Key Quests - Triangulation

20 Aug, 2026

I'm a big fan of SlyFlourish’s approaches to GMing. The “Keys” RPG quest model for collecting multiple things needed to progress the plot, discussed in Three of Five Keys and in several of his published Lazy line of books, is the inspiration and jumping off point for this article.

What I want to present here is an in-fiction approach to how you can present this to your players in a way that both "makes sense" in the game world, and which drives the chase. The idea came to me from my time learning to use GPS while in the military. For violence reasons, we needed to know our location as accurately as possible. The person training me explained that our GPS receiver would work if it could get a signal from 3 satellites, but would be more accurate the more satellites it could contact, which depended on things like overcast weather, if you were in a valley, etc. Three contacts was always needed for basic triangulation on a map purposes, while a 4th contact could better help calculate our exact location and altitude (above sea level), and a 5th honestly...I've forgotten what it did specifically but I recall it would help. So the connection I made to the Keys quest model was "what if the keys provided location data, and that location was more refined the more keys you had"?

The example quest:

Atropos Duskdancer, a gnome apocalypse cultist, is set on bringing about her beloved end-times. She hopes to do so by locating the entrance to the Primeval Vault, which legends say is hidden in the vast desert known as the Blasted Expanse, and that it contains dangerous and powerful artifacts capable of destroying the world. Atropos, and of course the party of heroes who oppose her, knows that there are five astral meteorite fragments hidden in and around the Blasted Expanse, and that these meteorites resonate with energy magical that shows the distance from that meteorite to the Vault entrance. The heroes have a hex map of the Expanse, and already have clues as to where the meteorites are can be found.

Finding Keys:

This leaves 6 possible outcomes for anyone seeking the Vault.

1. I have not found any meteorites, so I know nothing.
2. I found one meteorite, and I learn the Vault is 10 hexes from my location. I can now draw on the hex map a "circle" one hex wide with a radius of 10 hexes to my meteorite. This narrows down things a bit, but a handful of heroes have no hopes of finding anything with this information. Atropos, with her hordes of minions, can start to comb the desert along this circle, but it might take her several years before anything is found.
3. I found two meteorites. I draw a second circle on my map and behold! The two circles overlap in two places. The overlaps are entire hexes each, but I now know for sure there are two huge sections of desert where the Vault has to be. A hero group blessed with good fortune might get lucky in one of those areas, if they happen to pick the right one to search. Atropos, with resources, will now be focusing underlings on those two areas rather than the massive swathe of desert they had to search with only one meteorite.
4. I found three meteorites. I draw a third circle on my map and at this point we have a single area where all three circles overlap. The heroes can choose to head there and hopefully find the Vault. If the villain finds three meteorites first, their focused forces will likely find the entrance soon.
5. I found four meteorites. A fourth circle on the 2D map will not narrow the exact location further, it will simply cross the same spot the other three did. At this point the GM can offer some in-world information to players, such as the 3rd dimension (eg: the location appears to be below ground, on an elevated area that could be a hilltop or mountain, etc), or offering a subset of the hex to search rather than the whole thing (eg: search the northern edge of the hex). If the Apocalypse cult finds the fourth meteorite, entrance will effectively be found as soon as they can get word to their minions already in the area to further narrow the location.
6. I found all five meteorites. Like the 4th key, this is where the GM can give the heroes some kind of in-world bonus or knowledge that will mean they can walk right to the Vault entrance with little to no issue. If the Villain finds the fifth meteorite, things have gone very very badly. Shift to running a post-apocalyptic campaign maybe...?

While the above is very map focused, you can of course handle the information provided via triangulation narratively instead of literally.

• 1 key: "the Vault is somewhere in a wide swathe of the western part of the Expanse. It would take years to find it"
• 2 keys: "the Vault is either in the northwest, in an unnamed area of salt flats, or a long trek away in the southwest, around the cliffs and canyons know as the Doomcrags. If you search around one of those, you might get lucky, assuming you picked the right area of the two to search"
• 3 keys: "the Vault is definitely in the Doomcrags, on the eastern side of the largest canyon there. With some lucky searches, you should be able to find it in a few days of looking for possible entrances"
• 4 keys: "the Vault depth is underground, roughly as deep as the largest canyon just to the west of it. Perhaps if you venture to the bottom of that canyon, you'll find an entrance in the eastern canyon wall that leads straight to the underground vault."
• 5 keys: "the meteorites' magic imbues your party with celestial energy. You all feel a draw to the Vault entrance, and know you could walk right to it with your eyes closed."

Short Takeaways:

• Use 3 of 5 keys as sources of 2D map triangulation, adding 3rd dimension and/or in-world knowledge for keys 4 and 5 as needed.
• As the villain finds keys, their forces become more concentrated on potential areas, increasing the threat to characters who also go there. This should hopefully put pressure on the heroes to stay ahead of the villain.
• Once the third key is found by the party, they have a choice to either search the now-triangulated location, or to continue looking for keys in order to gain the improved location information of the fourth and fifth keys.

Some further thoughts and ideas:

• The villain and PCs also have the opportunity to try to infer what the other knows based on where they or their minions are looking.
  ** So if the party falls behind the villain, they could switch tactics to tracking the villain's activities and combine that knowledge with what they do know from keys they have found. Eg: If the party has two keys, they know two places to look, and the villain with 3 keys should be primarily focusing resources on one of those places.
  ** If the party is way ahead of the villain, having them give up information to the bad guys is an excellent complication or choice to offer. eg: "Atropos Duskdancer's minions have occupied this peaceful village that sits near a potential location of the Vault, brutalizing the locals. You could try to drive off these glorified bandits, but doing so might mean word gets back to Atropos that you are currently in this area."
• The triangulation key model supports both permanent keys, like unbreakable monoliths that anyone can use over and over, and one-time keys, like a magic gem that looses its energy once used to tell the user the distance needed for triangulation. Even with the party destroying keys, a villain can eventually find their target with only one key, by virtue of having more resources and/or time. Likewise, if the villain finds more keys and destroys them, the party only needs one key to get them started and then can switch to observing the villain's activities and using their key knowledge to their advantage.