TheRPGSite

I've been playing/GMing D&D since the Red Box in the 80's. We played it, and the expert set to death. I had many a fun summer bashing the shit out of monsters, leveling up and crawling through dungeons.

Ever since I started playing WFRP 1st edition though (and after the Isle of Dread to be fair). I never really wanted to go back to the traditional Dungeon Bash per se, or super high-powered games. Most of my games generally focus on urban or wilderness areas (with a load of CoC influence in there as well).

I certainly don't mind hacking through a tomb or a lair. But I'd really like it to feel cohesive and semi-realistic (and not too long). That is to say, that there's a logical reason that the creatures are there in the first place (and at least they feign being alive for more than just fodder). Plus that such a crawl is linked to the overall story arc in someway.

I'd (personally) dispense with the more surreal and random type of crawls. Stuff like human-sized chess boards or floating blocks, etc. Anything that would cause the use of 'too much' magical energy. Yes, I know how that sounds, considering were are talking about a game made of pure fantasy and imagination. :)

I still consider myself a big OSR fan though. More because it brings me back to the 'basics', or why I actually loved RPGs in the first place (D&D, Traveller, CoC, etc.). I'm getting less enamored with all the 'bells and whistles' that are associated with more modern RPGs. I also love the fact that OSR games are extremely compatible and hackable. Not too mention some awsome stuff that is curently being released (and I'm also picking up some old stuff as well that I missed over the years).

I think Beyond the Wall nails it for me... OSR rules that are geared towards a sandbox within a DIY low(ish) fantasy setting. With rules to suit the setting where appropriate. C&C is another one. More because I really think the rule implementation is just so elegant. And solves the problem with skills, etc.

Most of the other oddities (forgetting spells, etc) can add charm to the game, so I'm happy enough with those. I'm not trying to say, that playing high-fantasy games are bad at all, but not just for me.

I'm interested in other people's thoughts on the subject. Do you still go through the basic dungeon bash? Or have you changed your style over the years?

Ta',

Rob.

My style has changed a little over the years. In the 1970's we started out as dungeon-crawls only, but then slowly developed a "world" a small step at a time. Path from dungeon to village. Area surround village. Nation containing village. Larger world area containing nation. And so on. It took several years of constant play and slowly grew, and during that time we moved more into an exploration phase and mixed in political stuff, with occasional dungeon delves to break the grind. That group eventually drifted apart.

My newer group (mostly family) hopped around between exploration and dungeons. I ran through a "campaign" each 9-12 months or so, continually making new settings for them to experience. As my kids grew up I ran into some time crunches, so I mostly stuck to standard dungeon crawls to limit prep time. Now I play in mostly 5E Adventurer's League games, which mix wilderness with dungeons.

I suppose over the course of 40+ years playing my games have been roughly half wilderness, half dungeon crawls. I haven't developed the same dislike for them that you have, as I hardly ever spend time worrying about "realistic" factors such as how to keep monsters alive in those places. My current group will play whatever I run, and I like the mix.

I still enjoy a good dungeon crawl but I don't run campaigns that are nothing but dungeon after dungeon. There is interesting stuff going on above ground too. A good mix of environments for adventuring keeps things fresh. Dungeons still have their place.

Silly/gonzo dungeons have their place as part of the Realm of Chaos where reality begins to break down and is twisted at the whim of mad sorcerers. But they certainly should not be the "only way to play". Personally I like a good mix of dungeon, wilderness and political stuff, with some urban adventuring. I strongly dislike "You are stuck in this dungeon FOREVER" type campaigns.

We never changed our style because our style was never a dungeon crawl in the first place. We discovered rpg's by ourselves, our first book was AD&D and we have to find out how to play. Our primary influence was Howard, Moorcock and the Lone Wolf game books by Joe Dever.

Quote from: finarvyn;970080I haven't developed the same dislike for them that you have, as I hardly ever spend time worrying about "realistic" factors such as how to keep monsters alive in those places. My current group will play whatever I run, and I like the mix.

I think a mix is always good... I try and vary my games as much as possible (but I do tend to favor urban, wilderness or small isolated villages).

Don't get me wrong though, I'm happy to let players annihilate monsters. I just like having them there for a reason, even if they are only guards for a big bad that has located itself in a nearby area. Incidentally, I like the way Symbaroum incorporated Dungeons and Wilderness. You have that feeling of awe and wonder at having to navigate the immense and largely unknown Davokar forest. Then decend into some forgotten tomb of aeons past. But the subterainion exploration seems quite grounded. Well, when compared to more high fantasy settings. But it's all good!

Quote from: John Scott;970089We never changed our style because our style was never a dungeon crawl in the first place. We discovered rpg's by ourselves, our first book was AD&D with no one to "teach us" how to play. Our primary influence was Howard, Moorcock and the Lone Wolf game books by Joe Dever.

Moorcock was a big influence on me as well. I still love the Stormbringer RPG. I'd love a pdf copy as my print copy is very old at this stage. I'm obsessed with horror too so anything I GM will be towards the horrific.

That's even better! I was brought into a group, so the GM was all about Dungeon Crawls at the time. They ranged from 'weird' to Super Mario world. We had a blast at the time to be fair, but as other games and influences started to creep in I adapted my own GMind style (when I actually started to run them properly I should say).

To be fair, he ran a cracking Isle of Dread campaign. That gave me a love for pirate and jungle games that I still have to this day.

Quote from: S'mon;970083I strongly dislike "You are stuck in this dungeon FOREVER" type campaigns.

God... Me as well. I just feel very claustrophobic as a player if I'm trapped in a dungeon that goes on and on with no respite. I also feel that there's not a huge opportunity to roleplay down there either (unless the GM has got something already worked in).

Yeah, I can see a place for a gonzo style dungeons. But for me, it would be more of having a  laugh with a few mates and a couple of beers.

I like political stuff as well. but again that could get boring if you don't have a good mix as you mentioned.

Your commentary on Symbaroum picked my interest. Care to talk some more about it?

Quote from: The Exploited.;970096Moorcock was a big influence on me as well. I still love the Stormbringer RPG. I'd love a pdf copy as my print copy is very old at this stage. I'm obsessed with horror too so anything I GM will be towards the horrific.

That's even better! I was brought into a group, so the GM was all about Dungeon Crawls at the time. They ranged from 'weird' to Super Mario world. We had a blast at the time to be fair, but as other games and influences started to creep in I adapted my own GMind style (when I actually started to run them properly I should say).

To be fair, he ran a cracking Isle of Dread campaign. That gave me a love for pirate and jungle games that I still have to this day.

We played Stormbringer/Elric! a lot. As a matter of fact it was the game that "dethroned" AD&D and the preferred system for my group at the time.

I've always enjoyed a wide mix, and any particular element--crawl, wilderness, city, naval, etc.--gets stale to me if it goes on for an extended period with no leavening of the others.  Because our group plays almost entirely in a broad but definite band of fantasy, it's even more important to mix up the contents within that band.

I'll have to check with my players, but they seem to like a combination of crawling something (dungeon, castle, forest, space station, whatever) with things to kill every other room or so combined with dealing with sapient (people) NPCs or Monsters.

