I like the implication that the beholder basically lives to watch reality tv and get more slaves to bring it snacks. It really suits the personality profile
I think it could work as a fighting game adaptation, maybe. Where the ability to represent a player or enemy while jumping or crouching is way more important than the ability to move sideways.
Not the OP but I was thinking more of a megaman 4-player brawler, with big 2-D hitbox templates to represent various energy attacks. I would want generic enemies that drop collectable powerups, and I would want it to be something we could pick up easily and jam through in 2 hours and never play again, basically just 4e D&D but sideways and with less attack rolls.
[...]
To elaborate, I think a fighting game would put more emphasis on rock/paper/scissor dynamics between different basic attacks, with some being slightly faster or reaching slightly farther than others. Then the real game live in the bluffing and repositioning. I think you can do that in tabletop, but I also think grid-based games do it better, and if we're going to draw out bigger maps and explore them then we're already moving away from Street Fighter and towards doubledragon/battletoads/etc, I'd just as soon take the next step and emphasize different ranged attacks with different firing patterns.
This sounds a lot of "I want to do these cool video game things but tabletop", with no thought given to the teeny tiny little detail that a lot of shit that works in video games work because the computer takes care of all the book keeping and whatnot instead of forcing the humans to do it.
moronation aside, if no miniatures-combat is involved what's the con of running a sidescrolling dungeon?
pic not related, just adding it to catch attention among the one guy samegayging himself to shit up the thread
For a start every room ever is now suddenly a narrow corridor. (And let's be fair, to some degree you're asking "if we ignore the cons, what are the cons?")
>For a start every room ever is now suddenly a narrow corridor
You can draw it with a high ceiling just fine, and (again) no miniatures are involved so there's no such thing as "narrow"
It's all just a representation of where you are in the dungeon
8 months ago
Anonymous
You've either removed width from gameplay, at which point every room is effectively a narrow corridor since there's no longer meaningful movement depth-wise, or you've simply chosen to show the height instead of the width in the maps, which will generally be fricking moronic since most people have a lot easier time moving sideways than they have flying and the width is thus far more important to know about than the height. (And even with flying creatures the height will only at most be of equal importance.)
>with no thought given to the teeny tiny little detail that a lot of shit that works in video games work because the computer takes care of all the book keeping and whatnot instead of forcing the humans to do it.
What do you mean? Cardboard attack templates, emphasis on ranged attacks and line of sight, general emphasis on spatial reasoning over mathematical reasoning, '4e but less attack rolls', generic enemies with learnable statblocks ("it takes 2 hits to kill that one"), this is all to address the different needs of tabletop.
[...]
You can but we're talking about something else.
>What do you mean? Cardboard attack templates,
Those templates would be one of the thing I'm talking about for a start.
>emphasis on spatial reasoning over mathematical reasoning
Sure, geometry and counting range is far less mathematical than counting HP...
8 months ago
Anonymous
I truly don't know what you're saying. The templates are to make the game slightly easier in situations where counting squares might be tiresome, but also counting squares is super fricking easy and is already an integral part of every grid-based wargame. Also you don't actually have to use grids because you could just measure distance (and/or use templates) and then your maps can be more organic.
>with no thought given to the teeny tiny little detail that a lot of shit that works in video games work because the computer takes care of all the book keeping and whatnot instead of forcing the humans to do it.
What do you mean? Cardboard attack templates, emphasis on ranged attacks and line of sight, general emphasis on spatial reasoning over mathematical reasoning, '4e but less attack rolls', generic enemies with learnable statblocks ("it takes 2 hits to kill that one"), this is all to address the different needs of tabletop.
>For a start every room ever is now suddenly a narrow corridor
You can draw it with a high ceiling just fine, and (again) no miniatures are involved so there's no such thing as "narrow"
It's all just a representation of where you are in the dungeon
You can but we're talking about something else.
8 months ago
Anonymous
>we're talking about something else
No "we" aren't, you replied to this post which had a very specific question, anon:
moronation aside, if no miniatures-combat is involved what's the con of running a sidescrolling dungeon?
pic not related, just adding it to catch attention among the one guy samegayging himself to shit up the thread
Not the OP but I was thinking more of a megaman 4-player brawler, with big 2-D hitbox templates to represent various energy attacks. I would want generic enemies that drop collectable powerups, and I would want it to be something we could pick up easily and jam through in 2 hours and never play again, basically just 4e D&D but sideways and with less attack rolls.
To elaborate, I think a fighting game would put more emphasis on rock/paper/scissor dynamics between different basic attacks, with some being slightly faster or reaching slightly farther than others. Then the real game live in the bluffing and repositioning. I think you can do that in tabletop, but I also think grid-based games do it better, and if we're going to draw out bigger maps and explore them then we're already moving away from Street Fighter and towards doubledragon/battletoads/etc, I'd just as soon take the next step and emphasize different ranged attacks with different firing patterns.
Sorry, what I meant to say is that non-grid-based games do Street Fighter better, like card games, or like that one game with the 3 different-colored orbs that I never played.
Your poorly drawn rendition of the side scrolling map from hollow knight does seem to indicate that that would be the case. Is there anything else you'd like to blog about but frame as a question to get around spam filters?
Wow, admitting to being a disingenuous homosexual sure showed me
I hope you all noticed the part where op looked up the answer to his own question before posting the thread and only made it to get you morons to waste your lives replying to garbage
Your poorly drawn rendition of the side scrolling map from hollow knight does seem to indicate that that would be the case. Is there anything else you'd like to blog about but frame as a question to get around spam filters?
Why the frick are people on this board so vehemently against abstract games discussion. It's like some of you gays only exist to be mad about something.
>"OP has been nothing but obstructive" >literally the second post is hostile for no reason and proceeded to shit up the thread by acting moronic the entire time
You got your fix, now let the adults talk
What an absolutely schizo post. Unironically take your meds, OP's question was totally inane and you attacking him like a rabid shitbull is the problem with the thread. If you don't think the question is worth answering, why the frick are you spending your time in this thread?
8 months ago
Anonymous
There are 43 separate people posting in this thread. I'm just one of them, and I'm not the author of anything inflammatory. Cool your jets. It is sort of telling how angry and baseless the replies I've just gotten are, though.
8 months ago
Anonymous
>i'm not one of the trolls shitting up the thread >but I will take their side!
hmm
It fundamentally isn't you fricking moron, OP posted an in-progress rough map from Hollow Knight's development, that is not the same thing at all as a sidescrolling dungeon map in tabletop.
Put that image on a tabletop, run a game in it, and voila. There isn't anything else to it. There's nothing else to discuss.
"Can you make a side-on diagram of a dungeon?"
"Yes, you gave us an example."
I suppose there are corollary questions like "can a diagram help me to run a game" and "am I talking or experiencing diarrhoea right now?" but they should be even more trivial.
I genuinely don't think it would make much difference. Maybe something where gridded combat isn't as expected, to minimise the duplication of effort. Mini Six, FATE, Dungeon World or Blades in the Dark could all fit.
>is a "side-scrolling" dungeon a thing?
Yeah, but it's often even more of an abstraction than the traditional top-down. You can say, 'this is the room we're in' on a side-view, but then you lose out on position within the room. Though since it does give you more verticality, you could perhaps justify it with flying characters? But then you just changed one axis for the other and it's not really a side-scrolling dungeon any more.
This pretty much. I've considered doing this previously but while it looks cool as a map in totality it's very uninformative for both the GM and players during play, and hence becomes frustration. People operate mostly on a flat 2d xy plane, not a vertical xz plane and a 'vertical slice' of a dungeon has very little information content compared to a series of flat horizontal slices by level.
Now isometric maps, those have great utility, but are quite hard to make.
90320729
Get thee gone, troll.
