D&D General Adventurers Go Left?

[Xenonnonex]

Imagine your adventuring party goes down a stone corridor in some dungeon. You reach an intersection where one corridor snakes to the left. The other corridor sharply turns to the right. Both feature sconces of torches at regular intervals.
Where everything is equally enigmatic and dangerous what do you do?

 

[DND_Reborn]

LEFT IS THE WAY OF THE WARRIOR!!!

So, we go right!

 

[ccs]

Make some perception/investigation type checks concerning tracks - how many/wich ways/types.
Send the familiars &/or rogues to scout.

If all else fails I pull out my Wand of Plot Detection

 

[Bacon Bits]

This was maybe 25 years ago now. Myself and another player in our current group used to play in a campaign where some of the players... tended to do a lot of stupid and dangerous things. Not even always intentionally. The players were just that dense sometimes. They were great guys, they were just the type to investigate a strange panel in the dungeon floor by standing on it. Or starting a fight with a heavily telegraphed dragon masquerading as a human wizard... who we were sent to ask for help.

It became a bit of a trope that these PCs would always start out every encounter, room exploration, etc. by going right and then doing something stupid. At one point me and the other player just looked at each other and we said, "We step to the left." Going left became the way to say to each other that we weren't doing something stupid. And it kept our characters alive and saved the party more than once.

So whenever the DM asks, "Which way are you going?" the answer is almost always, "We go left."

 

[Sword of Spirit]

I have a pretty good mental random generator, so I just activate it and go with whichever direction pops into my head.

 

[Charlaquin]

Imagine your adventuring party goes down a stone corridor in some dungeon. You reach an intersection where one corridor snakes to the left. The other corridor sharply turns to the right. Both feature sconces of torches at regular intervals.
Where everything is equally enigmatic and dangerous what do you do?

You ain’t looking right, it’s full of openings, it’s just you ain’t seein’ ‘em.

 

[Prakriti]

Side-scroller video games (Mario, Mega Man, Contra, etc.) have trained me to think that right = end-goal. So I would choose right if I wanted to complete the dungeon as soon as possible, and left if I wanted to explore more.

 

[DND_Reborn]

You ain’t looking right, it’s full of openings, it’s just you ain’t seein’ ‘em.

Ok, AWESOME QUOTE!!! I was JUST thinking of watching the movie today... strange coincidence.

 

[LordEntrails]

With no meaningful reason to choose left over right, the choice is meaningless. Roll a die.

 

[Charlaquin]

Ok, AWESOME QUOTE!!! I was JUST thinking of watching the movie today... strange coincidence.

I almost quoted the sequel comic instead, but I figured no one would recognize it if I did.

 

[DND_Reborn]

I almost quoted the sequel comic instead, but I figured no one would recognize it if I did.

Yeah, you made a great choice going with the quote. Like I said, I know it from the movie (love movies of the 1980's).

 

[Arvok]

I remember an episode of the old (live action) Batman TV show where he found his way out of a maze by always keeping the wall on his right...so go right.

 

[Seramus]

Follow the left is old maze advice. But since dungeons can have monsters, I also clear out rooms as we go.

Why left? So right handed people can keep their weapon free to swing.

 

[Celebrim]

My current players are fond of implementing the right hand rule in situations like this, which I think is ridiculous because it all but guarantees you'll traverse the entire maze, and it doesn't actually guarantee you'll traverse a dungeon.

But I have for some time been having the growing feeling that these sorts of left/right choices are probably the most boring sorts of choices that you can present a party.

 

[Shiroiken]

Follow the left is old maze advice. But since dungeons can have monsters, I also clear out rooms as we go.

Why left? So right handed people can keep their weapon free to swing.

This is actually why tower stairs always rose clockwise. Going down you'd have room to swing your weapon, while going up you'd get caught up on the center.

 

[Oofta]

When my wife and I played LFR, we noticed that a lot of mod writers will assume the party goes right. So we always went left, missing the worst encounters in several mods.

 

[Esker]

I strongly internalized the "always go left" rule from many many hours playing Daggerfall, with its enormous algorithmically generated 3D dungeons, where if you weren't systematic in your exploration you were guaranteed to get hopelessly lost.

This is much less relevant in D&D, but it's imprinted too deeply on my brain. I just DMed White Plume Mountain, where the module is written in a way that seems to assume the party will go right first, and it just seems wrong.

 

[delericho]

Barring some sort of pressure of time (or resources, or otherwise), the optimum route to clear out the dungeon is to be nice and systematic. So always go left.

(Of course, always go right would work just as well, as long as whatever is chosen is done consistently. But I've always done "go left", so... Oh, and @Seramus is right about the handedness issue.)

And of course, as a DM, it is of course incumbent on me to make sure that such systematic approaches aren't optimal - either because of traps designed to move the party against their will, invisible teleporters or other weirdness, or simply by applying one of those pressures I mentioned at the outset.

 

[Blue]

Imagine your adventuring party goes down a stone corridor in some dungeon. You reach an intersection where one corridor snakes to the left. The other corridor sharply turns to the right. Both feature sconces of torches at regular intervals.
Where everything is equally enigmatic and dangerous what do you do?

Without any information it's a meaningless choice.

As a player, I try to find out more information. If nothing, go randomly.

As a DM, I make sure there's something to make it meaningful.

 

[Beleriphon]

In Rogue, and Rogue-likes, I'd always bust out the wand of disintegration (or the old shovel) and go forwards!