Creating an Escher-like room

[hafrogman]

I'd suspect coherent rules would defeat the purpose of such a place where earth and sky is not always parallel.

A random thought: Character chooses 'intended move', DM rolls on this chart, adding +1 if the character is running.

You could use a similar concept to plot out a slightly more ordered area, not quite as strange as Labyrinth, but a little easier to comprehend.

Divide the whole space into eight different zones. Laid out something like shown in the attachment. There's also six different directions gravity can be for you, personally.

Say you start out in Gravity 1 (G1), Zone 1.
From each point you can either interact with your own zone, or try and reach one of the others. You have a few different exit strategies.

Stairs
Doors
Jump

Stairs move you diagonally and change your level. Stairs connect Zones 1 and 7, 2 and 8, etc. Your gravity stays the same.

Doorways send you somewhere random.

Gravity Orientation 1d6: Zone 1d8.

You can try and cheat the system by jumping down, up or across to some other zone, but if you fail you end up in a random point (as if through a door) and take falling damage.

 

[Walknot]

You could draw a typical room of 6-sides out onto 6-maps. But, whichever entry the party came thru, that is the only side you would show, at first. Then verbally describe the room (good luck). Now, when someone goes up the stairs and through the doorway etc... then they appear to the other party members on the wall or ceiling or whatever.

Could be the party discovers this before an encounter. Or, could be the enemy shows off these attributes as they attack and the party discovers it that way. Or, there is no enemy and you simply use the room as a skill challenge, or a trap. Or a combination.

But, what would explain such a strange room, that is, for lower level or heroic characters?

 

[jmucchiello]

The most important thing to remember about these rooms is that they really don't have rules. In fact, be inconsistent. Maybe entering a portal while tugging your ear means you enter oriented 90 degrees off from everyone else's orientation. If the player calls you on the inconsistency, have him make a Sanity check. The more a PC overthinks the way it should work, the more likely they are to become insane, right?

There's a good reason to do this: You don't want to spend the session discussion multidimensional mathematics do you? Odds are there's a player who is better at it than you are. Instead, the goal is to do whatever it is you are doing here and get out. Unless your group is kind that likes to maneuver though hedge mazes for hours, you don't want to spend a lot of time on the How of the Escher room.

 

[Umbran]

The tesseract is a reasonably mappable object that might help you with this.

 

[grodog]

Nice link, thanks Umbran

 

[The Grumpy Celt]

I wonder if this could be linked up with the idea of that goblin collider.

Or maybe it only becomes an Escher-like room after they use the goblin collider.

 

[Phaezen]

I once ran an adventure on the inside surfaces of a tesseract, I will dive through my notes and see if I can find it again. But bassically I mapped it out as 48 surfaces with interlinking doors. Makes a nice prison.

Phaezen