Dear ESL, the plural of utility is utility, not utilities (which are companies that provide water, electricity and sewerage). It means 'practical use'. An isometric map shows both horizontal information and vertical information, hence it has more information density than a standard map, which has to be cut across levels.
>it has great utility >name those utilities >part of its utility >one of its utilities >describe its utility >describe its utilities
Are we done with the grammar lesson now?
8 months ago
Anonymous
...so I was correct then?
8 months ago
Anonymous
If you're
>could you uh... name those utility?
Sounds wrong.
Also you're american so it's very likely you have no idea what you're talking about.
Yeah, I'm still convinced it's "utilities" there
and/or
>Now isometric maps, those have great utility
could you uh... name those utilities?
, then you were correct.
Dear ESL, the plural of utility is utility, not utilities (which are companies that provide water, electricity and sewerage). It means 'practical use'. An isometric map shows both horizontal information and vertical information, hence it has more information density than a standard map, which has to be cut across levels.
gets half credit for trying to correct
>Now isometric maps, those have great utility
could you uh... name those utilities?
who should have used a construction that kept utility (this isn't a literature class so who fricking cares if it changes, really), but doesn't know utilities are not just who their legal guardians pay for basic necessities. Replace "utility" with "use" (prounced youss not yuze, I don't fricking know the IPA symbols) and the right time to use singular/plural becomes even more apparent.
8 months ago
Anonymous
...
what the frick
Yo this thread just attracted a whole bunch of odd ducks
8 months ago
Anonymous
It's not just this thread. Nearly all of the threads I followed this week have derailed into insult match about linguistic nitpicking.
It's crazy.
There was this thread about magic use in Tolkien which degenerated after someone used the word "gamify".
I'm beginning to suspect ChatGPT frickery may be afoot here.
8 months ago
Anonymous
People come here to get into arguments. Emotional availability is basically currency now, and some people are in such poverty that they will strike out and enjoy "I made someone angry."
A visual aid can offer multiple utilities in the same way that a continent can contain multiple peoples. Isometric maps help the imagination-impaired to picture a scene, that's one utility. They also, I don't know, give you something to roll your dice on, That's another utility.
Anon may have been leading the question a bit, by implicitly expecting you to name a second use, but under no circumstance can one "name the utility". One can, at most, name a utility, and "name the utilities" is a more open-ended way of asking the same thing. It may have been simpler to just say "What utility?".
Because of the angle it should be easier to understand an area's layout, it makes otherwise static areas seem more dynamic. Being able to see how one room can relate to a different room on a different level at a glance is the core value.
Flaws: because of the format, rooms that are close behind one another and at a lower level will get covered unless they're much deeper, and the format incentivizes you to put major features on the closest corners to you, meaning the back/"top" corner is usually less populated.
Compare movement and ranged attacks in Final Fantasy Tactics to Shining Force. Walls in Shining Force are going to be represented with impassible tiles, which can cause situations where an archer on "top" of a wall can't fire down it at all, nor does he benefit from the height. FFT however has very few impassible tiles but it does have a Z axis.
That's called a chase scene.
PCs can be both hunter or hunted. And the thing that hunts them can not only be a monster, but also spreading corruption, rising lava or an impeding building collapse.
You can't turn left or right. No intersections on the same level.
[...]
This sounds a lot of "I want to do these cool video game things but tabletop", with no thought given to the teeny tiny little detail that a lot of shit that works in video games work because the computer takes care of all the book keeping and whatnot instead of forcing the humans to do it.
[...]
For a start every room ever is now suddenly a narrow corridor. (And let's be fair, to some degree you're asking "if we ignore the cons, what are the cons?")
>For a start every room ever is now suddenly a narrow corridor.
There can be more of the room just like how top-down maps can have cielings.
>we're talking about something else
No "we" aren't, you replied to this post which had a very specific question, anon: [...]
No I didn't, I replied to
>For a start every room ever is now suddenly a narrow corridor
You can draw it with a high ceiling just fine, and (again) no miniatures are involved so there's no such thing as "narrow"
It's all just a representation of where you are in the dungeon
, which was a reply to
[...]
This sounds a lot of "I want to do these cool video game things but tabletop", with no thought given to the teeny tiny little detail that a lot of shit that works in video games work because the computer takes care of all the book keeping and whatnot instead of forcing the humans to do it.
[...]
For a start every room ever is now suddenly a narrow corridor. (And let's be fair, to some degree you're asking "if we ignore the cons, what are the cons?")
, which replied to my posts (about a theoretical tactical sidescrolling TTRPG) in addition to the posts you reference.
moronation aside, if no miniatures-combat is involved what's the con of running a sidescrolling dungeon?
pic not related, just adding it to catch attention among the one guy samegayging himself to shit up the thread
in any event is open-ended, discussion of sideways maps for theater-of-the-mind games (as per some of the earlier posts) and discussion of tactical grid-based sidescrolling would both be relevant to that post, and to the thread at large. I simply meant to note that we (
[...]
This sounds a lot of "I want to do these cool video game things but tabletop", with no thought given to the teeny tiny little detail that a lot of shit that works in video games work because the computer takes care of all the book keeping and whatnot instead of forcing the humans to do it.
[...]
For a start every room ever is now suddenly a narrow corridor. (And let's be fair, to some degree you're asking "if we ignore the cons, what are the cons?")
and myself) were talking about tactical sidescrollers.
Most human-occupied spaces have complexity on the horizontal, not the vertical. Think about your house. If you wanted to explain the layout would a side-on diagram be the most helpful aid to someone who has never been there? Unlikely.
Vertical movement is usually trivial in D&D. On a macro scale it is important (to navigate) but jumping and climbing and using staircases are a lot rarer than turning left or right.
I'd only use a side-on map for limited circumstances (tower ascents, cliff climbing) where vertical information will be relevant more often than not.
Read it as "In D&D vertical movement is trivial, HOWEVER, on a macro scale IN GAMES INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO D&D it is important (to navigate) but jumping and climbing and using staircases are a lot rarer than turning left or right."
>If no minis are involved what are you even moving
I AM MOVING THE CHARACTER OF MY MIND IN THE THEATER OF MY MIND CAN WE PLEASE GET PAST THIS PART PLEASE
Ok. Any OSR game can be played without a grid and miniatures.
Scarlet Heroes if you need a specific one.
Now what
[...]
What are the drawbacks of a sidescrolling map in an RPG where movement within a room doesn't matter?
>moronation aside, if no miniatures-combat is involved what's the con of running a sidescrolling dungeon?
>Top down = 4 cardinal directions of movement.
>Side scrolling =2 cardinal directions of movement.
You're removing an whole spatial dimension of movement for the players. They can't go left or right and unless the players have spider climb or fly 24/7 they're not going to go up or down much anyway aside from ladders.
Limitations can make the game more interesting but they can also be just annoying. Unless you really design the game around planning party line formation and jumping and climbing, acting in order ECT it's going to be frustrating to most players.
You're so insistent on that point, despite it being irrelevant to the replied-to post, that I think you may have to explain what you mean by it. Do you mean "positioning is not tracked beyond what room you are in?"
You time wasting fricknut. In that case there's no need for much of a map at all, as I have repeatedly posted.
8 months ago
Anonymous
Different rooms have different hazards, traps, encounters, treasures, and secret passages.
Many RPGs have dungeon rooms but don't track where you are within the room.
As I've said time and time again.
8 months ago
Anonymous
Yes, but you can just flowchart them, or draw in an inconsistent projection, or a dozen other solutions. So being side-on is still pointless. Even on a by-room scale most structures will have more information in depth than in height and so a projection that illustrates that information is superior to one that doesn't.
