Worlds of Design: The Lost Art of Being Lost

If you’ve played tabletop RPGs long enough, you’ve probably been in an adventure where your party got lost. Yet it’s much less likely to happen nowadays.

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Picture courtesy of Pixabay.

You got to go down a lot of wrong roads to find the right one. - Bob Parsons
If you’ve played tabletop RPGs long enough, you’ve probably been in an adventure where your party got lost, or cut off from retracing their path home (which amounts to the same thing). Remember how exciting it was? Getting lost is a common occurrence in actual military operations. Yet it’s much less likely to happen in tabletop RPGs nowadays.

Fog of War​

In the first years of playing Dungeons & Dragons, many of my most memorable adventures were ones where we got lost in a place with few pathways, such as a dungeon. The cause could be as simple as a one-way door, or a rotating room. But this has changed, and it’s due in no small part to computer role-playing games (CRPGs).

In D&D’s early days, one of the fundamental roles of any party was the mapper. The idea being that the dungeon was concealed through fog of war, in which games simulate ignorance of strength and position of friends and foes. A common staple of board games, it was carried over into wargames and D&D. A mapper was an out-of-game role for a player (although presumably, the player’s character was also creating a map) so that retreat and further exploration were possible.

Fog of war changed how D&D was played. Being lost or cut off from home requires a different mode of play. In typical play you can go through an encounter or two, then stop (or go back home) to recover before you continue. But when you’re lost, you have to husband your resources much more carefully (depends on the game rules, of course).

Fog of war has a lot of fiddly tactical elements, not the least of which being that it requires keeping players in the dark. Dungeon masters must keep track of what’s happening with two separate maps, one representing the “real” dungeon and one representing what the PCs have explored. If the game is procedurally generated, it may be that even the DM doesn’t know the layout of the “real” dungeon, creating it as the players explore it.

This is a lot of work, which is why when the concept was ported to CRPGs, mapping was offloaded to the program.

Computers Take Over​

The Dunjonquest series of games were one of the first to replicate dungeon exploring, using numbered rooms and text descriptions that were read separately in a booklet resembling a pen-and-paper adventure module. But it wasn’t long before games just mapped everything for you. As computer power increased, virtual worlds got bigger, as did the opportunity for players to get lost. Many CRPGs provide waypoints that show the direction, if not the distance, to the next quest.

This led to the conventional wisdom that CRPGs should “always make sure the player knows what to do/where to go next.” It’s a form of handholding, making sure that players don’t get frustrated, that derives in part from the prevalence of free-to-play (F2P) games. If a free game is frustrating, players may quit it and (easily) find another to play.

The design objective in free-to-play video games is not to challenge the player(s), but to engage them in an electronic playground long enough that they’ll decide to spend money on micro transactions, or other methods of acquiring the player’s money. In a game that costs the player nothing to procure, anything that’s frustrating tends to be avoided, except when that frustration is a slow progress “pain point” that the player can fix by spending some money to speed things up. Negative consequences are avoided.

This approach can surprised players accustomed to CRPG-style exploration.

The Fun of Getting Lost​

The same factors that led to CRPGs streamlining mapping affect tabletop games: lack of players, lack of time, and getting players up to speed quickly so they can play.

While getting lost can be fun, not everyone wants their first play experience to be wandering around in the dark. New players expect to jump into the action, at least in part because so many other forms of entertainment allow them to do just that.

This of course depends on the style of play. Players might not be as frustrated in sessions where the GM is telling a story, as players will regard getting lost as a necessary part of the story. In a story, getting lost is exciting and mysterious. But (as GM) if you’re “writing” a story for your players, you have to control when they get lost, you can’t let it happen randomly. And if they’re used to you guiding them through a story, they’ll lose that excitement and mystery of getting lost, because they’ll know you’re in control.

