Recent content by Charlaquin

Emulation doesn’t matter. What matters is whether or not navigating the space is meant to be part of the gameplay challenge. If it is, then the players making a map is something they can do to try to make that challenge easier. If it’s not, then there’s no point in the players making a map, and...

It’s not a universal benefit. It may be beneficial in games where successfuly navigating the space is meant to be part of the challenge of the dungeon. It would be quite detrimental in games where that isn’t the case.

Of course it corresponds to a character activity. It’s just that any map the character could make is also imaginary and therefore not very useful for navigation. A map is gained by it, which is a valuable tool in helping navigate the space it depicts.

It definitely is a set of principles that specifically aims to make a dungeon easier to map for the players’ benefit. While it doesn’t sound like what you need, I think it’s a great way to introduce players to this “mapping as part of the challenge of a dungeon” type of gameplay who haven’t...

No worries! Just curious. Regardless, I think you have some compelling thoughts about dungeon design!

Fantastic blog post! I wholeheartedly agree with the dungeon design principles you laid out there. The choice to use Wave Echo cave as an example is also a great one. Did you go on to flesh out the 10 unkeyed rooms in later posts?

The character can’t draw a map, because the character is imaginary. Die rolls are the DM’s way of resolving uncertainty in the outcome of an action the player declares their character is doing. In the case of drawing a map, there’s no uncertainty in the outcome, because the player(s)can...

If you’re mapping as you go, making an accurate map is the challenge. The dungeon may be laid out in such a way as to be deliberately confusing and difficult to map, because navigation is just as much a part of the gameplay as combat is. The map is a tool you use to help understand and navigate...

I think this is the way to go for groups that aren’t into mapping. I think for some modes of play, dungeons themselves are puzzles. The goal of a dungeon is to “solve” the space by exploring it, and the monsters and traps that lie within the dungeon, as well as its very layout, are the...

So, I feel like people are missing some important details here. You don’t have to make the save every night. You only have to make it when you go unconscious while the moon is in the sky. The moon being in the sky only really coincides with the hours most people sleep for a few days a month, and...

Oh, I see. Yeah, that would be the first thing I’d try. I actually already edited the opening post to drop the DCs by 5, because that seems to be the consistent feedback I’m getting.

Easiest fix to what? Yes, well I set the DCs the way I did because I want it to still be pretty likely for high-Charisma characters to shapeshift under the full moon. The idea is for the better approach to be to try to avoid having to make the save in the first place - staying in a Hallowed...

Yeah, this problem has gotten worse for me lately too. I don’t know if there’s anything to be done about it, but figured I’d add my voice to those saying “this is an experience I’m having that makes me less inclined to visit the site.”

I would guess there’s selection bias at work here, because there are certainly RPG communities in which player mapping is very popular. But, yes, my experience has also been that most of the people playing D&D 5e don’t want to do player mapping, and that’s fine. Of course. I think it goes...

For the players, obviously. Characters, in this context, are game mechanical constructs that can’t make decisions or solve puzzles.