For reference I told you this
Most human-occupied spaces have complexity on the horizontal, not the vertical. Think about your house. If you wanted to explain the layout would a side-on diagram be the most helpful aid to someone who has never been there? Unlikely.
Vertical movement is usually trivial in D&D. On a macro scale it is important (to navigate) but jumping and climbing and using staircases are a lot rarer than turning left or right.
I'd only use a side-on map for limited circumstances (tower ascents, cliff climbing) where vertical information will be relevant more often than not.
yesterday.
8 months ago
Anonymous
>most structures will have more information in depth than in height
like what information
now watch him answer with "the position of the minis"
8 months ago
Anonymous
While that would usually be in depth: the positions of the rooms, corridors and features within them. I suspect you knew that, you disingenuous cretin.
when someone is so terminally low IQ they need a literal drawing
there's one in the OP as well, clear as day, but who the hell knows how this fat frick's damaged brain works
HERE, see? There's no "removal of a spatial dimension" at all.
Look at the picture. NO, dont fricking start typing yet, LOOK at the picture, take your time.
Christ man. How do you function on a day to day basis?
when someone is so terminally low IQ they need a literal drawing
there's one in the OP as well, clear as day, but who the hell knows how this fat frick's damaged brain works
HERE, see? There's no "removal of a spatial dimension" at all.
Look at the picture. NO, dont fricking start typing yet, LOOK at the picture, take your time.
Christ man. How do you function on a day to day basis?
when someone is so terminally low IQ they need a literal drawing
there's one in the OP as well, clear as day, but who the hell knows how this fat frick's damaged brain works
HERE, see? There's no "removal of a spatial dimension" at all.
Look at the picture. NO, dont fricking start typing yet, LOOK at the picture, take your time.
Christ man. How do you function on a day to day basis?
PF2 had an encounter that plays out in 2D in Fists of the Ruby Phoenix that was pretty fun. Obstacles are on a pillar, you have to stay within arm's reach of the pillar. It wouldn't be hard to conceive of a 'dungeon' on a cliff face with a similar conceit as long as you had some reason for them to have to stay within arm's reach of the cliff face.
I guess it could work better than top down for 'fantasy martial arts' like dragon ball or groups made up of jedi/mages and rouns would emulate very short time frames, so a high jump would take a few rounds to play out. Would probably need a lot of fine tuning and testing to not turn into legit dogfighting, a book keeping fest or a meaningless gimmick.
>miniatures
It's about movement. If you're playing a game where the movement aspect is trivial (an investigation game without logistical pressure, or a romance or something) then no type of map has any meaningful advantage over any other kind. Have a flowchart, or a sketch, or no map at all.
If movement is important, my point stands.
There are plenty of games where a map with distinct rooms is very important, but movement within it isn't. Like D100 dungeon or literally most games that aren't dnd
I've been daydreaming for a while about making vertical terrains, actually.
I'm not sure which benefits it would bring on the table, though, apart from the novelty.
Oh frick, trips!
Well let me add this:
Sending enemies falling to their deaths is hilarious and I would love a combat system that puts a heavy focus on having characters pushed and thrown around, with cascading effets (punch a character, he falls out the window, bounces on a platform, bumps on a barrel of napalm that sets the whole room on fire). Kinda like Worms or Superfighters, but adapted to the constraints of tabletop obviously.
Best attempt I'm aware of is Rogue Planet and... well... it worked, but pushing it even further could be fun?
>parabolic trajectories and wind in tabletop
Well, you have different options:
Option 1: don't.
Option 2: the Triplanetary approach, using vectors. It's not perfect, but it's an easy way to crunch trigonometry and still making it fun and playable.
Option 3: mmm... perhaps special accessories could do that? Not sure.
I'm inclined towards option 1 though, I don't think a 1:1 representation of Worms is what we should be going for, as much as going for the spirit of it, where little accidents can comically cascade into unpredictable huge effects.
Oh frick, trips!
Well let me add this:
Sending enemies falling to their deaths is hilarious and I would love a combat system that puts a heavy focus on having characters pushed and thrown around, with cascading effets (punch a character, he falls out the window, bounces on a platform, bumps on a barrel of napalm that sets the whole room on fire). Kinda like Worms or Superfighters, but adapted to the constraints of tabletop obviously.
Best attempt I'm aware of is Rogue Planet and... well... it worked, but pushing it even further could be fun?
Damn that looks amazing but kind of impractical to play on
Oh frick, trips!
Well let me add this:
Sending enemies falling to their deaths is hilarious and I would love a combat system that puts a heavy focus on having characters pushed and thrown around, with cascading effets (punch a character, he falls out the window, bounces on a platform, bumps on a barrel of napalm that sets the whole room on fire). Kinda like Worms or Superfighters, but adapted to the constraints of tabletop obviously.
Best attempt I'm aware of is Rogue Planet and... well... it worked, but pushing it even further could be fun?
We witness your digits.
Like other anons have said, in tactical terms its a lot like an endless 5-foot-wide corridor, so the complexity of the game (whatever game you're using) may collapse somewhat. But that's good, because it gives the players a chance to focus on vertical interaction and on any other toys that the map might give them. Basically the broth is "marching order matters" and then you can add anything you want to that broth. Obviously it's completely different from a 5-foot corridor in the sense that you have open access and possibly line-of-sight to things above and below you.
Unrelated, but just because you mentioned Worms, I think it would be cool if the map was very large in scale (like a mountain range) and if the PCs were little wizards that were miles apart throwing terrain-altering spells at each other. That made me think of Worms.
All terrain is novelty. Looks fun. And I’ve always wanted to do a cliff archer scenario where players have to fight upward against some devastating range
>Dude what if sidescrolling dungeon, like those platformers where your positioning matters >But actually we don't need to track positions of people in this sidescrolling dungeon >Just tell them what's in the room but room is like, in a side view >It's all in the MIND bro you don't understand
I ran a dungeon where every room was just a static image, like pic related. On practice what I did was LITERALLY THE SAME as what you're proposing, only you're doing it with irrelevant gizmo that has no bearing on how the game is played, how the room is described and how the players view your dungeon. >oh boy i have to jump down instead of going to the side room, what joy, what a breath of fresh air
Said no player ever.
It can be done, yes. But it's irrelevant, it's useless, it's pointless and it's effort that could be applied elsewhere. TL;DR - you're an easily entertained moronic magpie who played some 2d platformer and got all excited about your super cool and clever idea that is neither.
NOW, verticality in RPGs is actually a fun and interesting topic, so i'll just assume
Oh frick, trips!
Well let me add this:
Sending enemies falling to their deaths is hilarious and I would love a combat system that puts a heavy focus on having characters pushed and thrown around, with cascading effets (punch a character, he falls out the window, bounces on a platform, bumps on a barrel of napalm that sets the whole room on fire). Kinda like Worms or Superfighters, but adapted to the constraints of tabletop obviously.
Best attempt I'm aware of is Rogue Planet and... well... it worked, but pushing it even further could be fun?
is an actual non-homosexual OP and go from there.
Games like Gubat Banwa which I played lately actually put a lot of thought in verticality - with abilities that can factor in height or even terramorph the terrain. I've been experimenting with "true 3d" battlemaps, which have multiple layers and inside/outside spaces. While more complex than usual "semi-2d" maps we all know and love, those definitely add layer of strategic fun (and headache while calculating line of sight/effect).
Thankfully our group plays literally any system that is not D&D. Pic related by the way was Ryuutama where I combined traditional hexcrawl on the ovrworld with pictures for caves, dungeons and towns.
