Location-based adventures are a staple of the GM’s art and form a kind of bedrock for scenario design. Even if a scenario isn’t primarily about ‘crawling a specific location, you’ll still find yourself frequently keying a map to describe wherever the action is taking place.

Which is why I find it fairly surprising that the location keys in published adventures are almost universally terrible.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE KEY

In 1974, the original edition of D&D included a “Sample Map” keyed with both numbers and letters. The description of the key, however, was instructional rather than practical. For example:

5. The combinations here are really vicious, and unless you’re out to get your players it is not suggested for actual use. Passage south “D” is a slanting corridor which will take them at least one level deeper, and if the slope is gentle even dwarves won’t recognize it. Room “E” is a transporter, two ways, to just about anywhere the referee likes, including the center of the earth or the moon. The passage south containing “F” is a one-way teleporter, and the poor dupes will never realize it unless a very large party (over 50’ in length) is entering it. (This is sure-fire fits for map makers among participants.)

Skip ahead a couple of years to 1976, though, and we’ve reached Year One for published adventures: Arneson’s “Temple of the Frog” appeared in Supplement II: Blackmoor; Wee Warriors released Palace of the Vampire Queen; Metro Detroit Gamers released the original Lost Caverns of Tsojconth; and Judges Guild released Gen Con IX Dungeons and City-State of the Invinicible Overlord.

Palace of the Vampire Queen featured a completely tabular key that looked like this:

The Lost Caverns of Tsojconth, on the other hand, featured the Gygax “wall of text” key which would become a staple at TSR for the better part of a decade:

K. COPPER DRAGON: HP: 72. Neutral, intelligent, talking, has spells: DETECT MAGIC, READ MAGIC, CHARM PERSON, LOCATE OBJECT, INVISIBILITY, ESP, DISPEL MAGIC, HASTE, and WATER BREATHING. It is asleep but will waken in 3 melee rounds or if spoken to or attacked. It will bargain to allow the party to pass on to the east if given at least 5,000 GP in metal and/or gems/jewelry – deduct 1,000 GP for each magic item offered instead. It will tell the party nothing, but it will ask about the fire lizards. If the party has slain these creatures, the dragon will attack them. 30,000 CP, 1,000 GP, 36 100-GP gems, 42 500GP gems, 13 1,000-GP gems, 9 pieces of jewelry (9,7,7,6,5,4,,4,3,3 in 1,000’s each). A jeweled sword (quartz), non-magical, will be hated by party’s swords at first, value is 783 GP. An ivory tube with contact poison contains a scroll of 3 spells (MONSTER SUMMONING III, LIMITED WISH, SYMBOL). Several pieces of jewelry radiate magic (they have a magic mouth spell on them with a nearly impossible speak command) for a 10^th piece of jewelry is a necklace of missiles (5), with each missile globe encased in an ivory block (which can be pried open along a hairline seam to reveal the missile).

In Gen Con IX Dungeons, meanwhile, Judges Guild was way ahead of the curve (as was so often the case). Bob Blake had recognized that a key with better organization would make it easier for DMs to run the adventure, and he introduced that organization by including a “DM Only” section in each key entry:

13. 30’ N-S, 30’ E-W. Enter by secret door in center of W Wall. There is a blackened firepit in the center of the room, and a barred opening into 10’x10’ opening in the center of the E Wall.

DM Only: The firepit contains nothing of value. The portcullis may be easily raised by pulling on a chain hanging from a small hole in the wall next to the portcullis. There is a secret door in the E Wall of the alcove.

Although not technically boxed text, this format was effectively accomplishing the same thing on a structural level. (Particularly interesting are the keys which feature two separate “DM Only” sections – one before the player section and detailing information necessary when entering the room and one after the player section detailing information on what investigating the room will reveal.)

Unfortunately, although Blake used this format through 1977, Judges Guild eventually abandoned it and also moved to “wall of text” keys.

In 1978, B1 In Search of the Unknown effectively created the idea of separating the key into distinct sections:

30. ACCESS ROOM. This room is devoid of detail or contents, giving access to the lower level of the stronghold by a descending stairway. This stairway leads down and directly into room 38 on the lower level.

