Roger the GS over at Roles, Rules, & Rolls posted some interesting thoughts regarding the use of the techniques I described in Xandering the Dungeon in small, one-shot scenarios. This, in turn, prompted me to ruminate on the application of xandering techniques on small scales.
Xandering isn’t a cure-all. But, in my experience, it does scale to almost any size and it’s almost always useful to at least consider xandering as a potential tool even if you ultimately decide against it. (I might even go so far as to say that you should default to it unless you have a really good reason not to. In no small part because, as I mentioned in the original essay, this is actually the way the real world works 99 times out of 100.)
To demonstrate what I mean about using xandering techniques at any scale, let me give you an example at an extremely small scale to emphasize the point: A two-room “dungeon” that I just got done designing for an Eclipse Phase scenario.
The “dungeon” in this case is actually a warehouse: The first room is a small security office. The second room is the big warehouse floor itself. Since it’s only two rooms, there’s really no way that we could apply xandering techniques, right?
(Spoilers: That’s a rhetorical question.)
Let’s take a look at a few xandering techniques:
First, multiple entrances: Skylight(s) on the roof of the warehouse. The loading dock. A door leading into the security office. (From a tactical standpoint, this is infinitely more interesting than just having a single door leading into the building.)
Second, multiple paths: Rather than just having one connector between the security office and the warehouse, what if we include several? There’s the door. A ladder leading to a trapdoor in the roof that gives you access to the skylights. Let’s toss in a trapdoor leading to a crawlspace that’s used for electrical wiring; it’ll let you pop up right in the middle of the warehouse (or maybe in multiple places). (If that crawlspace is actually a tunnel that leads over to the exterior generator we could also add that as yet another entrance to the complex.)
That crawlspace would also qualify as a secret or unusual path (another of our xandering techniques).
This obviously isn’t the only way to design a warehouse. (It might even be overkill.) But it does demonstrate how you can use xandering techniques even on the tiniest scales can organically create interesting tactical and strategic choices.
Dude,
A dungeon-like warehouse for a cyberpunk-style game? I think that you are pushing this technique too far and in the wrong media (like applying a chalking technique to oil painting. You remind me of a group of D&D players who decided to give other role-playing games a try. Problem is, they wrote a small dungeon adventure with each new game as a genre-setting, and did not get very far in experiencing the differences. A Dungeon adventure is a unique setting that woks best with fantasy role-playing. It might come in useful in a scenario calling for tactical room clearing, but other role playing games emphasize other aspects of adventuring. Even games like Traveler, RuneQuest and Chivalry and Sorcery, emphasized adventuring elements other than dungeon crawl. I have [xandered] my node-based adventure set up, with the modification that the extra interconnections did not lead to the existing nodes, but to new scenes, NPCs and critical incidents not directly related to the main story, giving a chance for the players to get lost and for the antagonists to become aware of the players looking for them.
@ Brooser Bear
Actually, dungeon crawling is a viable type of game structure in almost any fictional era, meaning one can have dungeon crawls just as easily in a faux-renaissance Europe or the 40th millennium as in a pseudo-medieval setting. What it requires, really, is rules that make this particular structure smooth and exciting to play; for instance, Monsterhearts, Dogs in the Vineyard, or The Esoterrorists are not really good candidates for dungeon crawling, but many sci-fi and cyberpunk games are.
It is the GM’s responsibility to decide if preparing the scene as a crawl would make it easier to run or not. If the warehouse in the example is nothing but a setting for an interrogation or a very simple investigation, it is most certainly overdoing it.
Ynas,
Point is, the core experience of these OTHER role playing game systems is NOT the dungeon crawl. You miss out on the whole point of these other games. Unfortunately, most of the GM’s can’t think outside the dungeon, and those other games aim at places other than a keyed labyrinth map. Isaak Asimov’s Foundation was the setting for traveler. Characters in Runequest were supposed to navigate wilderness and encounter temples and human settlements, but not the labyrinths within, since most ancient temples were a whole lot simpler on the interior than the most rudimentary Dungeon. In Man, Myth and Magic, you were supposed to wander the pre-ancient world and encounter strange travelers – ancient greeks, Tibetans, Egyptians and adventures were based on multi-cultural encounters, not treasure hunts and labyrinths.
