DISCUSSING
In the Shadow of the Spire – Session 24A: The Squire of Dawn

Sir Kabel returned the bow with a nod and then sat down on the couch, motioning Tor to a nearby chair. “Sir Torland of Barund, if I remember correctly? We spoke of horses at Harvestime, did we not?”

“Yes, but I am no knight, sir.”

“Truly?” Sir Kabel raised his eyesbrows. “Yet you bear a sword at your side and you carry yourself like a warrior.”

“I am trained in the blade,” Tor said. “But I belong to no order.”

“Would you like to?”

In this week’s session, Tor makes a choice about which order of knighthood to approach in his quest to become a knight. This might be a good time, therefore, to do a call back to an earlier Running the Campaign essay, “An Interstice of Factions,” in which I looked at how and why I’d set up this choice in the first place.

I honestly have no idea how things might have played out if Tor had instead selected the Knights of the Golden Cross or the Knights of the Pale. But as you can see in the campaign journal (although Tor really doesn’t), Sir Kabel had not only become aware of Tor’s martial prowess, he also had political motivations for keeping Tor close to him. As a result, Tor’s entrance into the order is heavily accelerated as he moves almost immediately into almost informal Trials of Arms, which are what I’d like to discuss today.

UNUSUAL RULINGS

“I’ll rest on little ceremony here,” Kabel said. “This is your First Trial of Arms. We’ll begin with the Test of the Blade. Strike me. If you can.”

Tor attacked… and Kabel easily parried the thrust. “Good form. Controlled, yet fierce.”

Tor feinted to the left and then slashed to the right. Kabel almost completely ignored the feint and easily parried the slash, but Tor deflected his blow and plunged the point of his blade toward’s Kabel’s chest. Kabel was forced to twist his own sword in order to parry the follow-thru. “Excellent!”

Tor backed off half a pace and then quickly brought a strong blow down directly towards Kabel’s head, but Kabel was quick enough to shift his footwork, right his form, and block the blow.

“Enough!” Kabel cried, disengaging. “Now for the Test of the Shield. Defend yourself!”

A lot of mechanics in RPGs are clearly designed for one specific implementation, and this can often be seen quite clearly with combat mechanics. One of the great things about having a GM who can make ruilings, though, is that even these mechanics can be creatively turned to new uses when the occasion calls for it.

In this case, for example, I plucked attack rolls out of the combat system and structured them as a series of checks which included parsing some mechanical failures into partial successes – i.e., attacks which could impress Sir Kabel even if they were not, in fact, successful at striking him.

The cool thing about using mechanics in unusual ways – instead of just doing some ad hoc fiat – is that (a) the player still feels like they’re in control of the situation because they can apply their mastery and understanding of the rule system and (b) the GM can also continue to use the supporting infrastructure around those mechanics to support and enhance their rulings.

For example, I was able to use my house rules for fighting defensively to increase Sir Kabel’s effective AC (since he was entirely focused on parrying Tor’s blows). Conversely, Tor’s player realized she could do the same, using the Aim ability on Tor’s final attack.

PLAYER-FACING MECHANICS

Tor loosed the shield from his back and lowered himself into a defensive posture. Sir Kabel unleashed a withering flurry of attacks, and although Tor blocked many of them, Kabel’s sword seemed to constantly find the weak points in his defense.

After several exchanges, Kabel stepped back again. “I’m impressed. It’s clear you have had little formal training, but your instincts are strong and you have clearly been tested by the true heat of battle. The Order would be honored to have you serve as its squire.”

The other thing I did here was shift to a player-facing defensive roll when Sir Kabel moved to the Test of the Shield.

A player-facing mechanic involves the player always being the one to roll the dice: If a PC is attacking, the player rolls the attack dice against a static target number representing the target’s defense. If the PC is defending, on the other hand, the player makes a defense roll against a static target number representing the attacker’s skill.

(A system where both the attacker and defender roll on each attack is NOT player-facing; that’s dual-facing. D&D attacks are generally neither, with the attacker always being the one to roll.)

A player-facing mechanic can have advantages in both practice and design, but perhaps the biggest advantage is psychological: Even though the mathematical effect of a player-facing mechanic can be utterly irrelevant, we nevertheless associate rolling the dice (i.e., an action taken at the table) to the action of the character for whom the dice are being rolled; it feels as if that character is the one in “control” of the outcome.

This is also due to the variability of the dice: If I roll for the attacker but not the defender, then the defender’s outcome is constant. Ergo, our subconscious assumes that success or failure is entirely dependent on what the attacker did – on the variability of their outcome.

