* * * * *

  I wonder how the Sunday D&D players would react to mapping a 9-dimensional
                                   dungeon?

As a kid (we're talking middle school here) I was really interested in time
travel and higher dimentions (but I never liked the theory that time was the
fourth dimension since it's not orthoganal to the three spatial dimenions we
live in—for one thing, time only goes in one direction). I read such books as
_Flatland_ (by Edwin A. Abbot) [1], _the Planiverse_ (by A. K. Dewdney) [2]
and _Geometry, Relativity and the Fourth Dimension_ (by Rudolf Rucker) [3]
and I got to the point where I could fairly easily visualize the various
geometries in my head (the fourth dimension is hard to verbalize and I don't
have a full mental image of it, but I can grasp at it).

[Room 238 of the 512 room map] [4] [5] So it's understandable that I was up
way too late last night (or way too early this morning—take your pick)
pouring over the Starmaze [6], an incredible 9-dimentional maze [7] and the
efforts required to map such a construct. It's an incredible map—half the
size it normally would be due to it being hightly symetrical, so it's folded
in on itself and each “room” actually represents two distinct locations
represented by the colors red and blue (if you enter a room through a red
passage, you can only leave through a blue passage, and vice-versa).

Also interesting (at least to me—I'm under no delusion that this has any
interest whatsoever to anyone but a very select few) was the description of
walking through such a space (Scroll down to the “The Nine-Space Hotel”
section) [8] (if it actually existed).

The description gets a bit too metaphysical at times, dipping into Astrology
and the I-Ching [9], but that may have been a technique used by the author to
help him map the space and provide a logical structure. Still, it comes
across as being a bit too New-Agey for my liking.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/048627263X/conmanlaborat-20
[2] http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0387989161/conmanlaborat-20
[3] http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0486234002/conmanlaborat-20
[4] gopher://gopher.conman.org/IPhlog:2006/03/30/step4map.jpg
[5] http://www.cartania.com/starmaze/intro.html
[6] http://www.cartania.com/starmaze/intro.html
[7] http://www.cartania.com/starmaze/images/themap.jpg
[8] http://www.cartania.com/starmaze/triangle.html
[9] http://www.cartania.com/starmaze/hexagrams/hexagram.html

Email author at [email protected]