Brooser Bear,
Hmm. Maybe you’re reacting to the tendency to make things over-elaborate, and you have some good points. However, if those games are trying to create a different mood, as games they are still meant to be house-ruled, anyways. At least after you have seen how the designers intended them to be used in their initial forms. Why not get the feel of the play for any of those other games that don’t Typically have dungeon crawls, and [xander] 2 room “complexes” for the occasional situation? Don’t do it so consistently, that the PCs always know there will be other obvious entraces, or that they won’t be surprised by those other entraces when they penetrate the defenses, but often enough that it rewards the extra effort once in a while.
For instance, Runequest has at least one of its earliest published adventures that’s kind of a dungeoncrawl, “Snake Pipe Hollow.” The other games I’m not familiar with. At least some of these game creators intended there to be some exceptions to the rule of the mood/feel, they were creating in their games.
I think a default of [xandering] and nodes works well with most things. If it seems overly elaborate, then discard it, for a simpler approach. At least consider it as an option.
@Justin,
Any ideas in this direction for when the style of game precludes [xandering], or not?
[Xandering] doesn’t just have to be for “room clearing” either. What about sneaking? It can allow multiple ways to sneak through and around things, to steal or spy on different areas in a setting where you hope to avoid encounters. Having a wide variety of paths, some of them secret, can be really valuable in that type of scenario.
Really, any time where the players might want to sneak around something seems like a good setting for [xandering].
Dungeon crawl is a stylistic narrative form. Something you want to get away from. There was a guy who wrote a 350 page novel using concepts and terminology copyrighted by TSR at the time. Gygax trademarked his imagination. DMs who started out playing D&D will design role playing adventures for other games as if it was D&D. Wizards of the Coast own them. When [xandering] a multi level dungeon or a wilderness map, you [xander] the connection between the hexes and the areas on the dungeon map. When [xandering] the connections between the nodes, you [xander] outward to create additional nodes.
Neal, if you want to try a DIFFERENT fantasy role playing style (not atmosphere, not the mood – different game). Try chivalry and sorcery as it was initially intended. Spells were mostly scrying, dark arts, and psychological illusions, that took days and rituals to complete. The game took place between castles and tournaments and in the midst of a historic medieval life without the dungeons or treasures. Like a fish that never been outside water, you don’t know what you are missing. In the end, bit Rune Quest and C&S both capitulated to the marked and to competition with TSR, and started trying to emulate the D&D stylistics with their own games.
> Dude, A dungeon-like warehouse for a cyberpunk-style game? I think that you are pushing this technique too far and in the wrong media
> Point is, the core experience of these OTHER role playing game systems is NOT the dungeon crawl. You miss out on the whole point of these other games.
> Dungeon crawl is a stylistic narrative form. Something you want to get away from.
> Try chivalry and sorcery as it was initially intended.
Dude … chill.
If you would spend a little time with your push-to-talk switch NOT depressed, you might get a glimmer of what Justin’s actually suggesting here (namely, that adding tactical options can make even very simple situations more interesting, and that techniques of doing so need not be restricted to your traditional kick-in-the-door dungeon crawls). As for suggesting that the whole notion of exploring a warehouse isn’t an appropriate situation for a near-future cyberpunk-style — WTF over?
And perhaps you should give the whole telling-people-how-they-should-be-having-fun schtick a rest, too; I at least am finding it pretty tiresome.
Leland,
If you are setting a scene for an escape from, a prison, then it would make sense to map out every air duct, skylight and false ceiling, but for a simple warehouse? Why add unnecessary and unrealistic tactical options to make simple situations more interesting? Could it be the lack of knowledge and experience of doing anything else and dungeofying every adventure instead of structuring the incidents in a genre-appropriate setting and using different framing? That’s what you are doing by spending time drawing and keying in a tactical area map.
What’s tiresome is mediocre DMing through randomly rolled dungeons with nothing else in sight, and if you gonna waste valuable gaming time dressing up a simple warehouse for the players to explore in a Cyberpunk setting, then you haven’t got s clue.
