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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7323735" data-attributes="member: 42582">Well, I offered some reasons for thinking they might be different, and tried to bring these out further in the discussion with [MENTION=23935]Nagol[/MENTION].In a dungeon, the parameters of the puzzle are very confined. There is a maze. The maze has &quot;nodes&quot; (rooms) whose contents are largely static until the players interact with them (in the fiction, this means opening doors, dealing with inhabitants, taking loot, etc). This means that players can solve the puzzle over time by first scouting and divining; then raiding; using different equipment load-outs, spell load-outs, etc for each stage. (Gygax gives detailed advice about this in the final section of his PHB before the appendices.)Once the setting changes to something like a wilderness or a city, the parameters change dramatically if the setting is going to be even remotely verisimilitudinous. So techniques that worked in the dungeon context - obtaining information by way of sheer fictional positioning and free roleplay (&quot;We open the door and look in&quot; &quot;We lift the lid of the chest&quot; &quot;How many goblins can we see through the peephole?&quot;) - become far less feasible. The players become far more dependent on the GM to dispense information (eg in the form of rumours; encounters and interactions with various city inhabitants; etc). Call of Cthulhu adventures, for instance, aren't puzzle-solving like classic D&amp;D. They're much closer to the GM telling the players a story. (Which isn't necessarily a bad thing - I quite enjoy CoC one-shots with a good GM - but it's a different thing.)Well, the point of the thread is (in part) to ask whether it is? If you think it is, tell me about it!I find it a bit hard to imagine how it would work - it seems like the GM would map the mountains, then draw the &quot;old map&quot;, then arrange for the PCs to find the old map, and then the players would delcare (as actions) that they follow the map - but maybe that's not what you have in mind. Eg maybe the map is the puzzle, and once it's been deciphered the actual journey through the mountains is a matter of a minute or two of narration.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 7323735, member: 42582"] Well, I offered some reasons for thinking they might be different, and tried to bring these out further in the discussion with [MENTION=23935]Nagol[/MENTION]. In a dungeon, the parameters of the puzzle are very confined. There is a maze. The maze has "nodes" (rooms) whose contents are largely static until the players interact with them (in the fiction, this means opening doors, dealing with inhabitants, taking loot, etc). This means that players can solve the puzzle over time by first scouting and divining; then raiding; using different equipment load-outs, spell load-outs, etc for each stage. (Gygax gives detailed advice about this in the final section of his PHB before the appendices.) Once the setting changes to something like a wilderness or a city, the parameters change dramatically if the setting is going to be even remotely verisimilitudinous. So techniques that worked in the dungeon context - obtaining information by way of sheer fictional positioning and free roleplay ("We open the door and look in" "We lift the lid of the chest" "How many goblins can we see through the peephole?") - become far less feasible. The players become far more dependent on the GM to dispense information (eg in the form of rumours; encounters and interactions with various city inhabitants; etc). Call of Cthulhu adventures, for instance, aren't puzzle-solving like classic D&D. They're much closer to the GM telling the players a story. (Which isn't necessarily a bad thing - I quite enjoy CoC one-shots with a good GM - but it's a different thing.) Well, the point of the thread is (in part) to ask whether it is? If you think it is, tell me about it! I find it a bit hard to imagine how it would work - it [I]seems[/I] like the GM would map the mountains, then draw the "old map", then arrange for the PCs to find the old map, and then the players would delcare (as actions) that they follow the map - but maybe that's not what you have in mind. Eg maybe the map is the puzzle, and once it's been deciphered the actual journey through the mountains is a matter of a minute or two of narration. [/QUOTE]

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