That’s really cool, I had no idea! I suppose it’s because the DM at least can see the graph formulation of the game on a piece of paper right in front of them. Except when the overworld representation is SMB3-style, it is rare that videogame players see a graph formulation of the game world (though I definitely believe BustedAstromech that game design plans are full of them), so our discourse about linearity vs open is simplified and impoverished.
Relatedly, I’m thinking again of the brilliant player-made Dragon Quest “map of meaning” from a blogpost I found linked on twitter (I linked it last week in the news thread). That is the map of the spatial associations of the experience in the vivid memory of a first-time player. I wonder how much it corresponds to the initial map illustrations over at Enix while it was being designed? I wonder how Enix’s game designer(s)'s experience with D&D (surely 80s RPG designers were very avid D&D players) informed how they thought about their map?