Brooser Bear,
I saw that list of games you mentioned, including Chivalry & Sorcery, and didn’t register it. I have that game. Red cover. the binding was glued onto thin outer paperboard and is very fragile. I’ve reread parts of that game, and it’s pretty involved for so many different stated combat actions, medieval social situations, etc. Don’t know if it’s more complicated than D&D 3.X, but, it was plenty complicated back in the day. I think they’ve come out with up to 5 editions, since then? It had it’s critics, and think it’s mutated into something unrecognizable.
As per Brooser’s statement: Neal <– Fish out of water. Damn New Yorkers think you know everything. Just because you can get Chinese food at 4 A.M. or anything else at any time of day or night, pretty soon you'll be telling the rest of us we don't know how to recognize a decent bagel and bad, good, or indifferent delicatessen. Brooser: "Hey, Gygax, you Wisconsin "Cheeseheads" don't know Brie from Burrata di bufala!"
First, we have the claim that raiding warehouses owned by nihilistic megacorporations is not a “core experience” of the cyberpunk genre. My response to that basically matches Leland’s: WTF?
Then we have the seemingly related claim that location-based scenarios featuring a map and a key should only be used if you’re playing D&D. My response to that is identical: WTF?
Buried under those points appears to be an assertion that providing tactically and strategically rich environments is somehow inappropriate. I’m afraid this earns a third WTF?
Brooser: Rein it in. And proofread your comments. I don’t care if you post stuff I disagree with. But large chunks of your comments here are completely unintelligible nonsense.
Point is, nobody runs anything other than location based, D&D style gaming using a map and key while running non-D&D games. Address that.
Heh. When I read the article, I had quite a flashback to a raid with my Shadowrungroup back in the day… 😉
First off, I’ve been lurking here forever and ever. Love the blog, thanks for all the great content!
> Point is, nobody runs anything other than location based, D&D style gaming using a map and key while running non-D&D games. Address that.
I really don’t think he has to address that, because it’s painfully and obviously false.
I’ve run location-based scenarios in Shadowrun and Call of Cthulhu. I’m somebody, therefore you’re wrong.
Furthermore, I’ve seen published adventures using location-based design in everything from Numenera to Paranoia to Toon. Unless they sat unused, without a single soul using them, you’re still wrong.
Maybe you should tone back the absolutism a bit? If you don’t think it’s an appropriate tool for games outside of D&D, that’s a valid viewpoint, but clearly not everyone agrees with you.
Cheers!
Landon
Using [xandering] in situations where you might not usually think of got me thinking and I realized that, when playing games like Fiasco I like to [xander] plot. Well sorta. I’m probably just comparing apples and oranges here where the shared attribute is complexity. And complexity is interesting.
For those unfamiliar with Fiasco it is light in rules but the rules it does have encourage complexity. Webs of relationships and objects, needs and locations that you are encouraged to revisit in multiple scenes as themes of the game.
There are techniques that are used to make the game interesting. The foremost that comes to mind is that nascent plot threads should be built upon and not immediately brought to a close. But, like in [xandering], you want to “beware the sprawl” of creating too many threads and interconnections.
In Fiasco you are building up these complexities on the fly but in all the [xandering] discussion it has been about preplanned maps. I feel like the [xander] technique could help with on the fly dungeon especially with a few rules of thumb to help guide it.
I want to chime in and agree with Landon.
Not only can you make excellent use of location-based adventure locations with nice maps and keys in Call of Cthulhu, you can do it in the context of a game/campaign that spends the majority of time NOT in a keyed-map-style location (the library, the train, searching police/newspaper/tax records, etc.) but ends up in such a location.
Having complexity in how the players can move around this final horrific location can really help them feel like they aren’t safe, like they can’t cut off all points of access or know if they’ve got someone or something sneaking around in the house with them.
I think [xandering] is great for both stealth and horror, without having to be about fighting whatever is in the rooms your hallways connect.
And the whole scenario most certainly does not need to be happening on maps with keyed locations, just part of it with a complex environment in which they may have to make tactical movement choices rather than “we go to the History section.”
I see nothing wrong with Justin’s example of the warehouse, it’s assuming the party will be doing something pretty serious in the warehouse rather than going there to peek in a crate and leave, and that depends on the adventure, but that’s not a bad assumption for many games, even ones that aren’t being played like D&D.
