Doug's Direction Sense

[Acyl]

Since I haven't been lurking on the forums for all that long, I don't know if this question's been asked before. Still, I'm curious, enough to -stop- lurking. It's assumed that Doug isn't jumping entirely randomly every time he hits on a successful gate song - he's getting closer to his home universe with each step in the Walk.
So, what's the rationale for that? Does it have anything to do with the Laws of Sympathy and Contagion, as described in Chapter Seven of DW2? Or is his subconscious control of his metagift giving him some kind of vague directional compass each time he gates out of a universe?
Considering how much planning seems to go into the writing of Drunkard's Walk material, I assume it ain't just authorial Deus Ex Machina at work. =D

= Acyl =
-- Acyl

[offsides]

This is by no means official, so take it with a couple pounds of salt
I don't think there's any sense of direction in the jumps. Hence the name "Drunkard's Walk". Given the nature of Doug's moving through universes, being "closer" in any sense isn't really gonna help him. There may be a pattern to things, but that's up to Bob.
Also, as a reminder, while DW1 and DW2 are sequential, Bob's said that not all the steps are going to be documented - there are going to be a number of rather vanilla worlds in which he simply spends time finding the next gate song, and then moves on.
I'm also guessing that at some level the Walk is the Universe's way of "billing" him for his gifts - he has a certain amount of stuff he needs to get done before he can actually make it home...
Offsides
Drunkard's Walk Forum Moderator and Prereader At Large

[Bob Schroeck]

I really shouldn't reply, because I need to be working on That Damned Book, but I can do it quickly, so I will.
Offsides is right. Doug doesn't hit a wowser of a world on every Step. In fact, here's words to that effect in Doug's voice; it's the (current) opening paragraph of the Evangelion Step:
In making my way back home, I have visited far more worlds thanthese memoirs might suggest to the casual reader. These tales ofmine are simply accounts of the most interesting of the stays Ihad in various timelines; but they were a mere fraction of theworlds I passed through. My first two stops and the pattern theyseemed to set notwithstanding, I actually lived "under the radar"(so to speak) in almost every world I visited. There weren'tmuch more than a dozen or so where I actually got involved inevents and problems on a large scale.
-- Bob
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Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[the kwp]

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where I actually got involved in events and problems on a large scale.

---

Given the nature of events in NGE, that has to be the straight line setup...

[Bob Schroeck]

It is, and it isn't. It's also kind of incorrect -- for instance, except for the players involved, Doug's involvement in the O!MG world is relatively local, similarly in the Kodocha Step (at least so far as that one's plotted yet). I'll probably change that before DW-EVA comes out.

-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.