I like the cut of Liz’s jib. If you’re having trouble conceiving of a maze as a navigable obstacle, perhaps it’s something else like a puzzle to be solved with a good idea or a test.
However, I strongly urge you all to at least attempt to play dungeon-telephone. Exploration via dialogue is incredibly fun, but our rules acknowledge that it’s fun once! The intent and design is to navigate via your wits and then log your progress via a map so you don’t have to do it again.
-L
Hmm, dungeon-telephone can be quite fun… but I suppose my primary concern is getting incredulous stares from players if I tell them they aren’t allowed to test pathfinder and they aren’t allowed to draw a visual aid to help them. They can make cartography checks, but if it’s a true labyrinth what would that look like? If it’s just the various areas connected to the labyrinth then they still have a potentially frustrating experience trying to engage in discovery without being allowed to rely on a visual aid. If they map every intersection that would get out of hand very quickly, as there could be dozens to hundreds of little left-right-straight choices in a real labyrinth intended to confuse and mislead. Unless I forsake the rules against drawing visual maps, but that, to me, felt more integral than not making pathfinder checks underground. I suppose there are also good ideas, like unrolling a ball of twine or marking intersections with chalk… but if they don’t think of those things then they could just end up stuck, and the great thing about TB is that players are never stuck. Even if they fail at something the story is advanced either with a twist or a conditional success. So do I let them draw a visual map if they need to within a labyrinth specifically?
Again, this is a niche situation, since most dungeons needn’t and shouldn’t have a labyrinth in them. But it is an interesting edge case to explore, and I know there were at least a few people that didn’t really understand to handle that sort of thing, including myself once I considered it. I certainly don’t mean to be contrary…
Also, I suppose if we’re talking something like navigating between locations within the expanse of the underdark, then that would be similar enough to overland travel to call for a Pathfinder test?
Would it be possible to use the conflict mechanics for this? Something like Dungeoneering for attacks and feints, and Cartographer for defenses and manuevers. The maze itself could be stated as a monster, with its might, nature, disposition, weapons, etc. Any specific locations that you would like to show could be stated as the weapons.
All of this is theory, I have not run a maze in Torchbearer yet.
What do you do when your players ask to roll for initiative? What do you do when they say, “I stab him in the face. He’s dead! Dead! I killed him before he could react!” Or when they demand to shoot lasers from their eyes?
You gently guide them to the right procedure for this game. And if their expectations are far out of line, you guide them back to earth. Or you duck behind your screen and hope it can deflect the eye-lasers.
In this case, a labyrinth is supposed to be confusing. Let them enjoy being confused! Don’t guard against your players’ frustration. A little frustration is good for them. The rules here are ultra simple to both give the quintessential experience of dungeon crawling and make it easy on the players and characters.
And if the players want to take notes or make a sketch, I hope you don’t persecute them. You shouldn’t slow down the game for them either, but don’t punish them for being diligent.
Hmmm, good points.
So to summarize the conclusions of this thread:
Pathfinder is generally only intended for long distance overland travel.
It’s fun to get lost in a maze and “describe to live” your way out of it.
Players shouldn’t be punished or discouraged from creating play aids like visual maps, it just shouldn’t take over the game or replace use of the cartography skill for quickly navigating briefly described locations.
Use external puzzles sometimes as a replacement for in-game puzzles, as appropriate.
One more question occurred to me… what if they have a really lousy map? Maybe it’s obsolete or the adventurer they bought it from was an idiot. How would you handle that? Know in advance what parts of the map are wrong and have them encounter an unexpected obstacle when they try to navigate that part of the map? Don’t use imperfect purchased or found maps as “narrative teleportaiton” but instead just use them as clues to the players (“A trap is marked on the map in this room” or “the maps says there may be treasure down the hallway to the left”)?
Right. If my players want to sketch a map as they go, they can. I don’t stop them. But I keep going with the description, I don’t give them feet and accurate dimensions. And I’ll alternate between using cardinal directions and things like ‘left,’ ‘right,’ ‘ahead of you,’ etc. On Sunday, I tried something I liked a lot: since the characters hadn’t actually mapped the dungeon, I didn’t give the players back the map that they had been making as they went. They either had to go ahead and make a map or rely on memory.
That’s how I would handle it.
Incidentally, my reasoning for Pathfinder is as follows: It’s about using known landmarks/geography, the position of the sun, the moon and the stars, etc. to guide you from one point to another. If you know the place you are trying to reach is roughly south-southwest of your position, you’re able to hold a course and head in that direction (or you simply know the roads and countryside). None of these markers are available underground. Without a map, even an accurate magnetic compass (or dwarf) won’t do you a hell of a lot of good–there’s no trailblazing crosscountry in a dungeon.
That makes sense to me.
If you were in an underdark heavy campaign would you then use Pathfinding for long distance travel? Would you require a compass to make such a check? Would you make the players rely exclusively on a guide or map? Granted, raw TB doesn’t describe the underdark, but with how easy it is to use d&d modules, someone’s going to run into that.
I don’t have an “official” answer for you on that one. I haven’t really considered it. I’m interested in your thoughts on the matter! My instinct is that you’d want a guide or a map. I’m not sure magnetic compasses are used as navigation aids in my Torchbearer world. If they are, they’re rare! But I could see a dwarf, with dwarven delving Nature, doing something like this.
Ah, I like the idea of using Nature for subterranean creatures and leaving those silly surface dwellers lost, clueless, and dependent on happenstance. There might also be a distinct skill for navigating the underdark, like “Delver” or something, that surface dwellers can use with beginners luck and eventually learn if they’re forced to try to navigate down there. The way you explain things it does seem to make sense to have a skill distinct from Pathfinder. I might parallel the difference with a pirate campaign where you would use something like “Navigator” for high seas travel. Pathfinder certainly wouldn’t be appropriate to that.