Monster:

Treasure & Location:

Although this division superficially resembles later “adventure formatting guides” (which we’ll get to momentarily), it was actually an accidental by-product of In Search of the Unknown being designed as a training tool for beginning DMs: The adventure included prepared lists of monsters and treasures which the neophyte DM was supposed to assign to various rooms throughout the dungeon. (Which is why those sections are blank in the example above.)

THE ERA OF BOXED TEXT

In either 1979 or 1980, depending on how persnickety you want to get with definitions, boxed text — prewritten text designed to be read aloud by the GM — arrived for the first time in Lost Tamoachan: The Hidden Shrine of Lubaatum, a tournament module by Harold Johnson & Jeff R. Leason that was originally printed for the Origins game convention.

In the original version of the module, the text was not yet boxed, instead appearing between quotation marks:

But in 1980, TSR reissued the module as C1 The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan, placing the prewritten descriptions in a box for the first time:

Like Blake’s “DM Only” section from earlier in the decade, the boxed text clearly delineated the elements of a given area that should be immediately shared with any PC entering the area.

Later, of course, the role of boxed text would be expanded to include any sort of “read-aloud” text intended for the players, but its function as a narrative device is beyond the scope of location keying. In this context, however, an honorable mention should perhaps be given to Quest of the Fazzlewood, a 1978 “head-to-head” tournament module designed to be played with just one DM and one player. In addition to a lengthy introduction designed for the player to read, the finale of the adventure is presented with read-aloud text:

(photo from Explore: Beneath & Beyond)

The formatting is quite similar to the later Lost Tamoachan, and one could argue that this is, in fact, the first example of “boxed text” (albeit of the not-yet-boxed variety).

In any case, at this point, things basically settle down: When Dungeon #1 appeared in 1986, it still featured the familiar boxed text paired with a “wall of text” key for the DM. In 1988, monsters and NPCs in the magazine received a standardized stat block that gets clearly delineated from the text. But that basic format can still be seen in The Apocalypse Stone in 1999 (the very last adventure produced for 2^nd Edition).

ADVENTURE FORMATTING GUIDES

When 3^rd Edition arrived, however, an effort was made to introduce a new “standard format” for published adventure modules. First appearing in The Sunless Citadel, this format had the familiar boxed text and wall of text, but supplemented this with a specific set of bold-faced sections:

• Traps
• Creatures
• Tactics
• Development
• Treasure

Not all of these appeared in every location, but if they did appear then they appeared in that order and no other.

As noted above, this format recalls B1 In Search of the Unknown. There were also a handful of other examples between 1978 and 2000, most notably 1982’s I3 Pharaoh which featured headings for:

• Play
• Lore
• Monster
• Character
• Trap/Trick
• Treasure

Tracy and Laura Hickman, the authors of Pharaoh, also dedicated a full page to explaining what each section of their key was designed to accomplish. For example:

Play: This outlines the general sequence of events that may take place in the room. For example: “Players entering the room from the door must first encounter the Trap, which releases the Monster. Only by defeating the Monster can the Treasure be found.” Play explains the general order that the sections should be used. Additional size and dimension information about the area is also included here.

And that largely explains what the intended purpose of the standardized adventure format is: To break up the wall of text and clearly communicate to the DM where they should look for a given piece of information.

It’s a noble intention, but the problem with this specific approach to adventure writing is that it tends to encourage writers to “fill the format”. You probably don’t really need to tell a DM that the orcs attack people using their swords (since that’s the only weapon they have)… but the format says you should have a “Tactics” section, so you might as well write two or three paragraphs about it.

An even bigger problem, in my experience, is that of sequencing information: A room with an ogre standing in the middle of it should talk about the ogre first; a room with a goblin hiding behind a tapestry, on the other hand, shouldn’t lead off with the goblin.

This sort of one-size-fits-all formatting becomes both a straitjacket and an excess. And the culmination of this approach is the infamous “delve” format, which I’ve talked about extensively elsewhere.

The fundamental problem (which the delve format simply metastasizes) is that the rigid adventure format forces information to be presented out-of-sequence or breaks that information up in a way that doesn’t make sense during actual play. Instead of making the information easy to parse and reference, a rigid format ends up having the opposite effect.

Go to Part 2

THE ART OF THE KEY
Part 2: The Essential Key
Part 3: Hierarchy of Reference
Part 4: Adversary Rosters

Should the Bluff skill be usable on PCs?

