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
And if you think online play is “vastly inferior “, well we’re just not going to see eye to eye.

I’m more than willing to say that online play has some serious advantages over in person. Far better in character role play probably being the main one. It’s much easier to stay in character over online than face to face.
 

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Micah Sweet

Legend
And if you think online play is “vastly inferior “, well we’re just not going to see eye to eye.

I’m more than willing to say that online play has some serious advantages over in person. Far better in character role play probably being the main one. It’s much easier to stay in character over online than face to face.
That's really interesting. How do you feel ability to stay in character for RP and online/offline are in any way related? They seem orthogonal to me.
 

That's really interesting. How do you feel ability to stay in character for RP and online/offline are in any way related? They seem orthogonal to me.
For my part, despite not being who you asked, it's because of the extra control I have over when and how I speak. I can keep myself "in character voice" much more easily because I can keep all my unwanted side comments unshared. I don't have to work up my face or be concerned about the gestures I make--I can focus purely on charging my voice alone with the power behind the comment.

It's not that that's impossible to do in physical gaming, it's just that overall, in person, it is much more of a challenge for me to do all of that and all the physical acting specifically as improvisation. I can do acting--I did a little in both middle and high school--but improvisational acting is quite a bit more of a challenge for me.
 

Thomas Shey

Legend
That's really interesting. How do you feel ability to stay in character for RP and online/offline are in any way related? They seem orthogonal to me.

I don't know Hussar's take on it, but my feeling is the less things you have that constantly remind you the player is not their character, the better in this regard. I actually find the ideal in this regard is text, but most people can't type fast and maintain flow well enough to make that work (but its not impossible since I've seen it MUSHes years ago).
 

Hussar

Legend
Both of the above reasons really hit it. There are simply a lot fewer distractions. Plus play rarely gets sidetracked in online play. There aren’t spouses/children/pets interrupting play. Plus you don’t have players who insist on rolling dice like it’s a craps table, falling on the floor or knocking over three minis in the middle of combat.

There are, of course, other issues like tech problems. Fair enough. But when those aren’t happening, I find online play easily equal to face to face.
 

Lanefan

Victoria Rules
Both of the above reasons really hit it. There are simply a lot fewer distractions. Plus play rarely gets sidetracked in online play. There aren’t spouses/children/pets interrupting play. Plus you don’t have players who insist on rolling dice like it’s a craps table, falling on the floor or knocking over three minis in the middle of combat.

There are, of course, other issues like tech problems. Fair enough. But when those aren’t happening, I find online play easily equal to face to face.
The flip side is that when online only one person can speak at once, where at a live table people are usually good at tuning out conversations they're not involved in and focusing on that which they are...meanign things can get said/done at a higher rate.

Also - and bigger, for me - I can't read expressions or body language or gestures or similar like I can in person; nor can I see or pick up on non-verbal reactions either in-character or out. (disclaimer - we use audio only as video feeds generate more tech issues and crashes than it's worth, never mind that it's hard to look at video feeds and the map at the same time as they'd be in different tabs)

And then there's the tech issues, which just never seem to end.
 

where at a live table people are usually good at tuning out conversations they're not involved in and focusing on that which they are
Where does one learn this skill, and how much would it cost?

Because I promise you this is not, AT ALL, an easy thing for me. Online conversations being one person at a time is a huge BOON for roleplay specifically because it eliminates the incredible distraction of cross-chatter.
 

Hussar

Legend
Yeah. I’m right there with you for tech issues. It’s an endless source of frustration. That and something like Fantasy Grounds is not very user friendly sometimes.
 

Thomas Shey

Legend
The flip side is that when online only one person can speak at once, where at a live table people are usually good at tuning out conversations they're not involved in and focusing on that which they are...meanign things can get said/done at a higher rate.

This is absolutely not true if you're willing to do the work. You can easily have multiple voice channels on Discord, for example, and that's if you aren't willing to use text for the side conversation.

Also - and bigger, for me - I can't read expressions or body language or gestures or similar like I can in person; nor can I see or pick up on non-verbal reactions either in-character or out. (disclaimer - we use audio only as video feeds generate more tech issues and crashes than it's worth, never mind that it's hard to look at video feeds and the map at the same time as they'd be in different tabs)

To me, that's as much a virtue as a flaw.

And then there's the tech issues, which just never seem to end.

This sometimes can be a thing, however, and it doesn't seem to matter how good the hardware.
 


pemerton

Legend
See, to me, there's a very good reason the Tom Bombadil diversion in LotR was cut from the movies. It was boring and pointless. I've skipped entire pages of the LotR because I just cannot be bothered reading it. It serves no purpose. It does not further the plot. It does not show any character growth of the protagonists. It's basically just a big middle finger to the reader - here's this guy that could save all the death and misery of the entire story but he's too twee to bother worrying about little stuff like that.
I agree that Tom Bombadil was well-cut. I often skip those sections when I reread LotR. Recently I did read the Barrow Downs bit - my partner had mentioned that she had to present some fantasy short stories to her students, and I suggested that that 8-or-so page extract might be suitable.

There is a lot of tedium in there, and it is also perhaps the closest in my view that LotR gets to Epic Pooh (as Moorcock labelled it).