They are having a blast playing B1 In Search of the Unknown, where I divided the top level into feuding orcs and goblins, and a magically sealed section with death lizards. And downstairs (through the death lizard section) are trolls with death lizards. The party is busy facilitating a romance between the daughter of the goblin leader and the son of the orc leader. This got them the wand to get into the death lizard section (which contains the book for which they are looking). But their main concern seems to be resolving the conflict between the orcs and goblins. Each group thinks the other is instigating conflict, and since the party is the only people who has talked to both sides, only they know...

I try to include a dungeon or two in my adventures/campaigns because some people may expect it, but they are not the focus and never terribly huge.

I never liked "dungeon crawls" even back in 1982, if by dungeon crawl you mean exploring dungeons and killing things and taking treasure and no real rhyme or reason for why I'm doing it. Even then I preferred to have a goal other than killing monsters and steal their shiny objects.

The dungeon crawl idea is like the game of chess: the playing field is structured and basically always the same, but the game is infinitely interesting because there is an infinite number of directions the game can go, though with recurring themes.  If you played it without the constraint and structure of the board it would lose a lot of what makes it work.

The trouble is that lots of people in our hobby don't know how to play chess, so as often as not a dungeon crawl is one person playing checkers vs. someone else who thinks they are the stage manager for finger-puppet Macbeth.

Quote from: Larsdangly;970113The trouble is that lots of people in our hobby don't know how to play chess, so as often as not a dungeon crawl is one person playing checkers vs. someone else who thinks they are the stage manager for finger-puppet Macbeth.

"finger puppet Macbeth" made me chuckle.

I find dungeons don't have the appeal (for me or my players) that they had in the 1970s. When I switched from D&D to Runequest I stopped using large dungeons (we weren't anywhere near Pavis or the Rubble) and switched to predominantly a wilderness campaign with a sprinkling of purpose built underground areas (old tombs, scorpion-man cave lairs, solitary dwarf caves, and such). Like the OP I liked the less gonzo feel of the smaller purpose built areas.

Recently I included an underworld in 1624 Paris for my Honor+Intrigue campaign. For the underworld I used a mix of period sewers, old basement, church and monastery crypts, old Roman baths and other ruins, ghoul tunnels under large cemeteries, and the extant period below ground quarries (some of which later formed the current Paris catacombs).  The the players enjoyed it, but more as a change of pace than anything they would want to see much more of - and they never explored much of the total underground. To be fair, I don't think H+I is a particularly good system choice for dungeon crawling since it is fine tuned for rapier and cutlass duels.

All types have merit.  Dungeons are great for groups who are pressed for time.  It's easy to point to which room you left off at, which rooms were cleared and tracking your progress and such, at least for us.

Quote from: The Exploited.;970077I'm interested in other people's thoughts on the subject. Do you still go through the basic dungeon bash? Or have you changed your style over the years?

My style has changed back and forth over the years. From dungeon crawls, to... I want to say Storygame, but I don't think the term fits quite right. That adolescent phase where we were doing any crazy adventure idea. Starships in the hells, Mecha Hitler (I shit you not, one of our bad guys was cyborg Hitler) We made Rifts look bland. Most of our RPing that phase was comic book style drama.
Then we went to a more low key but still more RP focused phase. That was when I was GMing Earthdawn and Dark Sun. Very few dungeons, and short ones when they did show up. More about politics, factions and adventures centered around the PCs and NPCs.
Now I've got a new appreciation for Dungeons. I really want to make a Megadungeon in the style of Super Metroid, that's designed to be about exploration, and embedding a story in the discoveries about the location.

Quote from: Itachi;970100Your commentary on Symbaroum picked my interest. Care to talk some more about it?

Sure, what do you want to know? :)

In a nutshell... It's a lowish fantasy game. Set after a very bad war where the humans prevailed against some very nasty dark lords. However, it left their homeland scorched and devoid of life. So, they had to move off seeking newer pastures so to speak. This brought them into conflict with, not only barbarian tribes, but with Elves. The game has Dwarves, Elves Ogres, and Trolls. But they are all different to what what you'd normally associate with a traditional fantasy setting. It's humancentric but with a wide scope for playing those races (if you want to).

The mythos is very much Scandinavian in origin (as you'd expect as the creators are Swedish). Anyway, there's a huge forest called Davokar and it's the size of a country. There's a loose pact between the Elves and humans. The Elves were the protectors of the forest (or Nazis I should say). Symbaroum refers to an ancient lost civilization that has long since died. But humans (and others) constantly seek out its fortunes in Davokar (artifacts, ancient knowlege, etc). There's a town called 'Thistlehold' (and that's a great place for intrugue itself) where the adventures can stay before they go into the rather unsafe forest.

I don't want to give any spoilers away. Elves are really freaking nasty! Especially, the older ones. Ogres, goblins and Changelings all have an interesting intertwined history. Although, the ones that  mix with humans tend to be ghettoized or shunned.

Be careful using magic too! Less you are corrupted and turned into an abomination. Corruption is deadly in this game... Now only with magic but with other stuff as well (artifacts, locations).

Systems it is pretty simple. It uses a d20 but it's a fairly easy plus and minus affair. It's pretty quick to run.

However it's quite deadly, to be honest... I had to fudge a couple of roles otherwise the adventure would have been over rather quickly. Definitely one of my favorite games though I love the vibe. :)

There are definitely good dungeon crawls and bad ones.

I don't think the good ones are necessarily those that "make sense" or have some "clear purpose." This sort of preference is immediately suspect because how, as a player, would you ever know that the dungeon doesn't have a purpose? How do you know you just haven't figured it out yet?

Which brings me to what I think makes a good dungeon. It's got to have a lot of ambience and a sense of mystery. The former gives you reason to want to see what's next (exploration is the hook rather than loot and plunder). You don't mind if it goes on forever, because it always leaves you wanting more. The latter provides enough information to suggest that maybe something bigger is going on here that you haven't figured out yet. It suggests to the player he doesn't know enough to draw judgements such as whether or not the dungeon makes any sense.

You can hardly be faulted for saying you don't like dungeon crawls. I find so few meet these standards.

I don't mind some dungeon content, but in a campaign setting, I do tend to find it more interesting and satisfying when a world makes sense, including having some reason for the existence of things, and that does tend to rule out most dungeons, and/or lead to odd reasons why they exist. My first campaign is a huge thing which I still occasionally play with, and has many more dungeony places than game worlds I made later. I quickly started coming up with reasons to explain them, though that led to some peculiar ancient/powerful agents and so on, who I otherwise wouldn't tend to put in a world. But it is possible to make some dungeon-like places that do make sense, and I think those can be pretty interesting and fun.

I think I jettisoned dungeon-crawling-as-campaigning decades ago. I realized that dungeon-crawling became its own sub-genre and required specific skill-sets as D&D became more baroque with rules. At a certain point it became difficult to have "just any party" actually go DO a dungeon-crawl. I found I had PC's that didn't know how to swim, or climb, or didn't have survival. Conversely it forced myself to want to create more expansive games.

Now I like to trick players into a good ol' fashioned Dungeon Crawl - regardless if they have those skills or not. Often they won't even realize they're in one until they're in too deep. I do this sparingly, just to keep people on their toes. But as a "campaign"? Nah.

