Quote from: Dumarest;971658I sure wish Dungeon Masters would stop coming to my house, abducting me, and making me play their dungeon-only campaigns.

I know, right?

Quote from: Dumarest;971658I sure wish Dungeon Masters would stop coming to my house, abducting me, and making me play their dungeon-only campaigns.

I thought I was the only one that had been through this ordeal.

Quote from: ArrozConLeche;971674I thought I was the only one that had been through this ordeal.

Shut up and get in the van you two!

While the "dungeon crawl" is not my favorite thing to do, and D&D is not my favorite game to play, I think they can be lots of fun if run well. I think the various statements equating "dungeon crawl" with nonsensical dungeons full of monsters with no rhyme or reason to be in the dungeon are awfully broad; I think all of it will depend on the quality of your DM and the players' interest level (which often times is in proportion to the quality of the DM). I'd rather play Boot Hill or Flashing Blades or Traveller, but if the DM is good I wouldn't mind going on a spelunking expedition, disarming or avoiding clever traps, slaughtering monsters, and stealing treasure once in a while.

I prefer dungeons if they are part of a larger sandbox, and we chose to enter the dungeon for a reason (even if that reason is, "We could use some more gold, and I bet there is some in that dungeon"). We can go as deep in the dungeon as we choose, but we can also back out and go elsewhere. The decision of how far to go into a dungeon is part of the fun, and if you are stuck there, you lose that.

I'm less happy with game where you are in the dungeon and that is the whole campaign. I played in one of those a couple of years ago, and while it was an imaginative dungeon, it just felt consequenceless.

Quote from: Dumarest;971658I sure wish Dungeon Masters would stop coming to my house, abducting me, and making me play their dungeon-only campaigns.

Me too.

Quote from: Baulderstone;971683I prefer dungeons if they are part of a larger sandbox, and we chose to enter the dungeon for a reason (even if that reason is, "We could use some more gold, and I bet there is some in that dungeon"). We can go as deep in the dungeon as we choose, but we can also back out and go elsewhere. The decision of how far to go into a dungeon is part of the fun, and if you are stuck there, you lose that.

I'm less happy with game where you are in the dungeon and that is the whole campaign. I played in one of those a couple of years ago, and while it was an imaginative dungeon, it just felt consequenceless.

Yeah, I definitely feel the same way. I tend to prefer the Mentzer "wilderness with dungeons" paradigm over the more Gygaxian "campaign dungeon". Though JMal's "tentpole megadungeon" approach (same as Gygaxian, really) with campaign dungeon as default activity, but tons more stuff to do, is very good approach. I ran Lost City of Barakus and that worked very well.

This looks like it's going to be a good thread to dig into but I'm going to bed, so I will just give my first reaction. We didn't do dungeon crawls much since just before the turn of the century, so I can't say I am tired of them. We were playing caravan guards and merchants for a long campaign that a friend ran and then I ran the first Elven Fusion band on the planet and the beginning of the magically-recorded music industry and that lasted a quite awhile. We were in a dungeon-like setting in that one for a month or so out of the year plus that it ran. Right now, I'm playing in a game that resembles a dungeon crawl in that we fight monsters almost every week but we haven't been underground and I'm running a campaign that was mostly overland/wilderness but just had a short climactic dungeon crawl at the end. When we resume, we will be in a city and go out into wilderness again, possibly to wind up in a dungeon, possibly not.

I think that the more variety you get, the less tired you would be of any one thing. I kept telling my girlfriend that but that's another story.

https://sites.google.com/site/grreference/home/05-the-black-mountain/at-the-high-point-inn

To add to my earlier post, the edition matters when it comes to dungeons. I began to completely hate dungeons during the 3E era. The long combat with gridmap and minis meant the game, well, crawled. You'd go through a few encounters a session at most. If it was anything but the smallest dungeon, you would be stuck in it for weeks of real time.

