Xindaris
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 1531
Registered: 06-13-2015
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Exquisite corpse is a general kind of game that can be played where something (such as a sentence) is created by several people one piece at a time (like one phrase or word at a time), but each person can only see the immediately previous part while making their own. In the sentence example, person A could write "Can", person B could see A's "Can" and write "I", and then person C would only see B's "I" before writing their own word. This could result in a 'sentence' such as "Can I have you got to the dinosaur?" Each pair of words sort of makes sense but as a whole it winds up looking strange.

This sounds like a delightful way to make some genuinely bizarre DROD rooms. But if there is interest in this, there's some thought needed on how to proceed. It would be best to do this on a room basis, with each architect making part of a room, since individual rooms in DROD are really quite disconnected from each other in general and the whole idea of exquisite corpse is the bizarre connections you get from several minds each bringing along their own interpretation of the previous one's part. But there are loads of ways to split up a room into pieces so that each architect can build one piece. There can be 12 7x7 squares separated by a distance of 2; 6 vertical strips of width 6 (or 5 horizontal strips of height 6) all contiguous to each other, and various other things in between. Of course, after the chain of building pieces of the room is done somebody has to go in and try to arrange things so the room is at least baseline conquerable, and the choice of arrangement might make this harder or easier.

I have the idea in my head that each architect can not just view the previous architect's part, but is also allowed to make orb-door connections between their part and the previous part (but no new connections entirely within the previous part), and all of the connections get combined in the final version. This allows for an extra little bit of confusion and chaos that should make things really interesting, without allowing people to just arbitrarily alter the previous part too much. I'm not sure about scripting; maybe it would be a good idea to forbid certain things like having build markers or build commands that affect other people's sections, but it would be kinda cool to allow the inclusion of custom elements if desired.

So, I'm open to thoughts and suggestions on possible rules, statements that people are vaguely interested in building something strange this way, maybe volunteers to handle the oversight of this if it happens because I'm probably already managing too many collaborative things right now, etc.

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109th Skywatcher

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[Last edited by Xindaris at 03-21-2017 04:25 AM]

mauvebutterfly
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 720
Registered: 05-03-2015
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This sounds fun. I wouldn't mind running it.

The way this would be set up, only one person can actually be working on any given room at a time. This might actually help to get through the process relatively quickly.

If architects are connecting their rooms to the previous room, but aren't doing any other connections, won't it just end up being a linear gauntlet?

As far as room design itself, I would enjoy trolling the next architect by having my component of the room require bringing a monster or mimic or using a decoy from the previous room so that it would look impossible without that information. Using a weapon token on a trapdoor, or a tarstuff switch token, would also have silly consequences later.

I guess as far as starting this goes, deciding on a room layout seems like an obvious first step. Once we have that figured out I'll start a thread in architecture I guess.

Depending on interest, we could have several of these rooms being built at once so that one person isn't stopping the entire process.

Can .hold files be sent via PM? Or would we need to use emails or the honour system so people don't see parts of the room that they aren't supposed to? I guess we can probably just post in the thread since peeking would only really be cheating yourself of the experience anyway.

edit: also, tunnels could be used to connect room compartments, so you wouldn't necessarily have to go in order as long as previously used compartments were marked as unavailable when the next architect was selecting where to build.

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106th Skywatcher

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[Last edited by mauvebutterfly at 03-21-2017 04:33 AM]

Xindaris
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 1531
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Having orb connections back and forth could have all kinds of effects on the order in which the player needs to do the room. For example, if architect B's section has a door behind which is a monster, but they don't actually put in anything that connects to it, architect C could put in an orb the player has to do something funky to reach that opens that door, so the player has to go do C's section to unleash the monster in B's section and then use it for whatever. It's entirely possible for a series of architects to arrange things (for example, in a vertical strip room arranged from west to east) so that the player has to make it all the way to the east and then open doors on the way to the west to actually clear the room.

I would say that whatever layout is used, there's no reason to assume or enforce that the player encounters or has to solve the pieces of the room in exactly the order the architects built them. In fact, there's no particular reason to assume the player 'solves' things in any sequential order at all. For example, if you have a bunch of square boxes one of them could be some widget like a briar timer which the player has to deal with throughout the entire room but can't directly interact with at all. Or a room piece could have a "release one at a time" mechanism hooked up to a bunch of roaches, with several other room pieces having pressure plates that all need to be held down at once by said roaches, which would require the player to keep coming back to the roach supply place to get roaches for the other parts.

As for sending hold files through PM, I don't think the forum supports it exactly but anyone can get a dropbox account and link to a download from that (which is what I would do), or stick the .hold file in any of the myriad other download sites that exist really.

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109th Skywatcher

Here are some links to Things!

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[Last edited by Xindaris at 03-21-2017 02:13 PM]

Dischorran
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The most feasible way to guarantee a completable room may be to have each architect finish the prior room and then do half of the next room (i.e. up to the center row/column whichever way is being built). I guess it's not exactly what you're after, but would be a decent enough game that would end up an interesting hold that isn't strictly linear.

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mauvebutterfly
Level: Smitemaster

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For some reason I was assuming that every compartment had to be solvable individually. That makes a lot more sense.

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106th Skywatcher