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

DISCUSSING:
In the Shadow of the Spire – Session 23F: The Pale Tower

At last, Aoska brought them before great valves of silvered adamantine. She turned to them then and said, “You shall have audience with Sephranos, the First Among the Chosen.”

At her touch the doors parted and opened, revealing a hall of ivory and gold. Atop a dais at the far end, upon a throne of mithril, sat a gold-skinned man with white-feathered wings. His eyes were pits of pale blue fire shining out from a face both regal and welcoming.

Aoska approached him and whispered into his ears, and then his eyes were turned upon them. And, most particularly upon Dominic.

“We are honored to give audience to the Chosen of Vehthyl.” Sephranos smiled and turned his gaze to all of them. “We thank you all on the behalf of Edlari. We were saddened to see him leave us once again, but glad that he is now free to find his own path again. What boon would you ask of us?”

When the dungeoncrawl is done, it’s time for the PCs to deal with the lingering legacies and unresolved elements of the dungeon. This is a kind of epilogue which, structurally, you’re going to repeatedly experience when playing or running roleplaying games.

The simplest version – which is more or less the default – is just liquidating your loot. If all you’re hauling out of the place are coins and gems, this can be a purely routine transaction that’s quickly dispatched with. But even in this simplistic form, , I think this still functions as a primitive yet important narrative beat: The primary purpose of the epilogue is to provide closure, and even something as simple as divvying up the treasure can accomplish that; can definitively declare, “We have done this thing and this thing is done.”

However, one of the reasons I like including treasure in more exotic forms (besides flavor, immersion, and highly effective worldbuilding) is that the logistics of realizing its value can create an opportunity for intriguing entanglements. And, as you can see in the example of Pythoness House, in a fully realized scenario this will naturally extend far beyond simply treasure. In addition to selling their spoils and spending their new wealth, the PCs had to deal with:

• The lingering effects of Freedom’s Key (plus what to do with the key itself)
• The tainted items
• The Cobbledman
• Meeting Edlari at the Pale Tower

Figuring this out saw the PCs forging new alliances, gaining new resources, and setting up future scenarios. All of these things will either have a dramatic impact on how events play out for the rest of the campaign, provide an interesting crucible for roleplaying, or both.

In other words, what emerges from these logistics are stories. And when I see GMs skipping past these logistical concerns, what I see is not only a failure to provide proper closure for the previous adventure, but also a failure to properly plant the seeds for the next adventure.

Some of these elements will emerge naturally from your prep. For example, I couldn’t be certain that the PCs would free Edlari, but I knew that if they did he would extend them an invitation that would almost certainly pull them to the Pale Tower (where I could reincorporate Aoska, who they had met previously).

On the other hand, in a well-designed dungeon there’ll almost always be unanticipated fallout. For example, I had no idea that they would befriend the Cobbledman or take such care to help him seek aid from the Brotherhood of Redemption. In fact, I thought it quite likely that they would end up fighting and killing the Cobbledman.

Conversely, we could imagine an alternate version of reality where the PCs ended up befriending the ratlings in Pythoness House (instead of slaughtering them) and ending up with a potentially very useful gang of allies.

Which I guess is largely my point here: As with any other good scenario, the players should be making meaningful choices. These choices should, pretty much by definition, have meaningful consequences, and the logistical epilogue is where we begin to discover and define how these consequences are going to spill out of the scenario and into the ongoing campaign.

Which, in my opinion, is kind of inherently interesting.

How much time you spend resolving the logistical epilogue depends on how many consequences are spilling out of the dungeon and, of course, how complicated dealing with those consequences proves to be.

Pythoness House, for example, was a dungeon of moderate scope. Over the course of several visits intermixed with other events, the ‘crawl spanned a total of four sessions. I wasn’t recording my sessions yet, so I’m not sure exactly how long we spent in the dungeon, but it was probably twelve to fifteen hours in total. The logistical epilogue probably took up another thirty to forty-five minutes of playing time, while also incorporating some background events and other miscellaneous business the PCs wanted to take care of.

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

SESSION 23F: THE PALE TOWER

June 7th, 2008
The 11th Day of Kadal in the 790th Year of the Seyrunian Dynasty

BROTHERHOOD OF REDEMPTION

Elestra led Dominic down to the Guildsman District. They found the public house of the Brotherhood of Redemption to be a rather small and unimpressive affair. When they knocked on the door, it was answered by a meek-looking man.

“Welcome. Can the Brotherhood be of some assistance to you?”

“I think so,” Elestra said.

“You have captured some bestial creature in need of the gods’ redemption?”

“Not exactly,” Dominic said.

“We met someone in need of help. He’s gentle. And kind. But a little lost and confused.”

“We are no common charity,” the man said. “If this creature is civilized, then he is beyond our purlieu.”

“Well, half of him is,” Dominic said.

