Scampir

So things I understand about the Jaquaysing mapping technique from the Alexandrian Blog Series.

1. Have Multiple Entrances
2. Loop together rooms so that circuits can have set themes (this includes the secret and sub-rooms imo)
3. How difficult are things to reach?
4. What are the Landmarks used for orientation?

These are all very interesting guidelines to follow! I am simultaneously working on an Edge of the Empire and ICON dungeon rn, and there's something missed here (that's probably on some blog somewhere else) that I think you might be interested in reading me explain. Below the read more is a little review of what I draw on when designing dungeons, a huge play report of my first ICON dungeon i've chosted about for a while now, and at the end my goals for meshing Jaquaysing into it.

So here's a longchost about why I care about the politics of space in a dungeon.

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I took a course in my undergrad called "The Anthropology of Space and Place." I wrote a horrible paper. I still have all the excellent readings. I think it is the most important course I took. I still think about DeCerteau's Spatial Stories, , Soja's Space and Spatiality, and Tilley's phenomenlogy of landscape. Tim Ingold's temporality of landscape fundamentally changed what I saw outside the window driving on Highway 97.

To summarize, here are three key points on place and space that I make relevant to dungeons:

1. All stories are travel stories, and all travel is a story.
2. If the perspective of the players is to enter a dungeon they do not know, then they are at a power disadvantage to anybody else already found in the Dungeon.
3. A Place is defined by it's significance or meaning. Those things are developed by repeated visitation, departure, and returning. A Space is defined by what is possible inside it. We should be conscious of who or what controls, limits, or creates the content of these definitions.
4. There is no landscape unmarked by human impact. Choosing not to touch is a choice that is made from a position of power; one has to be able to touch in order to choose not to.

In ICON, I wanted to tell a story about how all the factions in the core rulebook (1.45) would use an Arkenruin (an architectural prong of a super structure from an ancient empire now belched from deep within the earth, spewing out "blight" and monsters but holding valuable magical radiation people are eager to get their hands on and use for "arkentech"). It was definitely a variety hour, where each faction was shown in snapshot and served as a vignette for the players to sample; after we got through the dungeon we all chatted about which faction we wanted as a primary antagonist going forward.

an overdue play report for ICON.

• Upon entering a lobby room with a door on each of it's four walls, the players came through the entrance to see that the doorway across from them was sealed by an Arken Aetheric Barrier. An Imperial soldier (here rendered with my best Vizzini impression) sat on the large head of a crocodile. He was happy to chat but not willing to lower the barrier and let the players proceed. The door to the east was barricaded and the door to the west was ajar.
• Proceeding west, the players found themselves in a makeshift dance club that Churners had constructed in a Crypt. Everybody clued in on what was happening when I mentioned the underground raves in Parisian catacombs. The Dungeon was the place to be for Churners and a few Yeokin small towners who were eager to escape their parochial villages.
• North of the Crypt the dungeon turned to cave, and the players found Atsi, a Lowlander Merchant. At her camp she told the players she had purchased enough supplies from the Churners to start running her own store. She also spoke in reverence of the Arkenruin and how it was a holy place. She asked the players to continue into the Cave and slay a Chimera so that she could create a cloak for her son Eebai.
• The players went north and found the Chimera. It was gorging itself on honey and grubs in a massive monster nest. They decided to steal a suspicious key Arken Jug tied around it's neck instead of kill it.
• The players returned to the Barricade in the lobby room, and dismantled it. They continued down a hallway and found a Portcullis. (Surtr, the Trogg Demonslayer, rolled 3 6's to open it so I said he just destroyed it.)
• The players found a room of Relict chanting about how they wanted to kill Jotunn while watching a holographic projection of Arken and Jotunn fighting. The Players snuck past the Relict to find a room with a big pit in it. This is the Painwheel Demon room. We did a tactical combat here. The players killed demons, sealed the pit that Demons were entering the dungeon through, and Painwheel escaped (killing all the Relict and escaping the Dungeon to who knows where).
• During this fight Painwheel is screaming with Glee. There's also a Maw demon trying to eat everyone. There's also a Succubi Demon trying to tempt people with magical food and good smells.
• The players returned to the Room with Dead Relict and entered a Power Junction room. They deactivated the barrier that the Imperial Soldier was hiding behind and explored a side room.
• The side room was actually a balcony that overlooked a seemingly infinite row of pews that extended into black darkness. To go down would be a four story drop with no obvious means of returning. Big Threshold Hours. A massive Green Chandelier hung in the distance. They didn't go for it.
• Did I say all of this was to rescue the Mayor from an Imperial Kidnapping? The players finally got past the barrier to find the imperials. They slipped into an inner chamber with a teleportation circle and found themselves in a pocket dimension. In this dimension was an Aesi of Summer Flame, a nature spirit that is troublesome for it's proclivity to indulgence. The Imperials Officers had the Mayor in another mirror pocket with the Aesi to try and bargain: Here is the Mayor who's ancestor sealed you here to steal your powers of controlling summer's bounty. Take your revenge by sealing him in turn and become our ally.
• The Seeker (this is a narrative playbook in ICON) taps into the history of the Dungeon and it is revealed that this dimension is a control vector for the Arken High Priest for whom the Arkenruin was initially constructed. The Dimension has a rule: one person can never leave, and whenever someone is alone in the Dimension, they gain control of it. The will of the person in control then emanates throughout the rest of the dungeon.
• Please review how much fun every NPC was having. Get it?
• From this point forward we are now in The Cool Zone.
• So, the Shade character decides "Aesi, don't trust the Imperials. I'll stay here and you go free." They get a recorded confession that the Imperials are bad news via Guild Arkentech 8-track recorder (Brokers are wild in this game). The player characters confront the Imperials and their intentions, kill the Imperial Officer and rout the soldiers, then free the Aesi. The Aesi takes his powers back from the Mayor and leaves.
• The Shade is now alone in The Dimension. When the other characters arrive, it has turned into a midnight glade at the bottom of a waterfall. There is an island where the Shade stands. Shadow copies stalk the treeline on the riverbank. There is no moon, just a massive lidless eye that is constantly crying.
• Everybody has a big emotional moment. "It was wrong of you to stay here. It should have been me" says the 17 year old Goblin (frog) who is also a Clown Assassin and our "Dreamer."
• They try to figure this out. The Shade is on the run from the Empire because they were made a Shade through a classified Guild experiment, and have a resume of assassinating nobles to destabilize regimes to the Guild Citystate of Tornstadt's advantage. This is the perfect place for him to hide forever.
• From this point forward we are now in The Cooler Zone

