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Author Topic: Jacquaying hack: three lines per box  (Read 5846 times)

Azraele

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Jacquaying hack: three lines per box
« on: April 06, 2017, 05:25:04 PM »
So I've been trying to get the art of jacquaying the dungeon right for a while now (ie: making it nonlinear). I've made about a million of these things and finally had the balls to share a few to decidedly mixed reviews.

Sharing was really informative, especially simplifying the initial blueprint to a ball-and-stick model. Since then, I've adopted the strategy of beginning all dungeon blueprints with that model to ensure that they're properly jacquayed before fleshing them out with a more complete blueprint.

I've been doing this for a few months, and I noted a really stupid-simple hack that, maybe it's obvious to you guys but it shocked me: just make sure the majority of points have a minimum of three lines leading to them

This basically makes linearity impossible. One entrance per room makes it a dead end. Two makes it linear. With three, you have an option for how to proceed in every single room (or a least the majority of them: some choke points are desirable)

Check it out on this shitty thing I made: [ATTACH=CONFIG]860[/ATTACH]

I literally sketched that out in 15 minutes. It's just the ball-and-stick model, and it CAN be solved in a basically linear fashion, but importantly: it doesn't have to be.

So with the understanding that I may be revealing my own ignorance of a super well-known hack, I share it with all of you. Enjoy!
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Opaopajr

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Jacquaying hack: three lines per box
« Reply #1 on: April 06, 2017, 05:41:27 PM »
:) Thanks for the revelation! Yes, it seems painfully obvious once you see it, but it's part of the fun process of discovery.

Reminds me of an Azande occultic saying, "one birthed the two, two birthed the three, from the three birthed all other things." Meaning pretty much what you noted here about choice, continuation, and their dynamic tensions.
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Gronan of Simmerya

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Jacquaying hack: three lines per box
« Reply #2 on: April 06, 2017, 05:49:24 PM »
Sweet Crom's hairy nutsack, that's considered radical and drastic?

Fuck.

* sets hobby on fire *
You should go to GaryCon.  Period.

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Azraele

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Jacquaying hack: three lines per box
« Reply #3 on: April 06, 2017, 06:11:34 PM »
Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;955806
Sweet Crom's hairy nutsack, that's considered radical and drastic?

Fuck.

* sets hobby on fire *

Hey, not all of us are a million, buddy ;-)
Joel T. Clark: Proprietor of the Mushroom Press, Member of the Five Emperors
Buy Lone Wolf Fists! https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/416442/Tian-Shang-Lone-Wolf-Fists

Spinachcat

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Jacquaying hack: three lines per box
« Reply #4 on: April 06, 2017, 06:56:10 PM »
What are you gaining from every room having 3 doors?

Won't that lead to players just assuming there are 3 always 3 doors? AKA, if they enter a room with no doors, they know there are 2 secret doors. Not 3, not 1, but 2.

I can see this being weirdly awesome for the "Dungeon of 3 Doors", but I don't know how its useful beyond that.

BTW, I would totally play and run Three Door Doom Fortress, but not as a regular always happening thingie across the campaign.

Azraele

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Jacquaying hack: three lines per box
« Reply #5 on: April 06, 2017, 07:09:37 PM »
Quote from: Spinachcat;955831
What are you gaining from every room having 3 doors?

Won't that lead to players just assuming there are 3 always 3 doors? AKA, if they enter a room with no doors, they know there are 2 secret doors. Not 3, not 1, but 2.

I can see this being weirdly awesome for the "Dungeon of 3 Doors", but I don't know how its useful beyond that.

BTW, I would totally play and run Three Door Doom Fortress, but not as a regular always happening thingie across the campaign.

Yeah, I think you need to make sure you're using connections which aren't only doors. Like, maybe some are secret passageways. Maybe some are staircases. Maybe some are teleporting mirrors (working on this dungeon, just you wait...). Just make sure those boxes have 3+ sticks, dammit.
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Spinachcat

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Jacquaying hack: three lines per box
« Reply #6 on: April 06, 2017, 07:13:02 PM »
Definitely want to get creative with the sticks, but outside of the Dungeon of Trios, what's the gain?

Azraele

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Jacquaying hack: three lines per box
« Reply #7 on: April 06, 2017, 07:23:58 PM »
Quote from: Spinachcat;955835
Definitely want to get creative with the sticks, but outside of the Dungeon of Trios, what's the gain?

The gain is to break up the linearity of the dungeon and present players with multiple options for tackling it (while of course being as lazy as humanly possible).
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matthulhu

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Jacquaying hack: three lines per box
« Reply #8 on: April 06, 2017, 08:26:22 PM »
Quote from: Spinachcat;955831
What are you gaining from every room having 3 doors?

OP mentions specifically that not every room has three doors, just a majority of them. Choke points are still desirable (bordering on necessary for tactical play).

And of course we're speaking of three ways to move into or out of the room, not "three doors."

