Book 51 -- ISAGM Site Mapping Lecture
by Aelwon

The room is buzzing with the usual commotion, prior to the much anticipated
lecture on site mapping. Standing behind the podium is a lanky elf, his
ears quivering and slightly red, his face and especially his nose flushed
from years of continuous drink. Beside him, an imperious elf stands ready,
scanning the crowd for would be troublemakers, hand resting lightly atop a
steel-capped staff.

Thup, Thup, Thup."Is this thing on?" Aelwon's voice carries to all
assembled and a slow quiet settles over the crowded room. "I welcome you to
the first and last in a series of lectures presented by the ISAGM. Today we
have a special guest speaker to elucidate some of the finer points of
generating commonly understood site maps." Aelwon backs unsteadily away
>from the podium, taking a large bronzed drinking horn with him.

Presently, a lithe young woman with flowing raven tresses and luminous
green eyes takes his place and quickly scans the audience. "Before I begin,
would someone please remove that impostor..." All eyes follow Jamethiel's
pointing finger to the hunched over figure in the back. The crude minotaur
disguise is laughable. One horn tilted towards the ceiling, the other at
the floor. A large gold nose ring braided into a stringy beard. To the
jeers of the crowd, the figure rises and departs with several curses thrown
at Safandi and his servant behind the podium.

"For those of you who didn't recognize our unwanted guest" Jamethiel
explains, "that was Helm Hammerhand. He always gives me a headache, and I'm
sure that today would be no exception."Once again settled after the small
distraction, newer guild members ready quill and paper. Jamethiel begins
her discourse.

"Nixxon asked: 'If someone could help me with translating this into the
format the other info was posted in, it'd be appreciated. T162: Heifertiti,
GilGamesh, Lizzie, Healer; diff 5, CMI: 913

Area #1: Huge Black Spiders; big glowing door, yellow door used a lot,
thick door used very little, blue glowing door, purple door. Exit via
yellow door

Area #3: Failed Herdling, Bandit, Brigand; black glowing door

Area #7: ...

The yellow door out of room 1 is door 2 of 5, and the above translates into:

Room D1, D2, D3, D4, D5, D6, CMI, Type, Notes

1 ?, 3, ?, ?, ?, x, ALL, C, SP

2

3 7, x, x, x, x, x, 913, C, BD

Of note, the door colors are randomly generated, and have no bearing on the
destination. The same door number always yields the same destination. The
door descriptions indicate the predominant CMI component. Used a lot is
combat, glowing is magic, and used very little is intrigue. This is useful
if you can reach a certain room but not manage to select a specific exit
door. The description indicates in which direction to alter the CMI to
achieve the desired exit.

Area #7: bell trap; purple door used a lot, green door used a lot. Exit via
purple door. Area #8: Felldwarves; green door used very little, thick door
used very little. Long, nasty fight... Bowmen kick our tails badly... Exit
via green door (from where???)

When the party retreated from the Bowmen, they returned to room 7 and
selected the next CMI choice of doors that had not been previously
selected; in this case, the green door (2). When a party retreats back into
the same room more often than there are alternate doors, the message
"backtracking until a new path is found" appears. I believe that the
highest numbered door is taken. In the case of multiple stuck or locked
doors, the message "though it takes the party quite a while, they
eventually manage to get past the door" appears. I think that in this case,
the last door attempted is the one that the party actually got past. It is
rare outside of the Spider Caves, but there are cases where multiple doors
from one room lead to the same next room."

[Jamethiel pauses and takes a sip of water. Chairs scrap the floor amid
muffled coughs. The imperious Elf to her right remains fixed in place.]

"The Type column indicates the types of encounters that have been observed;
C = Combat, M = Magic, I = Intrigue. Also, "V" denotes that a locked vault
has been seen. Where a Combat encounter has been observed, the type of
monster(s) encountered are denoted in the Notes column by a code from the
following set:

BD = Bandits, BT = Beetles, CN = Centipedes, CY = Cyclops, DG = Dogs, FD =
Felldwarves, FR = Frog Demon, GD = Guardians, GH = Ghouls, HC = Hellcat, HG
= Hobgoblins, IL = Ilsoren, OZ = Oozes, NC = Night Cult, RT = Rats, SA =
Saurians, SK = Skeletons, SP = Spiders, VP = Vampires, ZM = Zombies. Of
course, you can add whatever notes you think may be relevant, like NM for
"null magic" or GL for Glissen and his traveling medicine show. Special
codes like AZ = Azcor or LG = Little Girl are specific to a single site and
should be annotations on that site map."

Jamethiel pauses to allow those taking notes to complete their thought
before closing. "Thank you all for coming. I hope I have shed some light on
the issue of commonly understood site maps."With that, she nods to the
audience as a whole, turns, and leaves. The imperious Elf appraises her
departing posterior and moistens his lips, before following after.

The End

Back to The Library

 Create your own free wiki!Support CommunityPublic, not yet premium Privacy Policy RSS