(I talk about this effect a bit more in “The Design History of Saving Throws,” and also how you can consciously choose to break this psychological default when narrating outcomes in The Art of Rulings.)

Long story short, I deliberately chose to have Tor make a player-facing defensive roll — rolling 1d20 + AC modifiers vs. Kabel’s attack bonuses + 10 — because it centered Tor as the most important character in that moment.

And, of course, the player rolling the dice is the one actually engaged in the resolution, and you can see that quite clearly in this example: If I’d followed the normal mechanics and rolled Kabel’s attack rolls during the Trial of the Shield, Tor’s player would have just sat there watching me roll dice and narrate outcomes. Having the player roll the dice, regardless of any other factors, simply made for a more satisfying game play experience.

NEXT:
Campaign Journal: Session 24B – Running the Campaign: Lore Book Meetings
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index

SESSION 24A: THE SQUIRE OF DAWN

June 21st, 2008
The 11th Day of Kadal in the 790th Year of the Seyrunian Dynasty

Tor left the Ghostly Minstrel and turned north towards the Temple District, heading towards the Outer Cathedral. In the three weeks since he had come to Ptolus, he had felt a deep frustration growing in his heart. He had left his home and his family to become a knight and follow the path of honor. But he had found little of the certainty he had hoped for traveling with these strange companions that the mage Ritharius had sent him to. They were good people – of that he was certain, although there had been times when he had doubted – but they seemed lost in a time when he desperately needed direction.

And so he was intent in seeking out Sir Kabel Dathim, the leader of the Order of the Dawn. He had seen Sir Kabel’s cold reaction to the proclamations of Rehobath and this had, for whatever reason, created some sense of trust in him.

When he arrived at the Cathedral, Tor spoke with one of the lesser priests and was led to Sir Kabel’s quarters. The priest knocked on the door, entered, and returned only moments later to usher Tor forward and shut the door behind him.

Sir Kabel’s quarters were small, but well-furnished. An inner door led to what was most likely a bedroom, and the main chamber into which Tor stepped served as both an office and a lounge of sorts. Sir Kabel was sitting at his desk, but as Tor entered he closed a thin ledger, rose, and crossed towards the couch.

“Sir Kabel.” Tor bowed deeply. “Thank you for agreeing to speak with me.”

Sir Kabel returned the bow with a nod and then sat down on the couch, motioning Tor to a nearby chair. “Sir Torland of Barund, if I remember correctly? We spoke of horses at Harvestime, did we not?”

“Yes, but I am no knight, sir.”

“Truly?” Sir Kabel raised his eyesbrows. “Yet you bear a sword at your side and you carry yourself like a warrior.”

“I am trained in the blade,” Tor said. “But I belong to no order.”

“Would you like to?”

Tor couldn’t contain the grin which erupted across his face. “That’s why I’ve come to you!”

But now Kabel’s face, which had been drawn in thought and consideration, became clouded with suspicion. “You’re in league with the Chosen of Vehthyl, aren’t you?”

Tor’s grin dropped away and he chose his next words carefully. “He has recently been my companion.”

“How recently?”

“A few weeks.”

“And what do you think of the Novarch-in-Exile?” Kabel couldn’t keep the contempt out of his voice.

“I think he’s dangerous,” Tor said plainly. “And I don’t trust him. I don’t think Dominic trusts him, either.”

“And yet he stood at Rehobath’s side.”

“He didn’t know what Rehobath was planning. None of us did.”

Kabel nodded thoughtfully. “Do you think Dominic is truly the Chosen of Vehthyl?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think he knows.” Tor shrugged. “But he bears the signs. That’s no trick.”

Kabel grunted and then stood up. He circled behind the couch and began pacing, his words coming thoughtfully. “I don’t trust Rehobath. He claims to speak with the voices of the Gods, but the Gods speak through the Church and he would raise himself against it. I serve the Church. Not him.” He turned to Tor. “I’m not sure what to make of your friend, either. I would squire you into the Order of the Dawn, but as part of that I must ask you to keep a wary eye on Dominic.”

Tor frowned. “I won’t betray my friends.”

“I’m not asking you to,” Kabel said. “Are not two of my men – men who are more loyal to Rehobath than me – already standing guard at the Ghostly Minstrel? And you can be sure that those are not the only eyes that Rehobath has on him. I am only interested in making sure that Dominic himself does not turn against the Church.”