When I want back to B/X ten years ago, I loved how the faster, simpler combat allowed the players to explore a whole level of a dungeon in a single session. Of course, morale and reaction rules helped there as well. The focus in a dungeoncrawl should be on exploration. If the combat takes too long, it steals the focus from the exploration and increases the feeling that the dungeon is nothing but a string of fights.

Quote from: Azraele;971675Shut up and get in the van you two!

Awesome.

Quote from: Azraele;971675Shut up and get in the van you two!

Reminds me of my coming of age....

Good times, good times...

Quote from: Baulderstone;971752To add to my earlier post, the edition matters when it comes to dungeons. I began to completely hate dungeons during the 3E era. The long combat with gridmap and minis meant the game, well, crawled. You'd go through a few encounters a session at most. If it was anything but the smallest dungeon, you would be stuck in it for weeks of real time.

When I want back to B/X ten years ago, I loved how the faster, simpler combat allowed the players to explore a whole level of a dungeon in a single session. Of course, morale and reaction rules helped there as well. The focus in a dungeoncrawl should be on exploration. If the combat takes too long, it steals the focus from the exploration and increases the feeling that the dungeon is nothing but a string of fights.

Add in ignoring morale and ignoring NPC reaction possibilities and you have the basis for virtually every complaint about dungeons.

In other words, a shitty dungeon run in a shitty way is shitty.

Quote from: Spinachcat;971564Back in the ancient times, there were plenty of DMs who did not like dungeons. Many of them played RuneQuest.

Pavis and the Big Rubble.

Dungeon crawling was as big of part of Runequest as any other fantasy RPG of the day. But Stafford's Dragon Pass was just as well supported so both side were happy.

One thing I loved about WFRP (1e) was that it really put dungeon crawls way down in the pecking order. Sure, there were tombs, caves, sewers, and hideouts but their best scenarios had very minimal protracted time underground.

The Enemy Within was a great example. Unlike its unpopular follow-up the Domstones campaign that was widely criticized as 'just another dungeon crawl'.

But it's really just what your personal preference is and if you're having fun then you're doing it right. So it's all good.

Quote from: estar;971824Pavis and the Big Rubble.

Dungeon crawling was as big of part of Runequest as any other fantasy RPG of the day. But Stafford's Dragon Pass was just as well supported so both side were happy.

A part? Sure. As big a part? Didn't seem to be the case. Take your example. Pavis was a city. The Big Rubble was the ruined part of the former city where the dungeon stuff was. Pavis was full of city locations and urban intrigue. The Rubble was full of ruins, dungeons, trolls, and some really weird stuff. And outside of Pavis was all of Prax which had supplements of its own -- although those included a tower with a literal dungeon and a cave complex or two.

To further support your point that dungeon crawling wasn't absent (but that it wasn't everything). Griffin Mountain was published before The Big Rubble and it included small underground areas; iir there was a troll tomb, a tomb that might have been in a cemetery of one of the three Citadel towns, and of course the cave complex griffin lair at the top of the eponymouos Griffin Mountain. But the dungeon-y stuff was probably 5-10% of the supplement. Most of Griffin Mountain was wilderness travel and exploration not dungeon crawling. Then there was Snake Pipe Hollow (which came out well before Griffin Mountain and The Big Rubble was published) was a total dungeon crawl, albeit in a cavern complex of somewhat limited size and with nary a 20'x20' room in sight. Apple Lane was an above ground village that was totally statted up and had adventure hooks including a bandit troll and trollkin lair in cave complex not far from the hamlet. Even before all that there was Balastor's Barracks (published in 1978 the RQ1 days) which was set in the Big Rubble before the Big Rubble was published. Though my recollection was that BB was pretty lame being just barely above the level of a randomly generated dungeon. It was old though, it predated RQ2 and Cults of Prax. As I recall the Humakt area of the barracks had undead guardians. A thing that later publications would show as anathema to the cult.