>So, how do you do this
It's as easy as pic related. I use Foundry plug-in that lets a token be projected onto other "versions" of the same map. I believe it would be even easier IRL if you have some plastic scrap, superglue, greenstuff, paints and autism.
is a fantastic example, because it isn't built around an arbitrary cross-section, moving into the background puts you in a cave and moving into the foreground puts you in open air. I'm sorry, I know that miniatures offend you, but it's still relevant to your question. The best side-scrolling maps are the ones with actual barriers (not hard barriers but meaningful barriers, "thresholds" if you prefer) in the foreground and background, because then the map is useful as a flow-chart, rather than just being a cross-section of a flow chart.
PF2 had an encounter that plays out in 2D in Fists of the Ruby Phoenix that was pretty fun. Obstacles are on a pillar, you have to stay within arm's reach of the pillar. It wouldn't be hard to conceive of a 'dungeon' on a cliff face with a similar conceit as long as you had some reason for them to have to stay within arm's reach of the cliff face.
is probably a less good example, because it sounds like the central premise of the map is quite literally linear, and if you're on a linear path then do you need a map at all? Well, yes, but only if your game tracks movement on a tactical scale. If you were working in theater-of-the-mind then a map wouldn't really be helpful in that situation. Because that's what you want to talk about, right? Maps as visual aids, and not maps as metrics for tactical movement, right? If the map were pinned to the wall, and no miniatures were allowed to touch it, then you would see that linear maps aren't useful as visual aids. It's useful as a way to track progress, to show that Gimli is lagging 30 feet behind Legolas, but if you don't care abotu that then it isn't useful.
when someone is so terminally low IQ they need a literal drawing
there's one in the OP as well, clear as day, but who the hell knows how this fat frick's damaged brain works
HERE, see? There's no "removal of a spatial dimension" at all.
Look at the picture. NO, dont fricking start typing yet, LOOK at the picture, take your time.
Christ man. How do you function on a day to day basis?
This space is stretched out diagonally, so that it works equally well as a top-down map or as a sideways map. It's perfectly fine either way but I don't know what point you were trying to make with it. The anon that you replied to was being very helpful (again) and you made a twit of yourself (again). Why are you like this?
It would be easier if you had basic adult communication skills and/or TTRPG experience. You're a pompous twat, and you have nothing to say, and a good thread is happening in spite of you.
There are plenty of RPGs that don't care about movement within a dungeon. I think these RPGs would work perfectly fine with sidescrolling.
You not being aware of these RPGs is not a valid point
Theoretically, it would be, but you aren't aware of them either. The only RPG you can name is a solo game (you have my condolences), and you don't even know how to talk about it, I bet it's sitting unread on your computer.
If I were going to spoonfeed you, I would talk about Tunnels&Trolls, which is the lightest dungeoncrawler that I'm familiar with. Movement is completely abstract, but positioning still matters, it's the difference between melee combat and shock combat. It matters that you're standing behind the fighters, and it matters that goblins can attack from the side in a pincer movement, being abstract/narrative doesn't mean that it doesn't matter. I really don't think that you have any idea what you're talking about, I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt about d100 dungeon, but if I actually read that game I would not be surprised to learn that it had rules for flanking/backstabbing/etc which would cause positioning to matter.
Ok. Any OSR game can be played without a grid and miniatures.
Scarlet Heroes if you need a specific one.
Now what
He specifically asked me to respond to his post asking about the drawbacks of a 2d map, so I did, what part did you not understand? He keeps getting mad at people for talking about sidescrolling battlemaps, he wants to talk about maps as flowcharts just to keep track of what room you're in, and that's fine but I'm still going to keep talking about sidescrolling battlemaps.
What are the drawbacks of a sidescrolling map in an RPG where movement within a room doesn't matter?
>Ok. Any OSR game can be played without a grid and miniatures.
lol, sure, some of them can be. Assuming that you have a good map.
Again, the fact that SOME OSR games don't track movement on a round-by-round basis doesn't mean that position doesn't matter, it means that there are ad-hoc bonuses for positioning (like in Tunnels&Trolls). This makes you sound like a giga-nogame because OD&D and its clones are disproportionately concerned with exploring maps. Searching the West wall isn't the same as searching the East wall, sleeping by the door isn't the same as sleeping by the window, the fact that the system doesn't track movement does not mean that every character is occupying a quantum superposition. In particular, if your game tracks time and rewards you for moving efficiently (and, lets be clear, it isn't OSR unless it does), then you need to track movement through rooms. You have no idea what you're talking about, and your misconceptions could have been cleared up sooner if you had been less belligerent. >Scarlet Heroes
At least it isn't a solo game. But it's still a 1-player game. This may suggest that positioning matters less when there is only one hero, but again I'm just taking your word for it, I'm not familiar with this game and I have no reason to think that you are either.
>Now what
Now we're back to maps purely as visual aids, pinned to the wall so that no one can put a miniature on them. I'm not sure that Scarlet Heroes works that way, I think it might be one of those games where there's a good hiding place in the North East corner of the room and a secret exit in the South West corner of the room and so position within a room matters, but for the sake of conversation we'll pretend that position doesn't matter in Scarlet Heroes.
Most places have complexity on X and Z and not on Y. The rooms to the North, South, East and/or West are the rooms that you can directly move to. There may be a room directly above you but that isn't nearly as relevant as the rooms to the North and South. So mapping vertical connections isn't nearly as helpful as mapping horizontal connections. You absolutely dense motherfricker.
But like I said earlier (the first time that you begged me to respond to your question), if it isn't baked into the game rules then it isn't much of a drawback, you can use horizontal maps if and when they make sense and then use top-down maps right alongside them.
8 months ago
Anonymous
>I'm not sure that Scarlet Heroes works that wa
then why speak about shit you know nothing about?
8 months ago
Anonymous
I've already shown more knowledge of Scarlet Heroes than OP has shown. People keep inviting him to describe the kind of gameplay that he wants and he keeps deflecting. The bottom line is, if there's a pit trap in the middle of the room, then a side-scrolling map sucks. It doesn't tell you whether or not you can go around the pit. OP keeps implying that there are games where this wouldn't matter, but it's not really a function of the game system, OP is just an idiot.
8 months ago
Anonymous
yay more pilpul
8 months ago
Anonymous
If theres a pit trap in the middle of the room youre not playing scarlet heroes
>It would be easier if you had basic adult communication skills
I'm willing to bet somebody in the past said this to you and now you're parroting it, because the other guy was perfectly understandable yet you are just hostile with zero logical sense to your words
He specifically asked me to respond to his post asking about the drawbacks of a 2d map, so I did, what part did you not understand? He keeps getting mad at people for talking about sidescrolling battlemaps, he wants to talk about maps as flowcharts just to keep track of what room you're in, and that's fine but I'm still going to keep talking about sidescrolling battlemaps.
I ran a one-off with a side scrolling gimmick with the added rule that every melee strikes pushes people back, including everyone behind the victim.
This mixed with a more complex jumping system and a shitload of platforms made things interesting but not worth running an entire campaign in
If you were in a dungeon that primarily focused on climbing/traps and other such vertical enterprises it seems fantastic, so long as combat is minimal. It would just swap grid combat and theater of the mind vertical navigation for the opposite
>non-theater of the mind thoughts
It becomes interesting once you consider gravity, in most cases vertical movement should be limited (jumping) or perilous (leaves you open, can fall). Exchanging an XY board for an XZ board means that positioning to flank is more difficult as you need to either go over the top instead of around. So you can theoretically clog up space better, but also can get trapped easier. Vertacality is absolutely vital for combat scenarios and navigation puzzles. You'd need to make a hard call on fall damage, either it's non-existent so you can drop 30 feet onto a guy's head and attack him, strictly enforced at all times (TABLES!), or enforced when hurt/staggered/incapacitated.
I'm sure there's a world where all the planning to make it work would make something great, but it's a lot to consider.