I'd play one if someone ran one. But it's not enough to feed my interest as a GM to use it as it's own thing alone.

Quote from: Dumarest;970112I never liked "dungeon crawls" even back in 1982, if by dungeon crawl you mean exploring dungeons and killing things and taking treasure and no real rhyme or reason for why I'm doing it. Even then I preferred to have a goal other than killing monsters and steal their shiny objects.

They got stale very quickly for me... Pretty much for the same reasons, you mentioned. That there was little or no logic involved with the game's design. It felt like an excuse our DM to come up with a wackier idea after wackier idea. The Isle of Dread was a breath of fresh air (at the time).

As I played more and more WFRP (1st e) I became less and less interested in levels, gold and magic items. I just loved the mayhem of going into a city or village and see what would happen. Especially, at the idea of killing cultists scum. Not that we were all that nice at all! :)

I had to be taught how to appreciate dungeoncrawls.

The first sparks of interest were kindled by this short, sweet article (http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/2009/10/what-i-mean-when-i-say-dungeoncrawl.html?zx=1ad1afb5a425ca82) (which now has numerous broken links, but is a good read none the less)

I was a big fan of Zork back in the day; that article got me thinking about the atmosphere of that great game, and how I could recreate it at my table. I still feel like that is the best argument for "dungeon as atmosphere" I've ever read.

When it came to designing dungeons which were interesting to explore, this much, much longer but extremely interesting series of articles (http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/13085/roleplaying-games/jaquaying-the-dungeon) gave me lots of grist for reading and many things to ponder about dungeoncrawling.

Finally, as I was still struggling to develop my own dungeons consistently, I stumbled on this brief but very inspiring article (http://www.runagame.net/2014/03/the-hex-crawl.html) which introduced me to the concept of "a plot" (current events) and "b plot" (ancient origin) with dungeons. This greatly helped me because it gave me a quick, reliable way to make a dungeon a living part of the milieu of my games.

Taken together, those above resources turned dungeons from "those places that are like a video game" to "the most atmospheric, characterful and strategically interesting architecture in my games". As you can probably collect, I was very pleased with this transformation.

One things that dungeons do, in meta-game terms, is limit player choices, and provide a ready made flow-chart type of environment for GMs.  They provide structure to the wide-open nature of RPGs.  It makes the world small - even in big dungeons.  Sure a GM can put whatever in the dungeon, but it is still a place of limited scope.  Its not like having the option to fill a world.  Players can still play open-ended and make what choices they want, but the number of reasonable choices is quite a bit smaller than in a wide open sandbox world.  In a dungeon, you can get the feel of open ended sandbox play in an easily manageable environment.  I think that is a big reason why dungeon crawls are so popular.

Your game system is an important piece to this puzzle. Someone above commented that they drifted away from dungeon crawls after switching to Runequest. RQ doesn't have a lot of things that make set-piece dungeon crawl games fun. Resource management is far less important in RQ than D&D. Combat is more likely to murder you off by dumb luck in RQ, which means you can't get in many scraps. D&D has an unusually gradual, sustained advancement in character power, which is well suited to games that focus on repeatedly overcoming challenges and/or digging deeper and deeper into an environment that gets more and more dangerous as you go. It lacks the 'role' elements of D&D classes. All in all RQ is a different sort of game that is better for other sorts of campaigns

I feel ya, Exploited.  I like Dungeons that 'make sense', as much as they do in the Conan short stories.  I like ruined, evil cultist filled or degenerate temples, sewers where necromancy happens because it used to be a giant mass grave where they city's nobility/rich tossed plague victims and corpses generations past, a city built upon another city, which is built on an older city, so ruined tunnels and sewers and ancient buildings abound underground, stuff like that.

Dungeons have never really inspired my imagination.  When I dream up a new idea for fantasy, endless corridors, doors, wandering monsters, and treasures are not the first things that come to mind.  I also did not start off dungeon crawling in my early years.  I was a wargamer, so I melded politics, mass conflict and roleplaying.  

That said, dungeon crawls manage to find a place in almost all of my campaigns - though I distinctly prefer short ones.  As an example, I really like what Goodman has done with the DCC modules.  The dungeons are small and epic, playable in a night.  They are the kind of dungeon that you can add to a campaign without it taking the campaign over.

Quote from: Lunamancer;970145There are definitely good dungeon crawls and bad ones.

You can hardly be faulted for saying you don't like dungeon crawls. I find so few meet these standards.

That's true... Unfortunately, I've had more bad experiences than good ones. But I think it's also down to me as well (and my mates). We tend to prefer gritty low fantasy settings. Which don't often suit fantastic dungeons.

I take the point that the characters don't necessarily have to understand how it works in essence. But for me, I need some sense of consistency.

However, you're spot on with getting that sense of 'wonder', it's critical regardless of the setting type. That's one of the reasons I bang on about Sybaroum so much (it gives me that feeling as a player and GM). Numenera is interesting in that way too, although it's pretty over the top which works for the type of settings it's supposed to be.

Quote from: Ratman_tf;970136My style has changed back and forth over the years. From dungeon crawls, to... I want to say Storygame, but I don't think the term fits quite right. That adolescent phase where we were doing any crazy adventure idea. Starships in the hells, Mecha Hitler (I shit you not, one of our bad guys was cyborg Hitler) We made Rifts look bland. Most of our RPing that phase was comic book style drama.
Then we went to a more low key but still more RP focused phase. That was when I was GMing Earthdawn and Dark Sun. Very few dungeons, and short ones when they did show up. More about politics, factions and adventures centered around the PCs and NPCs.
Now I've got a new appreciation for Dungeons. I really want to make a Megadungeon in the style of Super Metroid, that's designed to be about exploration, and embedding a story in the discoveries about the location.

That sounds wonderful.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;970172I feel ya, Exploited.  I like Dungeons that 'make sense', as much as they do in the Conan short stories.  I like ruined, evil cultist filled or degenerate temples, sewers where necromancy happens because it used to be a giant mass grave where they city's nobility/rich tossed plague victims and corpses generations past, a city built upon another city, which is built on an older city, so ruined tunnels and sewers and ancient buildings abound underground, stuff like that.

This is it mate! If it makes 'sense', I feel the game is so much more immersive. Conan is an excellent example. I like going through a lair and rooting out the evil (or more evil than myself I should say). Defitely, Necromancy is brilliant and it makes perfect sense given youre situated in an ancient Necropolis (or some such place where there are many bodies).

I GM'd a Hollow Earth Expedition game recently where there was a strange ruined city which the players stumbled across. Pretty much deserted but the goal is for the players to kill an evil cultist who is actually stalking them. Which makes it pretty tense, given the horrible place it was set in, and the no ending of hiding places. And becase it's deserted the players feel very helpless. It just added to the sense od dread as opposed to a constant slew of strange creatures.

But during the course of the game, the players get to see the wonders of a remnant cizilization that no human has ever seen. So the story unfolds 'naturally' as it goes along. There were some situational hazards because of the ancient nature of the crumbling architecture. Then the end there's a climax with the cultists and a few of his undead minions. I liked the adventure becase it felt logical.

I think it was one of the original adventures written for Hollow Earth (I changed it up a bit but I liked the overall scope of it).

