Regions, rooms, and routes

A Bunnyland map is a graph, not a painted backdrop. Rooms are places where characters can be present and act. Regions organize larger geography. Directed exits say which movement is actually possible.

Choose the right scale

Make a room when location changes what a character can perceive, reach, or do. Two areas can share a room when moving between them would add no meaningful decision. Split them when the boundary affects privacy, danger, weather, access, social context, or available objects.

For the Lantern Ferry, a useful first map is:

Store Room — Village Bank — Ferry Landing — Lantern Platform
                    |
                Reed Path
                    |
                Marsh Shrine

Six rooms are enough for a route choice, a social hub, a supply source, a mechanism, and a secret-bearing location. More rooms would increase travel and prompt context before they add story.

Build regions as readable hierarchy

A region entity uses RegionComponent. A region contains rooms or smaller regions through a Contains edge whose mode is region.

Useful region kinds include district, village, province, biome, building, floor, ship, deck, planet, dungeon level, or jurisdiction. The kind field is setting data rather than a fixed taxonomy.

For the example:

Do not use a region as physical inventory. Region containment groups geography; room, inventory, and container containment describe physical reachability.

Give every room a job

At minimum, a room normally carries:

• RoomComponent for its stable targetable title, biome, indoor/private/safe state;
• DescriptionComponent for sensory and explanatory prose when the title is not enough;
• containment edges to its visible contents;
• outgoing ExitTo edges for movement.

Write a one-line job before writing description:

If two rooms have the same job, merge them or give them different constraints.

Write descriptions for decisions

The short description should establish the room quickly. The long description can name landmarks, state, and sensory details. Do not claim mutable facts that components may later contradict. “The lantern hangs from a black iron hook” is stable; “the lantern burns brightly” becomes wrong as soon as it is extinguished unless a projection derives that line from state.

Put critical directions in persistent objects or exit labels as well as prose. A returning player should be able to reconstruct the route at the junction where the decision occurs.

Connect routes deliberately

ExitTo is directed. A normal two-way path needs one edge in each direction. This supports real one-way travel such as drops, portals, turnstiles, or evacuation routes, but it also makes accidental one-way exits possible.

Each exit can carry:

Use consistent names. If a quest says “Lantern Platform,” the room title, sign, dialogue, and exit label should not alternate among “light tower,” “beacon,” and “upper dock.” Colorful synonyms are good prose but poor navigation keys.

Gate room entry

Add one RoomGateComponent to a destination room when normal movement through an ExitTo edge should require adult status, group membership, room ownership, administrator status, or a combination of those conditions. The component has these fields:

In the world editor, select the room, add RoomGateComponent, enable the required flags, and write a useful rejection reason. For example, an adults-only tavern could use:

{
  "adults_only": true,
  "members_only": false,
  "owner_only": false,
  "admin_only": false,
  "rejection_reason": "The taproom is open to adults only."
}

The server fails closed. A character without LifeStageComponent cannot enter an adults-only room, and a members-only room with no AllowsMembersOf target admits nobody. Enable the lifesim package and give characters explicit life stages when using adult gates.

Allow group or faction members

Membership access needs two directed relationships:

restricted room --AllowsMembersOf--> faction or group
character -------MemberOfFaction---> the same faction

Create the AllowsMembersOf edge from the room to each accepted group. Multiple targets are alternatives: membership in any one of them satisfies this gate. The character's matching relationship may be any installed MemberOf… edge, such as MemberOfFaction or MemberOfInstitution, but it must target the same entity. A faction label, identity tag, standing score, or prose description alone does not grant entry.

Allow only the room owner

Create an OwnsHome edge from the owner character to the gated room:

owner character --OwnsHome--> gated room

ClaimsRoom does not count as ownership. Use the lifesim ownership handlers where possible so their single-owner and endpoint rules remain valid instead of manually creating conflicting owner edges.

Create an admin lounge

Set admin_only on the lounge's RoomGateComponent, then add AdminComponent to each administrator character or to its active controller entity. Server API authorization and in-world authorization are separate: possessing the HTTP world:admin scope does not by itself add AdminComponent to the character being played.

Combine and test gates

Enabled flags compose as AND conditions. A room with adults_only and members_only admits only adult members; it does not admit every adult plus every member. The one rejection_reason is used for any failed condition, so phrase it to describe the complete policy, for example Only adult Ferrymen may enter the records room.

Test each gate with one character that should enter and one that should be rejected. For a combined gate, also test a character satisfying only each individual condition. Confirm that the rejection reason appears in the client and that the rejected character remains in the source room. Gate checks apply to the normal core move command; direct admin/editor containment patches are privileged world-authoring operations and do not represent player movement.

Place contents with Contains

Containment is an edge from container to contained entity:

• region to room uses region;
• room to visible occupant or object uses room_content;
• character to carried item uses inventory;
• container to stored item uses container.

An entity should have one physical parent. If the oil flask appears in both the store and Sable's inventory, you have duplicated state rather than established two points of view.

Reveal topology through the world

Add signs, directories, maps, posted schedules, landmarks, and residents who can repeat directions. These survive across browser, terminal, Discord, and LLM projections better than client-only highlights.

Use hidden exits for discoveries, not for mandatory information with no clue. A concealed marsh path might be suggested by muddy footprints, a map, local dialogue, and a hidden route. If the path is the only way to finish the scenario, provide more than one recoverable clue.

Map review

• Every room has a distinct gameplay or narrative job.
• Region hierarchy clarifies the setting without changing physical reachability.
• Ordinary routes have reciprocal exits.
• Intentional one-way routes have an in-world warning or recovery path.
• Required destinations use consistent names everywhere.
• Objects and characters have exactly one physical containment parent.
• Required routes can be rediscovered after the first visit.
• Travel length creates decisions rather than empty delay.

Next, populate the map with people in Characters and dramatic roles.