There was a phase in Classic Traveller when ship descriptions included “points of entry”. It might have started in Supplement 7: Traders & Gunboats. Certainly both Adventure 10: Safari Ship and Double Adventure 3: The Argon Gambit/Death Station used it.
The ship descriptions would include a section of points of entry listing the airlocks, then cargo doors, then hangars, then landing gear wells, then maintenance hatches, then windows and what it would take to break them, then fueling ports, and so on. The idea was that the ships were a resource that might be reused many times and characters might not always want to use the door or might not always need to get a full-sized person inside (or outside). I believe notes were also included as to how forcing entry at various points would effect hull integrity.
Similarly, many warehouses do have wiring tunnels. It is one standard way to construct warehouses. I used to work general maintenance at an airport and there are a lot of ways to get around other than doorways and hallways. I studied architecture for a bit and one of my professors said the main advantage of being an architect was you could always find the bathrooms in an unfamiliar building.
Some groups will be happy saying, “We enter the warehouse and look around.” Others will be frustrated by such a broad brush approach. They want to feel challenged and clever for overcoming the challenge. It’s possible to feel clever for overcoming a challenge that wasn’t ever there. For some groups going sideways adds to the fun. And the warehouse template, like the CT ship designs, can be used over and over again. It might seem a lot of work when you do the preparation for one possibly minor encounter, but it saves work when you can reuse the template over and over. And who is to say the encounter will be minor? Players have a talent for making mountains out of molehills and completely missing entire mountain ranges.
Leland,
You must have misread my comments. Your and J. Forbes’ comments underscore exactly what I been saying: D&D dungeon style location based adventure design predominates even in the non-D&D games to the exclusion of adventure design to cover other types of adventures that occur in the other non-D&D games.
Another example of the same: Justin proudly told me that his [xandered] two room warehouse is a tactically and strategically rich environment. Tactically yes, [xandering] will make it tactically more interesting, but strategically is a different level of involvement altogether – Strategy – means – players assigning value to the warehouse as opposed to OTHER potential targets and deciding where to go and what to, based on available information, they should win through good playing and initiative.
I have no problem with adventure presented as dungeon crawl. I love writing dungeons to explore, and I am currently running AD&D. I have a problem with no other design alternatives available or used in those other non-D&D games. I am not telling anyone how they should play, my concern is how little the adventure design technique has advanced since the days that Gary Gygax has written his dungeon design supplements in the back of his DMG and the brilliant page or two that Tom Moldway distilled it down to in his red basic set rulebook. Subsequently, there was a lack of adventure design writing of similar quality. I had to create a realistic system for wilderness design, because there was nothing equivalent on the market.
Finally, try this – take any rulebook. Look through the illustrations of the events in the game and of the descriptions of the events that are supposed to occur in the game and in the examples of gameplay given. Then look at the events and the environments in the game that you are running or are playing in, whether in a purchased or self-written adventure. Does the game you are playing match the incidents and environment portrayed in game illustrations and in the description of play given in the rulebook?
Have you ever tried the board-games, Escape From New York (TSR) and the Elder Sign (Fantasy Flight Games)? Those are great, vivid games! Does whatever fantasy role playing game you are involved in (Call of Cthulu vis a vie the Elder Sign), give you the same memorable and vivid role-playing experience? Mine does, I hope yours does also.
@Brooser Bear – Perhaps I’ve just missed it, but could you explain what exactly makes a location-based adventure “D&D-style”? Or do you consider all location-based adventures to be “D&D-style” by definition? Without that information, it’s kind of pointless for anyone else to claim that they’ve played non-D&D-style location-based adventures in CoC/Toon/whatever.
You’ve also mentioned dungeon crawls a couple times, but it seems like a bit of a stretch to me to compare the process of making a sweep through a two-room warehouse to a full-blown dungeon crawl and, even if it involves combat, neither storming the warehouse with guns blazing nor doing a Mission: Impossible-style infiltration strikes me as “D&D-style”.
nDervish,
Location based adventuring alone does not make it D&D style. Consider this example: A long time D&D player makes a Traveler space adventure: Players’ ship crashes on a deserted planet. The DM/GM makes a map of the area surrounding the crash site and some encounter tables, The players exit the ship and explore the area, kill a few local fauna, and find, of course, CAVES to explore.
