While poking around caving websites doing research for the Better Dungeon Maps series, I stumbled across a thread at CaveChat.org of “caving lies”, many of which seemed to have a great deal of pertinence to fantasy dungeoncrawling:
- “You pretty much can’t get lost.”
- “The trip can’t take more than 4 hours.”
- “I’m just going to poke my head in and see where it goes.”
- “It’s dry.”
- “We’ve got plenty of rope.”
- “You can fit through there. No problem.”
- “Trust me.”
- “Leave your pack behind, you won’t be needing it.”
- “I know exactly where I’m at!”
- “The cave map is accurate.”
- “I don’t know how those rocks got in your pack.”
- “I only scooped a hundred feet.”
Tangentially, the idea of “scooping” an area (i.e., being the first to explore it) has recently come up quite a bit in my hexcrawl campaign. Should have more on that later this week or next.
I should point out that “scooping” in caver circles means exploring new territory without mapping it, especially in a large cave with a concerted mapping project.
Another analogous thing is in archeology, where some researchers would be more concerned with finding neat artifacts for their sponsors, while others would be more concerned with a meticulous study of the site, attempting to learn as much as possible.
Frank