I like a good dungeon crawl if the dungeon actually makes sense. This, for me, goes back at least as far as Supplement Two and the Temple of the Frog. Before that even to Theseus in the Labyrinth of Crete.

A random assortment of monsters, treasures and traps strewn about various rooms and passages with no rhyme or reason dosen't interest me these days.

Quote from: Lunamancer;970145I don't think the good ones are necessarily those that "make sense" or have some "clear purpose." This sort of preference is immediately suspect because how, as a player, would you ever know that the dungeon doesn't have a purpose? How do you know you just haven't figured it out yet?

I was speaking as the GM, not as a player. As a GM I want the dungeons I run to make sense and have a purpose. "A wizard did it" just doesn't cover it for me.

Quote from: Madprofessor;970167One things that dungeons do, in meta-game terms, is limit player choices, and provide a ready made flow-chart type of environment for GMs.  They provide structure to the wide-open nature of RPGs.  It makes the world small - even in big dungeons.  Sure a GM can put whatever in the dungeon, but it is still a place of limited scope.  Its not like having the option to fill a world.  Players can still play open-ended and make what choices they want, but the number of reasonable choices is quite a bit smaller than in a wide open sandbox world.  In a dungeon, you can get the feel of open ended sandbox play in an easily manageable environment.  I think that is a big reason why dungeon crawls are so popular.

Which is also why dungeons and dungeon crawls make it much easier for DMs (now GMs) to pick up a pencil and graph paper and start running something.

Quote from: Larsdangly;970169Your game system is an important piece to this puzzle. Someone above commented that they drifted away from dungeon crawls after switching to Runequest. RQ doesn't have a lot of things that make set-piece dungeon crawl games fun. Resource management is far less important in RQ than D&D. Combat is more likely to murder you off by dumb luck in RQ, which means you can't get in many scraps. D&D has an unusually gradual, sustained advancement in character power, which is well suited to games that focus on repeatedly overcoming challenges and/or digging deeper and deeper into an environment that gets more and more dangerous as you go. It lacks the 'role' elements of D&D classes. All in all RQ is a different sort of game that is better for other sorts of campaigns

I'm not sure what you mean by a "set-piece dungeon crawl." The Runequest dungeons (and caves and tombs) that I've seen and created were as much a set piece as any D&D dungeon I ever created (i.e. you had maps with rooms that contained traps, monsters, loot, and furnishings. You are correct that static hit points don't lend themselves to much of a resource management game, but Magic Points are spell points and especially at higher levels Magic Points are a resource analogous to D&D hit points. And of course resource management of arrows, torches, lanterns, magic light, food, and water work equally well in Runequest as in old style D&D.

Quote from: Madprofessor;970167One things that dungeons do, in meta-game terms, is limit player choices, and provide a ready-made flow-chart type of environment for GMs.  They provide structure to the wide-open nature of RPGs.  It makes the world small - even in big dungeons.  Sure a GM can put whatever in the dungeon, but it is still a place of limited scope.  Its not like having the option to fill a world.  Players can still play open-ended and make what choices they want, but the number of reasonable choices is quite a bit smaller than in a wide open sandbox world.  In a dungeon, you can get the feel of open ended sandbox play in an easily manageable environment.  I think that is a big reason why dungeon crawls are so popular.

That they do in fairness... They can defintely give you an overview of the game in one small sliver of the world's interior so to speak. I can also appreciate that it's a lot less daunting for most to build a dungeon as opposed to an open sandbox adventure/campaign where the players have a free reign. There's also a never ending supply of tried and tested supplements to get you going if you're a new GM (or if you're short on time). They defintely have a place within the context of RPGin'.

I do like exploring derelict spaceships in the context of horror gaming I have to admit. But these are pretty much logical as they are just 'crafts'. Although, you can inject the weird, especially if you're paying something like 'The Void' or Lovecraftian. Once it's got horror in it I'm all over it. :)

Quote from: Azraele;970163I had to be taught how to appreciate dungeoncrawls.

The first sparks of interest were kindled by this short, sweet article (http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/2009/10/what-i-mean-when-i-say-dungeoncrawl.html?zx=1ad1afb5a425ca82) (which now has numerous broken links, but is a good read none the less)

I was a big fan of Zork back in the day; that article got me thinking about the atmosphere of that great game, and how I could recreate it at my table. I still feel like that is the best argument for "dungeon as atmosphere" I've ever read.

When it came to designing dungeons which were interesting to explore, this much, much longer but extremely interesting series of articles (http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/13085/roleplaying-games/jaquaying-the-dungeon) gave me lots of grist for reading and many things to ponder about dungeoncrawling.

Finally, as I was still struggling to develop my own dungeons consistently, I stumbled on this brief but very inspiring article (http://www.runagame.net/2014/03/the-hex-crawl.html) which introduced me to the concept of "a plot" (current events) and "b plot" (ancient origin) with dungeons. This greatly helped me because it gave me a quick, reliable way to make a dungeon a living part of the milieu of my games.

Taken together, those above resources turned dungeons from "those places that are like a video game" to "the most atmospheric, characterful and strategically interesting architecture in my games". As you can probably collect, I was very pleased with this transformation.

Ta', I'll check those out mate.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;970172I feel ya, Exploited.  I like Dungeons that 'make sense', as much as they do in the Conan short stories.  I like ruined, evil cultist filled or degenerate temples, sewers where necromancy happens because it used to be a giant mass grave where they city's nobility/rich tossed plague victims and corpses generations past, a city built upon another city, which is built on an older city, so ruined tunnels and sewers and ancient buildings abound underground, stuff like that.

same here.

Got burned out on this 15 years ago. Mostly by playing too much Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale coop on the pc, I think. The best rpg sessions are where everyone uses a wide variety of skills, like survival, stealth, lockpicking, fast-talking, alchemy, arcane knowledge, streetwise etc. to solve the problems they face. Be creative. It's fun that way. You can use all of those things, so why shouldn't you use them all? Strangely enough I love dungeoncrawls in boardgames. Must be the tiles and miniatures that make it appealing.

Quote from: The Exploited.;970196I GM'd a Hollow Earth Expedition game recently where there was a strange ruined city which the players stumbled across. Pretty much deserted but the goal is for the players to kill an evil cultist who is actually stalking them. Which makes it pretty tense, given the horrible place it was set in, and the no ending of hiding places. And becase it's deserted the players feel very helpless. It just added to the sense od dread as opposed to a constant slew of strange creatures.

But during the course of the game, the players get to see the wonders of a remnant cizilization that no human has ever seen. So the story unfolds 'naturally' as it goes along. There were some situational hazards because of the ancient nature of the crumbling architecture. Then the end there's a climax with the cultists and a few of his undead minions. I liked the adventure becase it felt logical.

I think it was one of the original adventures written for Hollow Earth (I changed it up a bit but I liked the overall scope of it).

That sounds like a lot of fun. I also prefer a dungeon to "make sense."

Quote from: The Exploited.;970160The Isle of Dread was a breath of fresh air

I don't know that one (I think). The name sounds familiar, though.

Quote from: Dumarest;970223That sounds like a lot of fun. I also prefer a dungeon to "make sense."

Yeah mate, it was a decent little adventure. I hope I captured the sense of mystery with a bit of horror...  

