[Empire of the Petal Throne] The Dungeons of Jakalla

[Sean]

So at UCon this year, Victor Raymond, a player in M.A.R. Barker’s Thursday Night Group and the author of a nice essay on the early history of RPGs I posted a link to here a long while ago, ran us through the dungeons of Jakalla using the rules to the original 1975 Empire of the Petal Throne. The game was billed as a ‘retro dungeon crawl’ and it indeed was.

I should add that this was not a typical con game experience, in that I had roleplayed with everyone at the table before, though not in this group or with Victor as GM.

There were a couple things that struck me hard about the experience:

1) Phil’s maps. We were playing in Phil Barker’s original dungeon under Jakalla, the map of the first level of which was practically the size of Undermountain. I mean, these are crazy-huge graph paper maps with a very high level of detail everywhere. Victor had Phil’s dungeon key too – he was essentially running a historical artifact of RPGing.

2) Hard-core Sim and Crazy Color. A dungeon in Tekumel has things most other dungeons don’t. For instance, if you look at the inscriptions, you can tell whether they’re Bednjallan or Engsvanyali, assuming you know the languages, and you might even be able to pick out a scribe. The monsters are all unique. There are bizarre people in bizarre situations – we talked to a sailor who was waiting to be a sacrifice to Durritlamish before we spirited him out of there. (Later he got killed by the Ssu.)

This was, on the one hand, very cool, as a backdrop. But it definitely slowed down the action. Furthermore, there are vast tracts of the dungeon that were essentially uninhabited: in between bribing a Sro-dragon with a big-assed sword and the awesome final battle with hordes of Ssu and Qol we essentially wandered around staring at scrolls and trying to figure out what broken devices of the ancients were the whole time.

Now, here’s the thing. I’m a Tekumel nut and I eagerly await every scrap from Phil’s notebooks. I’ve even corresponded with him privately about some serious arcana concerning the world.

But in a game billed as a dungeon crawl, I TOTALLY lost patience with the detail. I was like, ‘come on, already, let’s get to the fights!’ ‘Where’s the loot?’ One other player at the table, who knows me from more ‘highbrow’ RPG contexts, was looking seriously askance at me when I held up the party to loot dead bodies every time one of our slaves, henchmen, party members etc. died. (Victor loved it, though.)

Standard clash between Sim and Gam priorities, no? Almost, but there’s a ‘but’ which made me want to post this in the first place. As color, and dealt with quickly, the scenery was incredibly cool and made the dungeon way more fabulous than it would have been otherwise. There is a genuine contribution to the exploration in general which a limited dose of all that cool Tekumel visual imagery made. Also, having dungeons with vast swathes of wide-open space was a very cool effect; it gave you the feeling of wandering around in a vast underground ruin, which is what it was (the old city of Jakalla).

But here’s the thing. A writer who was not attempting e.g. a travel narrative would handle the sweep of travel with a paragraph, evoking emptiness just long enough to give you that feeling, and then smack you with another action scene or moral conflict (or action scene which embodied or addressed a moral conflict). You’d get that feeling of desolation for a second, and then back to the action.

But in an RPG, creating that feeling of desolation through ninety minutes of mostly pointless wandering in the middle of a four hour game is an inefficient use of the effect.

So my question for the thread: how to
(a) have concrete maps, especially cool ones which are such great visual aids
(b) evoke the sense of traveling great distances and use color to enrich the exploratory experience
(c) give players the sense of choice in where they go
(d) avoid bog-down
(e) facilitate Gamism
all at once, or some subset thereof.

The most obvious preliminary answer is to have a ‘player’s map’ with the non-secret areas of the dungeon visible, and just have people say: “I want to go there”. Then you describe what they see as they go as efficiently as possible, allowing them to focus on the exploratory content at their choice, but not forcing it on them. (This isn’t totally satisfactory either unless you’re willing to introduce challenge material spontaneously in reaction to their choice to explore, a la Donjon (except there the players do it for themselves by stating facts)). When they discover a secret door or something you put the extra space on the map and do the same: you add the whole ‘open region’ behind the secret door to the accessible locations.

Anyway, probably someone’s used that technique before. If anyone wants to chat about EPT or hear more particulars of the adventure, or riff off anything I said above, feel free.

[ethan_greer]

Actually, boxed text might be just the thing here. In most of the modules I've played, boxed text happens when something is going to happen. It sets up encounters and combats, initiates puzzles and riddles, and the like.

But boxed text could instead be used when nothing is happening, to speed through that wandering around stage. Instead of playing through it all, room by tedious room, the GM could read a paragraph or two, let the players soak in that evocative feeling of ancient majesty or whatever, and then say, "Okay, that covers that area - traveling through it could put you here, here, or here. Which will it be?" And on with the action.

I'm not sure whether this technique would be applicable to the situation you describe, but it was my first thought.

[Ron Edwards]

Hiya,

Two completely contradictory ideas.

1. Much as this idea provokes horror whenever I mention it ... I've had immense success with a number of "twisting scary corridors" situations in play, when I just put the fucking map right out there onto the table for everyone to see, the whole time.