“What do you mean?”

“He has two heads,” Elestra explained. “One of them is civilized, I guess. But the other definitely isn’t.”

“An ettin-like divided consciousness?” The man was not only intrigued, but excited. “With one turned against the other? Well, if you can bring him here we would certainly give him any help that we can.”

Taking their leave, Elestra and Dominic – primarily at Elestra’s prompting – decided to return to Pythoness House, by themselves, and try to find the Cobbledman.

They got no further than the courtyard, however, before they realized – given the possibility that a demon was still wandering about the place – that this might have been a good idea. Elestra called for the Cobbledman a couple of times and, when he did not come down into the courtyard, they left.

SHOPPING

They reconvened at the Ghostly Minstrel. Agnarr took the many rat tails they had collected and turned them into the proper officials for the bounty, feeling a great sense of fulfillment at finally managing to accomplish one of the first things he had vowed to do upon awaking in Ptolus.

Tee gathered up the items they were going to sell and led the rest of the group on a shopping trip. Ranthir chose not to go with them, instead remaining behind to continue his studies (while trying to find some useful way for Iltumar to contribute beyond petting little Erin), but did ask Tee if she could try to find for him an item with a particular enchantment laid upon it.

Ranthir described the enchantment in detail. Tee glossed over most of the technical details, but captured the gist of it: The item would attune itself to the rhythms of Ranthir’s own body. Once it had done so, it would be capable of nourishing him, intensifying the refreshment of mind and body during periods of sleep.

“Instead of needing to sleep for eight hours every night,” Ranthir explained, “I would only need two hours of sleep. And in the extra hours of the night I could be copying my scrolls or studying the many books we have discovered or anything of the like.”

Tee knew that Ranthir was frustrated by how little time he was able to devote to his studies and preparations, and she herself had worried that they weren’t spending enough time studying the various books of lore they were discovering. So she was quite happy to discover that Myraeth had recently received a ring with just such an enchantment laid upon it. Ranthir did not have quite enough money to afford it, but Tee talked it over with the others and they decided it would be in their best interests to pool their resources and help him buy it.

“After all,” Tee said. “The best wizard is a well rested wizard.”

THE PALE TOWER

They went back to the inn. Ranthir excused himself from Iltumar and joined them in Elestra’s room for a conference. They decided to follow-up on the offer that Edlari had made and go to the Pale Tower to speak with him.

Ranthir poked his head back into his room and spoke with Ilutmar, who was more than willing to wait for him to return. Ranthir smiled, nodded, and then ran to catch up with the others.

Standing in the northern reaches of Oldtown, not that far from Pythoness House, the Pale Tower stood in stark contrast to the structures around it, rising up from the midst of a perfumed garden more like a marble monument than a building. The windowless round tower was faultlessly white and seemed to shine as if newly built, and yet there was an air of great age that hung unmistakably about it.

There were two great knockers of gold upon the double doors of godwood at the front of the tower. Tee reached up and clapped one of them loudly.

The doors parted without visible hand, revealing an antechamber of marble. The rune-carved Graven One stepped forward to greet them.

“What business brings you to the Pale Tower?”

“Edlari asked us to seek him here.”

“I see.” The Graven One’s solemn face seemed to smile. “I shall seek him and return.”

At his gesture, they stepped into the antechamber and the outer doors of the tower swung shut behind them. The Graven One turned and went through an inner door. They caught a glimpse of a long hallway beyond it, making it clear that the Pale Tower’s interior was vastly larger than its exterior.

A few minutes passed, and then the Graven One returned, leading Aoska through the inner doors.

Aoska smiled. “The Graven One has told me that you seek Edlari.” Her voice was like honeyed silk.

“He asked us to seek him here,” Tee said.

“He did return here,” Aoska stood. “And told us of what you did for him. We thank you for freeing him from so foul an imprisonment. But he has left us again, and stepped through the Jewels so that he might stand once more before the Nine Gods and cleanse his soul of the taint that has been left upon it. He may not return, and Sephranos himself counseled that he should feel no need… but Edlari could not bear the touch of it.”

“We know something of the Taint,” Tee said. “We have suffered its touch in attempting to cleanse the evil from that place where Edlari was imprisoned.”

“I can sense it in you,” Aoska said. She seemed to think carefully for a moment. “Come. It is the least that we might do to see that such accounts are set to rights.”

She turned and led them through the inner doors, which parted at her approach. They passed in silence through many pillared halls and open gardens, each seemingly more beautiful than the last.

At last, Aoska brought them before great valves of silvered adamantine. She turned to them then and said, “You shall have audience with Sephranos, the First Among the Chosen.”

At her touch the doors parted and opened, revealing a hall of ivory and gold. Atop a dais at the far end, upon a throne of mithril, sat a gold-skinned man with white-feathered wings. His eyes were pits of pale blue fire shining out from a face both regal and welcoming.