Jumping over enemies can be punished by jumping enemies or by upward-attacking enemies, which is an avenue of interaction so I think it should be rewarded to some extent, and I think it's an argument for hang-time (letting characters end their movement mid-jump). I would use a single action system, attack or move but not both, just so it's granular and turns flow fast. Perhaps I should be more open-minded about initiative, but if not a simple turn system then I would go to a "frame" system where every action takes 2 or more turns, but that's the point where it really starts to be turn-based streetfighter and I'm not sure how fun that is, I think simpler might be better.
If you're trying to evoke videogames, then the one thing you really needs is to get powerups that recontextualize the level somehow. Moving faster, or jumping higher, or being able to climb walls, or having shadow clones ahead of and/or behind you like in Ninja Gaiden, the benefit of aping classic games is that there is a lot of great game design to steal.
Sidescroll doesn't seem to work especially well in dungeons, notably in D&D and it's derivatives, but it has its uses in combat for other systems in my experience. A system where flight and verticality is commonplace but not flanking and opportunity attacks will generally work fine if not better on a side view.
we used to play stuff like this with my brothers, usually around noon and with a lot of water. they were good times. different, but good.
darkest dungeon did something similar and that game was like what twenty years ago? it's a videogame though, not sure about any board games that
No one at this point expects you to be gracious or thankful, it's just fun to prove that we understand what you want better than you do. You pretended that your frustration was related to the lack of relevant replies, but anyone who reads any part of this thread knows that this isn't true, you're just frustrated because you're frustrated.
No one at this point is surprised by your ability to ignore relevant replies.
>Dude what if sidescrolling dungeon, like those platformers where your positioning matters >But actually we don't need to track positions of people in this sidescrolling dungeon >Just tell them what's in the room but room is like, in a side view >It's all in the MIND bro you don't understand
I ran a dungeon where every room was just a static image, like pic related. On practice what I did was LITERALLY THE SAME as what you're proposing, only you're doing it with irrelevant gizmo that has no bearing on how the game is played, how the room is described and how the players view your dungeon. >oh boy i have to jump down instead of going to the side room, what joy, what a breath of fresh air
Said no player ever.
It can be done, yes. But it's irrelevant, it's useless, it's pointless and it's effort that could be applied elsewhere. TL;DR - you're an easily entertained moronic magpie who played some 2d platformer and got all excited about your super cool and clever idea that is neither.
NOW, verticality in RPGs is actually a fun and interesting topic, so i'll just assume
[...]
is an actual non-homosexual OP and go from there.
Games like Gubat Banwa which I played lately actually put a lot of thought in verticality - with abilities that can factor in height or even terramorph the terrain. I've been experimenting with "true 3d" battlemaps, which have multiple layers and inside/outside spaces. While more complex than usual "semi-2d" maps we all know and love, those definitely add layer of strategic fun (and headache while calculating line of sight/effect).
This guy put it better than I did, he said basically the same thing but with less words.
this entire post is easily destroyed by this one sentence: dont play dnd
>this entire post is easily destroyed by this one sentence: dont play dnd
lol
lmao
not really, ttrpg dungeons are usually 2d on xz axes insted of xy axes
Yes but could it work?
As a gimmick specific to one particular dungeon, sure.
As a core mechanic it would get annoying real fast.
I think it could work if I'm playing a TTRPG where combat is not done through minis, but rather it's all theater of the mind
Absolutely, perhaps in moderation though. A good way to make dungeons is to draw a side view of sub levels and then a small top-down map for each one.
Isometric maps show three dimensions instead of only two, without distortion. The downside is the map can get in its own way.
>without distortion
Perhaps I should have said "with very consistent distortion" but you catch my drift.
I like the implication that the beholder basically lives to watch reality tv and get more slaves to bring it snacks. It really suits the personality profile
I think it could work as a fighting game adaptation, maybe. Where the ability to represent a player or enemy while jumping or crouching is way more important than the ability to move sideways.
Not the OP but I was thinking more of a megaman 4-player brawler, with big 2-D hitbox templates to represent various energy attacks. I would want generic enemies that drop collectable powerups, and I would want it to be something we could pick up easily and jam through in 2 hours and never play again, basically just 4e D&D but sideways and with less attack rolls.
This sounds a lot of "I want to do these cool video game things but tabletop", with no thought given to the teeny tiny little detail that a lot of shit that works in video games work because the computer takes care of all the book keeping and whatnot instead of forcing the humans to do it.
For a start every room ever is now suddenly a narrow corridor. (And let's be fair, to some degree you're asking "if we ignore the cons, what are the cons?")
>For a start every room ever is now suddenly a narrow corridor
You can draw it with a high ceiling just fine, and (again) no miniatures are involved so there's no such thing as "narrow"
It's all just a representation of where you are in the dungeon
You've either removed width from gameplay, at which point every room is effectively a narrow corridor since there's no longer meaningful movement depth-wise, or you've simply chosen to show the height instead of the width in the maps, which will generally be fricking moronic since most people have a lot easier time moving sideways than they have flying and the width is thus far more important to know about than the height. (And even with flying creatures the height will only at most be of equal importance.)
>What do you mean? Cardboard attack templates,
Those templates would be one of the thing I'm talking about for a start.
>emphasis on spatial reasoning over mathematical reasoning
Sure, geometry and counting range is far less mathematical than counting HP...
I truly don't know what you're saying. The templates are to make the game slightly easier in situations where counting squares might be tiresome, but also counting squares is super fricking easy and is already an integral part of every grid-based wargame. Also you don't actually have to use grids because you could just measure distance (and/or use templates) and then your maps can be more organic.
>with no thought given to the teeny tiny little detail that a lot of shit that works in video games work because the computer takes care of all the book keeping and whatnot instead of forcing the humans to do it.
What do you mean? Cardboard attack templates, emphasis on ranged attacks and line of sight, general emphasis on spatial reasoning over mathematical reasoning, '4e but less attack rolls', generic enemies with learnable statblocks ("it takes 2 hits to kill that one"), this is all to address the different needs of tabletop.
You can but we're talking about something else.
>we're talking about something else
No "we" aren't, you replied to this post which had a very specific question, anon:
To elaborate, I think a fighting game would put more emphasis on rock/paper/scissor dynamics between different basic attacks, with some being slightly faster or reaching slightly farther than others. Then the real game live in the bluffing and repositioning. I think you can do that in tabletop, but I also think grid-based games do it better, and if we're going to draw out bigger maps and explore them then we're already moving away from Street Fighter and towards doubledragon/battletoads/etc, I'd just as soon take the next step and emphasize different ranged attacks with different firing patterns.
Sorry, what I meant to say is that non-grid-based games do Street Fighter better, like card games, or like that one game with the 3 different-colored orbs that I never played.
yes. there is no reason it cannot. might have restrictions given the turn based nature that rpgs usually require.
Your poorly drawn rendition of the side scrolling map from hollow knight does seem to indicate that that would be the case. Is there anything else you'd like to blog about but frame as a question to get around spam filters?
picked it from google images after searching sidescrolling dungeon
you're not as smart as you think you are
Wow, admitting to being a disingenuous homosexual sure showed me
I hope you all noticed the part where op looked up the answer to his own question before posting the thread and only made it to get you morons to waste your lives replying to garbage
Livid.
What drives you to be so miserable?
Why the frick are people on this board so vehemently against abstract games discussion. It's like some of you gays only exist to be mad about something.
OP came here with a shit question and has been nothing but obstructive to the ensuing discussion. It's a thread in bad faith.
>"OP has been nothing but obstructive"
>literally the second post is hostile for no reason and proceeded to shit up the thread by acting moronic the entire time
You got your fix, now let the adults talk
What an absolutely schizo post. Unironically take your meds, OP's question was totally inane and you attacking him like a rabid shitbull is the problem with the thread. If you don't think the question is worth answering, why the frick are you spending your time in this thread?
