Quote from: Justin Alexander;955980Not in my experience. Jaquaying techniques are useful any time you're dealing with a location-based scenario structure, regardless of scale. Here, for example, I describe how the techniques can be applied to a location with only two rooms in order to make that location substantially more interesting in actual play. Jaquaying techniques are about creating environments with complex topography that allow for interesting tactical and strategic considerations.



That's the most basic element of the Jaquaying the Dungeon: A diagnostic tool paired to a discussion about the benefits of non-linearity in location design.

But those aren't the only lessons learned from Jennell Jaquays' work: Part 2 looks at different types of advanced, complex topographical relationships. Part 3 talks about how non-linear design relates to real world architecture; the importance of not losing all structure and "flattening" your dungeon while pursuing non-linearity; and the use of landmarks to orient and lock-in the topographical relationships for the players. Part 5 looks at how Jaquays uses topographical themes within a dungeon to give it a unique "calling card". And the Dungeon Level Connections addendum lays out a whole bunch of different unusual ways for dungeon levels to be connected to each other (including ones designed to trick the players).

"But that's all obvious stuff! Why can't you just design locations so that they make sense? I've been playing for 30 years and when I just think about how a dungeon should be I get good results!" That's nice. You might want to give some thought to how your 30 years of experience might be impacting how "obvious" things are to you. And you might want to reflect on the general efficacy of, say, an English teacher telling their students, "Why can't you just write better words? It's easy for me!"

I, for one, was not saying logical design was easy or obvious.

My main point was that thoughtful logical location design is not the personal invention/discovery of Jennell Jaquays, and that inventing a term based on his name and using that in my view pollutes an interesting topic. Just say Jaquays wrote some neat articles that talk about architecture, allowing more than linear movement, and A, B and C, and talk about those things, please, without calling any aspect of that Jaquay(ing/ism/itis).

Quote from: Exploderwizard;956090Player choice is a very important feature in adventure design, but architects in the game world don't design structures for this meta-purpose. Places are constructed for a purpose and X number of exits included purely for for player choice are sometimes at odds for that purpose.

When designing an actual dungeon that was used for locking away persons who displeased a king,

Most dungeons aren't that. In RPGs a dungeon is any underground lair where the adventure takes place. And not even underground, if you stretch the idea even further.
Some dungeons started life as prisons, but were then taken over by whatever critters. Others never were dungeons, but the name stuck for describing adventure settings for some reason...



Anywho. "Realism" can add to a location's interest. Different locations will have different features and hazards.
But the purpose of a dungeon is also to give the characters a place to explore and "beat".

Quotewhy on earth would the place be designed as a maze with many interconnected rooms and shitloads of exits? A functional dungeon for keeping prisoners might be better served as a dead end cell block with the only exit being through a guard chamber. That makes more sense if the dungeon is being built for actual use rather than as an amusement park for a bunch of murderhobos to wander through.

Sometimes a labyrinth with dozens of exits & passages designed by a deranged wizard with too much time on his hands is just what is called for but the majority of structures are or were probably built to serve an original purpose even if it has been forgotten over the centuries. Player choice is about more that just which direction to go. It also involves what to do exactly if there is but one way forward. Do you continue knowing that the further you go, the more cornered/trapped you might become, or do you fall back and explore other opportunities?

Why would a tomb designed as a death trap for grave robbers be designed with multiple exits & escape routes? The whole purpose of building the tomb was to entrap & funnel invaders toward deadly guardians & traps. How would providing a multitude of avoidance avenues serve the tomb's purpose?

Why is the Nostromo a dank, cramped, space dungeon instead of a well-lit, easy to navigate space mining rig? Because Alien was about being trapped in a space dungeon with a scary monster.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;956090Sometimes a labyrinth with dozens of exits & passages designed by a deranged wizard with too much time on his hands is just what is called for but the majority of structures are or were probably built to serve an original purpose even if it has been forgotten over the centuries.

I frequently see this opinion expressed: Jaquaying requires mad house dungeons! Real buildings are linear!

... in what universe, exactly?