I find the whole backdrop of the Hollow Eath very evocative.

Quote from: Dumarest;970224I don't know that one (I think). The name sounds familiar, though.

It's an oldie... I think it came with the D&D expert set back in the day. To be honest, I'm probably looking back at it with rose-tinted glasses. But it was very different than the usual scenarios at the time. It's loosely based on King Kong with a dollop of piracy, jungles, and lost tribes. If I was GMing it now I'd make sure each encounter would link better to the overall story. It was a little bit random in nature but it's years since I've read it to be honest.

Quote from: Azraele;970163I had to be taught how to appreciate dungeoncrawls.

The first sparks of interest were kindled by this short, sweet article (http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/2009/10/what-i-mean-when-i-say-dungeoncrawl.html?zx=1ad1afb5a425ca82) (which now has numerous broken links, but is a good read none the less)

I was a big fan of Zork back in the day; that article got me thinking about the atmosphere of that great game, and how I could recreate it at my table. I still feel like that is the best argument for "dungeon as atmosphere" I've ever read.

When it came to designing dungeons which were interesting to explore, this much, much longer but extremely interesting series of articles (http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/13085/roleplaying-games/jaquaying-the-dungeon) gave me lots of grist for reading and many things to ponder about dungeoncrawling.

Finally, as I was still struggling to develop my own dungeons consistently, I stumbled on this brief but very inspiring article (http://www.runagame.net/2014/03/the-hex-crawl.html) which introduced me to the concept of "a plot" (current events) and "b plot" (ancient origin) with dungeons. This greatly helped me because it gave me a quick, reliable way to make a dungeon a living part of the milieu of my games.

Taken together, those above resources turned dungeons from "those places that are like a video game" to "the most atmospheric, characterful and strategically interesting architecture in my games". As you can probably collect, I was very pleased with this transformation.

After reading those articles I am inspired to make a dungeon whose design and layout is based on my house.

I think our first half dozen or so adventures, I as GM, were crawls back in the 70s. After that we just naturally sort of expanded from there. There have been countless interior environments over the years as part of the overall story, some very 'dungeony' but I dont think Ive run something  like those first crawls sense.

If you don't like dungeon crawls, don't play them.

Okay, we're done here.  Somebody fetch me a beer.

Quote from: The Exploited.;970137Sure, what do you want to know? :)

In a nutshell... It's a lowish fantasy game. Set after a very bad war where the humans prevailed against some very nasty dark lords. However, it left their homeland scorched and devoid of life. So, they had to move off seeking newer pastures so to speak. This brought them into conflict with, not only barbarian tribes, but with Elves. The game has Dwarves, Elves Ogres, and Trolls. But they are all different to what what you'd normally associate with a traditional fantasy setting. It's humancentric but with a wide scope for playing those races (if you want to).

The mythos is very much Scandinavian in origin (as you'd expect as the creators are Swedish). Anyway, there's a huge forest called Davokar and it's the size of a country. There's a loose pact between the Elves and humans. The Elves were the protectors of the forest (or Nazis I should say). Symbaroum refers to an ancient lost civilization that has long since died. But humans (and others) constantly seek out its fortunes in Davokar (artifacts, ancient knowlege, etc). There's a town called 'Thistlehold' (and that's a great place for intrugue itself) where the adventures can stay before they go into the rather unsafe forest.

I don't want to give any spoilers away. Elves are really freaking nasty! Especially, the older ones. Ogres, goblins and Changelings all have an interesting intertwined history. Although, the ones that  mix with humans tend to be ghettoized or shunned.

Be careful using magic too! Less you are corrupted and turned into an abomination. Corruption is deadly in this game... Now only with magic but with other stuff as well (artifacts, locations).

Systems it is pretty simple. It uses a d20 but it's a fairly easy plus and minus affair. It's pretty quick to run.

However it's quite deadly, to be honest... I had to fudge a couple of roles otherwise the adventure would have been over rather quickly. Definitely one of my favorite games though I love the vibe. :)

And the artwork is the best I have seen for a long time. Haunting and evocative.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;970238If you don't like dungeon crawls, don't play them.

Okay, we're done here.  Somebody fetch me a beer.

Maybe you're done here, but I'm enjoying reading everyone else's replies. Well, except for one so far.

Quote from: Ashakyre;970186That sounds wonderful.

The megadungeon idea? I totally ripped it off from Angry GM.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLGpNSlrWxNaaHM2CHtpMzMEtwI9a2UWRx

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;970238If you don't like dungeon crawls, don't play them.

Okay, we're done here.  Somebody fetch me a beer.

That's not what we're saying, we're saying that we like something that 'makes sense' to us and our friends.  A 'reason' for it to exist.  It doesn't have to be realistic or even plausible, just that it seems to 'flow' or have its own, if weird, logic to it.

There's nothing wrong with liking what we like, yes?  Your Mileage Will Vary and all that?

Of course "megadungeon" and "makes sense" are not mutually exclusive.

Quote from: CRKrueger;970247Of course "megadungeon" and "makes sense" are not mutually exclusive.

Never said that, on my part.

Quote from: CRKrueger;970247Of course "megadungeon" and "makes sense" are not mutually exclusive.

I don't recall anyone writing that they are...or defining what makes a dungeon "mega" for that matter.

Quote from: The Exploited.;970227It's an oldie... I think it came with the D&D expert set back in the day. To be honest, I'm probably looking back at it with rose-tinted glasses. But it was very different than the usual scenarios at the time. It's loosely based on King Kong with a dollop of piracy, jungles, and lost tribes. If I was GMing it now I'd make sure each encounter would link better to the overall story. It was a little bit random in nature but it's years since I've read it to be honest.

King Kong + piracy + jungles + lost tribes = SOLD!

Although I'd rather use Daredevils or Justice Inc. and probably set it in the 1890s or 1930s...

Quote from: Dumarest;970260King Kong + piracy + jungles + lost tribes = SOLD!

Although I'd rather use Daredevils or Justice Inc. and probably set it in the 1890s or 1930s...

I think I just found my next Savage Worlds game...

Thank you, Exploited and Dumarest.

Quote from: Psikerlord;970239And the artwork is the best I have seen for a long time. Haunting and evocative.

Absolutely awesome art. System is 50/50 IMO but the setting is spectacular

Another vote for Christopher Brady's summation.  I burned out on dungeons qua dungeons a long time ago.  Ruined temples, catacombs, half-collapsed border forts, sure.  But those things are generally above ground, sensibly laid out, and small enough to be explored in a few hours.

There seems to be the standard assumption here, that most dungeons don't make sense, while I find the opposite to be true. Most of them have a good reason to exist around which the adventure usually revolves.

Then again, "making sense" is quite elastic.

Quote from: Dumarest;970260King Kong + piracy + jungles + lost tribes = SOLD!

Although I'd rather use Daredevils or Justice Inc. and probably set it in the 1890s or 1930s...

Then you might want to take a look at Monster Island (http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/116267/Monster-Island).

To stay on topic, I feel like (it seems) most people here: give me sewers, necropoles, anything that gives the "dungeon" a reason to be here and I'll enjoy it.

Quote from: Nerzenjäger;970273There seems to be the standard assumption here, that most dungeons don't make sense

Most published dungeons that I've seen don't make sense, even given D&D's gonzo kitchen sink wild magic assumptions.