Tor had to think deeply, but in the end he believed that what Sir Kabel said was true. Or, at least, true enough. “I can agree to that.”

“Then come with me.”

Sir Kabel led Tor out of the Cathedral and into the large complex of Church-owned buildings just to the north.

This complex was capped by the Godskeep, which housed the Order of the Dawn. At first, Tor thought he was being taken there, but instead Sir Kabel stopped in the small practice field just outside the keep’s southern gate.

A handful of knights were scattered here and there, practicing or skirmishing. Sir Kabel went over to the racks of practice weapons and pulled down two wooden swords. He tossed one of them to Tor. Tor caught it out of the air.

“I’ll rest on little ceremony here,” Kabel said. “This is your First Trial of Arms. We’ll begin with the Test of the Blade. Strike me. If you can.”

Tor attacked… and Kabel easily parried the thrust. “Good form. Controlled, yet fierce.”

Tor feinted to the left and then slashed to the right. Kabel almost completely ignored the feint and easily parried the slash, but Tor deflected his blow and plunged the point of his blade toward’s Kabel’s chest. Kabel was forced to twist his own sword in order to parry the follow-thru. “Excellent!”

Tor backed off half a pace and then quickly brought a strong blow down directly towards Kabel’s head, but Kabel was quick enough to shift his footwork, right his form, and block the blow.

“Enough!” Kabel cried, disengaging. “Now for the Test of the Shield. Defend yourself!”

Tor loosed the shield from his back and lowered himself into a defensive posture. Sir Kabel unleashed a withering flurry of attacks, and although Tor blocked many of them, Kabel’s sword seemed to constantly find the weak points in his defense.

After several exchanges, Kabel stepped back again. “I’m impressed. It’s clear you have had little formal training, but your instincts are strong and you have clearly been tested by the true heat of battle. The Order would be honored to have you serve as its squire.”

Kabel drew out a ring marked with the sigil of the Order of the Dawn and gave it to Tor.

Tor’s heart leapt. It was the dream he had sought, but scarcely hoped for. He quickly made arrangements with Sir Kabel to return once every other day for his training, and then made his way back towards the Ghostly Minstrel.

AGNARR’S ABORTED MISSION

Agnarr headed across Delver’s Square to Ebbert’s and purchased a variety of supplies, particularly a large bulk of raw meat and other food supplies. Loading all of it into his bag of holding, he set out for Greyson House: His intention was to travel down to the caverns of the Clan of the Torn Ear, gift them with the food supplies, and then practice sparring with them. The fact that he spoke none of their tongue dissuaded him not at all.

Once he made his way into the tunnels beneath Greyson House, however, he found them unexpectedly disturbed: The pit of chaos had been covered over with a thick layer of stone… albeit a layer of stone which now seemed to be slowly bubbling and boiling away as a result of the powerful forces of primal chaos trapped beneath it.

Agnarr doused his flaming sword and proceeded carefully down the hallway. As he approached the complex where the bloodwights had nested, he heard many voices and the muffled sounds of some activity.

Toying with the idea of brazenly entering the complex and confronting the intruders, Agnarr instead decided for prudence. He retreated silently back to Greyson House and returned to the Ghostly Minstrel.

NEXT:
Running the Campaign: Player-Facing Mechanics – Campaign Journal: Session 24B
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index

If you only follow me here on the website, you might not know that the Alexandrian has started streaming on Twitch! I’d been thinking about doing this for awhile, but what finally made me take the plunge was Virtual Gamehole Con back in November 2020. I had a number of seminars planned for the convention, and it turned out Twitch was the best way to deliver those.

If you haven’t had a chance to check out the stream yet, you might be interested in the Design An Adventure series, in which I literally design an adventure on stream. If you’ve ever been curious about how I use the structures and other procedures I talk about here in actual practice, this is what you’ve been looking for!

FENG SHUI

In this video we use the 5-Node Mystery template to design an adventure for Feng Shui.

D&D 5th EDITION

Here we start designing a node-based scenario for D&D which ends up being called “Noemi’s Dream.”

REMIXING AVERNUS

I’ve also been doing work on the Descent Into Avernus remix on Twitch. This is one example of these streams.

I’ll be streaming later today at 12:00pm CST.  Stop on by!

Last week I talked about the early history of religion in D&D, and how this discordant mélange of influences eventually led to a weirdly incoherent metaphysics in which:

• Gods are arranged into pantheons, a word literally derived from the Greek name for a temple which worshipped all gods, and yet…
• People (including the clergy) almost universally choose just ONE god to worship because…
• Every civilized god gets slotted into a church based on monotheistic Christian rites, architecture, and organization. (With “evil” gods being slightly more likely to get primitive fanes and the like.)