Consider the Secret Door​

Whether or not a DM uses secret doors encapsulates if characters can get lost in a dungeon. If the DM is telling a story, a secret door is more of an obstacle—the PCs will presumably find it no matter what to progress the story. If the DM is running the game as a simulation in which the PCs’ dungeoneering skills are tested, the secret door may not be found at all and the room behind it may never be discovered.

Where this becomes an issue if players think they’re playing a story game but the DM is running a simulation. A dislike of secret doors by novices in D&D, sometimes termed by players as a “dirty GM trick,” represents the conflicting approaches. Some players want clear paths instead of obstacles. They’re not interested in allowing secret doors to perform their primary function: rewarding players for skillful dungeoneering.

Video gamers learn what they "should" do next. Board gamers of the Eurostyle learn the Generally Accepted Best Move in This Situation, and other players may actually get mad at you if you play differently! (This is partly a consequence of "multiple paths to victory" that everyone must follow to solve the puzzle of the parallel competition.) TTRPGers have much more "freedom," fortunately.

If your campaign is a simulation, then getting characters lost is a good way to challenge and excite players. If your game is a playground, or a storytelling session, the players might not react favorably.

Your Turn: Do you allow parties to get lost in your games?
 

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Lewis Pulsipher

Lewis Pulsipher

Dragon, White Dwarf, Fiend Folio

Hussar

Legend
That's not my fault. There is always longer, up to the lifespans of the people involved; and as long as the GM is still keen then real-life player turnover wihtin a campaign isn't a problem.

Advising people to assume campaigns will last indefinitely until-unless told otherwise puts a vastly different set of expectations on to the campaign and how it might progress.

Assume forever and you just might get there. Assume less and you never will.
Assume forever and you are almost guaranteed to fail. That's the problem. Giving advice to people that amounts to, "Well, it's okay to take things really slowly because your campaigns might last 5 or 10 years" is pretty cold comfort to the vast majority of players who never see a campaign longer than 2 years. We know that this is true. This has always been true. Campaigns that last more than 2 years are the outlier. As in the very, very tiny minority outlier.

So, should we base game design on that tiny minority of gamers whose lives are stable enough that they can actually have a 5-10 year campaign or should the game be based on the other 99% of gamers who will never see a campaign that long?

Good grief, if I'm 19 years old, just getting into a new campaign, the odds that I could keep playing that campaign 3 years later are staggeringly small.

Who in their right mind commits to a 10 year campaign? Never minding the massive real life impediments piling up against that sort of campaign, let's also not forget that there are lots and lots of gamers that have no interest in playing the same campaign for that kind of length. There's a very good reason why we've seen Adventure Path campaigns as the de facto standard for D&D for almost twenty years now. Between what Paizo started and what now both Paizo and WotC do, the idea that you'd actually play that same character in the same campaign, for thousands and thousands of hours is, to me, mind bogglingly boring. I couldn't stand doing that. My current Candlekeep campaign is coming up on the two year mark in May and we will very likely be finished by then.

Those character's stories are done. I'm already one foot into the next campaign to be honest. I want to finish this one out and I'm hoping it will be glorious. But, the notion that I'd keep this same campaign going for the next eight years? No thanks. I have zero interest. There are too many other stories, other settings, other ideas that I want to explore.

And this little quote right here:

as long as the GM is still keen then real-life player turnover wihtin a campaign isn't a problem.

Is pretty much the complete opposite of what I want in a campaign as a player or a DM. If the campaign isn't about those characters, then why am I bothering to play it? If my character is so superfluous to the campaign, that I (the player) can be replaced by another player and another character and the campaign just carries on, then, well, to me, there's not much point in me even sitting at the table. Who cares? My character is of so little importance to the campaign that he or she can be replaced at any time? Forget that. The characters ARE the campaign. That's the whole point of play. Otherwise, I might as well just read a book about someone's setting since my character is just one generic piece that can be replaced by any other generic piece. No thanks.
 