Spinachcat

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Jacquaying hack: three lines per box
« Reply #9 on: April 06, 2017, 09:06:30 PM »
Maybe I am dense. I absolutely support breaking up linearity. However, the concept here is just make sure the majority of points have a minimum of three lines leading to them and I don't know what we are gaining from THE MAJORITY having THREE OR MORE lines.

It doesn't feel like architecture.

It feels weird - and I love weird fantasy - and I FEEL there is an issue of monotony / lack of verisimilitude if the majority of spaces have so many in/outs.

I am really good with 25%, but when we hit 50% I gotta start wondering if its overkill that promotes player paralysis instead of player creativity.

But again, I would totally buy Triple Door Dungeon, but not Triple Door Campaign.

Opaopajr

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Jacquaying hack: three lines per box
« Reply #10 on: April 06, 2017, 09:25:19 PM »
Oh dear, this might get ugly. I think there's a hang up on the idea of 'majority' building blocks needing to be a 'three'. Let me try to head it off by expounding in an esoteric way.

One is of conclusion, of statement, of inertia. Two is of tension, of direction, of movement. Three is of choice, of complexity, of layering. Once you get to the three, you now have the basic tools of stability to create manifold expressions of complex systems. To create overlayed and interlaced loops, enough 'threes' need to be present for a critical mass of complexity.

What is that exact ratio of 'threes' necessary for "Jacquaying?" Honestly I don't know, and would probably be saddened to see it reduced to something so formulaic. 'Majority' is as functional an answer as 'enough' -- yet we get to your point about how much is too much for another.

And then it becomes an issue of how much salt one needs in their soup. :p
Just make your fuckin' guy and roll the dice, you pricks. Focus on what's interesting, not what gives you the biggest randomly generated virtual penis.  -- J Arcane
 
You know, people keep comparing non-TSR D&D to deck-building in Magic: the Gathering. But maybe it's more like Katamari Damacy. You keep sticking shit on your characters until they are big enough to be a star.
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Justin Alexander
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Jacquaying hack: three lines per box
« Reply #11 on: April 07, 2017, 02:05:38 AM »
Quote from: Spinachcat;955831
Won't that lead to players just assuming there are 3 always 3 doors? AKA, if they enter a room with no doors, they know there are 2 secret doors. Not 3, not 1, but 2.

What is it with theRPGsite wanting to take every useful rule of thumb and analyzing it on the assumption that it must be used 100% of the time?

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Quote from: Spinachcat;955857
Maybe I am dense. I absolutely support breaking up linearity. However, the concept here is just make sure the majority of points have a minimum of three lines leading to them and I don't know what we are gaining from THE MAJORITY having THREE OR MORE lines.

It doesn't feel like architecture.

I'd say the biggest oversight in this particular rule of thumb is that it ignores the common hub-and-spoke design.

When you're talking about jaquaying, though, what you generally want to do when analyzing the navigational routes in your dungeon is to simply ignore dead ends. (You can still have them, but when you're doing structural maps like these, you simply ignore them.) Once you've done that, the rule of thumb becomes more useful.

Or, alternatively, you can flip that around: Any room which has less than three exits is navigationally irrelevant insofar as non-linear/jaquayed design is concerned. Build a ball-and-stick diagram accordingly to see what the fundamental structure of the dungeon is.

For example, consider this dungeon map:



There is only one point in that dungeon which is jaquayed: The initial crossroads just inside the entrance where you can head in three directions. If you draw that as a ball-and-stick diagram it would like this:



And nothing more.

By contrast, look at this dungeon map:



If you map this dungeon out while eliminating any room that doesn't have at least three exits you get:



Which makes the structurally significant rooms obvious.
« Last Edit: April 07, 2017, 03:17:43 PM by Justin Alexander »
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Telarus

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Jacquaying hack: three lines per box
« Reply #12 on: April 07, 2017, 02:34:23 AM »
Jaquaying is an essential part of good design, and I think Justin was brilliant to describe it as he did. The point he makes with the above post also reinforces the idea that when diagramming an adventure site with node&line ("stick &ball") diagrams, that a node is not simply "one room", but a space that may have linear or nonlinear internal connections.

Ashakyre

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Jacquaying hack: three lines per box
« Reply #13 on: April 07, 2017, 09:26:32 AM »
I'm with OP and JA here, you need to know how to read/use a conceptual diagram.

tenbones

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Jacquaying hack: three lines per box
« Reply #14 on: April 07, 2017, 11:28:43 AM »
While I'm not a million - I'm going to go out on a limb here and also point out that is is largely germane only if one assumes a "dungeon" *is* the "adventure".

I definitely use dungeons, but I design them not as byproduct of having a piece of graph-paper and wanting to fill it up with a labyrinthine set of rooms designed to confuse and foil would-be adventurers (unless the construct was designed expressly for that purpose) - but rather I design it for utility. That it happens to *be* an actual dungeon, it will be constructed with those conceits.

I guess if all you do is "dungeon-diving" and call it a campaign... I suppose this might be a novelty. (I'm 500k not a million). I think this is a better way of doing very high-altitude way of mapping out sandbox set-pieces and their connections more than a dungeon...  again, unless all you do is run dungeons.