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by scott_s 2185 days ago
Is the Escher-esque image under "Isometric Edit Mode" (https://dungeonscrawl.com/images/pic10.png) a joke, or does the tool allow for physically impossible layouts? Or am I reading the image wrong and it's a physical layout?
4 comments

AFACT it's just a line drawing tool that supports isometric drawing.

One of the defining features of isometric is that such layouts are possible because the X/Y axes are identically sized (iso = same; metric= measurement) regardless of the position on the Z axis.

> does the tool allow for physically impossible layouts?

I hope so! I've definitely run some dungeons that had Escher-esque layouts. It's for D&D dungeons, not real life architecture :)

The tool allows for that, but it takes some effort and familiarity to actually do - the isometric mode just does a rotate and squeeze scale
This reminds me of the Dr Who episode "Castrovalva"; the Doctor and his companions do spend some time running around trying to figure out the layout until they realize what's going on.

I've entertained the idea of DMing that type of thing for a while now.

Q1, Queen of the Demonweb Pits, had something similar if I recall.
There was an article in Dragon magazine back on the 80s about hypercube dungeon layouts.
Even further back, there's Hunt the Wumpus, which I think was originally laid out on a Platonic solid. Messing with adventurers is a time-honored tradition!
The original Wumpus map I've always seen referred to as a “squashed dodecahedron”, though since it only uses numbered vertices without spatial coordinates there is no particular way to distinguish it from an actual dodecahedron,