Quote from: Telarus;956108You should really watch Prison Break sometime...

This isn't even limited to fictional prisons. Do a Google Image search for prison blueprints. None of them are linear designs.

What about real world oubliettes beneath castles? Generally speaking, no. The oubliette itself, sure. The general complex of imprisonment / interrogation / etc.? Not so much. Generally speaking you just don't get these long, linear chains of rooms in real world architecture.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;955883What 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?

Did you read the OP? Or just the imaginary one in your head?

Multiple entrance/exits is a GREAT design idea, but the OP was about every room having 3 or more. It's even in the thread title "three lines per box"

Quote from: Exploderwizard;956090Why would a tomb designed as a death trap for grave robbers be designed with multiple exits & escape routes? The whole purpose of building the tomb was to entrap & funnel invaders toward deadly guardians & traps. How would providing a multitude of avoidance avenues serve the tomb's purpose?

Agreed.

It's almost as if this Jacquaying thing was a disassociated mechanic!

First and foremost, the "dungeon" design must make sense to WTF the dungeon was created to be originally. If it was a living space, the multiple "lines per box" makes sense for flow of people. You see it plenty in real world architecture. I run lots of Gamma World / post-apoc games where previous inhabited spaces are now...inhabited again, so atriums, community rooms, branching corridors and the like all work fine. But if its a lich's crypt designed to protect the lich, it isn't going to be escape friendly...except for the lich.

Also, if its a lair or fortress, different areas will be designed differently based on their function.

As I am a fan of wandering monsters, I love the many doors approach. It gives me many angles of attack and makes it hell on PCs to defend a zone. Because while the PCs get to make many choices, the denizens already know how to get from A to B along multiple paths. Even my death traps have extra doors...they are just secret and locked.

The person running this website is a racist who publicly advocates genocidal practices.

I am deleting my content.

I recommend you do the same.

Quote from: Spinachat;956231Azraele, please stick around and contribute more. Your attitude is refreshing. I am more than happy to help when I know the poster is open to ideas.

Spina, that's you the first time I got discouraged posting something here. It's the reason I chose to post this thread, actually.

Well, I'm contributing, I'm open to ideas.... Do you consider your contributions in this thread to meet your criteria for helping?

Quote from: Skarg;956113I, for one, was not saying logical design was easy or obvious.

My main point was that thoughtful logical location design is not the personal invention/discovery of Jennell Jaquays, and that inventing a term based on his name and using that in my view pollutes an interesting topic. Just say Jaquays wrote some neat articles that talk about architecture, allowing more than linear movement, and A, B and C, and talk about those things, please, without calling any aspect of that Jaquay(ing/ism/itis).

If Jaquays strangled your grandma in her sleep maybe I'd see how the name might "pollute" something for you, but in the context of adventure design the term seems to fit the bill. It seems the burden is on you to come up with something more compact and apropos if you don't like Justin's term.


My condolences on the loss of your grandma, though.

I consider it an appropriate piece of gamer "design jargon", especially considering how much influence Jaquays had on "early" real-time computer game map design via Halo Wars, Quake 3 Arena, etc. The influence goes beyond the Judges Guild, etc, products that Justin examined. Not many people are aware of that influence on computer game level design, and those maps have other "balance" based design pressures that tend towards symmetrical terrain with multiple complex paths through it an "firefight arenas" where they cross. Damn, on my phone.... Let me dig up a link to some of the articles Jaquays wrote about those designs.

I think others have said this already, but allow any given "ball" to be more than just a single room. Similarly (and you're obviously already thinking this way) let the "sticks" be more than just doors.

Ok the Halo wars design notes are still up ( http://www.halowars.com/GameInfo/maps/crevice.aspx ), but the other essays are not on Jenny's current website, so I had to use the Wayback Machine.

http://web.archive.org/web/20110918215954/http://www.jaquays.com/paul/gamedesign.htm
http://web.archive.org/web/20120308090754/http://www.jaquays.com/paul/index.html

The second link has a blog post from 10/01/2009 that had links to the design notes for each of the Halo Wars Maps.