Hypothetical situation proposed on another forum: Billy doesn’t trust Sue. Billy’s player argues that, even if Sue succeeded on her Bluff check, Billy still wouldn’t believe her. It doesn’t matter how good a lie is if the person being lied to inherently doesn’t trust the speaker. Counterargument? If you inherently distrust someone, that’s what roll modifiers are for.

This is a common discussion. I had a couple of immediate reactions to this particular scenario that I thought might be of general interest.

Note that there are, in fact, two different issues here.

First: Whether or not social skills should compel PC behavior.

One group will argue that playing an RPG is fundamentally about making choices as if you were your character. Therefore, a mechanic which effectively “plays the game for you” is really problematic, particularly if it fundamentally disrupts a player’s conception of the character they’re playing. (The GM gets to create and control the entire universe; it might be best if the player gets to at least have undisputed control over his one character.)

The flip-side of this argument is that being forced to believe a lie against your will is not fundamentally different than being stabbed through your kidney with three feet of steel against your will. Both remove character agency and there’s really no reason to distinguish between the two.

What decides the issue for me, personally, is that I’ve never encountered a player in the latter group who has their enjoyment of the game negatively affected if compulsory social mechanics aren’t used: They’re OK with them, but they don’t need them. On the other hand, I’ve met lots of players in the first group who have their playing experience totally ruined by the presence of compulsory social mechanics.

So, for me, this is kind of a no-brainer: I’ve got an option that will make a lot of people happier and which will have no negative impact on anyone else. That’s the option I should go with.

Second: How the specific mechanic is being applied.

Is the mechanic sufficiently taking into account the level of distrust that Billy has for Sue? It looks like there are roll modifiers, but are those modifiers large enough to truly represent the amount of distrust he has?

Also, should the outcome of a successful Bluff check be “you believe the lie and you have to act as if you are completely gulled and have no doubts whatsoever” or should the outcome of a successful Bluff check be “she looks like she’s telling the truth / you don’t see anyone reason not to believe what she’s saying”?

This ties back into the question of whether or not the social mechanics should be compulsory or not.

To put this in perspective, imagine that this was a Poker game: Someone makes a Bluff check and succeeds against your Sense Motive check. Should the mechanics force the PC to call his bet (or go all in) without having any choice in the matter? Or should the mechanics simply report back “you think he’s got the better hand” and then let the player make the decision?

In general, I prefer social mechanics to either (a) provide information or (b) have a mechanical impact without compelling action.

If you make a Spot check to see someone hiding in a room, a successful check doesn’t compel you to attack them: The Spot check provides you with information (“there’s a dude hiding in there” or “the room appears to be empty”) and then you make a decision about what to do with that information. Similarly, a Sense Motive check should provide you with information (“you think he’s in love with Sarah” or “you don’t think she’s lying”) and it’s still up to you to make a decision about what to do with that information.

Similarly, a successful Intimidate check might apply a morale penalty to your action, but the ultimate decision of whether you drop your sword and run away screaming is up to you.

What about NPCs?

I’m perfectly OK with social mechanics being compulsory for NPCs. In fact, as a GM, I generally prefer it. The difference is that I don’t think of them as “compulsory” — instead those mechanics are the oracle that I consult to tell me what’s happening in the game world. (It’s very similar to a random encounter check: I don’t know what’s going to happen. Let’s consult the mechanics and find out.)

For similar reasons, I find it perhaps unsurprising that people have a lot less problem with compulsory social mechanics in STGs: They are playing a game of narrative control and the relationship they have to their character is very different than the relationship a player has to their character in an RPG. An oracular consultation of the mechanics to determine what their character is doing is more likely to fit into their mental landscape; it also just becomes one more mechanic for determining narrative control among a plethora of such mechanics.

I’ve been a big fan of Level 7: Escape since I first played it at GenCon a couple years back. The basic concept of the game is simple: You’ve been kidnapped by aliens based out of an Area 51 look-a-like named Subterra Bravo. Now something has gone wrong in the facility, the stasis pods you were being held in have cracked open, and you need to figure out how to escape from the complex as everything goes to hell.

It’s a co-op ‘crawler, but with gameplay that’s based primarily around escape instead of combat. The scenarios are clever, varied, and tell a nice little story over the course of a full campaign.

