Treating Gradient Descent’s Labyrinth as Flux Space
See my other Gradient Descent posts here
In the Mothership module Gradient Descent, players are likely to come across The Labyrinth, described as follows:
“THE LABYRINTH: bird’s nest tangle of wet pseudoflesh-lined tunnels and corridors of pipes and scaffolding. Constantly shuddering and shifting in peristalsis.”
This is accompanied by a d10 table with the instruction, “Roll below every time the crew travels in the Labyrinth until they find an exit, The Minotaur, or The Core”
I’d run the Labyrinth as written once for a one-shot. The feeling of repeatedly being kicked back to an exit (20% chance each roll) gave the impression of it being surreal and unknowable, like navigating an Escher painting. It didn’t give it any sense of scale or complexity. I think it can be enriched.
On top of that, as I was prepping for my ongoing campaign, I noticed that the accompanying table is rough. Once I caught that one entry gives random results numbered 1 to 9, other details began looking suspicious. Not game-breaking, but the variety of Androids present raises an eyebrow (why those two specifically?), one entry (2) looks like it may be intended to mirror another (4), but doubles the chance of encountering the Minotaur instead, room references are presented in an unintuitive order… These are nitpicks, but it reinforced my desire to rework the Labyrinth mechanically.
I had a tool in mind: Flux Space, or at least a simplified version.
Objectives
- Use as much of the Labyrinth as written as I can. The goal is mechanical enrichment, not re-writing.
- Convey the Labyrinth as large and complex.
- Make navigating the Labyrinth uncertain, but essentially inevitable.
- Make time a meaningful cost of navigating.
- Mechanically represent the effect of irritated tunnels.
- Maintain a reasonable encounter rate, with a high likelihood of at least one occurring, but keeping the labyrinth sparsely populated.
The Labyrinth Flux
To navigate the Labyrinth, players roll a d10. They encounter the Level 1 room that corresponds. That room is then removed from the pool (oops, we’re playing Blue Prince now). If you roll that same room again, you proceed to Level 2, and remove that entry from the pool. Each roll takes 10 minutes so parties can lose up to 30 minutes just hitting “Normal” tunnels.
If you re-roll a Level 2 encounter, you then move to either Depths A or B, based on whether the tunnels are irritated (Depths A) or not (Depths B). As mentioned on page 29, non-Androids will irritate the tunnels, unless covered in pseudomilk.
I played it that the alternate Depth is the 4th Level. That is, if you have irritated tunnels, find an exit, keep exploring, and roll that exit again, you find the Core. On the other hand, I like the idea of it being unescapable if you don’t irritate it, since you should be able to use gear to irritate it. However, it didn’t come up in play.
For leaving from the core I reset the table, but glossed over everything but the encounters.
I pre-rolled Encounters separately, using a combination of the rules as written for the Labyrinth and the general rules for random encounters.
Example
Example
Here’s an example of the procedure:
9: Tongues; 9: Encounter; 2: Eyes; 6: Ears; 5: Teeth; 8: “Normal”; 4: “Normal”; 4: The Drain or the Core
Zooming in for a second, the first time rolling a 9 removes the Tongues block. When the 9 is rolled again, you skip over Tongues and take the Encounter. When 8 is rolled, you also skip over Tongues, but take the “Normal” block from the 8 row. In this case, navigating the Labyrinth took 80 minutes, with one encounter.
Another couple…
2: Eyes; 0: Normal; 0: Encounter; 1: Fortification or the Core
4: Teeth; 6: Ears; 8: Tongues; 0: Normal; 1: Encounter; 1: Fortification or the Core
6: Ears; 9: Tongue; 2: Eyes; 5: Teeth; 4: Normal; 5: Encounter; 5: Fortification or the Core
1: Normal; 2: Eyes; 9: Tongues; 0: Encounter; 6: Ears; 7: Normal; 5: Teeth; 2: Maintenance or the Core
In Play…
In Play
This is a rough draft. It’s not well-tested; this iteration is informed by simulations like the above, and I’ve used it with players once.
I’m sure it could be better, but I think the above table did a good enough job of meeting my goals in actual play, and can be a jumping off point for others who want to build out the Labyrinth a little more than as written.
See my other Gradient Descent posts here