(Also, I owe a thanks to Jenny and Justin for that A in my Level Design class. )

Considering Jaquays is a renowned level designer in tabletop RPGs as well as video games, and we know that there was a design philosophy behind the designs, I think coming up with a term for applying Jaquays' design philosophy is appropriate.

As far as design itself goes, verisimilitude to the setting should come first.  If, for example, temples of Sigmar are always laid out in a T formation, to represent The Warhammer, then they should be.  However, verisimilitude also includes real limitations of the builders and the site's history.  A temple repurposed from some other building will be designed differently then one custom-built for that purpose.  Older buildings may be more catacombed simply because there wasn't the wealth/knowledge to create large open enclosed spaces.  Different races/cultures may have different building technologies, philosophies, or preferences.

So, the idea is to provide for a Jaquaysian Design (which makes for a more interesting and tactical environment) as much as possible given the constraints of the setting.

FOR ME, the most interesting aspect of "Jaquaysian" design is how many of the "doors" are concealed, or somehow not instantly accessible to the PCs (like finding the keys in Doom, or code words for the magic door)

It is also a tension / atmosphere tool because the players (and PCs) can assume the denizens know all the "secret" ways, but they may not have found all of them, leaving concerns about what could approach from the side or the rear or ambush them entirely.

One thing I notice missing from much dungeon design is vertical movement options. You see it in Gygax's DMG 1e random dungeon design charts. A level generated will often have multiple stairs up and down, often 2 levels, along with pits, chutes, teleporters and elevators. These features could lead the PCs into dungeon areas "beyond their level" or allow quick access back upwards. I am surprised we didn't see more of this in TSR's modules.

And its not just missing in fantasy games. Odder, its often missing in modern and sci-fi adventures. Don't forget elevators, emergency exits, fire escapes, freight chutes, and other vertical options are all standard architectural elements. And in space games, there is the question of movement via airlocks.

Quote from: Azraele;956293Do you consider your contributions in this thread to meet your criteria for helping?

Absolutely! And if you PM your address, I'll contribute some of my shit to choke on.

It's got organic corn!

You posted a perfectly good discussion topic. Kudos.

I disagree on the certain aspects of the concept, but I agree with many.

And if you're not gonna publish the Three Door Dungeon, I just might. It's a terrific fantasy premise. I am certainly going to do a small version and run it to see if the players are amused or frustrated by the sheer number of pathways and see if they experience choice paralysis.

Movement in video games is much faster than in RPGs which adds some concerns for me about the "three lines to a box" ideas. The amount of video game map that you can cover in 2 hours is notable compared to the amount of space you will see RPG players tackle in that same time period.

The "exploration mode" gygaxian maze makes a bit more sense when you enforce the Party Caller position, doors can be "stuck" (x in 6) and close again when out of sight, and players have to roll to open stuck doors but native monsters do not. Parties carve their own unique path into many possible 'jaquaysian' routes to the major landmarks of the dungeon. Really good call with what are called "gated routes/areas" in crpg level design jargon. Once you have cleared your way to one of the gated/hidden exits or level connections this gives the players a tactical choice, shortcut, route around previous hazards, etc. Each of the multiple parties raiding the dungeon would get their own set of paths through it by the above mechanics, until an area had been "cleared" and mapped out. This clicks nicely with the old "we don't know who will be here week to week" campaign play.

Quote from: Spinachcat;956362FOR ME, the most interesting aspect of "Jaquaysian" design is how many of the "doors" are concealed, or somehow not instantly accessible to the PCs (like finding the keys in Doom, or code words for the magic door)

I thought the reason for having many doors/connections was to actively counter linearity/railroads.
If you block off the third door in a three door room, don't you just reintroduce linearity?

Quote from: Dirk Remmecke;956373I thought the reason for having many doors/connections was to actively counter linearity/railroads.
If you block off the third door in a three door room, don't you just reintroduce linearity?

Note he said they aren't immediatley accessible. Like how you can see stuff in Super Metroid, but not access it until you get a certain upgrade.