As we look across the vast landscape of roleplaying games in the modern world, of course, we can see that any number of efforts have been made, many based on real world mythologies, to break fantasy religions out of this box. But if we’re being honest with ourselves, we can also see that D&D’s religions, by default, remain heavily influenced by contemporary Christianity (probably because that’s most of the audience’s only practical exposure to religion): Monotheistic religious practices awkwardly grafted onto a pantheistic mythology.

And this tends to bleed over into other fantasy religions and our own worldbuilding.

FAITH & BELIEF

Here’s a common, yet also complicated, example of this: In a world where gods obviously and observably exist, why do we talk about people believing or having faith in their god? If you have proof that your god exists, you don’t need to believe in them!

In large part, this paradox exists because it’s how we think about God in contemporary Christian society: We think of the divine as something you have to “believe” in, and that way of thinking just kind of elides naturally into the fantasy world. (Often without any close examination.)

But this is also why I keep talking about contemporary Christian society. Because it turns out that this is not inherently how people think about gods in the real world; the idea that the existence of God is something you need to have irrational belief in is a way of thinking that developed over time. In fact, our very understanding of the words “belief” and “faith” have been shaped by that evolution of thought.

If you look at the etymology of “belief” (from Old French) and “faith” (from Old English), you’ll discover both words originally meant basically the exact same thing: To trust someone; to have confidence in them; to be loyal to them. (The last could perhaps better be understood as a mutual exchange: You trust them, they trust you, neither of you would betray that mutual trust, and therefore you are loyal to each other; i.e., you share or keep faith with each other — a phrase which survives into modern usage while maintaining the older sense of the word.)

The meaning of the word first bled from people into ideas: To have faith or belief in a particular idea meant that you trusted it; you believed it to be true. But just writing the word “believed” is misleading to a modern sensibility, because the meaning was still fundamentally rational: You believed something was true because you had evidence for it.

What caused the meanings of the words to glide into the irrational was, in fact, their application to God. People had faith in God the same way they might have faith in their feudal lord. And obviously the Church wanted them to believe in the ideas that the Church taught them. And so “faith” and “belief” became deeply tied to the worship of God.

(“Worship” itself was a word which originally meant one who was worthy of honor, glory, renown, respect, etc. The noun was turned into a verb – i.e., to worship was to give honor, glory, renown, respect, etc. to the worshipped – and then applied to God, who was obviously worthy of those things. You can see the remnant of the original sense of “worship” in honorifics like Your Worship.)

As time passed, however, European thought became more rational – in fact, the words “rational” and “irrational” were invented, along with concordant understanding that something could only be rationally thought of as true if you had evidence that it was true.

The trick, of course, was that there was no rational evidence for the existence of God.

It took centuries, but eventually this idea became so strongly enmeshed in European thought that it was actually reflected back into the Church and inverted: Sure, there was no rational evidence for God’s existence. But you still needed to believe in God; you still needed to have faith that God’s word and his love for you were true.

At that point, through religion, “faith” and “belief” were deeply connected to something which could only be irrationally accepted as truth. Give it another century or so and these words come shooting out the other side; they’re now applied to other irrational truths that must be believed without evidence and their modern sense. In the case of “belief” the meaning remains mixed (it can apply to both rational and irrational conclusions), but when it comes to “faith” the transformation is more or less complete.

FAITH IN A WORLD OF FANTASY

So one way of understanding how the relationship between worshipers and their gods would work in a world where gods actually exist is to basically turn back the clock on our understanding of the word “faith.”

In a fantasy world, to have faith in a god doesn’t mean that you believe the god exists: It means that you are keeping faith with them. (And I think, furthermore, that it’s worth the effort to truly grok the way in which “faith” described a two-sided relationship: Not just to trust someone, but for them to also trust you. For you to be able to count on each other.)

Once you’ve made this fundamental realignment, it’s interesting to see the impact it can have on other aspects of religious thought.

For example, consider the divine right of kings. In the real world, without any actual evidence of God’s existence, a king’s position as king was essentially “evidence” that God must want them to be king. (Otherwise, of course, they wouldn’t be king.) But the whole thing gets turned on its head if gods exist and are literally endorsing temporal rulers.