Aoska approached him and whispered into his ears, and then his eyes were turned upon them. And, most particularly upon Dominic.

“We are honored to give audience to the Chosen of Vehthyl.” Sephranos smiled and turned his gaze to all of them. “We thank you all on the behalf of Edlari. We were saddened to see him leave us once again, but glad that he is now free to find his own path again. What boon would you ask of us?”

“When we freed him, Edlari healed us of the dark wounds we had sustained in the place where he had been imprisoned,” Tee said humbly. “After he had left to return here, we faced greater dangers and suffered similar wounds. We had hoped that we might find healing here.”

“This shall I do for you.”

Sephranos raised his hand and a golden light shone forth from it. For a moment it seemed as if they had had lost consciousness – but rather than darkness, it felt as if a bright white light had embraced them.

Then their eyes opened once more and all was as it had been – Sephranos upon his throne and Aoska at his right hand upon the dais. But their wounds had been healed without any lingering trace or ache – and even the soul-hung weariness which had afflicted Tee since using the golden key had passed from her.

Aoska stepped forward and led them out of the hall. As the valves of silvered adamantine swung shut behind them and Aoska led them back towards the entrance, Tee turned to her. “Aoska, we have in our possession many artifacts that bear the taint. We know that there are many people seeking them for dark purposes, and we can’t carry them safely. We know that a hallowed place would serve to hold them and even to cleanse them, but the churches we have approached have turned us away. Is there such a place here in the Pale Tower where they might be kept?”

“We could not bear to have these objects mar the purity of such a place as the Tower,” Aoska said.

Tee nodded sadly. “Yes, we’ve been hearing that a lot.”

Aoska smiled. “But there is a place in the Temple District. A hallowed vault and sanctuary where such items may be kept.”

They couldn’t help but notice, as Aoska gave Tee the directions to this vault, that their path back through the Pale Tower was not the same path by which they had come.

“There’s something else,” Tee said, hesitantly.

“What is it?” Aoska smiled encouragingly.

“We… lost some of the tainted artifacts,” Tee struggled to find the words and then, like a pent-up river bursting its dam, babbled the rest of it. “We were ambushed by chaos cultists. They were led by someone named Wuntad.”

“I know the name,” Aoska said. “A minor cultist of some recent years. We had thought he had long since fled the city.”

“He’s back,” Agnarr said gruffly.

“Is there anything you can do?” Tee asked.

“Perhaps,” Aoska said. “But there are many things of greater import to concern the powers of the Pale Tower. There are many such cultists, and their danger is not to be dismissed. But there are also larger dangers in this world.”

The thought of that didn’t sit comfortably with Tee, and she found herself changing the topic. “I was also wondering if you knew Eida Laevantha. I have met her and she once mentioned that she had affairs with the Pale Tower.”

“Yes, I know her,” Aoska said. “Our paths have crossed often in the Dreaming.”

And then they were back at the entrance of the Tower and saying their farewells to both Aoska and the Graven One (who waited there still).

REDEMPTION FOR THE COBBLEDMAN

It seemed quite strange to emerge out of the marbled wonders of the Pale Tower onto the common streets of Ptolus, but after taking a moment to orient themselves they decided that – since they were in Oldtown in any case – they should return to Pythoness House together and try to bring the Cobbledman to the Brotherhood of Redemption.

They found the Cobbledman sleeping in his tower again. Tee gently waked him (from a safe distance) and explained that they had found people who could help him. “You don’t have to live like this any more.”

The Cobbledman seemed trepidatious, but also hopeful. He followed them down to the Guildsman District, and there they placed him in the Brotherhood’s care. Ranthir gave him one last iron ration and, as they left, he was munching it contentedly.

THE FATE OF PHON

They headed back to the Ghostly Minstrel and then split up again: Ranthir returned to his room (where Iltumar was still reading). Agnarr decided that he was going to return to the caverns of the Clan of the Torn Ear. Dominic retired to his room to study the Book of Vehthyl.

Elestra went out into the streets. Most of the city was still captivated by the story of what Rehobath had done the day before. The newssheets had dubbed him the Novarch-in-Exile and public opinion seemed evenly split on whether Rehobath’s actions were weal or woe.

But Elestra also discovered that the day before Rehobath’s pronouncement, there had been another Flayed Man killing in the Warrens… and there were many whispers of worry coursing through the city.

There had been another atrocity that day, too: A house in the Temple District had burned down. Three dead bodies had been found inside and the rumor of the street was that the Balacazars were responsible.

A sickening suspicion entered into Elestra’s head, and asking further she confirmed it: The house had been Helmut’s. It appeared that Phon was dead.

NEXT:
Running the Campaign: Detritus of the Dungeon – Campaign Journal: Session 24A
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index