I believe that dungeons should always be heavily jaquayed.
…
Okay, it’s true. I’m just making words up now. In the case of jaquaying, the term is referring to Jennell Jaquays, who designed Caverns of Thracia, Dark Tower, Griffin Mountain, and a half dozen other old school classics for Judges Guild, Chaosium, Flying Buffalo, and TSR before transitioning into video game design. In the latter capacity she recently wrote some essays on maps she designed for Halo Wars:
Memorable game maps spring from a melding of design intent and fortunate accidents.
Jennell Jaquays – Crevice Design Notes
That’s timeless advice, and a design ethos which extends beyond the RTS levels she helped design for Halo Wars and reaches back to her earliest work.
What Jaquays particularly excelled at in those early Judges Guild modules was non-linear dungeon design.
For example, in Caverns of Thracia Jaquays includes three separate entrances to the first level of the dungeon. And from Level 1 of the dungeon you will find two conventional paths and no less than eight unconventional or secret paths leading down to the lower levels. (And Level 2 is where things start getting really interesting.)
The result is a fantastically complex and dynamic environment: You can literally run dozens of groups through this module and every one of them will have a fresh and unique experience.
But there’s more value here than just recycling an old module: That same dynamic flexibility which allows multiple groups to have unique experiences also allows each individual group to chart their own course. In other words, it’s not just random chance that’s resulting in different groups having different experiences: Each group is actively making the dungeon their own. They can retreat, circle around, rush ahead, go back over old ground, poke around, sneak through, interrogate the locals for secret routes… The possibilities are endless because the environment isn’t forcing them along a pre-designed path. And throughout it all, the players are experiencing the thrill of truly exploring the dungeon complex.
By way of comparison, Keep on the Shadowfell is an extremely linear dungeon:
(This diagram uses a method laid out by Melan in this post at ENWorld. You can also find a detailed explanation in How to Use a Melan Diagram.)
Some would argue that this sort of linear design is “easier to run”. But I don’t think that’s actually true to any appreciable degree. In practice, the complexity of a jaquayed dungeon emerges from the same simple structures that make up a linear dungeon: The room the PCs are currently in has one or more exits. What are they going to do in this room? Which exit are they going to take?
In a linear dungeon, the pseudo-choices the PCs make will lead them along a pre-designed, railroad-like route. In a jaquayed dungeon, on the other hand, the choices the PCs make will have a meaningful impact on how the adventure plays out, but the actual running of the adventure isn’t more complex as a result.
On the other hand, the railroad-like quality of the linear dungeon is not its only flaw. It eliminates true exploration (for the same reason that Lewis and Clark were explorers; whereas when I head down I-94 I am merely a driver). It can significantly inhibit the players’ ability to make meaningful strategic choices. It is, frankly speaking, less interesting and less fun.
So I’m going to use the Keep on the Shadowfell to show you how easy it is to jaquay your dungeons by making just a few simple, easy tweaks.
JAQUAYING THE DUNGEON
Part 2: The Jaquays Techniques
Part 3: The Philosophy of Jaquaying
Part 4: Jaquaying the Keep on the Shadowfell
Part 5: Jaquaying for Fun and Profit
Addendum: Dungeon Level Connections
Addendum: Jaquaying on the Small Scale
Addendum: How to Use a Melan Diagram
Dark Tower: Level Connections
[…] take the shortest path between two points!) Of course, in dungeon layouts that are insufficiently Jacquayed– and in games where the playing time for combats take 10 times as long as those in B/X […]
[…] of the book, this particular dungeon isn't the greatest dungeon or map in the world. I plan on Jaquaying the dungeon (and changing some of the encounters, which is beyond the scope of this post). At the same time, I […]
[…] The Alexandrian » Jaquaying the Dungeon. […]
[…] Jaquaying the Dungeon, a multi-part article series from The Alexandrian about how to create non linear dungeons in the fashion of Jennell Jaquays‘ Caverns of Thracia and Dark Tower, two classics published by Judges Guild in the late 70s. The components of good dungeon design discussed in this article can indeed be ported to modern dungeons. […]
[…] Я уже писал ранее о нескольких игровых сессиях, которые я провёл в его заброшенных залах. Я также использовал его в качестве примера того, как можно сделать ваше собственное подземелье «в стиле Жако». […]
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[…] and options to get around certain areas without being unable to progress at all. The Alexandian wrote about this a while back and I very much recommend reading his thoughts on the […]
This series (plus observations of real-world places) has given me basically my entire approach to map design.
I’m still getting the hang of how to do it properly — for instance, my last adventure put all the monsters in dead-end rooms, so the players had little reason to move through loops — but it’s been a key factor in every adventure I’ve run so far.
[…] you’ve yet to read the wonderful series of essays at The Alexandrian called Jacquaying the Dungeon, you should line that up. Its findings aren’t mindblowing, but the clarity of dungeon […]
I never bothered to actually read the EN World post you shared until now, and man, shame on me : it’s a great read, and a great tool to make dungeons better.
