A technique adopted early on in Knightmare though not immediately. The first teams performed the majority of navigation by instructing the dungeoneer to turn and face the direction of travel and then walk forward. Most dungeoneers would turn in units of 90 degrees.

However, although reliable this technique requires more instruction and takes longer to execute than the later adopted side stepping.

Side stepping as the name implies simply means stepping directly to ones left or right as indicated by the advisor. E.g. "Side step to your left".

As effective as side stepping might be it did come with an additional cost over the turn and walk method. That being that failure on either advisor or dungeoneer side to correctly identify their left & right which could lead to an immediate death. In instructing the dungeoneer to first turn in a direction before manouvering it is established between dungeoneer and advisor which direction they're talking about. For example if an advisor told a dungeoneer to turn right and then turn to their left this would often be countered with something along the lines of "No! Turn to your RIGHT!". Thus in using turn and walk the cost of error is caught before the damage is done.

So side stepping is much easier to perform and quicker but since many teams seemed to suffer with the concept of left and right this as already stated led to many a downfall. When a dungeoneer performs the side step there is no opportunity to correct them unless they happen to still be safe. There is a famous (amongst the community) example in which side stepping combined with the incorrect use of left & right led to an immediate and hilarious death. Simon of Season 4 Team 4 was led directly into a hole that had opened up to his left in the block and tackle chamber in Level 2. His advisor Andrew instructed him to "side step to the left" consequently bringing a premature end to their quest.

So if you're ever abouts to embark upon a quest, ensure you know your left & right before issuing a side stepping command or you too might be joining Simon in the depths of the dungeons many pits.

Suggested further reading: clock code position

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Sidestepping has inspired the screen names of two Knightmare.com Discussion Forum members:

Side-step (username: sidestep) joined the forum in January 2003, explaining that 'ive been a fan of nightmare since i was a kid... the fisrt thing i remember about it is the phrase "take a side step to your left" lol'. 25 of her 26 posts to date were made in under a week across just two topics; the 26th was her entry to the forum's March 2007 T-shirt competition.

Sidestep to the... registered in August 2004, but did not post.Five years later, Mystara deleted the account.

[Earlier version: 2007-02-19 18:20:59]

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Well fairly self explanitory. One easy way of getting the dungeoneer to move slightly to their left or right is to tell them to side step.

However it does help if the advisor giving the instructions knows left from right. "Simon, sidestep to your left"

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