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Lanefan

Victoria Rules
Good grief, if I'm 19 years old, just getting into a new campaign, the odds that I could keep playing that campaign 3 years later are staggeringly small.
Your community and mine are worlds apart, then, as most games I knew of (or still know of) round here ran much longer than that.
Who in their right mind commits to a 10 year campaign?
As a DM? I do, every time I start one. Commit to ten, and see how far it gets (current one coming up on fifteen). As a player? Commit to "as long as I feel like playing" and see how far I get, knowing that if-when I eventually leave the campaign is (or I sure hope it is!) quite capable of carrying on without me.
Never minding the massive real life impediments piling up against that sort of campaign, let's also not forget that there are lots and lots of gamers that have no interest in playing the same campaign for that kind of length.
Who said anything about playing the same character all that time? Certainly not me. :)
Those character's stories are done. I'm already one foot into the next campaign to be honest. I want to finish this one out and I'm hoping it will be glorious. But, the notion that I'd keep this same campaign going for the next eight years? No thanks. I have zero interest. There are too many other stories, other settings, other ideas that I want to explore.
Other stories and ideas can be explored within the same campaign/setting - no reason to limit it to just one story. Other settings, I'll grant, aren't as easy.
And this little quote right here:



Is pretty much the complete opposite of what I want in a campaign as a player or a DM. If the campaign isn't about those characters, then why am I bothering to play it? If my character is so superfluous to the campaign, that I (the player) can be replaced by another player and another character and the campaign just carries on, then, well, to me, there's not much point in me even sitting at the table.
I'd have thought the point of sitting at the table was to enjoy, and contribute to, what happens in the moment.

As a player, the campaign is there to enjoy until such time as I (for whatever reason) end up leaving; and who knows - it might still be there to enjoy again if-when I end up coming back. As a DM, I'll run it as long as anyone wants to play in it, and if players come and go over time due to whatever reasons then so be it, the show goes on.

And what about a West Marches type of campaign, where you don't even always know who's going to show up to play at any given session, never mind which character(s) they'll choose to play if-when they do.
Who cares? My character is of so little importance to the campaign that he or she can be replaced at any time? Forget that. The characters ARE the campaign.
The party is the campaign...or parties, if there's more than one in the campaign/setting. The characters that make up those parties come and go, sticking around for varying lengths of time which can range from a few sessions to several years before dying, retiring, or otherwise leaving play either temporarily or permanently either due to player choice or in-game effects.
That's the whole point of play. Otherwise, I might as well just read a book about someone's setting since my character is just one generic piece that can be replaced by any other generic piece. No thanks.
Following that logic to its conclusion leads me to think that if your character unrevivably dies off you'd leave the game rather than roll up a replacement, which seems a bit much.
 

Following that logic to its conclusion leads me to think that if your character unrevivably dies off you'd leave the game rather than roll up a replacement, which seems a bit much.
I mean, there is a strong chance I would do that. The story I was interested in telling is now unrecoverable. Why settle for its leavings?
 


Thomas Shey

Legend
WotC's surveys and data collection methods since then haven't exactly overwhelmed me with confidence in their accuracy or completeness, never mind people still point to that 1999 survey when talking about "how people play the game".

Yes WotC do lots of online surveys, and at face value that's a good thing. But the questions in those surveys are frequently biased, and we're never told which responses are kept and which are tossed due to arbitrary criteria.

So, we're back to concluding that WOTC changed all these things just for--reasons.
 

Thomas Shey

Legend
Getting past a death knight's fortress: Not actually lost, you just don't know how to get to where you want to go. You know you are at the death knight's fortress.
Dealing with an elder brain: Has nothing to do with being lost, other than that they weren't on the path they intended to take, which can be caused by any number of things.
Dealing with a demon lord: ditto.
Dealing with a doppelganger eliminating NPCs: totally unrelated to being lost, as this can apply on any long journey.