On the other hand, the experiences/priorities in question were either hardcore Narrativist (e.g. Snakepipe Hollow in Hero Wars/Quest), or PoMo Gamist (e.g. Elfs) - not tactics-heavy Gamist. The Color provided by the maps, legends, cultures, and other details came into play in different ways.

2. The game I've played most recently which relies on potential discrepancies between player and GM maps, and which also uses a hell of a lot of Color (but usually for humor and tactics, not for Setting-richness), is Tunnels & Trolls. And in that case, well, there isn't any "boring part" to any section of a dungeon/underground/etc. It's all dangerous in either overt or covert ways, or if it's not, it's a safe zone which is to be used tactically.

I don't see, off-hand, a way to blend the benefits of #1 with the benefits of #2 in a way which suits the needs of the kind of game-experience you're talking about.

In some ways, that experience sounds like "structured incoherence" - OK, everyone, let's take off our Gamist hats and enjoy the Sim hats for a while; oh, OK, now it's Gamist time again, go! Is that an accurate description, Sean?

If so, then maps just mean different things for each approach, in terms of Techniques and how they relate to the current CA. I guess I'd have to go with the rather clunky idea of fully-prepped GM maps and fully-prepped (and possibly revisable) player maps.

Best,
Ron

[ethan_greer]

I feel like I'm missing some sort of cultural reference that I shouldn't be missing, but what the heck does "PoMo" mean?

[Matt Snyder]

PoMO = Post Modernist. I read Ron as saying Post Modernist as a thing that is self-referential. In this case, a role-playing game (Elfs!) which refers to other games (D&D), rather than necessarily the "universe" in that game the way "normal" games do. Hyper-reference and self-reference and awareness of medium are hallmarks of post-modernism.

[epweissengruber]

I feel like I'm missing some sort of cultural reference that I shouldn't be missing, but what the heck does "PoMo" mean?

PoMO = Post Modernist. I read Ron as saying Post Modernist as a thing that is self-referential. In this case, a role-playing game (Elfs!) which refers to other games (D&D), rather than necessarily the "universe" in that game the way "normal" games do. Hyper-reference and self-reference and awareness of medium are hallmarks of post-modernism.

Formerly know as "Romantic Irony" (Novalis, Schiller, et al)

[Sean]

Ethan, the idea of floating boxed text not only for 'random encounters' but for random bits of exploration is actually a really, really good one. It would be like a culture and setting-specific 'dungeon dressing' table. I think a few of the old Judges Guild products have things resembling this, as maybe - I'm not sure - do some of the Gardasiyal solo adventures. But I haven't seen too much of that. Come to think of it, that seems like the absolute right way to do a wilderness adventure. Why bother with fixed locations at all? Just have a big encounter-sourcebook with linked sites, like a more coherent and richer version of the old Wilderlands of High Fantasy stuff. That would rule.

Ron, you wrote:

"In some ways, that experience sounds like "structured incoherence" - OK, everyone, let's take off our Gamist hats and enjoy the Sim hats for a while; oh, OK, now it's Gamist time again, go! Is that an accurate description, Sean?"

Yes, that is the character of the experience. Tales of the TNG's more recent exploits suggest to me that they now sometimes bounce back and forth between Nar and Sim in a similar way, though they do not necessarily get aggravated with it in the way that I did during Victor's adventure (you'd have to ask them what the tensions in their play are I suppose).

As to 'leaving the map out', or at least a 'player's map': I think this is a functional technique even with a more 'straight' crawl environment. You do take away one dimension of challenge (where are we? did we get that right?) by removing the map, but you can enhance others too (OK! there's ten orcs coming up each of these corridors, and you can position the fire giant ballista on either one - they'll be on you in a minute! How do you set up?).

But you're right that you couldn't keep the dungeon as integrated-spatial-challenge-with-limited-information and move to a looser approach to it both. You'd have to just give up on certain challenge aspects and maybe emphasize other, 'holistic' ones that you might get towards the end of a traditional crawl but which really require most of the map to be known to allow for informed player choice.

[Paul Czege]

Hey Sean,

But you're right that you couldn't keep the dungeon as integrated-spatial-challenge-with-limited-information and move to a looser approach to it both.

Sure you can. You just lump vast spaces together conceptually and mechanically as single challenges. You create mechanics for determining how weary or refreshed the party is on the other side, how hungry, battle scarred, mentally overwhelmed, newly wary, etc.

And then you install the details into the SIS via voice over: "You emerge from two days of crawling the damp tunnels under the dwarf brothels, blinking, and weary, but with enthusiasm and a renewed sense of purpose. At times you could have throttled Vaarsuvius, but ultimately his relentless attention to detail paid off. The secret to the swords was indeed hidden among the writings on those tunnel walls, and you carry it with you now, transcribed in Vaarsuvius' book."

It's a gamist flash forward.

Paul

[Walt Freitag]

Maybe I'm missing something, but alternating "limited information spatial challenge" play with more abstract treatment of the challenge involved in moving through larger-scale spaces sounds bog standard to me.