Because you see, ICON has this cool little tidbit about Shades.

The legends say Shades make a deal with the Weeper, the dead titan queen of night and air, and drink her tears, splitting their soul in two. Their shadow becomes animate, bestial and hungry. Over a week and a day, they must fast and train their shadow to obey them, transforming them into agile and silent warriors of the highest order. The Shades say the stories are rumors, and they get along with their Darksides. They do have a tendency to appear when least expected, in uncanny and unsettling ways.

All of the shadowy doppelgangers in the treeline start merging together until one remains, wading into the river to approach the island where the Shade stands. It pleads. It begs. "I cannot be trapped here. Please do not keep me here. Anywhere is better than here I cannot live like this." Now, this Darkside does not talk. It's a shadow, and can only ever follow the Shade's direction. Only in the Dimension, under the eye of the weeper can this thing exert any agency. Furthermore, the players realize that they have a plan. As half a soul the Darkside could probably remain in the Dimension when everyone else leaves, but as a being conjured through the Weeper's magic, it might be able to be pulled out of the Dimension at the Shade's beckoning. And it works! The dimension collapses and eventually, things get less jolly in the dungeon.

Short notes on Politics of Place and Space in this dungeon.

So the pitch to me is: Arkenruins are this structural, undeniable legacy of the Arken Empire, and the Structure itself is both a metaphor for how people engage with that legacy through the fantastical ways they occupy the fictional physical space of the Dungeon. The Dimension is the keystone to all of this because it asserts that the Arken logic of space is Autocratic, but is subverted by people with certain political ends after the fall of the empire. See the Mayor's ancestory sealing away the Aesi for it's powers, see the people throwing a party inside, etc. The players could have found a Lowlander who would have been thrilled to stay in the dungeon as it's overseer for the rest of time but the players decided that this way of controlling the dungeon should just be dismantled instead. Now, the players want to come back and I do want this change to be important. We will see how I can carry this new metaphor of "no absolute control" forwards.

So, we were talking about something right?

How do you project control over a dungeon, and how does that materialize in different expressions of a central theme? These are the kinds of dungeons I am interested in. We can talk about room size and pathways, but to me caring about what a place means and what is possible within a space made a rudimentary dungeon layout (I want you to imagine a trident) into something that my players really enjoyed. There were some choices made about exploring, and I hope that Jaquaysing future dungeons and developing my dungeon approach (which is why we had to go through this play report) accordingly will make this even better. When I think "this dungeon needs multiple entrances" it provokes me to think "who's entrances? Why do they need different entrances? Does someone control the main entrance and what are the tradeoffs to using a given entrance?" This is something I think will really excite me with ICON. With the EotE dungeon too, I think that strong Faction Identity and relationships in broad terms really help me work through how all of this would play out on a small scale. I think that's important because something I wanted to break from other dungeon design is that I want my dungeons to be super active. I want clear defined uses, and multiple faction-connected uses to be represented for the players to engage with.

The circuitous rooms that Jaquaysing emphasize seem a little odd to me. Why are there multiple connections between these rooms? Who designed it like this and for what purpose? If I have two ways to get from one room the next, it better be because one is like, a freight elevator and the other is stairs.

ICON already has that in spades with the Imperial, Churner, and Lowlander factions. Each one has a fundamentally different relationship to Arkenruins.

The same goes for EotE. The Empire, Scum and Villainy, and whatever guards the dungeon have totally different relationships, goals, and uses with the space.

In the future, I hope that Jaquaysing the Dungeon is something I can develop in line with my current process for dungeon drafting.