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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Gus L" data-source="post: 9687673" data-attributes="member: 7045072">I've been thinking a lot about keying again... perhaps it's my day job moving into highly restricted forms of informational writing, perhaps it's the One Page Dungeon Contest rolling around again, and perhaps writing dungeon keys is just something I find comforting.I wrote a post about it (specifically about interactivity) a few weeks ago that I'll link at the bottom rather then transposing an essay worth of junk here - because my question is more speculative:1. How do you do dungeon keys? 1a. How do you write them (presumably for something you want to share with others to run)? 1b. How do you like them to look when you're reading keys written by others?Personally I tend to be a pretty baroque key writer - and this is not necessarily a good thing - because I tend to design weirder less standard sorts of locations.  This makes it tricky because I also agree that keys can get way way to long very quickly. It's a balancing act ... between interactivity and confusion ... between mechanical use and sticky evocative description ... between wonder producing unexpected imagery and accessible genre standards ... between thematic consistency and novel excitementA real tightrope ... one that 11 year olds can walk pretty well if I remember right ...  so how does everyone else walk it?The post where I dig into a bit more on my thoughts (I'm more interested in yours - only click this link if you are bored - write a response instead if it's either or).[URL unfurl="true"]https://alldeadgenerations.blogspot.com/2025/06/dungeon-design-note-defining.html[/URL]</blockquote>

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