OUT ON A LIMB

Which scale?
 

Dear Editor:
There is one thing that bothers me about
the DRAGON Dungeon Design Kit (issue
#45). In the Dungeon Masters Guide on page
10, Mr. Gygax states that if you use miniatures
the ground scale should be twice that of
the miniatures. This means that a 10-foot section
of hallway would be 3 inches wide (using
some sort of miniature geomorphs like the
Dungeon Design Kit). But with the DRAGON
Dungeon Design Kit you have aground scale
of about 1 1/3, as opposed to Mr. Gygax’s
scale of 2. Who’s right?

Terrance Mikrut
Jacksonville, N.C.
(Dragon #48)
 

There were a couple of major considerations
which went into our selection of the
scale used for the Dungeon Design Kit. We
used a scale of 5 feet = 1 inch because it’s
quite close to the scale of 25mm miniatures,
where the 25mm (almost an inch) is designed
to correspond to a figure height of 6 feet. We
also picked that scale as the best scale for our
purpose, considering the physical factors
which limited the size and number of components
we could get into the Kit. We wanted to
enable users of the Kit to depict areas of substantial
size, if they so desired, so we suggested
a scale which made it possible to
design a chamber or group of chambers
comprising 10,000 square feet (in scale) — in
other words, an area which averages 100 feet
on a side.
 

It was not emphasized in the instructions
for the Kit, and it probably should have been,
that the scale of the Kit can be altered to
accommodate a desire or a need for a different
size. The given scale of 5 feet = 1 inch is
only a suggestion, and it is quite simple to
adjust that scale to conform with the suggested
scale in the DMG or any other scale. In
order to conform with the DMG, all you have
to do is let 3 squares equal 10 feet
(instead of 2 squares), and then alter the
scale size of the components accordingly.
This would make a 10-inch-long wall section,
for instance, correspond to a scale length of
33 1/3 feet instead of 50 feet. The only essential
difference is that the “real” size of a room
which is set up using particular components
will be correspondingly smaller.

Who’s right? Well, since scale (in this instance)
is a relative matter, there is no right or
wrong. The only way to use the Dungeon
Design Kit wrong is to not use it at all.

— KM
(Dragon #48)