• Why would a god do that? It more or less turns “god” into just another tier on the feudal hierarchy: Counts swear to dukes; dukes to kings; kings to gods. And what are the feudal duties of a god to their kings?
• How can this be compatible with multiple gods being worshipped in a kingdom? Perhaps this is the function of a pantheon? It’s more or less a committee of gods who collectively agree who’s going to be king?
• What does this do to the concept of succession? Feels like the god(s) might endorse anybody to be the next king, not just the last king’s eldest son. Does this concept “trickle down,” so that you don’t really have any inherited nobility?
• What does this mean for the hierarchy of the church? In the real world there could be a struggle between the Holy Roman Emperors and the Popes because both could argue that they were the one with divine right, but if you can literally just dial up your god and ask him that sort of thing falls apart (and, assuming your gods are, in fact, endorsing kings, the division between temporal and religious power structures seems likely to collapse or never exist in the first place.

And so forth.

On the other hand, the concept of keeping faith with someone doesn’t necessarily require a one-true-way. You can be friends with Susan in a way that’s different from being friends with Debbie, and it might be the same way with gods. (Particularly if your gods are sufficiently ineffable.) Thus, for example, in my D&D campaign world both the Imperial Church and the Reformists worship the same Nine Gods in different ways… and the Nine Gods grant spells to all of them.

CODA: ATHEISTS

On thing I rather dislike is when “atheists” show up in a fantasy world where gods verifiably exist. An atheist is someone who rejects the existence of gods because there’s no rational evidence that gods exist: If you live in a world where there IS rational evidence that gods exist and you refuse to believe that they do, that doesn’t make you an atheist. It makes you a crazy person.

In some cases, the mythology of the world is that it’s not that “atheists” don’t believe that the gods physically exist; it’s just that they don’t believe that the gods are anything other than really powerful people and/or they simply don’t pledge themselves to any god (they refuse to keep faith with any of them). But even this is a perversion of what the word “atheist” actually means and what atheists actually believe. If you want characters who reject the idea that gods are worthy of worship or faith in your fantasy world with verifiable gods, I’d recommend using a term like “heretic” or perhaps inventing a new term like “godless.”

Ten years ago I wrote Xandering the Dungeon, a detailed look at the differences between linear and non-linear dungeons. In this essay I briefly used what I dubbed Melan diagrams — a technique created in 2006 by Melan for a thread on ENWorld where he discussed “map flow and old school game design.”

These diagrams are, unfortunately, not immediately intuitive to everyone looking at them, and because I used the diagrams in Xandering the Dungeon, I’m frequently asked how they’re supposed to “work.” In fact, I’ve been asked that question three different times in the last week… which brings us to today’s post.

You can see an example of what a Melan diagram looks like at the top of this post. It depicts the first level of The Sunless Citadel, designed by Bruce Cordell with original cartography by Todd Gamble. (Today, though, I’ll be using Mike Schley’s version of the map from Tales From the Yawning Portal.)

So… what’s the point of this thing? Well, as Melan said in his original post:

[They are] a graphical method which “distills” the dungeon into a kind of decision tree or flowchart by stripping away “noise.” On the resulting image, meandering corridors and even smaller room complexes are turned into straight lines. Although the image doesn’t create an “accurate” representation of the dungeon map, and is by no means a “scientific” depiction, it demonstrates what kind of [navigational] decisions the players can make while moving through the dungeon.

By getting rid of the “noise” you can boil a dungeon down to its essential structure. They also allow you to compare the structures of different dungeons at a glance.

It’s fairly important to note that you don’t actually use Melan diagrams for designing dungeons. They are an analytical tool, not a design tool: You use them to look at something which has already been created, not to create it in the first place.

But if you’re looking at a diagram what does it actually mean? How is the noise being stripped out and what does that tell you? How are you supposed to interpret the diagram? Or make one for yourself?

STRAIGHTEN THE LINE

The first principle of making a Melan diagram is to eliminate all the irrelevant twists-and-turns on the map. For example, consider this path through the Sunless Citadel:

It looks really interesting, right? All kinds of turns. You went through multiple doors. You even reversed direction a couple of times!

But as far as the Melan diagram is concerned, this is a straight line: Following a corridor when it makes a turn isn’t a meaningful navigational choice. Same thing for going through a door if there’s no other exit from the room.

FORK THE PATH

“But wait a minute!” you say. “In following this path the PCs did make choices! For example, in that first circular room the PCs had the choice of two different doors!”