And that's fine.  They don't have to make sense; as many people have already pointed out, they're a kind of framework for playing D&D that works really, really well for constraining and directing play.  They're why open table games even work.  Personally, I find the dungeon-as-Hellmouth a nice compromise between verisimilitude and playability, but then I'd want more weird magic and less "Gygaxian realism" in the denizens.

I can't speak for anyone else, but I find actual ancient temples, catacombs, ruined walled settlements and abandoned border forts a lot more interesting than the usual artificial dungeon maps.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;970238If you don't like dungeon crawls, don't play them.

Okay, we're done here.  Somebody fetch me a beer.

Wow! Thanks... I would have never thought of that one.

Quote from: kobayashi;970289Then you might want to take a look at Monster Island (http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/116267/Monster-Island).

To stay on topic, I feel like (it seems) most people here: give me sewers, necropoles, anything that gives the "dungeon" a reason to be here and I'll enjoy it.

That's a great supplement and dead easy to convert to another fantasy system.

Quote from: Dumarest;970260King Kong + piracy + jungles + lost tribes = SOLD!

Although I'd rather use Daredevils or Justice Inc. and probably set it in the 1890s or 1930s...

Heh... I hope you like it after all. But if you are prepared to tweak it a bit then it can really shine as an adventure. And would very much work in the 1890s or 1930. What system are you thinking of using?

Quote from: Nerzenjäger;970273There seems to be the standard assumption here, that most dungeons don't make sense, while I find the opposite to be true. Most of them have a good reason to exist around which the adventure usually revolves.
.

Hmm... I don't know.  Most of the dungeon modules and adventures that I have stretch reality pretty hard or don't bother to explain why there is dungeon there in the first place.  I recently bought Stonehell for example, and though the author goes to great length to explain the ginormous excavation, it's a pretty darn flimsy excuse for a campaign.  It's more like "suspend your disbelief like this."  

You know, it would be interesting to list classic modules and rate them on the plausibility of their dungeons.

I pretty much agree with Brady as well.  And if we look at the real world the places suitable for a "dungeon" are pretty darn sparse.  In North America there are 3 or 4 cave complexes and some mines, mostly dug with industrial machinery. There are tombs throughout the world, but they're small - even the pyramids only have a few rooms.  There are sewers, and there were in the ancient world, but these are rarely the subject of dungeon crawls. There are ancient cities built atop older cities, but even these are rarely interconnected and/or sprawling.  There are some true dungeons beneath castles, but these are are exceptions rather than the norm.  In D&D, it seems every castle or tower has dungeon.

I kinda like dungeons and the phantasmagorical otherness of leaving the world of light and the living, but I find them much more compelling if they are small, rare, and plausible.

Of course, they don't have to make sense in real world terms.  It is fantasy after all, but it is a good starting point.

QuoteThen again, "making sense" is quite elastic

...ain't that the truth.

Quote from: daniel_ream;970295I can't speak for anyone else, but I find actual ancient temples, catacombs, ruined walled settlements and abandoned border forts a lot more interesting than the usual artificial dungeon maps.

Yes, that's what I much prefer. Structures that had a reason for existing. But I also don't play fantasy that much and when I do, magic is relatively uncommon, so "a mad wizard did it because he was MAAAAD!" doesn't interest me much.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;970261I think I just found my next Savage Worlds game...

Thank you, Exploited and Dumarest.

Indeed, I'm thinking about working up something now based on just Exploited's description without actually acquiring the module. I've got Daredevils, Justice Inc., and the Indiana Jones RPG...anyone actually play "Hollow Earth Expedition"? The character templates I saw kind of turned me off as being "pulp types by people who never actually read pulps but based their ideas on modern interpretations of pulps," but I don't know much about the actual game and its usefulness in creating a game in the mode of The Hollow Earth, The Lost World, The Mysterious Island, Journey to the Center of the Earth, and things like that which were not really pulps at all.

Quote from: The Exploited.;970315That's a great supplement and dead easy to convert to another fantasy system.

How about for non-fantasy? I'm thinking more along the lines of Professor Challenger and The Lost World by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle...

Quote from: Madprofessor;970326if we look at the real world the places suitable for a "dungeon" are pretty darn sparse.  In North America there are 3 or 4 cave complexes and some mines, mostly dug with industrial machinery. There are tombs throughout the world, but they're small - even the pyramids only have a few rooms.  There are sewers, and there were in the ancient world, but these are rarely the subject of dungeon crawls. There are ancient cities built atop older cities, but even these are rarely interconnected and/or sprawling.  There are some true dungeons beneath castles, but these are are exceptions rather than the norm.  In D&D, it seems every castle or tower has dungeon.

And castles-as-dungeons never work the same in games as they would in real life. The real world is inconvenient to lots of different needs. I recently re-watched Princess Bride, and the two Wizards of the Lost Kingdom movies (as reframed by MST3K) and was thinking, "castles in 1980s movies must have been about 40 feet wide (with literally no sight lines to the outside world for the heroes to sneak up to them), yet a raucous sword fight one room away cannot be heard." So it's not just TTRPGs.

Dungeon crawls are convenient to a certain type of gaming in that they constrain the boundaries of action (you can't go north or west, because you are in the northwest corner of the dungeon... unless there's a secret door). In the real world, you rarely have to do that, because people rarely need to be constrained--they are going to go where the relevant action is. If the real-world dungeon is instead a hill-fort* or hedge-maze or city bizarre, that's fine, because anyone who goes outside the constraints of the area are likely irrelevant. To a DM, however, they aren't because you know some PC is going to dash off to random place and then they have to figure out what happens.

*I was thinking about this recently. A hill fort is a difficult landscape to model in most games. The difference in elevation, plus the challenge of hoisting oneself up 3-4 feet while being attacked, makes them really defensively beneficial. But in game terms it would often boil down to "oh, they have a +1 on their attacks against me, and I halve my move going up" or something.

I have no idea where I'm going with this. My groups took many breaks from dungeon crawling, but also keep coming back. We're very much in the "what's old is new, and gotten old again, and will be new again in 2-3 years" category.

Quote from: Dumarest;970344How about for non-fantasy? I'm thinking more along the lines of Professor Challenger and The Lost World by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle...

Absolutely... Especially, if the Pirates are trapped there too (there on a small Island beside it I think). So you'll have an interesting mix of players vs some old-time Pirates. I forgot to mention that there's also dinosaurs on the island too. So it's pretty much perfect for a pulp lost world game.

And anything that is fantasy (there's very little if I remember correctly) you can easily adapt it to a more modern setting.

Quote from: The Exploited.;970346Absolutely... Especially, if the Pirates are trapped there too (there on a small Island beside it I think). So you'll have an interesting mix of players vs some old-time Pirates. I forgot to mention that there's also dinosaurs on the island too. So it's pretty much perfect for a pulp lost world game.

And anything that is fantasy (there's very little if I remember correctly) you can easily adapt it to a more modern setting.

Yeah, that would be an awesome game. Fight the pirates? Team up with the pirates? Fight the lost tribes? Team up with a lost tribe? Fight the pirates and the lost tribes? Ride a dinosaur? Eat a dinosaur? Trick the pirates into being dinosaur food? Romance the hot native girl? Discover the lost temple and its treasures? So many possibilities.

