. Didn't matter much, because the PCs had their noses bloodied badly on the first floor.
; )
Oh I am definitely in the minority opinion on towers. Probably even more so than holding tombs in pretty high esteem. The main rub for me that towers need to do one of two things to be interesting. Either they need to be part of some greater structure (a castle, city, anything to give some variety) or they need make their interiors interaction heavy enough that the inherent linearity doesn't matter. The towers that tend to get held in high regard usually do something to completely subvert the entire structure. Tower of the Stargazer comes to mind, lots of ways around inside, highly interactable and dense etc etc. But towers that don't do this tend to get a free pass to "acceptable", even if the map is actually kind of boring and sparse. The reasoning being "It's a tower, of course it's linear." Whereas if a tomb dares to have a symmetrical layout, it's straight into the trash bin for it. Even if the rooms of each side are completely different and interesting in their own right.
It's a pet peeve, and one I doubt many people share. But it would be dishonest not to bring it up in a format like this.