Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;533427This bit makes me go "bwah?" a bit.
 

 
I think this is actually an outgrowth of his "series of scenes" stuff and is the opposite of some of the better dungeon design stuff I've seen (e.g. "Let There Be A Method To Your Madness" in Dragon/Best of Dragon) where you instead start by imagining what the original purpose of the complex was, who built it, its history, adding reasonable decay, and so on -a process giving a more logical layout and helping to suggest ideas.
 
You want to put cool traps and monsters in, sure, but I think that's the last step, not the first.

While I certainly appreciate dungeons that have a theme and a history and a purpose...weren't the "Gygaxian dungeons" known for being a collection of esoteric elements that made little sense with one another?

I think one reason I barely got into the idea of running dungeon crawls as a DM was because most of the published examples I saw fell more along those lines, rather than dungeons with an actual purpose and theme to them.

I've been reading this guy's blog, and there's something just . . . off . . . about his take on old school games.

Like, "In OD&D, as your character leveled up, you rolled for extra HP, and if you played a spellcaster, you got to choose new spells. That was it. No new abilities. No extra attack bonus or damage. This means that the difference between a first-level and a tenth-level fighter was primarily equipment." Except, of course, that your fighting ability did improve every three, four, or five levels, depending on your class; a first level fighting man hit AC 2 20% of the time and a 10th level hit AC 2 80% of the time.

I can't tell if this guy's just a poor writer or if he doesn't understand what he's doing.

The idea that dungeons are made up of scenes could be his attempt to redefine the use of the word 'scene' as it applies to roleplaying games. Or it could be an attempt to merge new school and old school. Or if could be something else entirely.

The whole thing just has a very odd vibe about it.

A dungeon is a series of tubes!

Quote from: thedungeondelver;533467A dungeon is a series of tubes!

It's not a big truck.

I think it's just a case of someone not really knowing what it is he is looking at. What's funnier is to see the story-dudes crowd this thread to try and claim the dungeon as a narrative device. Priceless.

Quote from: Benoist;533475I think it's just a case of someone not really knowing what it is he is looking at. What's funnier is to see the story-dudes crowd this thread to try and claim the dungeon as a narrative device. Priceless.

We're sneering at a guy who called himself "21th century man of Renaissance". It's like shooting ducks in a bathtub. Fun, but y'know...where's the challenge.

Agreed. I don't think there's a particular aim to this blogger's misuse of language, or his lack of understanding of the game's rules or purpose. He just doesn't know what he is talking about is all.

Quote from: Tommy Brownell;533462While I certainly appreciate dungeons that have a theme and a history and a purpose...weren't the "Gygaxian dungeons" known for being a collection of esoteric elements that made little sense with one another?
 
I think one reason I barely got into the idea of running dungeon crawls as a DM was because most of the published examples I saw fell more along those lines, rather than dungeons with an actual purpose and them to them.

Sounds heretical, but I couldn't give you a good answer to this in any detail, as I'm primarily a 3E/2E guy as regards D&D (+Tunnels and Trolls and Dragon Warriors, in general, as regards dungeon delving) rather than OSR.
 
With most of the series of dungeons I am familiar with the "collection of esoteric elements" dungeons are definitely the most crap though.
A couple of the early Fighting Fantasy ones do come to mind ("here is a revolving room complex and an endless corridor for no particular reason...and then over here in the middle of the dungeon is a shop being run by dwarves"). The T&T solos vary wildly in quality as well, from "a wizard did it" setups through to French castle adventures and haunted forests.

Quote from: DominikSchwager;533439Neither of those exclude a dungeon also being a series of scenes.

I think when I said that a dungeon may or may not host scenes, I was pretty clear that I don't think they're exclusive, so I'm not sure what you are getting at... and I'm not sure you get what I'm getting at.

What I someone says "a dungeon is a series of connected scenes", there are two implications I get from that, stemming on the words series and scene:
- Series suggests to me something about the way it is structured--serially, sequentially. Some dungeons are like that, but they aren't the best ones, and it would certainly be boring if they were the only ones. The best ones have flexibility and complexity in the way that they are approached, feature shortcuts, back alleys, interconnected regions, which can make the dungeon more than a railroad.
- Scenes was the word that suggested me the format of the D&D "delve", wherein rooms are explicitly "encounters" or set-pieces. These can be interesting if well done, but again, I think if that's the only tool in your dungeon design toolbelt, you are missing out. Sometime the best gameplay in a dungeon comes out of not single area pre-scripted encounters, but the texture of multiple inter-related areas that may not play out in a scripted fashion.

... and then his examples seem to contradict what I would initially interpret out of his beginning statement. What I think he means to say is "Collection of Regions" instead of "Series of Scenes."

Quote from: Benoist;533475I think it's just a case of someone not really knowing what it is he is looking at. What's funnier is to see the story-dudes crowd this thread to try and claim the dungeon as a narrative device. Priceless.

Eh? Who's doing that?

Quote from: David Johansen;533457A dungeon is a set upon which scenes are played out.

Yeah, I think that's a valid way of looking at it. I hesitate about it, though, because, well, a dungeon doesn't actually exist - it's not a place or even a set representing a place. I think I'd agree fully if what we're talking about is a dungeon, but not a dungeon in an adventure. Like a generic dungeon, or a map with bare-bones ideas but no adventure attached.

As I said before, if it's a published or pre-written adventure I have no problem with seeing the room descriptions as loose descriptions of scenes, all leading up to the finalé - the end of the dungeon. But I don't think that's quite what the blog author was going for.

Quote from: Benoist;533479I don't think there's a particular aim to this blogger's misuse of language, or his lack of understanding of the game's rules or purpose. He just doesn't know what he is talking about is all.

That was my first impression as well, but I wasn't sure if I was just missing something.

Who is this idiot?!

Also, Black Vulmea, as OHT said, and I am now requesting as well, please go back to edit your OP and present context to your link.  theRPGsite does not allow blind links.

If you don't do this, I'll have to close this thread.

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