Piratecat's dungeon design: fun with tesseracts!

[reiella]

Quick, mostly off topic, question/comment about Tesseracts/Hypercubes.

Does anyone here know who formalized the theory/definition for them?

 

[Squire James]

The module "Baba Yaga's Hut" (a variation of the 1e artifact with chicken legs that still belonged to its original owner) had a something like a tesseract as the interior of the hut. I think it stuck to the Simple Version to save everyone's sanity.

I even remember a "choose your path" book that involved that same Hut, though I don't recall if it retained the same properties.

 

[Thomas Hobbes]

To say this tickles my fancy is a grave understatement. I don't know how I'm going to fit this into my game, but I am, gosh darn it....

Edit: Also thanks to Psion for an extremely interesting article.

 

[Gez]

Without using fancy mathematics, I made a confusing dungeon once.

It was a little demiplane. It consisted of rooms, with several doors, all floating in limboplasmic stuff. Well, the "doors" were in fact transportation devices. Each time you opened one, it created a corridor with a random length, and another door at its end. This door at the end would connect to a random room.

It confused the players, until one figured it out. Then they stayed in a corridor, and opened/closed the door until they arrived in the place they were looking for.

Fortunately, the previous levels of the dungeon were more conventionals. Maze, caverns, insane labs, etc.

 

[dpdx]

As a player, I would demand higher-than-normal (like, double) XP for functioning within this headache of a system.

Killing monster: 200 XP
Killing monster while in a tesseract: 400 XP

And treats at the table. Krispy Kremes, strong coffee and Advil, minimum.

 

[Dark Jezter]

Every now and then, I see an idea on these forums that I just have to steal and use in my own campaign. Thanks for posting this, Piratecat!

I just hope that I don't make my players' heads explode when I unleash this on them.

 

[DMScott]

Quick, mostly off topic, question/comment about Tesseracts/Hypercubes.

Does anyone here know who formalized the theory/definition for them?

Geometrically, it's merely the answer to the question "what is the analogue of a cube in 4-space", which was considered in ancient times. I don't know if it can be credited to any particular person.

For characteristics of tesseracts in fiction, I think they might have started with Robert Heinlein (And he Built a Crooked House, 1940).

 

[Robbert Raets]

Hated the movie. It had it's science wrong, and most of the 'mysteries' were just to confuse the wonky writing.

That said, Piratecat's 8-cube dungeonroom is only the border of the tesseract. Y'know, just like six squares are the border of a cube. (Not bad for someone who hates math, eh? )

 

[Greybar]

Hmm... consider a simple hypercube, where each "room" is a stretch of cave football-sized (or rugby-sized, as you might prefer) in near darkness. You cannot see the relative ceiling very well at any one point, so you don't have the obvious feeling of something being wrong.

This would let the local-ecology thing work pretty well. Parties that hack at everything would take a while to realize what's wrong, whereas ones that stop to talk to the inhabitants might merely thing they are deranged cultists at first.

This also gives you more room to hide the McGuffin at allows exit from the trap.

hmmm

john
p.s. thanks Piratecat.

 

[Castellan]

For characteristics of tesseracts in fiction, I think they might have started with Robert Heinlein (And he Built a Crooked House, 1940).

This is one of my favorite science fiction short stories. If you haven't read it, you should. And I even have a link for you:

http://www.scifi.com/scifiction/classics/classics_archive/heinlein/heinlein1.html

It's not too long, and a very good read.

Enjoy!