Post AlGtpw9VCnLLgSzcGm by ohyran@social.piewpiew.se
 (DIR) More posts by ohyran@social.piewpiew.se
 (DIR) Post #AlGkV0aibhWjmZfWM4 by ohyran@social.piewpiew.se
       2024-08-23T19:27:32Z
       
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       In roleplaying games #ttrpg - why are mazes a thing? Is it a back reference to Theseus?
       
 (DIR) Post #AlGkV1V5E8c6bO2XD6 by lextenebris@social.vivaldi.net
       2024-08-23T20:07:54Z
       
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       @ohyran For the most part, they aren't a thing. Except insofar as "dungeons" tend to be labyrinthine, mazes for the sake of simply being mazes aren't something you run into.Now, why do you run into subterranean labyrinths on a regular basis? Partly tradition, partly because anything underground that isn't particularly well-lit is easily manifested as a series of challenges, partly because in very old-school RPGs, you were expected to keep your own maps and complex labyrinths were part of the challenge of mastery in that sense.Mainly, you have to look back to the inspirational media for that era and type of fantasy. The idea of the labyrinth as a metaphor for a trip to the underworld predates Theseus, and there were a lot of other approaches along the way.#TTRPG
       
 (DIR) Post #AlGtpw9VCnLLgSzcGm by ohyran@social.piewpiew.se
       2024-08-23T21:52:30Z
       
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       @lextenebris fair fair (and please note 1. I love the level of thought you've put in to your reply but 2. I am really REALLY drunk right now) I disagree. My culture studies-sensibilities ping that there is something deeper at play than just "we're in a tunnel, my cellphone don't work" horror trope. Is it connected to early skirmish mini's battle games? What are the cultural depths this thing rose out of?(again, you might be an expert and I a mediocre drunk dude in Sweden - so theorize!)
       
 (DIR) Post #AlH32dxD4o42axNQdk by lextenebris@social.vivaldi.net
       2024-08-23T23:35:40Z
       
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       @ohyran In fact, I might be an expert. I'm probably guilty of having put in more than 10,000 hours of work over the last half century in RPG and wargame design and the industry. Hades, bless my soul.It's not about the horror trope at all. It's about the fact that narratives arise from series of challenges. And those challenges must be relatively constrained to fit the context of early tabletop RPGs.In a lot of ways, you can think of old-school D&D as it used to be played as equal to primitive dungeon-exploring video games, which is where they picked up the trope to begin with. The Dungeon Delve is very much still a thing because, as an abstract mechanism to package story experiences, it inherently tells you everything you need to know. It's a "single place" which can have and should have its own narrative context. It has a very constrained number of entrances and exits, often just the one. Everyone understands by exposure what it looks like. You could think of it as a sociological shorthand for an indirect journey if you're looking for literary postmodernism hand-waving, to cover it in.(cont)#TTRPG
       
 (DIR) Post #AlH341J7jb6BJXHd68 by lextenebris@social.vivaldi.net
       2024-08-23T23:35:57Z
       
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       @ohyran If we approach it by looking at the historical architecture of the game which immediately gave rise to D&D, Chainmail, it was primarily an open field battle simulation for squad up to roughly company size if you were particularly ambitious, in a very literal sense. Playing it was the antithesis of going through any kind of labyrinth. Maneuver and engagement control were pretty pivotal.Dungeons and Dragons, in specific, was a scaling down in scope while maintaining mechanical complexity for man-to-man, individual-level conflict resolution, first and foremost.Some of its inspirations, which led to the fantasy army list of Chainmail, which inspired D&D directly, involved '60s and '70s pulp fantasy with heroes, doing the usual fantasy heroic things, and sometimes having to go through sewers, dungeons, and other fun places, while looking for the usual suspects.Outside of D&D and philosophical D&D descendants, however, it's probably not accurate to say that mazes are much of a thing at all, even, and especially, if you look at other RPG lineages, lineages with beginnings not long after D&D, including Traveller, which is sort of the Ur science fiction setting.#TTRPG