Quote from: Dumarest;970355Yeah, that would be an awesome game. Fight the pirates? Team up with the pirates? Fight the lost tribes? Team up with a lost tribe? Fight the pirates and the lost tribes? Ride a dinosaur? Eat a dinosaur? Trick the pirates into being dinosaur food? Romance the hot native girl? Discover the lost temple and its treasures? So many possibilities.

Team up with the dinosaur. :)

Quote from: The Exploited.;970077I've been playing/GMing D&D since the Red Box in the 80's. We played it, and the expert set to death. I had many a fun summer bashing the shit out of monsters, leveling up and crawling through dungeons.

Ever since I started playing WFRP 1st edition though (and after the Isle of Dread to be fair). I never really wanted to go back to the traditional Dungeon Bash per se, or super high-powered games. Most of my games generally focus on urban or wilderness areas (with a load of CoC influence in there as well).



I'm interested in other people's thoughts on the subject. Do you still go through the basic dungeon bash? Or have you changed your style over the years?

Ta',

Rob.

I probably don't count as "old school gamer" where you are (though I'm among the first people in my country to get introduced to RPGs). Still, that's more or less how I feel, too:).
Though in my case, I started out feeling that way, and have lately grown more accepting to dungeons (probably because if you move beyond total refusal to engage, you can only move in the other direction;)).

Quote from: Steven Mitchell;970385Team up with the dinosaur. :)

:eek:

I like it.

Quote from: Dumarest;970389:eek:

I like it.

My group came back from Monkey Isle riding a troupe of brachycephalosauri... :cool:

I just finished Princes of the Apocalypse as a player, and it left me more than a little burnt out on dungeons. Combat after combat after combat just doesn't do it for me anymore.

Dungeons have a lot of attractive qualities for a game like D&D. They channel exploration. Provide for a high density of encounters in interesting locations. But D&D is best when there's around equal table-time given to the three pillars of the game: exploration, roleplaying, and combat. And very few dungeons manage to effectively present all three. There's rarely any reward for exploration - just a string of encounters that are presented one after the other. The settings are often mundane and lack colour. Opportunities for roleplaying with dungeon denizens, factions, rival NPCs, etc. are usually absent. And the combats often fail to make imaginative use of the dungeon environment.

In my experience, most dungeons become a tedious grind. You need both strong source material and a DM adept at running them to bring out the best qualities of dungeons, and that's not common.

Quote from: The Exploited.;970314Wow! Thanks... I would have never thought of that one.

Yeah, not nearly enough people think of fetching me a beer.

Quote from: Haffrung;970673I just finished Princes of the Apocalypse as a player, and it left me more than a little burnt out on dungeons. Combat after combat after combat just doesn't do it for me anymore.

Dungeons have a lot of attractive qualities for a game like D&D. They channel exploration. Provide for a high density of encounters in interesting locations. But D&D is best when there's around equal table-time given to the three pillars of the game: exploration, roleplaying, and combat. And very few dungeons manage to effectively present all three. There's rarely any reward for exploration - just a string of encounters that are presented one after the other. The settings are often mundane and lack colour. Opportunities for roleplaying with dungeon denizens, factions, rival NPCs, etc. are usually absent. And the combats often fail to make imaginative use of the dungeon environment.

In my experience, most dungeons become a tedious grind. You need both strong source material and a DM adept at running them to bring out the best qualities of dungeons, and that's not common.

Damn, I'm sorry you've had such a series of shitty referees with shitty dungeons.

For us dungeons were always where you got the weird, the wild, and the whacky.  Exploration was key; secret doors were there to hide treasures and whole sections of the dungeon from the lazy and the dullard.  NPCs would often be much higher level, so you had BETTER negotiate.  And woe to the players who don't watch behind them.

Quote from: Haffrung;970673The settings are often mundane and lack colour. Opportunities for roleplaying with dungeon denizens, factions, rival NPCs, etc. are usually absent.

To be honest, that has not been my experience.  Most of the old school published dungeons have all these in spades.  The problem is that they're arbitrary and nonsensical most  of the time, and lack any kind of consistent logic.  It makes it hard to interact with the dungeon environment when all of your natural assumptions are completely wrong.  One of my players was ex-light infantry and he pointed out that if we really wanted to "clear out a dungeon", cutting off food and supply was the best way to do it since there were never any food stores, supply routes, or indeed even latrines in most of the dungeons we played through.

Quote from: daniel_ream;970736One of my players was ex-light infantry and he pointed out that if we really wanted to "clear out a dungeon", cutting off food and supply was the best way to do it since there were never any food stores, supply routes, or indeed even latrines in most of the dungeons we played through.

It definitely matters who you play with.  I am not the least interested in RPGs as an alternate reality simulation so I don't care very much about these things.  There are absurdities, of course, such as a giant dragon with no way in or out.  But beyond those I don't want my DMs to spend precious time creating stuff I'm not going to interact with in the game.  I'd rather a DM said that every creature in the dungeon was magically sustained by the air alone than sit and plan out mundane logistical elements.

But that's me - I'm playing for shits and giggles with my buddies and have no great desire for immersive verisimilitude.  What I want to know is if your dungeon can inspire the guy to my left to crack a joke that makes all our sides ache.  Nothing else really matters.

Quote from: EOTB;970742It definitely matters who you play with.  I am not the least interested in RPGs as an alternate reality simulation so I don't care very much about these things.  There are absurdities, of course, such as a giant dragon with no way in or out.  

I just had that in my game - at the bottom of Dyson's Delve, in the Heart of Elemental Chaos, the Archmage Dyson Logos had turned into a gargantuan brass dragon, grown so huge over the centuries that his leaving ripped a big hole in the dungeon itself. :)

I retract - there are no true absurdities in a dungeon :D

Quote from: Haffrung;970673In my experience, most dungeons become a tedious grind. You need both strong source material and a DM adept at running them to bring out the best qualities of dungeons, and that's not common.

That's the same for me as well... The bigger they are the more I want to stop playing.

I think the three pillars are the things to aim for. But as you say, it takes a good DM to encompass all those in a singular dungeon. One of the things I get really bored is the constant combat. Luckily OSR games tend to resolve that pretty quickly at least. I like characters to have a sense of 'decompression' after a conflict. Otherwise you feel like that you are being hounded without any respite.

And generally, there are not too many interesting roleplaying opportunities in dungeons. Although, it depends on the GM/Game. I just haven't really found anything in one that has really inspired me so far.

Quote from: EOTB;970742It definitely matters who you play with.

I'm playing for shits and giggles with my buddies and have no great desire for immersive verisimilitude.  What I want to know is if your dungeon can inspire the guy to my left to crack a joke that makes all our sides ache.  Nothing else really matters.

Absolutely... It's very group dependant. My oldest group are all mates and we all like the same style of games. A crazy dungeon just wouldn't work for us at all. Not that it's bad, it's just not what we like. We play for a laugh as well and have a few beers etc.

As we've all got less time to play, we don't want the GMs to have to spend a long time creating elaborate dungeons or games in general. But you don't need to be really detailed for a semblance of verisimilitude. Something like a cultists cave is a hell of a lot easier to create than a large fantastical dungeon.