There is nothing wrong with this, except that the adventure is stilted in its design towards fantasy role playing. Here are the things that I would consider for a similar adventure: Players need to assess the ship and the live support system to see how long they can last, if the ship can take them off the planet. Players need to establish communications with Base and arrange for rescue, if necessary. There may be morale issues with the crew. Maybe test the atmosphere and the environment on an unknown planet for human compatibility. Cave exploration is nice, but that’ what space travel gaming should focus on. And obviously the location based adventure mapping won’t let you lay pout/document the situation with the ship repair. It could be mapped with a check list and a schematic showing damage, maybe.
Another example: With regards to espionage genre, D&D style means that you focus you adventure on maps of the areas and locations, where your players will strike, penetrate, raid etc, and the WHOLE play is, again, centered around these locations much like a dungeon campaign. Contrast this with what a realistic setting might look like: 1960’s Indochina, players are the execs running Air America, airline, using the jobs as a cover to travel where they need. Another PC might pose as a journalist. There are special forces soldiers, officially going on leave and doing private security work as a cover. The adventures that they may have to handle should involve smuggling weapons to rebels in Laos and Cambodia, identifying underground members of the North Vietnamese communist party in South Vietnamese villages and killing them with the help if the South Vietnamese soldiers and police, identifying ships transporting weapons and supplies to Vietcong all over the world and killing those organizing these shipments and blowing up the tramp freighters themselves. Again, there is a tactical component to this, and there is a place for maps and encounter tables, but the focus of the adventures should be the players encounters with villagers, village chiefs, police chiefs, airline and transportation officials, globe trotting. Most of these do never require any mapping or gun play or burglaries. What is needed to pull off this kind of an adventure is an Incident based design and Node-based encounter structure. To take a plane from Saigon to Hamburg does not require a wandering monster check. To go out to a night club might take a few encounter and a description of a club, but not a keyed tactical map. To pick up a machine pistol at a dead drop in Germany will require role play, and maybe a tourist map. You will need to improvise a map of the location where a Mediterranean tramp steamer captain will be gunned down, he may have a gun, but historically they were unarmed. Compare this scenario with any of the TSR’s published adventures for their spy title “Top Secret”, to see further illustration of D&D influencing adventure design. By the way, none of this is classified or privileged and was largely known to those Americans who cared about these things at the time the White Box set was being written. The ignorance and fecklessness of the TSR writers who were scared to base their game on the real life intelligence community is disgusting. For those wanting to run realistic spy/action type of role playing games, I recommend “A Murder in Wartime” and Google Tony Poe for some real world inspiration as to adventure and setting.
What were you saying about Mission Impossible type infiltration? How about some real FANTASY role playing – why not infiltrate a drug cartel or a terrorist organization or a rebel army leadership in Africa? How would you go about designing THAT adventure?
The question isn’t really how anyone would design some specific example, it’s whether the techniques Justin was emphasizing in the post we’re all commenting on can be useful in non-D&D-like adventures.
You seem to be the only one arguing they can’t be.
I don’t see anyone proposing that all adventures, or even most should be dungeon crawls. If you read above, you’ll note that I was trying to talk about maps as one setting of several. Have tactical options in the warehouse, not the records office where you researched the blueprints.
You’re giving examples of the extremes, what would be really helpful would be trying to define where the line is.
This discussion is beginning to touch on some issues I discussed in my series of essays about game structures, particularly the post where I talked about the ways you can combine and use different game structures to construct scenarios.
In looking specifically at the location-crawl (featuring a map with keyed rooms), I’ve generally found that this structure is useful when the players are primarily interested in either:
a) Detailed tactical approaches; or
b) Detailed geographic exploration
The former is relatively easy to qualify, although it should be noted that tactical doesn’t necessarily equate to a room-by-room brawl: It could also mean tactical stealth play. (It could even mean setting up a sniper’s nest half a mile away and needing to know what the sight lines are going to be.)
The latter is a bit more nebulous, particularly as we move into the area of investigation.
For example, let’s consider a scenario where the PCs go to investigate the house of Suzy Gennaro. Suzy has gone missing and the PCs need to figure out what happened to her. Is this something that should be handled as a location-crawl?
