Pacing The Labyrinth move
How much does the amount of hold to reach the end affect pacing and time?
My players are headed into the volcanic dwarven stronghold of Ang Khazem, in pursuit of the mad linguist-sorcerer Galdur. We decided collectively to use Jason Cordova ‘s Labyrinth move for this. How many hold is a good number to pace this out to maybe two sessions? Our sessions run maybe three hours, and we seldom have more than three scenes per session. They also want to find some dwarven warmachines and the fabled necklace Brisingamen, so they’ll probably spend some hold on that.
I dont knwo the move. Could you post it here, please?
Esteban de la Peña https://plus.google.com/+AviWaksberg/posts/4ref4tkfx7R
plus.google.com – So that I can link to it easily, here is +Jason Cordova’s labyrinth custom mo…
I’m definitely interested in this as well… I have a dungeon I want to port over and want to gauge how much hold I should require before getting to the “big bad.”
Oh, its an interesting move´, i recomend you to take a lok at “Perilous Wilds” dungeon sistem if you want random lenght dungeons.
In this case I think 3 is a preety good number for a 4 player group. Do they have all they need to fight Galdur?
And dont forget you can give them clues about their interest even in a 6- roll, I have seen very unlucky groups
Esteban de la Peña yes, it’s very interesting. I’m a little worried that 3 isn’t enough. They’re all high level, and fails have gone down with a lot of +2 and +3 stats. On the other hand, they are really interested in the treasures they want to find.
Then again, if I set the final goal to 5,maybe they’ll be to afraid to spend the hold.🤔
Instead of changing the amount of hold they spend to make the discovery, maybe you could customise the “You may spend 3 hold at any time to find the entrance to the heart of the labyrinth.” bit to be something more staged… something like “You may spend 3 hold at any time to progress to the next stage of the stronghold”.
Then, have something akin to a series of Grim Portents, but they’re progressively deeper discoveries in the Dwarven stronghold. Something like:
[ ] The layers you’ve been exploring so far are just the “surface city” that the Dwarves allow outsiders to see. You’ve now found an entrance to the under-city.
[ ] You emerge into a massive cavern, natural or otherwise, and your light reveals soaring pillars and ornate Dwarven buildings nearby.
[ ] You find the Palace in the centre of the cavern.
[ ] You find the entrance to the heart of the labyrinth.
Robert Rendell that’s a neat idea! I like it, it’s a nice way of depicting a leveled dungeon.
I don’t think I’ll use it this time around, I like the simplicity of the original.
What I’m really after is a playreport from someone who’ve used it in play, to get a sense of how long it takes
Robert Rendell I was just writing that kind of move. 🙂
Robert Rendell more to the point, I see the original move resolving in much the same way. Since it only covers the “scene worthy” spaces of the Dungeon, I’m prepping several interesting locations/rooms that they arrive at after resolving each roll. But when they do spend their hold to reach the final destination, we narrate them finding a shortcut or passing by some of these locations.