None of these things are about being lost. They are about finding your way out. Which is, and has been, my point. The "you are lost" part is the least interesting part of this process. It can easily be replaced in most cases, and even when it can't be replaced, the interesting part is when you start having some idea, even if it's only partial or incomplete or "well, it's a start," of how you can get to where you want to go, or at least get to somewhere where you can figure out how to get there.

I think there's a fair argument to be made that, in context, the "being lost" part enabled the others, in that it did not require a set of contrived reasons to deal with them on their way to, presumably, what they otherwise were trying to do. But you're absolutely correct that its just an enabler, not anything that is interesting in and of itself.
 

I think there's a fair argument to be made that, in context, the "being lost" part enabled the others, in that it did not require a set of contrived reasons to deal with them on their way to, presumably, what they otherwise were trying to do. But you're absolutely correct that its just an enabler, not anything that is interesting in and of itself.
Hence why I was (and continue to be) so confused about emphasizing things like having people repeatedly make checks to even get out of that enabler state, and eliminating various tools (class features, spells, etc.) which address the "we have no idea where we are" part but not he "we have obstacles between where we are and where we're going" part.
 
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Lanefan

Victoria Rules
I mean, there is a strong chance I would do that. The story I was interested in telling is now unrecoverable. Why settle for its leavings?
So the only story you'd care about is that of your own single character? That seems a bit...something. Self-centered, maybe?

The campaign, and by extension the party in play at the moment within that campaign, is and always must be bigger than any one character, as must its story. Otherwise you're playing x-number of different games all at once, where x is the greater of the number of players at the table or the number of characters in play; and the DM's job largely becomes Cat-Herder In Chief.

Think of a typical stage play with a cast of, say, thirty. Some of those thirty might only be on stage for a minute out of a two-hour show, others will be on stage for a significant part of the show, while a few - the stars - will be on stage most of the time. My take on it is that every one of those actors maps to a PC in a campaign - some are only in for a few moments, others hang around for ages - and it's the luck of the draw that determines whether you end up playing a star or a series of bit parts or, eventually, both.
 

Lanefan

Victoria Rules
So, we're back to concluding that WOTC changed all these things just for--reasons.
Yes. I've long posited they made some changes just to put their own stamp on the game, and to bring in a degree of hard-rules M:tG influence due to their familiarity with how such things worked.

Much more cynically, I posit that many of their changes were driven purely by a profit motive. They wanted a game that played faster and produced shorter campaigns because that was the path to selling more non-core product, and so they made sure to skew their data such that they could say "Hey, short campaigns, single adventure paths, and fast levelling - that's how people are playing - let's cater to that". Since then it's become self-fulfilling; people coming in new have no reason to think that's not how the game always was.
 

Thomas Shey

Legend
Hence why I was (and continue to be) so confused about emphasizing things like having people repeatedly make checks to even get out of that enabler state, and eliminating various tools (class features, spells, etc.) which address the "we have no idea where we are" part but not he "we have obstacles between where we are and where we're going" part.

Well, I'm not going to speak of 5e but its not like at least the D&D versions I'm familiar with haven't traditionally had a few too many ways (usually magically) to sidestep obstructions, too. By the time you've been able to eliminate both, you've had to cut out a lot of both Divination and transportation magics, especially once you hit low double digit levels.

(You can argue that so many of them are problems in and of itself, but as I've noted before, by the time you're starting to have that much issue with that much of the traditional D&D spell list, I'm starting to wonder why you aren't looking elsewhere for your game...)
 

Thomas Shey

Legend
Yes. I've long posited they made some changes just to put their own stamp on the game, and to bring in a degree of hard-rules M:tG influence due to their familiarity with how such things worked.

Well, that's certainly a--take.

Much more cynically, I posit that many of their changes were driven purely by a profit motive. They wanted a game that played faster and produced shorter campaigns because that was the path to selling more non-core product, and so they made sure to skew their data such that they could say "Hey, short campaigns, single adventure paths, and fast levelling - that's how people are playing - let's cater to that". Since then it's become self-fulfilling; people coming in new have no reason to think that's not how the game always was.

