Go to Part 1

Pit traps are as old as the game itself, and their iconography is familiar to anyone who’s spent time gazing at dungeon maps. A little less familiar, perhaps, is the symbol for an open pit, but it’s not exactly a stranger to the dungeon, either.

If you’re in need of a circular pit, it’s pretty easy to modify these familiar symbols to suit:

This leads us pretty comfortably to a discussion of trapdoors which are designed to be traversed (usually taking you to another level of the complex). These, too, have an established iconography:

With “C” indicating a trapdoor in the ceiling and “F” indicating a trapdoor in the floor.

But here things get a little confused, because you will also find some maps keying the “C” to mean “concealed trapdoor”. (Which matches the use of “C” to indicate concealed doors in general.) This matches the use of an “S” to consistently mean both “secret trapdoor” and “secret door”:

So what I’m going to suggest is that our map symbols for trapdoors instead look like this:

And it’s now relatively simple to use “S+”, for example, to indicate a secret trapdoor going up. Or even a +/- to indicate trapdoors in both the floor and ceiling at the same spot.

The other argument for this is that it conveniently matches the UIS’s key for indicating the difference between pits in the floor and chimneys in the ceiling:

Which looks pretty useful to me.

Final thought: Would it be useful to indicate the depth of a pit?

The meaning seems fairly clear, but it might be muddier if we were dealing with a closed pit. What if we invert our symbol for ceiling height and use it to indicate depth?

It looks perhaps a trifle redundant on the open pit, but I’m guessing the consistency of iconography is worth it. Particularly since this same design can be used for pits and chimneys as desired.

And as a bonus, here’s a thought on indicating a spiked pit:

What other common features do pits have that it might be useful to include on the map?

Go to Part 6: The Room Key

This post is part of the RPG Blog Carnival for Cartography.

This is a book trailer I produced for The Bishop’s Tale by Margaret Frazer. I also provide the (brief) voice of Sir Clement Sharpe near the top of the trailer.

Since I know most of the readers here are gamers, I’ll also recommend Frazer’s A Medieval Year in England: It provides a “day by day” insight into what medieval life was like. Lot of good inspiration to be found there for making your fantasy settings flavorful and distinctly “non-modern” without becoming overwhelmed in detail.

Go to Part 1

One of my goals with this series of brainstorming posts is to find ways to encode as much data as possible onto the dungeon map itself. This is partly to supplement the map key, but it’s also about removing some types of information from the map key in order to make the key itself easier to use.

One example of that would be ceiling height. Although this information is often forgotten about entirely (which becomes increasingly problematic as the PCs start levitating and flying), if it were to be habitually included in the key it would become an extra bit of clutter to parse.

On the dungeon map, however, I think it adds clarity and can be easily referenced. Assuming, of course, that we have a clear method for doing it.

On cave maps, differences in elevation and height will often be indicated by simply listing numbers. For gaming maps, however, I’ve found that this approach – mixed with a numbered room key – often results in a confusing map. Different font sizes and/or text colors can aid in comprehension, but the layout still often comes across as fairly muddy to me.

Consider this solution adapted from Aeons & Auguries, however:

The symbol clearly sets off the number and allows quick identification for what this number (in a potential myriad of others) is referring to.

More generally, if we combine this with our symbol for light sources, I would argue that we have the basic workings for giving each room a “detail legend”. Let’s try it out:

Probably needs some tweaking on the starburst symbol in either size, design, or font to make it more legible. But the basic principles seem pretty sound and easy to read: At a glance I can tell that all three rooms are lit with candle-strength lights (20′ radius), while the ceiling in area 12 rises to a high vault 40′ above the heroes’ heads.

If the map allows, it would probably also be pretty easy to place the detail legend for a room next to the room, possibly with some kind of grouping iconography to make it clear which room the legend belongs to:

CEILING FORMS

What about unusual ceiling shapes? any way to get those on the map?

Here’s how the UIS keys ceiling forms for cave maps:

We could probably use a simple version of the same, keying from our ceiling height legend:

Not something you need for every room, but potentially useful for when those sorts of details become important.

Go to Part 5: Pit and Chimneys

This post is part of the RPG Blog Carnival for Cartography.

If you’ve got a couple seconds, I’d much appreciate your electoral muscle.

There’s a contest for appearing in a minor role as part of the upcoming full-cast audio book for Neil Gaiman’s American Gods. If you go here:

Justin’s Awesome Entry

You can hear me read a short passage from the book. And then, if you don’t feel I suck too much, you can vote for my entry.

Don’t throw your vote away! Rock the vote! Vote early, vote often! No taxation without representation! Umm… Vote Dunkelzahn for President!

(And thanks.)

Savage Worlds uses playing cards for initiative: Each round, everybody is dealt a playing card and the rank of the cards determines the order in which characters take their actions. The system has the advantage of being quick, intuitive, and transparent. (It’s very easy to glance around the table and immediately see when people will be taking their actions.)

Here’s a variant of the same idea designed for D20 or D20-like systems.

PLAYING CARD INITIATIVE

THE DEAL: Each round, deal each PC and each group of NPCs a playing card. Characters with an initiative bonus are dealt extra cards equal to their bonus and get to keep the best card dealt to them. Characters with an initiative penalty are dealt extra cards equal to their penalty and must keep the worst card dealt to them.

(For example, Peter the Brave has a+2 initiative bonus. He is dealt three cards — the single card that everyone receives automatically, plus two bonus cards from his initiative: A ten, a nine, and a jack. He keeps the jack.

Brazz the Slow, on the other hand, has a -1 initiative penalty. He’s dealt two cards: An eight and a six. He must take the six.)

THE COUNTDOWN: Once the cards are dealt, the GM simply counts down from Ace to Deuce with characters taking their turns when their card comes up. In the case of a tie, actions can be resolved simultaneously. If the tie must be broken, resolve by suit order in reverse alphabetical order: Spades, then Hearts, then Diamonds, and then Clubs.

JOKERS: Jokers are wild. When you’re dealt a joker you can keep it even if you have an initiative penalty. A joker allows you to go whenever you want in a round, even if it means interrupting another character’s action with your full turn! In addition, you gain a +2 bonus to all checks and damage rolls for the round.

SHUFFLING: Reshuffle the deck after any round in which a Joker was dealt.

VARIANTS

TRADITIONAL VARIANT: Instead of drawing each round, you can simply draw once for the full combat. When characters take a readied or delayed action that changes their initiative, it’s recommended that players fish out a card of the correct value.

UTILITY VARIANT: Designate one of the players as the dealer. The GM can just tell them how many cards he needs and let them handle the actual dealing of the cards. Alternatively, if you’re all right handling simultaneous action resolution, there’s no reason the GM and players couldn’t have separate decks.

POKER VARIANT: For completely dissociated wackiness, let the players form poker hands by taking collective actions with various bonuses depending on the hand formed. Many poker hands, of course, would require some of the players to delay their actions for the round. (For example, two players with a pair attacking the same target could each deal double damage. What might a royal flush be worth?)