Well, this is partly going to be driven by the atmosphere the GM wants to create. But that will probably be heavily influenced by the actual content of the house. Let’s consider a couple of extremes.
Extreme #1: There is only a single useful clue in the entire house (a bloody handprint on the wall of Suzy’s bedroom). In this case, a location-crawl approach to the house is almost certainly a bad idea.
Extreme #2: There are useful clues in every single room of the house. In fact, a large chunk of the investigation (or at least this stage of the investigation) is reconstructing exactly what happened in this house on a room-by-room basis.
In this latter case, even though there’s no combat in the house, a location-crawl is probably a good idea: As a GM you going to want the clarity of presentation that will come with the map key; and the location-crawl (where each room is experienced individually) is going to provide necessary clarity to the PCs’ investigation.
(Note, too, that a common mistake by a GM is to think that if there’s a need to tactically map part of a location that you need to tactically map the whole thing. For example, if the PCs go into the basement of Suzy’s house and unleash a demon that they have to fight… Well, having a tactical map of the basement can make a lot of sense. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that you therefore need to map and key the entire house.)
Forbes, I am not arguing that at all. Justin’s techniques are extremely useful for non D&D adventures, which is why I am here. The point I am belaboring is precisely, conventions of traditional D&D unwittingly applied to non-D&D adventure design.
With regards to the extreme example of D&D influenced Traveler scenario. It’s taken from real life. I have played in 12 D&D groups. Of them 11 were mediocre and all but one were dungeon exploration. A few involved too many players and were conducted like those boring to tears committee meetings. The one that was good, as in a coherent game was run by a unique DM, he dispensed with a lot of what is traditional D&D to make his life easier. He dispensed with treasure. All monsters we fought were shadow creatures that turned into gold when a critical hit was scored. It was all location based, as in he did not use interior maps at all, no dungeons per se. Locations were secret meeting at a forest clearing, the Inn had rooms upstairs, a main tavern hall and a kitchen. Never need for a map. But, of all people he managed to run a coherent game world with a consistent nemesis and reluctant allies. I have no idea how he documented his adventures. I never saw is maps or notes.
Justin,
Thank you for the references. You write original and most insightful work on adventure design. There is too little quality writing on adventure design to begin with. Question: have you ever tried combining a time-line with a node-based adventure design and how did you do it?
I always took Shadowrun to basically be a new take on the D&D dungeon crawl. If you’re playing a cyberpunk heist/crime game and have a reason to suspect that shit’s going to go down in the warehouse it’s not a bad plan to spend a minute or two (maybe even three) thinking up its layout. Not all games care too much about tactical depth, but cyberpunk games tend to work really well with it.
I also don’t think you have to worry about dungeon crawlers being overrepresented these days. Brooser, none of the games you mentioned seemed to be all that recent–have you taken a look at the modern indie RPG scene? If someone is into logistics-heavy dungeon crawls these days it’s generally because that’s actually what they like best, not just because they’ve never experienced anything else, so complaining about narrow-sighted D&D players feels a bit weird to me. It may have been a valid complaint 20 years ago, but. . .
Touche, OtspIII,
I haven’t seen a modern RPG besides the WOTC D&D volumes. Ironically, Shadowrun (when it first came out), was the first role-playing game that I didn’t buy a copy of. Until then, I bought every FRPG that came out, and am sticking to the old books. Gygax core volumes for D&D, 1st Edition for GW, as well as Aftermath! So, I am behind the times, not that I am missing anything with the new retro-clones. Why them when you can get the original books for pennies on the dollar?
If ever I get dome with my D&D campaign, I will take up the post apocalypse or neo-noir mystery. Dust Devils sounds very intriguing. I am about to buy a copy. If I like it, I will incorporate parts of it into my D&D play, where applicable. Twilight 2000 used an Cartomancy (fortune telling with playing cards) for generating NPC’s and their personalities. Now, that system, I use in all my games to generate NPCs fro stats to their personalities.
I am not even sure, what new role-playing games are out there, besides Wizards if the Coast, the forge in spired Indie titles, and retro-clones. Any other alternatives for the apocalypse and the detective genre?