We go left!

[Man in the Funny Hat]

Couldn't tell you specifically when we started but perhaps 2 years after 1E came out it became S.O.P. in our group to go left. The mantra was actually, "Left! ALWAYS left!" which would be chanted every time a DM would actually ask us which way we wanted to go. Oh, sure, occasionally there would be some overriding circumstance where we would break procedure and want to choose another option (e.g., you always choose the big double doors over other options) but that mantra only failed us ONCE.

We had taken a road trip as a group to attend a con and we'd signed up for a tournament. There were several stories attached to that one tournament we were in but pertaining to the side-track at hand in the dungeon there was a maze section where somehow the choice to always go left wound up sending us in circles, I think because there was a rotating or teleporting section in there somewhere.

That single anomoly aside, it saved endless hours of pointless debate and frustration to have that as part of our S.O.P. I think there was even reasonable justification for it being Left instead of Right, but I can't recall what it was anymore.

 

[Janx]

In absence of any information of one direction being better than the other, my party usually (but not always) chooses Right. Why?

"...Because Evil is LEFT-HANDED."

True story.

As somebody recounted to me, left handed in latin was something like "sinistair" and right handed was some other similar "star" suffixed word. the gist is, sinistair got morphed into sinister.

Ultimately, the concept of being left handed became associated with being bad or sinister.

 

[Beginning of the End]

My group generally goes left, but they're not religious about it. I don't design for it, although they're constantly paranoid that I do.

What is true, however, is that I seem to have a tendency to put the goal in the middle of the map. I hadn't really been aware of it until this group spent multiple sessions circling left through entire dungeon complexes before finally spiraling in to their destination.

 

[MerricB]

I suppose then that I should specify that turning in the same direction every time will eventually solve any maze which can be reduced to a two-dimensional map on a sheet of paper. That, I think, is correct.

Assuming you're trying to get to the centre of the maze rather than out the other side, it actually doesn't. Loops cause great problems in mazes.

+--+--+
|  |  |
|  *  |
|     |
+--+--+
   ^

Start at the hat (^), and - always turning left - attempt to reach the centre of the maze. Interestingly, always turning right also doesn't reach the centre (*).

Cheers!

 

[Janx]

Assuming you're trying to get to the centre of the maze rather than out the other side, it actually doesn't. Loops cause great problems in mazes.

+--+--+
|  |  |
|  *  |
|     |
+--+--+
   ^

Start at the hat (^), and - always turning left - attempt to reach the centre of the maze. Interestingly, always turning right also doesn't reach the centre (*).

Cheers!

You have to include in the process a identification of "we've been here" and a retrace to the last fork and choose the next left after our previous choice.

Marking the wall at each choice would help in this identification.

In doing this, the person would return to the starting point, see the mark, and then retrace to the fork they passed, and choose the next path choice.

The wall mark method would also help in identifying if portal ways was causing some sort of loop, because the PC would see "we've been here before".

Obviously, something messing with the marks would cause a problem, but then, that's the point of messing with marks...

 

[Raven Crowking]

As somebody recounted to me, left handed in latin was something like "sinistair" and right handed was some other similar "star" suffixed word. the gist is, sinistair got morphed into sinister.

Ultimately, the concept of being left handed became associated with being bad or sinister.

You are perhaps thinking of sinister (from which we get sinister) and dexter (from which we get dexterity), terms in heraldry derived from Latin?

 

[TroyXavier]

Going left was also a trend for our group. We used to laugh whenever a DM/GM asked which way we'd go. "To the left is instant death, to the right freedom. Which way do you go? We turn backwards and go to the left"

 

[MerricB]

As somebody recounted to me, left handed in latin was something like "sinistair" and right handed was some other similar "star" suffixed word. the gist is, sinistair got morphed into sinister.

"Dextera" or "dextra" is the right hand. (Dexter = right)
"Sinistra" is the left hand. (Sinister = left)

Cheers!

 

[Filcher]

American. We always take the "leftmost left."

 

[Lanefan]

Imagine you are in a 'maze', but this maze only has 5 identical rooms with no way to tell the difference from each of them, or direction.

Now each room as 4 walls, and on each wall is a door that opens into a hallway which leads to the door of another room. Only one door may be opened at one time.

However, what you do not know is that these hallways are in fact not actually hallways, but rather magical portals you pass through.

So you enter the 'maze', and take the door straight ahead, but you actually come out the door that was to your left when you entered the maze. You continue straight ahead across the room you just walked through, and go to another door that leads to another room. And so on and so forth. The rooms do not line up, or have any actual relation to each other, (Or themselves) in 3D space. You travel in a straight line without turning, but you keep crossing over your own path.

Now, if that doesn't mess with your head enough, think of this. You enter the maze and walk across the first room and take the door right in front of you. You come out the door that had been to your left when you first entered. However instead of turning around you realize you forgot something so you turn right around to go back out.

Only the portals depend on which direction you enter them from. Instead of taking what was the 'left' door back and coming out the door that was 'in front' of you, you have walked out the door that was to the 'right' when you first entered.

Make it 9 rooms instead of 5, two levels instead of one (9 rooms each) and take out the intervening hallways and you've just perfectly described the old module "Lost Island of Castanamir".

Lanefan