The subsequent posters also exemplifies pretty well the “Railroad is fun” motto. 🙂
[…] Jaquaying the Dungeon […]
Cross-posting an interesting video series on The Legend of Zelda dungeon design, which has some interesting parallels with your blog series.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLc38fcMFcV_ul4D6OChdWhsNsYY3NA5B2
[…] therefore introduced the concept of “ghoul tunnels” to jaquay the map and connect different areas. I placed these at the bottom of pit traps or in rooms that already […]
[…] with you. The first and foremost inspiration was Justin Alexander’s article “Jaquaying the Dungeon“. It is one of many, many articles on The Alexandrian that I will be referencing during this […]
As the images on the ENWorld forum thread have since been lost to the web, I went hunting for any other details and found the following, a copy of Melan’s original post with images still intact:
http://www.darkshire.net/jhkim/rpg/dnd/dungeonmaps.html
[…] The Alexandrian has a decent series of articles relating to this issue which you can find here. […]
[…] en text som ofta hänvisas till beskriver The Alexandrian vad han anser vara god design för en megadungeon i allmänhet och vad […]
[…] out, but I had them all drawn fairly close to each other, so I cannot say that the dungeon was well Jacquayed. Janelle Jacquays does a lot in her designs to avoid railroading and creating quantum ogres, and my […]
[…] It’s influential in the world of dungeon design, so much so that Jaquays’ name has been coined into a verb for designing deeply interconnected, explorable game spaces. (FYI: That last link is to a post […]
That’s make perfect sense in the Dark Souls video game’s, especially the first one. The feeling of exploration is huge, due to the interconnections and the choices they bring.
Great stuff! Can I translate it to spanish?
E-mail me at the address in the About link (in the right hand column at the top of the page) for translation queries.
[…] told by the writer to the reader, with only a passing thought given to actual play. This utterly non-Jaquayed funhouse dungeon is a level of silliness we should have left behind with TSR’s Slaver […]
Just an FYI-her name is Jennelle Jaquays now. They no longer identify by their previous name. 🙂
[…] The choice of a mega-dungeon for the school has been resolved: I aim to run the acclaimed “Caverns of Thracia” module, which has been the subject of so many excellent reviews and actual play reports as to catch my attention. Combining this with B/X Essentials will be a pretty cool combo, methinks. In truth, however, reading it and pondering upon the contents has convinced me to Jaquay my dungeons. […]
[…] players along a linear path, the dungeon teases explorers with perils and routes to discover. In a study of designer Jennell Jaquays’ dungeon maps, Justin Alexander explains how a well-connected dungeon gives groups agency and flexibility. […]
[…] Lair” published in The Dungeoneer 11 in 1979 did not embody the design principles outlined in Jaquaying the Dungeon even though it was created by the person whose name would become synonymous with the […]
[…] Also, the number at the bottom (Jaquaying Number?? | for more see this post, which references this series of posts) , gives a measure of non-linearity of the adventure. A completely linear adventure e.g. Room 1 […]
[…] are spelled out in a five-part series of posts on The Alexandrian titled Jaquaying the Dungeon here, here, here, here and […]
[…] make the dungeon appear more linear looking to the players. To increase interconnectivity, hence ‘jaquaying-the-dungeon’, simply add a few more pegs (e.g. 3) at […]
[…] are spelled out in a five-part series of posts on The Alexandrian titled Jaquaying the Dungeon here, here, here, here and […]
[…] not the first to write about this. In fact, I aim only to summarize some high-level takeaways from the Alexandrian blog post on this. I believe that site coined the term, but I don’t know for sure. In any case, what follows is […]
Hey, I love this series of articles, and have applied a lot of the techniques to my own dungeon designs. I wrote a post on my blog summarizing this (linking to your original article here), and it looks like some aggregator posted it above in the comments. This wasn’t me, and I hope it wasn’t as a result of any kind of spam service. I don’t make use of anything that would do this, so I was perplexed to see this page in my notifications. In any case, just wanted to clear that up, and thank you again for the excellent analysis you routinely have on your site.
Cheers,
Mark
[…] Temple, one map for the ground floor, one for the catacombs. Then I redrew the maps after reading an (awesome!) article about “Jacquaying the Dungeon”, which gave me some insights I felt I needed to incorperate in my adventure. I will probably redraw […]
[…] The “Jaquays” style dungeon has multiple loops, connecting different areas of the dungeon, rather than being (essentially) in a straight line. This style also includes multiple connections between levels, both consecutive (between levels II and III) and otherwise disconnected (between, say, levels III and V). There is an excellent article at the Alexandrian about this style of non-linear dungeon design. […]
[…] проектирования подземелий не универсальны в CRPG. В этой замечательной статье The Alexandrian говорится о «дизайне подземелий jaquay», в […]
A quick comment to thank you for this awesome article!
There are a lot of articles and videos about how to improve your game/dungeon/NPC (you name it), but this one is really a gem.
The Hexcrawl article is also very nice.
Nice article. I’m running an immense dungeon at the moment called “The Halls of Arden Vul” written for OSRIC, but I’m using 5e because we’re on roll20 and it has good support, and also because it’s what my Players wanted.
What’s great about Arden Vul is that it truly could be played twenty times over and have completely different results. There are entry points and exit points and chutes that drop you five levels deeper with no regard for what level the PCs are. There are creatures not remotely made to be taken on by low level groups, and there are factions that are doing their own thing. Interacting with them or even killing them will often have a completely unintended effect which I as the DM have to take into account.
It’s a blast and for all the 5e modules I have bought nothing comes close to it. The hardcovers from WoTC feel a lot like you’re reading the script for a play.
[…] are nonlinear, make good use of 3D and verticality, have enough connections and looping to fit the Jaquaying the Dungeon […]
[…] Cavern. The first blogpost to truly get hooked on the idea of the OSR was the Alexandrian’s Jaquaying The Dungeon. It was here that my mind started opening to the idea of building worlds, not stories. Finally, […]
[…] to use based off of the point network. And, ideally, each layer of the network would be suitably Jaquayed, and the connections between layers would Jaquay the whole […]
[…] putting the entire module into Obsidian.md, and turning the map into a point-crawl with a more Jaquaysesque connectivity, unlike the original which features mostly long looping tunnels with occasional rooms […]