March 2006 Archive
Good And Bad Dungeons
You could “design” a dungeon simply by drawing a group of circles and squares (for rooms) connecting them by lines (for corridors) and making a list of monsters and treasures to be found. But this random “design” is not a good dungeon. A good dungeon is reasonable. Its design is carefully though out, and the monsters and treasures are placed for a reason.
A good dungeon is is more than just a place to meet monsters; it provides entertainment, puzzles and clues, and fits together in a meaningful way. In a good dungeon, the players gain a sense of achievement - of successfully meeting a challenge of some kind.
Gary Gygax et. al. - Dungeons & Dragons Rulebook 1983
Chunking
Thinking how we organise information and “navigation” through interactive media, and specifically the idea of chunking information, and how that relates to other types of information and experience.
Chunking in essence is about grouping things, and thus separating them from other things. It’s a bit like categorising, but without the category-label, and it occurs at a more basic level of thinking.
Potentially the journey described is equally acheivable if we remove the signage on the left - assuming there is no obscuration of the objects in the environment, and they can be modeled with enough accuracy to describe them - although this would have to be some kind of strange, 2 dimensional ‘virtual’ environment. …[more]