I think when we talk about games, a lot of the time we assume we're talking about the same things from the same point of view. But we combine concepts that for us are grouped in ways they arent for others. Play culture. Structure. Experience. Let's talk about dungeons. 1/x - ThreadSky

pandatheist.bsky.social • 43 days ago

I think when we talk about games, a lot of the time we assume we're talking about the same things from the same point of view. But we combine concepts that for us are grouped in ways they arent for others. Play culture. Structure. Experience. Let's talk about dungeons.

1/x

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hjaywatson.bsky.social•42 days ago

📌

pandatheist.bsky.social•43 days ago

Dungeons are, from one perspective, an enclosed physical space containing a series of connected rooms. From another, theyre a set of potential scenes with connection points that impact their nearby neighbors. In the first, its about space. In the other, its about framing and flow.

2/x

pandatheist.bsky.social•43 days ago

How you think of it defines its conceptual neighbors. If youre talking spatially, theres not a lot of difference between a hex map and a dungeon. Limited resources, controlled exploration, expected set of interaction models.

3/x

pandatheist.bsky.social•43 days ago

If youre talking more conceptually, theres not a lot of difference between a dungeon and a scene map. Theyre both flow charts for player choices. In a mystery clues provide the impetus for movement rather than physical adjacency, but at a high level? To a writer perhaps? Looks very similar.

4/x

klezmerstyle.bsky.social•43 days ago

a dungeon in a lot of ways is a flow chart

related: non-profit organizational charts make for excellent complicated dungeons

pandatheist.bsky.social•43 days ago

Hex maps and scene maps feel different, to me at least. An extra degree apart. But maybe not! After all, peg those scenes to a city map and suddenly they might look a lot more similar. A point crawl instead of a hex crawl, but in both cases youre differentiating on connection rather than scene.

5/x

pandatheist.bsky.social•43 days ago

Structural and experiential divergence. Lets say you take an OSR dungeon crawl, a Call of Cthulhu mystery, a 5e campaign, and a Blades in the Dark Heist. Ask the players, the GMs, the writers, and the system designers which are most similar. Id bet youd get very different answers.

6/x

pandatheist.bsky.social•43 days ago

To one player, BitD might be most like the OSR dungeon. After all, position and effect isnt that far off from how a lot of OSR GMs treat environmental interactions. Problems not solutions is a maxim for a reason. Weigh more heavily on aesthetics and the OSR game is clearly closer to 5e.

7/x

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