There are 43 separate people posting in this thread. I'm just one of them, and I'm not the author of anything inflammatory. Cool your jets. It is sort of telling how angry and baseless the replies I've just gotten are, though.
>i'm not one of the trolls shitting up the thread
>but I will take their side!
hmm
>Has anyone ever had this idea?
>BTW here's a picture of the idea someone else made
It fundamentally isn't you fricking moron, OP posted an in-progress rough map from Hollow Knight's development, that is not the same thing at all as a sidescrolling dungeon map in tabletop.
Put that image on a tabletop, run a game in it, and voila. There isn't anything else to it. There's nothing else to discuss.
"Can you make a side-on diagram of a dungeon?"
"Yes, you gave us an example."
I suppose there are corollary questions like "can a diagram help me to run a game" and "am I talking or experiencing diarrhoea right now?" but they should be even more trivial.
Would you care to recommend a system?
I genuinely don't think it would make much difference. Maybe something where gridded combat isn't as expected, to minimise the duplication of effort. Mini Six, FATE, Dungeon World or Blades in the Dark could all fit.
>is a "side-scrolling" dungeon a thing?
Yeah, but it's often even more of an abstraction than the traditional top-down. You can say, 'this is the room we're in' on a side-view, but then you lose out on position within the room. Though since it does give you more verticality, you could perhaps justify it with flying characters? But then you just changed one axis for the other and it's not really a side-scrolling dungeon any more.
This pretty much. I've considered doing this previously but while it looks cool as a map in totality it's very uninformative for both the GM and players during play, and hence becomes frustration. People operate mostly on a flat 2d xy plane, not a vertical xz plane and a 'vertical slice' of a dungeon has very little information content compared to a series of flat horizontal slices by level.
Now isometric maps, those have great utility, but are quite hard to make.
90320729
Get thee gone, troll.
>Now isometric maps, those have great utility
could you uh... name those utilities?
>could you uh... name those utilities?
looks cool
I like them
thanks
Dear ESL, the plural of utility is utility, not utilities (which are companies that provide water, electricity and sewerage). It means 'practical use'. An isometric map shows both horizontal information and vertical information, hence it has more information density than a standard map, which has to be cut across levels.
>could you uh... name those utility?
Sounds wrong.
Also you're american so it's very likely you have no idea what you're talking about.
Yeah, I'm still convinced it's "utilities" there
>it has great utility
>name those utilities
>part of its utility
>one of its utilities
>describe its utility
>describe its utilities
Are we done with the grammar lesson now?
...so I was correct then?
If you're
and/or
, then you were correct.
gets half credit for trying to correct
who should have used a construction that kept utility (this isn't a literature class so who fricking cares if it changes, really), but doesn't know utilities are not just who their legal guardians pay for basic necessities. Replace "utility" with "use" (prounced youss not yuze, I don't fricking know the IPA symbols) and the right time to use singular/plural becomes even more apparent.
...
what the frick
Yo this thread just attracted a whole bunch of odd ducks
It's not just this thread. Nearly all of the threads I followed this week have derailed into insult match about linguistic nitpicking.
It's crazy.
There was this thread about magic use in Tolkien which degenerated after someone used the word "gamify".
I'm beginning to suspect ChatGPT frickery may be afoot here.
People come here to get into arguments. Emotional availability is basically currency now, and some people are in such poverty that they will strike out and enjoy "I made someone angry."
They're both right, shithead
A visual aid can offer multiple utilities in the same way that a continent can contain multiple peoples. Isometric maps help the imagination-impaired to picture a scene, that's one utility. They also, I don't know, give you something to roll your dice on, That's another utility.
Anon may have been leading the question a bit, by implicitly expecting you to name a second use, but under no circumstance can one "name the utility". One can, at most, name a utility, and "name the utilities" is a more open-ended way of asking the same thing. It may have been simpler to just say "What utility?".
Because of the angle it should be easier to understand an area's layout, it makes otherwise static areas seem more dynamic. Being able to see how one room can relate to a different room on a different level at a glance is the core value.
Flaws: because of the format, rooms that are close behind one another and at a lower level will get covered unless they're much deeper, and the format incentivizes you to put major features on the closest corners to you, meaning the back/"top" corner is usually less populated.
Compare movement and ranged attacks in Final Fantasy Tactics to Shining Force. Walls in Shining Force are going to be represented with impassible tiles, which can cause situations where an archer on "top" of a wall can't fire down it at all, nor does he benefit from the height. FFT however has very few impassible tiles but it does have a Z axis.
That's called a chase scene.
PCs can be both hunter or hunted. And the thing that hunts them can not only be a monster, but also spreading corruption, rising lava or an impeding building collapse.
90320509
/v/
I ran a castlevania themed dungeon once, 3d with platforming type setups. Seemed to be novel enough
moronation aside, if no miniatures-combat is involved what's the con of running a sidescrolling dungeon?
pic not related, just adding it to catch attention among the one guy samegayging himself to shit up the thread
You can't turn left or right. No intersections on the same level.
>For a start every room ever is now suddenly a narrow corridor.
There can be more of the room just like how top-down maps can have cielings.
>You can't turn left or right.
Unless there's a door drawn into the background.
Yeah but the map doesn't help for what's behind it. It would be like a staircase in top down maps.
Yes, exactly like that.
No I didn't, I replied to
, which was a reply to
, which replied to my posts (about a theoretical tactical sidescrolling TTRPG) in addition to the posts you reference.
in any event is open-ended, discussion of sideways maps for theater-of-the-mind games (as per some of the earlier posts) and discussion of tactical grid-based sidescrolling would both be relevant to that post, and to the thread at large. I simply meant to note that we (
and myself) were talking about tactical sidescrollers.
>no dude, I totally helped you
Ok
Can you answer the question here now
just that question, ignore whatever other discussion
can you do that
Most human-occupied spaces have complexity on the horizontal, not the vertical. Think about your house. If you wanted to explain the layout would a side-on diagram be the most helpful aid to someone who has never been there? Unlikely.
Vertical movement is usually trivial in D&D. On a macro scale it is important (to navigate) but jumping and climbing and using staircases are a lot rarer than turning left or right.
I'd only use a side-on map for limited circumstances (tower ascents, cliff climbing) where vertical information will be relevant more often than not.
>in D&D
I really should have started the thread saying no dnd and no minis, frick me
It's an example. Can you think of an RPG where acrobatic or aerial movement is as common as walking?
>no minis are involved, the guy says
>"well, in D&D..."
baffling reading comprehension
Read it as "In D&D vertical movement is trivial, HOWEVER, on a macro scale IN GAMES INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO D&D it is important (to navigate) but jumping and climbing and using staircases are a lot rarer than turning left or right."
If no minis are involved what are you even moving for jumping and shit
To get between one area, and another area that is above it.
>If no minis are involved what are you even moving
I AM MOVING THE CHARACTER OF MY MIND IN THE THEATER OF MY MIND CAN WE PLEASE GET PAST THIS PART PLEASE
>moronation aside, if no miniatures-combat is involved what's the con of running a sidescrolling dungeon?
>Top down = 4 cardinal directions of movement.
>Side scrolling =2 cardinal directions of movement.
You're removing an whole spatial dimension of movement for the players. They can't go left or right and unless the players have spider climb or fly 24/7 they're not going to go up or down much anyway aside from ladders.
Limitations can make the game more interesting but they can also be just annoying. Unless you really design the game around planning party line formation and jumping and climbing, acting in order ECT it's going to be frustrating to most players.
god
NO
MINIATURES
ARE
INVOLVED
You're so insistent on that point, despite it being irrelevant to the replied-to post, that I think you may have to explain what you mean by it. Do you mean "positioning is not tracked beyond what room you are in?"