You’re absolutely right! This is exactly what a Melan diagram is interested in looking at. On this little chunk of the Sunless Citadel, there are two forking paths:

And so, on a Melan diagram, this section would look like this:

The black path is depicted as a straight line and the alternate paths are shown in red. (Melan diagrams typically aren’t color-coded like this since all paths are equally valid. We’re using the colors here for clarity.)

The length of each branch of the diagram, it should be noted, is roughly proportional to its length in the dungeon. (I don’t carefully measure this or anything, but you could if you wanted to.) In this case I’m showing them proportional per the section of map we’re looking at. (As we’ll see in a moment, these particular spurs are actually much longer.)

ELIMINATE SIDE CHAMBERS

“Wait another minute!” you cry. “I can see other doors that you’re ignoring!”

The second principle of a Melan diagram is that we are going to eliminate all paths that are only one chamber deep.

So we could take this chunk of dungeon:

And draw a diagram like this:

But the reason we don’t do this is because such a diagram becomes meaninglessly noisy. Furthermore, these side chambers largely don’t represent meaningful navigational choices on the macro-level of the entire dungeon: You might choose to bypass such doors, but if you open one of them the only “choice” is to go back to the path you were already following.

Note that you can actually see this when looking at the diagram: It’s immediately apparent that all those little spurs don’t really “go” anywhere.

(You can argue that the same thing is technically true of longer sidetracks, but in practice these longer paths tend to be more meaningful to the overall structure of a dungeon and the experience of playing it. With that being said, there’s nothing magically relevant about one room vs. two rooms and in larger dungeons you may find different thresholds for what constitutes a “meaningful sidetrack” to be useful.)

You’ll similarly want to eliminate very short dead end hallways if they exist.

DIAGRAMMATIC TURNS

“Hey! What’s with that turn in your diagram? I thought you said we weren’t mapping that sort of thing!”

That’s true. In practice, however, Melan diagrams will introduce superfluous ninety-degree turns in order to keep the diagrams relatively compact or to conveniently make room for other paths.

So if you see a turn on a Melan diagram that doesn’t have a second path branching from it, you’ll know that it’s purely cosmetic. It doesn’t actually reflect a “turn” in the dungeon; and, although the turn in our current example sort of resembles a turn in the dungeon itself, such turns on the diagram may be present even when there are no turns in the corresponding dungeon tunnel.

ELIMINATE FAKE LOOPS

Dungeon paths will, of course, form loops. In fact, a well-designed, xandered dungeon will probably feature LOTS of loops. Ignoring routes that branch off from the loop for the moment, here’s one from the Sunless Citadel:

On the Melan diagram, it would look like this:

But what about this loop?

Well, on a Melan diagram this would actually be depicted as a straight line. To understand why, let’s start by eliminating the side chambers:

Viewed like this, you can clearly see that this is not a true navigational loop: It’s a fake fork. The navigational “choice” is a false one. After eliminating the side chambers, both paths lead immediately to the exact same place.

SECRET PATHS

When a path like this one goes through a secret door, this is indicated with a dotted line on the Melan diagram:

(Note that the other secret doors are not represented here because they lead to side chambers, which are eliminated regardless.)

An area is ONLY depicted as secret on the Melan diagram if the ONLY way of reaching that area is secret. However, even a secret door that leads directly from one “public” area to another would still be shown on the diagram as a short dotted line. (The secret path exists and is significant, even if the “length” of the path is only the width of the secret door itself, so to speak.)

LEVEL CONNECTIONS

The last functional element of a Melan diagram are the connections between levels. When a path goes from one level of the dungeon to another (by stair, elevator, sloping ramp, teleporter, or whatever), this is indicated by a break in the line with terminating lines on either side:

OTHER ELEMENTS

Melan diagrams may also include labels (e.g., “Goblins” or “Secret Lab” or “Teleportation Trap”). These are technically non-functional parts of the diagram, but can be useful to help readers orient themselves.

Some Melan diagrams of long, linear dungeons will be split into multiple columns, with the connection between the columns being indicated by a dotted line with an arrow.  (This is sometimes confused for a secret door, but it’s really just a tool for keeping the diagram relatively compact.)

CONCLUSION

If you’re reading this and still scratching your head over what the point of any of this stuff is supposed to be or what relevance the elements depicted by a Melan diagram are supposed to have, I’m going to do a full loop here and refer you back to Xandering the Dungeon, which is designed as an introduction to the sort of basic dungeon design techniques that the diagrams are designed to demonstrate.

Back to Xandering the Dungeon