I hate to tell you, but campaigns of the length you described weren't all that common even 40 years ago (to the degree you could describe a lot of the games that went on then as "campaigns" rather than settings people just played in on and off).
 

Lanefan

Victoria Rules
Well, I'm not going to speak of 5e but its not like at least the D&D versions I'm familiar with haven't traditionally had a few too many ways (usually magically) to sidestep obstructions, too. By the time you've been able to eliminate both, you've had to cut out a lot of both Divination and transportation magics, especially once you hit low double digit levels.
Agreed; the solution is to not get to low-double-digit levels. :)

Seriously, though, there's ways and means of limiting and un-breaking divination spells while still keeping them useful to the PCs. For example, a limitation I long ago put on Commune was that the answer to any given question will be limited to one of Yes, No, Uncertain, Unknown/Unanswerable, or a number.

Thus, for example, asking for a specific demon's true name will get "Unanswerable" in response, as it cannot be answered with any of the other options.

The transportation magics are more of a double-edged sword - both very useful and too useful at the same time. They don't even need to wait for two-digit levels to become a headache either, says every DM who has ever watched a party happily fly over some major terrain-based obstacle... :)
 

Lanefan

Victoria Rules
I hate to tell you, but campaigns of the length you described weren't all that common even 40 years ago (to the degree you could describe a lot of the games that went on then as "campaigns" rather than settings people just played in on and off).
A continuing setting run by the same DM with some identifyable connectors e.g. a few persistent characters is to me a campaign.
 

Thomas Shey

Legend
A continuing setting run by the same DM with some identifyable connectors e.g. a few persistent characters is to me a campaign.

"A few persistent characters" was not necessarily a given in many of the cases I saw. You could very well have an entirely different character set from one week to the next, some of whom might never play in that setting again.

In practice there was just no assurance of any continuity beyond what the GM had in his head.
 

So the only story you'd care about is that of your own single character? That seems a bit...something. Self-centered, maybe?
Lanefan,you should have known, even before putting fingers to keys, that this was a deeply unkind, uncharitable, and inaccurate read of what I said. I'm both hurt and disappointed.

I care about the party's story. That is anchored in the character I play. His (usually his, I am generally not comfortable playing a female PC) connections to the other party members are a huge, huge part of that. If my character dies, all of those connections are cut, permanently. I have no more link to any of the other characters. Zero. And replacing those links is the work of months or years, during which time I will be continuously reminded of what was lost, of what I could be doing if my previous character wasn't dead. I don't find that prospect fun. I find it disheartening and unpleasant.

The campaign, and by extension the party in play at the moment within that campaign, is and always must be
No. You are laying down absolute laws. Don't do that. You yourself have told others (possibly even me!) not to do this on other topics.

More importantly, your overall thrust is built on your hurtful and wrong claim that I am a petulant child demanding everyone dance for my entertainment. That is not true. It is in fact the furthest thing from the truth. And your stage play example hammers home exactly why. Imagine re-casting the exact same actor to play a totally different part after her previous character is unceremoniously and permanently killed. Zero explanation is given for why this new character looks just like the old, and suddenly you have to introduce and build up the story of, interpersonal connections with, and emotional investment in this new lookalike character in the last half hour of the play. And you must do so despite how the story had been going full steam ahead for her predecessor and now must jettison every detail of that story other than "she's dead and that sucks for us now."

The awkwardness of the recasting, the difficulty of rebuilding the camaraderie and connections, the constant reminders of what could have been. That's why it doesn't really interest me. I can understand why others don't care or even find these things interesting. I usually don't. I get very deeply invested in characters. I tell you truly, it has devastated me when others lose their characters in the party. Happened twice in my favorite 4e campaign (almost three times, all before 6th level), though we were able to revive the two who died albeit at serious cost to our objectives. I was more thrown off by Elarion the wizard-archaeologist's death than Elarion's player was! Now, maybe that's because he expected it to get better and I wasn't so sure. I dunno. But it was definitely a blow, more than I expected it to be. Made the grief easy to RP though!
 