The only plot relevance is to provide the Hobbits with their barrow-swords. (The film has a continuity issue when Aragorn hands over four blades although he was only expecting two Hobbits.)
 


pemerton

Legend
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.
You really should come over to the Forge-ite dark side!

(I'm seriously QFT-ing here. Setting tourism play, in all its forms, is for me the absolute pits.)
 

pemerton

Legend
On being lost in a RPG:

At its core its a failure result like any other - the action declaration We move to this place we want to get to has been resolved, and the players failed (and hence their PCs are somewhere else).

It can be as interesting as any other failure state. Or as boring. A lot of D&D play seems to suffer from a lack of interesting failure states for failed action declarations in the "exploration" domain of play. (Map and key resolution of declared movement actions can contribute to this.)

My most recent sessions have been in Torchbearer. That system has no trouble making getting lost interesting. I've also played Agon in recent times, and its whole premise is about being lost on a large scale, and likewise it makes it easy to have interesting consequences for getting lost on a small scale.
 

Hussar

Legend
To be fair, I’ve been reading through Ironsworn and it does have some neat ideas.

But I think part of the issue here is the idea of character driven gaming. Really, getting lost doesn’t push character buttons. It doesn’t really have much to do with character at all. It’s mostly related to resource management which is sort of orthogonal to character.

Being lost costs X resources. That resource loss is more ore less the same regardless of your character. Which, from a character centered campaign perspective makes it largely uninteresting.

I’m not sure there’s a way to square the circle here. How do you tie getting lost to specific characters when getting lost is generally very generic?
 

pemerton

Legend
But I think part of the issue here is the idea of character driven gaming. Really, getting lost doesn’t push character buttons. It doesn’t really have much to do with character at all. It’s mostly related to resource management which is sort of orthogonal to character.
I don't agree. When I think about Torchbearer, for instance, the most obvious twist for a failed Pathfinder test is that instead of arriving where you were hoping to get to, you stumble into your enemy's camp!
 

Hussar

Legend
I don't agree. When I think about Torchbearer, for instance, the most obvious twist for a failed Pathfinder test is that instead of arriving where you were hoping to get to, you stumble into your enemy's camp!

But that doesn’t really require being lost. That’s just a random encounter, much like any other. The lost part is pretty much just an afterthought. And also not an idea you can use more than a couple of times before it gets very stale.
 

pemerton

Legend
But that doesn’t really require being lost. That’s just a random encounter, much like any other. The lost part is pretty much just an afterthought. And also not an idea you can use more than a couple of times before it gets very stale.
Torchbearer doesn't have random encounters. "Twists" occur in response to failed checks. Failing a check to find the way opens the door to a twist that involves being somewhere else less pleasant!

I'm not making this post to challenge your preference about procedural hexcrawl-type play. Just to show that getting lost can be meaningful in a different sort of play too, which is more focused on characters, their concerns and their actions. It's not more special or important than any other sort of failure, but not less so either.
 

Hussar

Legend
Torchbearer doesn't have random encounters. "Twists" occur in response to failed checks. Failing a check to find the way opens the door to a twist that involves being somewhere else less pleasant!

I'm not making this post to challenge your preference about procedural hexcrawl-type play. Just to show that getting lost can be meaningful in a different sort of play too, which is more focused on characters, their concerns and their actions. It's not more special or important than any other sort of failure, but not less so either.
Well, to be fair, even in trad play, you only get lost as a result of failed checks. :D And, really, when people talk about random encounters, or finding this or that when lost, "twists" are exactly what they're talking about, just framed differently.

My point was that if you use the "wander into the enemy camp" twist, it generally is going to be taken off the table for some time afterwards, simply because you don't want to keep using the same twist. And, again, it's not the "I got lost" part that's the interesting bit - it's the "I wandered into an enemy camp" part that's interesting and, really, doesn't actually require you to be lost to happen.
 

pemerton

Legend
Well, to be fair, even in trad play, you only get lost as a result of failed checks. :D And, really, when people talk about random encounters, or finding this or that when lost, "twists" are exactly what they're talking about, just framed differently.
Classic Traveller had "events" as elements on its random encounter tables, and there's at least an argument that in a procedural hexcrawl "lost" should have the same status. Why double up the random content determination rolls?

My point was that if you use the "wander into the enemy camp" twist, it generally is going to be taken off the table for some time afterwards, simply because you don't want to keep using the same twist.
Sure. This is the challenge of "indie"-type GMing - you need to keep inventing content. In a well-designed game of this sort, other elements of the system (eg stuff on the PC sheets like Friend, Enemies, Beliefs, etc) help do some of the heavy lifting with this.

I guess what I'm saying is that making getting lost interesting doesn't seem to me to be harder or easier than making it interesting to encounter an Owlbear, or be ambushed by the enemy pickets, or anything else. It's just another sort of failure-consequence narration. So I don't see any need to exalt it, or condemn it.

Upthread I suggested that there might be a bigger issue here for "exploration" resolution in D&D - eg what happens when the player fails their INT (Investigation) roll made following the declaration "I closely examine the mysterious statues"? I think that might be where some of the issues lie - ie the problems with being lost generalise also to problems with traps, problems with searching, problems with secret doors, etc.
 

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