 Hello, I'm Kyle, and this video is brought to you by the Old Road Zine. It's a collection of maps, and if you'd like to learn more, check the description below for a link. Today we're talking about a form of dungeon layout and dungeon design called Jekweying the Dungeon. I first heard about this on a YouTube video that pointed me to the origin of this term, which is on TheAlexandrian.net. Check the description below for a link to the articles talking about this. It is named after a dungeon designer and adventure designer, a map maker named Janelle Jekwe. There are many different principles to this. I tend to just focus on the three that I find most helpful. I use this consistently in all of my map work, and it helps me make sure that I'm making an intriguing and gameable space, whether it's a dungeon or an overland map or an area map or whatever. The number one thing is to make sure there are multiple entrances or multiple ways to interact with the space. Number two is looping paths through the space, so avoid spaces that just have one route that goes straight through, and secret paths, so the idea that you might be able to discover more information or a different way through the dungeon or the area by being clever or utilizing some kind of hard to spot feature. Now, most of the maps I'm doing right now are overland maps and they're not really dungeons. So I am going to take a look at one of my favorite dungeons, the dungeon from the Beginner Box for Pathfinder 1st Edition. I have a lot of fondness for that map. It was like the first time I felt like I was really being like a dungeon master and I just had a great fun time opening up this map from the Beginner Box and just basically running it cold, following the instructions along, and I think it's a great introductory adventure to the hobby. Even if Pathfinder and Tactical Combat isn't your thing, I think it's a great dungeon. Now, for editing purposes, I am just going to make an isometric copy of this map and really, if I am running a game, if I am prepping a game, this is kind of more the level of detail that I'm looking at just for my own note-taking. So you might get the impression that if I'm running games, I'm constantly making these overly elaborate things, but that is kind of more for the zine, for the product, and for the profession, and not so much something that I would do for a home game. So this is it. This is Black Fangs Dungeon. It is named for the dragon at the end, but you start there in front of the vines in front of the cave. You move through the goblin guards that are waiting to ambush you, and then you move into the magic well room where you can split off into one of two directions. You can kind of go the hard route to get all of the treasure and fight all the mini bosses, or you can head over the other way. You can go through the magic well and kind of take the short route through a deal with the goblin king and then climb up the cliff into the crypt and onto the boss. That is the basics of it. There's basically only two paths to this, but that's all we really needed. Now, if I was going to play this in a game today, I would make some changes. The first change I would make is add a second entrance. I think the crypt at the top of that hill is a really interesting place to put a second location. It's a place that you could maybe have like a locked door, so maybe the rogue could, you know, apply some lock picks and get in there. And it gives you a completely different way to approach the goblin king room. Suddenly you have the drop on them. You have the high ground and you might be able to pick a couple of them off and then run out and re-approach the situation, having kind of reduced the enemy numbers. Now, because we're adding the possibility of basically starting out at the very end of the dungeon, I would make a little locked door on the other end of the crypt and just put the key somewhere else in the dungeon, maybe over by the water guard or give it to the spider or put it in the treasure trap or something like that. Just a way to make sure that you don't only have two doors in between you and the boss. Speaking of the boss, I think it would be fun to make a little crack in the wall over on the other side of that little water trap there and maybe some of that smoke from the dragon is seeping out of it. You know, kind of like a scene from The Hobbit where Bilbo sneaks in and sees the weak point on Smog. This will give your players a way to, a reason to explore something else to be rewarded with besides just treasure to give them that advantage. If they know something extra about the dragon, they have some information about it, they can, they feel more prepared and more ready to take on the boss at the end of the dungeon. The second thing I would change is to extend that spider room into yet another entrance into the dungeon. So you can add just an extra corridor and a whole extra room where maybe you can really foreshadow it, maybe fight some smaller spiders and then the big one is kind of waiting for you in the dungeon proper. But this gives us yet another option for how to approach this space, this dungeon. Now we have three entrances into it. One with a locked door, one that has some, you know, snickering goblin guards on the other side of some vines that are overhanging the main entrance. And then we have, of course, all of the cobwebs over this other kind of like crumbling cave entrance. And if you tell people, hey, there's an old crypt, there are these vines and there are these cobwebs, that gives players some information that they would need to come up with a plan of action and decide which one they feel like going, which challenge they feel like taking on. Multiple entrances are great, but they have to each be flavored differently to make those decisions on which entrance to use meaningful. Now speaking of meaningful, we can integrate this brand new room that we've added to our brand new entrance and connect it into the guard room. Maybe there is a narrow crack in the wall or a little crawl space that you could kind of get the drop on these guards, maybe set up a pincer maneuver or just spy on them. You don't know what is behind those vines in the original entrance, but you can use this to maybe send your halfling through to get some extra information on what is there. And that rewards their choice to take the spider route. Now that we've added some new entrances and kind of created these other loops and hidden passages and hidden crawl spaces, we can kind of see how much this can change the approach to the dungeon. As you go from room to room, you can pick your path and make meaningful choices to get to the end of this. It offers a way for players to feel like they have the opportunity to be coming and they're not just going through a fun house, kind of dealing with obstacles in a set order, in which case the DM could have just rolled everything for them. Oh, you triggered the trap, roll a dexterity save. Oh, now you have to fight a monster, roll to hit. Roll for damage, roll to hit, roll for damage, roll to hit. Okay, the monster is dead, right? This will allow people to come up with different solutions to these problems. Every time they get more understanding of the space, they see that they have more options and they can fill out those blank spaces with knowledge and with meaning, and that meaning will allow them to make different decisions that they feel empowered to make. Now the fun part about this is it is a way of reevaluating a dungeon space or a game space as a meaningful decision space, a meaningful possibility space for player interaction. Notice that we really didn't need to change that much, just add a couple of things here and there. That's it for this video. There's a lot more to talk about with Jacque and the dungeon, but if you want to know more about that, go ahead and check out the link to TheAlexandrian.net. If you liked this video, if you heard something useful, leave me a like. If you want to see more of these videos, hit the subscribe button, and maybe one day I'll see you on the old roads. Farewell.