It's why there's so often two different scales of map. Movement on the larger-scale maps (which are usually public) is resolved in terms of resources (including, most especially, time) consumed (and sometimes, as in Paul's example, benefits gained). Random encounters along the way might temporarily drop the action to a local spatial scale, but exploring (in the sense of mapping out) those local spaces is not usually a sigificant element. When local space does become important, in a random encounter or at a significant destination, then limited-information exploration and local-scale mapping is put back into effect.

I've only rarely seen problems with this, usually when a small-map-scale element is dropped into a large-map-scale situation without adequate transition, as in, "Five days into the sixteen-day march from the capital to the western frontier, you accidentally walk off a cliff..."

In fantasy gaming the large-scale map is usually wilderness or political, while the small-scale maps are usually dungeons, towns, buildings, ruins, cities, or lairs. But there's no reason the same transitions between scales can't be used e.g. entirely within a very large dungeon or city, or in an unusually detailed "wilderness," to differentiate between the "inhabited vs. uninhabited" or more generally speaking the "interesting-in-detail vs. interesting-in-toto" regions.

- Walt

[Bankuei]

Hi guys,

I'm also a big fan of the "open map" technique.  Knowing that there's tight spaces makes players paranoid for ambushs, and big open spaces make them paranoid for big monsters.  Either way, the anticipation adds a lot to gamist play.

In terms of color, try picture references.  Even if you only pull up a few pictures during the course of play, it does a lot for setting the tone of the area.  For fun bits of detailed info, sometimes I'll draw or photocopy a picture of an item, attach it to an index card along with a description for color.  Same thing for some major locale features("The Altar of Gorran was originally dedicated to a cult of nature worshippers, but it is still stained with their blood from the White Crusade of 1132.  One cannot approach it without feeling tears well up in one's eyes...")  Videogames are a good source of examples of adding color to things to create a game world, particular in descriptions of monsters or items.

Chris

[Callan S.]

I thought the trick was a mix of sim description and light gamism:

Eg, You travel down many dank corridors, finding strange markings on the walls as before. Along one there are many rooms branching off, with old dusty beds and past that through even more tunnels is a water fall, from water that had broken through the tunnel and drains through cracks in the stones. Beyond that, you explore many passages which tire you as they are on an incline. Eventually you figure out that these pages have a path that leads east and west (though not from a T intersection). Which way do you go?



Now, its established that there are 'easter eggs' to find. Part of the step on up is to not explore every damn thing...that's too easy and also too boring. What the players do is listen carefully to the description and declare their explorations like 'Wait, there's always something behind a water fall! While we were there, I explore behind it!' GM: 'Well done, you find a sack of silver coins!'. That sort of thing. While the tiredness is a game effect (you might have everyone save or be fatigued)

Gets the area across, light gamism and its fast.

[Sean]

Walt Freitag wrote:

"But there's no reason the same transitions between scales can't be used e.g. entirely within a very large dungeon or city, or in an unusually detailed "wilderness," to differentiate between the "inhabited vs. uninhabited" or more generally speaking the "interesting-in-detail vs. interesting-in-toto" regions. "

So that this thread doesn't degenerate into the semi-absurd, I'll note that Gygax's D1-2-3 series (those brown, green, and lavender pastels...) used this technique more than a quarter-century ago, with the big map of the underworld.

This thread's really all about techniques though, and there have been several good suggestions from different people. What I'm interested in mostly is fast ways to inject color (and setting detail) into a game with Gamist priorities. I'd add that many of these techniques will be as or more useful for the Narrativist.

What we're working with here is ways to give out large amounts of setting/color in small amounts of time without compromising the challenge. The various 'give 'em the map' tricks are all examples of this. But you can give people a LOT without totally ruining the challenge. Consider a game like 3e D&D or Champions, for example, with highly regimented character creation. In both games, one kind of adventure goes as follows: you just TELL the PCs what they're going to be fighting, with the catch that it's twice as tough as anything they could normally beat. Then they design tactics, traps, memorize spells, adjust their variable power pools, whatever to beat that particular foe. This is actually one of the better form of gamist RPG challenges, and it doesn't involve withholding anything from the players. (The hard-ass version of the same challenge, which I think is a cornerstone of one 'old-school' play style, is to do the same but to make the players discover the details of the foe for themselves. This is not always more fun in terms of time expenditure/experience, though there is a sense of reward to be gotten from victory in this kind of play which is pretty savory, or at least was to me at one time.)

I really like Ethan's and Paul's ideas about multi-level text descriptions, and if I were trying to write an adventure which was driven by the players' actions I think I'd try to use them. I'm imagining something like a cross between a traditional RPG adventure and one of those 'choose your own adventure' books but with less forced direction than either, with lots of interlocked encounters and interesting characters and the ability to shift level and site of description pretty easily so that everyone involved could get to the stuff they wanted to get to. Almost more of an 'adventure toolkit/setting' than an adventure itself, but designed to be navigated at a variety of different levels of description.