Yes.
All OSR games can be played like that.
As I've said I think six times now
You time wasting fricknut. In that case there's no need for much of a map at all, as I have repeatedly posted.
Different rooms have different hazards, traps, encounters, treasures, and secret passages.
Many RPGs have dungeon rooms but don't track where you are within the room.
As I've said time and time again.
Yes, but you can just flowchart them, or draw in an inconsistent projection, or a dozen other solutions. So being side-on is still pointless. Even on a by-room scale most structures will have more information in depth than in height and so a projection that illustrates that information is superior to one that doesn't.
For reference I told you this
yesterday.
>most structures will have more information in depth than in height
like what information
now watch him answer with "the position of the minis"
While that would usually be in depth: the positions of the rooms, corridors and features within them. I suspect you knew that, you disingenuous cretin.
wat
I rest my case.
when someone is so terminally low IQ they need a literal drawing
there's one in the OP as well, clear as day, but who the hell knows how this fat frick's damaged brain works
HERE, see? There's no "removal of a spatial dimension" at all.
Look at the picture. NO, dont fricking start typing yet, LOOK at the picture, take your time.
Christ man. How do you function on a day to day basis?
Climblet moment
Side view shows height axis which is good for Mario Bros and flying games
Kinda reminds me of metroid.
well it is from a metroidvania game
Well Duke Nukem Manhatten Project was also a good game. So I don't see why not?
why not what
Looks like Hollow Knight to me, champ.
Just make it a huge rotation tower on top of that.
PF2 had an encounter that plays out in 2D in Fists of the Ruby Phoenix that was pretty fun. Obstacles are on a pillar, you have to stay within arm's reach of the pillar. It wouldn't be hard to conceive of a 'dungeon' on a cliff face with a similar conceit as long as you had some reason for them to have to stay within arm's reach of the cliff face.
I guess it could work better than top down for 'fantasy martial arts' like dragon ball or groups made up of jedi/mages and rouns would emulate very short time frames, so a high jump would take a few rounds to play out. Would probably need a lot of fine tuning and testing to not turn into legit dogfighting, a book keeping fest or a meaningless gimmick.
One of the official 5e adventures has one, can't remember which one
There's a sonic the hedgehog fanbrew that works this way
kek
>he's still thinking in miniatures terms
holy frick
>miniatures
It's about movement. If you're playing a game where the movement aspect is trivial (an investigation game without logistical pressure, or a romance or something) then no type of map has any meaningful advantage over any other kind. Have a flowchart, or a sketch, or no map at all.
If movement is important, my point stands.
There are plenty of games where a map with distinct rooms is very important, but movement within it isn't. Like D100 dungeon or literally most games that aren't dnd
How do you have dungeons where movement isn't important?
>there's a pit in the way
>so?
Play those games and find out, I suppose
Then don't, just be aware of it and don't enter discussions where you don't know what the hell you're talking about
I've been daydreaming for a while about making vertical terrains, actually.
I'm not sure which benefits it would bring on the table, though, apart from the novelty.
Oh frick, trips!
Well let me add this:
Sending enemies falling to their deaths is hilarious and I would love a combat system that puts a heavy focus on having characters pushed and thrown around, with cascading effets (punch a character, he falls out the window, bounces on a platform, bumps on a barrel of napalm that sets the whole room on fire). Kinda like Worms or Superfighters, but adapted to the constraints of tabletop obviously.
Best attempt I'm aware of is Rogue Planet and... well... it worked, but pushing it even further could be fun?
Oh man, Worms but in tabletop form? I'd buy that in a heartbeat
How would you do something like parabolic trajectories and wind in tabletop?
>parabolic trajectories and wind in tabletop
Well, you have different options:
Option 1: don't.
Option 2: the Triplanetary approach, using vectors. It's not perfect, but it's an easy way to crunch trigonometry and still making it fun and playable.
Option 3: mmm... perhaps special accessories could do that? Not sure.
I'm inclined towards option 1 though, I don't think a 1:1 representation of Worms is what we should be going for, as much as going for the spirit of it, where little accidents can comically cascade into unpredictable huge effects.
Damn that looks amazing but kind of impractical to play on
We witness your digits.
Like other anons have said, in tactical terms its a lot like an endless 5-foot-wide corridor, so the complexity of the game (whatever game you're using) may collapse somewhat. But that's good, because it gives the players a chance to focus on vertical interaction and on any other toys that the map might give them. Basically the broth is "marching order matters" and then you can add anything you want to that broth. Obviously it's completely different from a 5-foot corridor in the sense that you have open access and possibly line-of-sight to things above and below you.
Unrelated, but just because you mentioned Worms, I think it would be cool if the map was very large in scale (like a mountain range) and if the PCs were little wizards that were miles apart throwing terrain-altering spells at each other. That made me think of Worms.
All terrain is novelty. Looks fun. And I’ve always wanted to do a cliff archer scenario where players have to fight upward against some devastating range
>Dude what if sidescrolling dungeon, like those platformers where your positioning matters
>But actually we don't need to track positions of people in this sidescrolling dungeon
>Just tell them what's in the room but room is like, in a side view
>It's all in the MIND bro you don't understand
I ran a dungeon where every room was just a static image, like pic related. On practice what I did was LITERALLY THE SAME as what you're proposing, only you're doing it with irrelevant gizmo that has no bearing on how the game is played, how the room is described and how the players view your dungeon.
>oh boy i have to jump down instead of going to the side room, what joy, what a breath of fresh air
Said no player ever.
It can be done, yes. But it's irrelevant, it's useless, it's pointless and it's effort that could be applied elsewhere. TL;DR - you're an easily entertained moronic magpie who played some 2d platformer and got all excited about your super cool and clever idea that is neither.
NOW, verticality in RPGs is actually a fun and interesting topic, so i'll just assume
is an actual non-homosexual OP and go from there.
Games like Gubat Banwa which I played lately actually put a lot of thought in verticality - with abilities that can factor in height or even terramorph the terrain. I've been experimenting with "true 3d" battlemaps, which have multiple layers and inside/outside spaces. While more complex than usual "semi-2d" maps we all know and love, those definitely add layer of strategic fun (and headache while calculating line of sight/effect).
this entire post is easily destroyed by this one sentence: dont play dnd
Thankfully our group plays literally any system that is not D&D. Pic related by the way was Ryuutama where I combined traditional hexcrawl on the ovrworld with pictures for caves, dungeons and towns.
>So, how do you do this
It's as easy as pic related. I use Foundry plug-in that lets a token be projected onto other "versions" of the same map. I believe it would be even easier IRL if you have some plastic scrap, superglue, greenstuff, paints and autism.
is a fantastic example, because it isn't built around an arbitrary cross-section, moving into the background puts you in a cave and moving into the foreground puts you in open air. I'm sorry, I know that miniatures offend you, but it's still relevant to your question. The best side-scrolling maps are the ones with actual barriers (not hard barriers but meaningful barriers, "thresholds" if you prefer) in the foreground and background, because then the map is useful as a flow-chart, rather than just being a cross-section of a flow chart.
is probably a less good example, because it sounds like the central premise of the map is quite literally linear, and if you're on a linear path then do you need a map at all? Well, yes, but only if your game tracks movement on a tactical scale. If you were working in theater-of-the-mind then a map wouldn't really be helpful in that situation. Because that's what you want to talk about, right? Maps as visual aids, and not maps as metrics for tactical movement, right? If the map were pinned to the wall, and no miniatures were allowed to touch it, then you would see that linear maps aren't useful as visual aids. It's useful as a way to track progress, to show that Gimli is lagging 30 feet behind Legolas, but if you don't care abotu that then it isn't useful.