I wish that the game supported more than 4 players, but the only real problem I have with the game is the rulebook, which has proven to be very difficult and convoluted to use during play. As a result, rules are frequently missed and mistakes are often made. This has hampered my enjoyment of the game, particularly because it provides a hurdle that needs to be cleared whenever I come back to the game after a long break (and all those niggling little rules go scurrying off again).

So I’ve ended up compiling a completely revised rulebook.

DESIGN NOTES FOR THE REVISED RULEBOOK

The key problem with the published rulebook is that it features both procedural and indexed organization.

Procedurally-organized rules are listed when you use them. (For example, you might say: “When you make an attack, first you do X, then you do Y, and that will tell you if Z happens.”) Index-organized rules, on the other hand, are grouped together into broad categories suitable for quick reference. (For example, you might say: “Z is something that will happen during A, B, or C.”)

Either of these approaches can work well. And, in fact, you can use both of them at the same time as long as both sets of information are fully functional. Unfortunately, this isn’t the case with the Level 7: Escape rulebook. Instead, half of the rules are indexed under general headings and half the rules are listed procedurally.

This is a really huge problem.

For example, there’s a section of the rulebook titled “Raising Fear” and it includes a list of things that raise your fear. One of the items on the list is, “When you leave a tile with a darkness marker, raise your fear by 1.” That rule is not listed in the procedures for moving off a tile. Later in the rulebook, however, there are other effects that raise fear which aren’t listed in the “Raising Fear” section.

You can see the problem: If you’re wondering if something raises fear or not, you can’t reliably check the “Raising Fear” index. Simultaneously, if you’re wondering what to do when moving off a darkness title, you’ll likely check the procedure for moving off a tile and end up forgetting to raise your fear.

In practice, it’s even more confusing because there isn’t a single section of “indexed rules”. Instead, these little index sections are scattered haphazardly around the rulebook. So if you’re following a procedure detailed in the rulebook, you can never be sure that there isn’t some crucial step that’s buried somewhere else.

For this revised rulebook, the rules are reorganized to be entirely procedural: If you need to move off a tile, look at the rules for movement and you’ll see everything you’re supposed to do (including raising your fear level if the tile has a darkness marker on it).

In practice, this has resolved a lot of the confusion surrounding the rules of the game and drastically reduced the number of errors being made during play. Hopefully you’ll find this to be true at your table, too!

UNOFFICIAL ERRATA

The rulebook also includes the errata and clarifications from the official FAQ. However, in addition to those changes I also discovered a number of other discrepancies or unclear rules in the course of my revising. In order to make the revised rulebook as clear as possible, I needed to include some “unofficial” errata.

All of those changes, however, are listed on the final page of the unofficial rulebook (along with an explanation of my rationale for making a particular ruling in each case). So if you want to make a different choice than I did, it should be easy enough!

It should be noted, however, that I’ve made no effort to resolve some of the difficulties found in the Scenario book for the game. I’m afraid that’s beyond the scope of this project. The official FAQ will resolve several of the most problematic mechanics (including the game-breaking errors in the final scenario), but when it comes to the remaining issues I recommend just taking your best guess. (When in doubt, go with the option which makes the game more difficult for you!)

Revised Rulebook (PDF)

(If you have a printer that can do booklet printing, I recommend it.)

The map for Dweredell was originally created with large key entries. It looked like this:

It’s a beautiful map, but I always wished that I had a version that had no map key numbers on it.

Then a fellow by the name of Andrew Shields contacted me: He’d done an absurdly awesome amount of Photoshop work and managed to rebuild the map sans numbers. Instead of posting it here, I’m going to point you over to Andrew’s website: Here.

It’s well worth checking out, particularly if you’re the proud owner of a copy of City Supplement 1: Dweredell. (And if you’re not a proud owner of that book, you should check it out. Hint, hint.).

Spam on this site has gotten out of control over the past few months. I haven’t had a lot of time to dedicate to the Alexandrian lately and, unfortunately, most of that time gets chewed up just trying to stay on top of the spam.

So I’m increasing the moderation filters on the site: This means that your comments are much more likely to hit the moderation queue and will require manual approval before they get posted. Sorry for the inconvenience, but hopefully it will make this place look a little bit less like a Russian garbage dump.