Hussar

Legend
Your community and mine are worlds apart, then, as most games I knew of (or still know of) round here ran much longer than that.
I have to ask, how?

I said 19 years old for a reason. I'd just started university. Which meant I was in a new city meeting new people. The circle of people around me changed pretty much year on year as people graduated, got jobs, got married, moved, whatever. By the time I graduated, I can recall I'd played easily a half a dozen different campaigns - either as a DM or a Player and none of them lasted longer than a single year. Once graduation hit, all bets were off. I never had a group for longer than a year, let alone a campaign until nearly ten years later when I started gaming online.

The longest I've ever been part of a stable group of players is about 5 years. And, even then, we have played and done goodness knows how many campaigns since I started playing online about twenty years ago. I honestly couldn't count.

To be fair @Lanefan, you're the only gamer I've ever heard of who has actually played a game that lasts this long. Heck, I remember polling En World about this years ago, and other than a tiny, tiny handful of responses, the overwhelming majority were 2 years or less.
 

Lanefan

Victoria Rules
I have to ask, how?

I said 19 years old for a reason. I'd just started university. Which meant I was in a new city meeting new people. The circle of people around me changed pretty much year on year as people graduated, got jobs, got married, moved, whatever. By the time I graduated, I can recall I'd played easily a half a dozen different campaigns - either as a DM or a Player and none of them lasted longer than a single year.
I also started in university, in the early 80s, and still play with some of those people today. Oh sure, there was loads of player turnover in those days (which did serve to keep things fresh!) but a long-term core of about 5 of us eventually coalesced with three or four others on the periphery, drifting in and out as life allowed. Since then there's been a bit more turnover - but nowhere near as much - as new players have joined, stayed in for whatever number of years, and left; and the long-term core has expanded to about ten, spread over several games and campaigns.

Also, out of that initial college chaos another group hived off from ours in the mid 80s, that crew lasted about ten years and if anything had a larger core group than we did. What killed it was that most of the core all moved away at once in the mid 90s.

Through playing drop-in broomball for several seasons I learned of another long-lasting group who I think ran from the mid 80s until at least the late 90s.

You might notice a theme here, and it held true for us as well: the whole thing nearly died in the late 90s. What saved it was the other main DM in our crew abandoning his dying campaign and bringing his one remaining player into my also-dying campaign (I had two players left), which revitalized my game. Then - and mirroring the greater community almost perfectly - within two years things turned around to the point where we had more players than we knew what to do with, a third DM started a 3e campaign (which itself lasted ten years), and away we went. Currently, all three of us plus a fourth have campaigns on the go, two using our rules, a third using 5e (I think mostly as written) and a 4th using a mashup of our system and Dungeon World.
The longest I've ever been part of a stable group of players is about 5 years. And, even then, we have played and done goodness knows how many campaigns since I started playing online about twenty years ago. I honestly couldn't count.

To be fair @Lanefan, you're the only gamer I've ever heard of who has actually played a game that lasts this long. Heck, I remember polling En World about this years ago, and other than a tiny, tiny handful of responses, the overwhelming majority were 2 years or less.
The one thing that has to happen for a long campaign to work is the DM has to stay committed to it, and - as online play is a vastly inferior option - has to stay put in the same town or city.
 

Thomas Shey

Legend
It is possible to play with potentially stable gaming groups for very long periods. One of the people I GM for now has gamed with me on and off for literally more than 40 years at this point. All but one other in the two groups I'm affiliated with has been gaming together for more than 20 years.

That said, I'm hard pressed to picture any of us being interested in the same genre, let alone system and campaign for longer than a couple years of alternate week play in a row. One of the groups has been doing Pathfinder 2e for about three years at this point, but even that was three unconnected campaigns (to Adventure Paths and a shorter series of unconnected adventures before that; three different groups of characters).
 

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