This space is stretched out diagonally, so that it works equally well as a top-down map or as a sideways map. It's perfectly fine either way but I don't know what point you were trying to make with it. The anon that you replied to was being very helpful (again) and you made a twit of yourself (again). Why are you like this?
boy you are dense
It would be easier if you had basic adult communication skills and/or TTRPG experience. You're a pompous twat, and you have nothing to say, and a good thread is happening in spite of you.
There are plenty of RPGs that don't care about movement within a dungeon. I think these RPGs would work perfectly fine with sidescrolling.
You not being aware of these RPGs is not a valid point
movement within a dungeon room*, I meant
Theoretically, it would be, but you aren't aware of them either. The only RPG you can name is a solo game (you have my condolences), and you don't even know how to talk about it, I bet it's sitting unread on your computer.
If I were going to spoonfeed you, I would talk about Tunnels&Trolls, which is the lightest dungeoncrawler that I'm familiar with. Movement is completely abstract, but positioning still matters, it's the difference between melee combat and shock combat. It matters that you're standing behind the fighters, and it matters that goblins can attack from the side in a pincer movement, being abstract/narrative doesn't mean that it doesn't matter. I really don't think that you have any idea what you're talking about, I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt about d100 dungeon, but if I actually read that game I would not be surprised to learn that it had rules for flanking/backstabbing/etc which would cause positioning to matter.
Ok. Any OSR game can be played without a grid and miniatures.
Scarlet Heroes if you need a specific one.
Now what
What are the drawbacks of a sidescrolling map in an RPG where movement within a room doesn't matter?
>Ok. Any OSR game can be played without a grid and miniatures.
lol, sure, some of them can be. Assuming that you have a good map.
Again, the fact that SOME OSR games don't track movement on a round-by-round basis doesn't mean that position doesn't matter, it means that there are ad-hoc bonuses for positioning (like in Tunnels&Trolls). This makes you sound like a giga-nogame because OD&D and its clones are disproportionately concerned with exploring maps. Searching the West wall isn't the same as searching the East wall, sleeping by the door isn't the same as sleeping by the window, the fact that the system doesn't track movement does not mean that every character is occupying a quantum superposition. In particular, if your game tracks time and rewards you for moving efficiently (and, lets be clear, it isn't OSR unless it does), then you need to track movement through rooms. You have no idea what you're talking about, and your misconceptions could have been cleared up sooner if you had been less belligerent.
>Scarlet Heroes
At least it isn't a solo game. But it's still a 1-player game. This may suggest that positioning matters less when there is only one hero, but again I'm just taking your word for it, I'm not familiar with this game and I have no reason to think that you are either.
>Now what
Now we're back to maps purely as visual aids, pinned to the wall so that no one can put a miniature on them. I'm not sure that Scarlet Heroes works that way, I think it might be one of those games where there's a good hiding place in the North East corner of the room and a secret exit in the South West corner of the room and so position within a room matters, but for the sake of conversation we'll pretend that position doesn't matter in Scarlet Heroes.
Most places have complexity on X and Z and not on Y. The rooms to the North, South, East and/or West are the rooms that you can directly move to. There may be a room directly above you but that isn't nearly as relevant as the rooms to the North and South. So mapping vertical connections isn't nearly as helpful as mapping horizontal connections. You absolutely dense motherfricker.
But like I said earlier (the first time that you begged me to respond to your question), if it isn't baked into the game rules then it isn't much of a drawback, you can use horizontal maps if and when they make sense and then use top-down maps right alongside them.
>I'm not sure that Scarlet Heroes works that wa
then why speak about shit you know nothing about?
I've already shown more knowledge of Scarlet Heroes than OP has shown. People keep inviting him to describe the kind of gameplay that he wants and he keeps deflecting. The bottom line is, if there's a pit trap in the middle of the room, then a side-scrolling map sucks. It doesn't tell you whether or not you can go around the pit. OP keeps implying that there are games where this wouldn't matter, but it's not really a function of the game system, OP is just an idiot.
yay more pilpul
If theres a pit trap in the middle of the room youre not playing scarlet heroes
>It would be easier if you had basic adult communication skills
I'm willing to bet somebody in the past said this to you and now you're parroting it, because the other guy was perfectly understandable yet you are just hostile with zero logical sense to your words
Not him but I literally have no idea what you're trying to say here
He specifically asked me to respond to his post asking about the drawbacks of a 2d map, so I did, what part did you not understand? He keeps getting mad at people for talking about sidescrolling battlemaps, he wants to talk about maps as flowcharts just to keep track of what room you're in, and that's fine but I'm still going to keep talking about sidescrolling battlemaps.
I ran a one-off with a side scrolling gimmick with the added rule that every melee strikes pushes people back, including everyone behind the victim.
This mixed with a more complex jumping system and a shitload of platforms made things interesting but not worth running an entire campaign in
If you were in a dungeon that primarily focused on climbing/traps and other such vertical enterprises it seems fantastic, so long as combat is minimal. It would just swap grid combat and theater of the mind vertical navigation for the opposite
I guess it's the superior option if you have a shitload of verticality in your dungeons.
>non-theater of the mind thoughts
It becomes interesting once you consider gravity, in most cases vertical movement should be limited (jumping) or perilous (leaves you open, can fall). Exchanging an XY board for an XZ board means that positioning to flank is more difficult as you need to either go over the top instead of around. So you can theoretically clog up space better, but also can get trapped easier. Vertacality is absolutely vital for combat scenarios and navigation puzzles. You'd need to make a hard call on fall damage, either it's non-existent so you can drop 30 feet onto a guy's head and attack him, strictly enforced at all times (TABLES!), or enforced when hurt/staggered/incapacitated.
I'm sure there's a world where all the planning to make it work would make something great, but it's a lot to consider.
Jumping over enemies can be punished by jumping enemies or by upward-attacking enemies, which is an avenue of interaction so I think it should be rewarded to some extent, and I think it's an argument for hang-time (letting characters end their movement mid-jump). I would use a single action system, attack or move but not both, just so it's granular and turns flow fast. Perhaps I should be more open-minded about initiative, but if not a simple turn system then I would go to a "frame" system where every action takes 2 or more turns, but that's the point where it really starts to be turn-based streetfighter and I'm not sure how fun that is, I think simpler might be better.
If you're trying to evoke videogames, then the one thing you really needs is to get powerups that recontextualize the level somehow. Moving faster, or jumping higher, or being able to climb walls, or having shadow clones ahead of and/or behind you like in Ninja Gaiden, the benefit of aping classic games is that there is a lot of great game design to steal.
Sidescroll doesn't seem to work especially well in dungeons, notably in D&D and it's derivatives, but it has its uses in combat for other systems in my experience. A system where flight and verticality is commonplace but not flanking and opportunity attacks will generally work fine if not better on a side view.
One day I'm gonna say frickit and see if I can make more vertical maps using the Foundry VTT 3d feature.
we used to play stuff like this with my brothers, usually around noon and with a lot of water. they were good times. different, but good.
darkest dungeon did something similar and that game was like what twenty years ago? it's a videogame though, not sure about any board games that
OP here, mid gaslighting attempt
meds remain recommended
No one at this point expects you to be gracious or thankful, it's just fun to prove that we understand what you want better than you do. You pretended that your frustration was related to the lack of relevant replies, but anyone who reads any part of this thread knows that this isn't true, you're just frustrated because you're frustrated.
No one at this point is surprised by your ability to ignore relevant replies.
This guy put it better than I did, he said basically the same thing but with less words.
>this entire post is easily destroyed by this one sentence: dont play dnd
lol
lmao
no one at this point thinks you're heterosexual
I prefer to use a complex system to represent echolocation for my dungeons. Everything is represented by numbers representing sound distances.