I think it's really about personal preference. Or from reading this thread, a healthy mix of RPing with a variety of different locations. The main this is, if you are enjoying it then it's all good.

Quote from: The Exploited.;970774I think the three pillars are the things to aim for. But as you say, it takes a good DM to encompass all those in a singular dungeon..

I really, really like what Torchbearer does there.  Dealing with the spelunking and resource management is more tension than the combat.

Quote from: EOTB;970742But beyond those I don't want my DMs to spend precious time creating stuff I'm not going to interact with in the game.

The point is that these things are what we would interact with in the game, if they bothered to exist.  There's a famous example (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Ch%C3%A2teau_Gaillard) of a castle siege being lifted when someone crawled up the jakes into the chapel and attacked the garrison from inside and opened the secondary gate.

I get it, if you just want a beer and pretzels game, this stuff isn't going to appeal.  But when we want to run sardonic sword & sorcery, knowing something about how ships work or hillforts tend to be constructed makes it feel like we've actually experienced something compelling.

I and most of the players I've played with tend to automatically notice things that don't make sense, to one degree or another. If you take a dungeon from the GM's perspective and imagine everything and everyone that's there, and imagine what they would do for an hour, a day, a week, a month, if you played it out, how much of it would be as it is described as a static set of things waiting for the PC party to waltz through?

If that makes sense and is interesting, consider that you can actually do that, if not by actually rolling dice for everything, using your intuition. The ending state of a crazy dungeon after considering what might happen to it after a month or year of the inhabitants actually doing something and having some visitors and needing to eat and so on, can turn a nonsense dungeon into an interesting one, even if it's just deciding who would kill whom and where the treasure would end up and who'd be in charge, or whatever.

Quote from: daniel_ream;970841The point is that these things are what we would interact with in the game, if they bothered to exist.  There's a famous example (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Ch%C3%A2teau_Gaillard) of a castle siege being lifted when someone crawled up the jakes into the chapel and attacked the garrison from inside and opened the secondary gate.

I get it, if you just want a beer and pretzels game, this stuff isn't going to appeal.  But when we want to run sardonic sword & sorcery, knowing something about how ships work or hillforts tend to be constructed makes it feel like we've actually experienced something compelling.

Even in a beer and pretzels game, logistics are important.  If I'm conducting a siege-and-sack campaign to take a half-dozen castles and towns away from a duke, or clearing out a series of monster lairs, I want that info - absolutely.  

Just not in a dungeon.  I'm going there because I want the Chinese food.  More mundane elements carried into that environment would feel to me like ordering the burger off the back of the menu.

I do think a DM should be pretty upfront about their style in this regard, because IME its one of the quadrant boundaries in the gaming hobby.  Everybody should get their respective itches scratched.

Quote from: The Exploited.;970077I'm interested in other people's thoughts on the subject. Do you still go through the basic dungeon bash? Or have you changed your style over the years?

I mix it up -- I'm currently running a dungeon-crawl space/sci-fi game (the characters are inter-planetary "archaeologists"), but right before this I ran a super-hero game that, while it did have a dungeon of sorts at one point in it was mostly not a crawl-type-thing.

I think dungeons represent great opportunities for roleplaying in a lot of ways -- they are intense, high-risk / high-energy areas. They offer opportunities for both tactical play and (at least to some degree) roleplaying interaction with NPCs (to some degree... mostly it's killing things). Because they're enclosed spaces, they tend to force conflict and resolution (it's hard to "go around" something risky in a lot of cases).

Wilderness games, though, have a lot of the same opportunities and more chances for roleplaying interactions (more likely to meet a non-combat encounter, in my estimation).

In my experience wilderness adventures tend to be less intense because if you're risk-averse and have adequate resources you can (sometimes) just avoid dangerous dangerous encounter... and, while dungeons aren't really linear, wilderness is way, way more open-ended.

But in my book, if you're exploring a map looking for treasure and dealing with pre-planned or wandering-from-a-table encounters, I'm not sure it's that big a difference.

When I think about game types I tend to contrast dungeons or wilderness crawls more with more social or political types of encounters like dealing with people in a city or running an army or whatever. Game of Thrones type stuff.

Cheers,
-E.

Quote from: The Exploited.;970774And generally, there are not too many interesting roleplaying opportunities in dungeons. Although, it depends on the GM/Game. I just haven't really found anything in one that has really inspired me so far.

The reaction table in B/X and modest levels of creativity tend to generate tons of roleplaying opportunities. Just requires DM and players not to go "roll for initiative!" at every encounter.

Quote from: daniel_ream;970841sardonic sword & sorcery

What makes it sardonic in your view?

Quote from: darthfozzywig;970910The reaction table in B/X and modest levels of creativity tend to generate tons of roleplaying opportunities. Just requires DM and players not to go "roll for initiative!" at every encounter.

I agree. I really had to go back and re-examine the assumptions and read a bunch of old-school Actual Play accounts, blogs like the Alexandrian, etc, before I started to understand how all those subsystems drive play in the dungeon.

For example, during exploration turns, I now ask for what the Party wants to do (not individual players, this isn't combat). They have to decide on a course of action and clearly communicate it to me (that's really what the "Caller" position is all about). If they waffle and can't decide, then they are burning precious in-game minutes and getting much closer to the Random Encounter check.

Another thing that I found really sped up dungeon play was to pre-roll a couple of lists of "Random Encounter" results. Then, when a RE check came up positive to just use the first thing on the pre-generated list for that dungeon level (crossing it out). That way, I could have an idea of the order of the random events, and get a chance to think about how to incorporate the next one as we play, but I never know _when_ that next event will happen. Will those 4 Gnoll guards show up now? Or when the party has packed up half the treasure? Oh, the next RE event is spooky noises and bats... ok, I'll foreshadow that with environment descriptions. Etc, etc.

Yeah, I liked dungeon crawls in my past, but am more prone to do overland and city adventuring more now with a few small dungeon crawls thrown in for that old feel, things like under mountain don't appeal to me anymore, unless you have a spell to take you to places like Skull port or such for a quick bash, I'm getting older now, so dungeon crawling is just too dusty for me, cough, cough!

Given the Star Wars topics going on at the moment, it's interesting (funny?, amusing?) to me how my view of SW almost exactly parallels some of the dislike/disinterest in dungeon crawls.  Thought it was kind of cheesy at first, and repeated exposure hasn't improved my reaction, to the point now where I'll go out of my way not to interact with it.  Makes me wonder how much of the dislike in inherent in the thing itself versus the personal experience with it.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell;970974Given the Star Wars topics going on at the moment, it's interesting (funny?, amusing?) to me how my view of SW almost exactly parallels some of the dislike/disinterest in dungeon crawls.  Thought it was kind of cheesy at first, and repeated exposure hasn't improved my reaction, to the point now where I'll go out of my way not to interact with it.  Makes me wonder how much of the dislike in inherent in the thing itself versus the personal experience with it.

That's my take on it nowadays too. Was a big fan of the original saga on my teens, but nowadays I find it silly, kinda infantile and uninteresting.

I'm currently running a campaign which is theoretically a big megadungeon crawl, except for the fact that the PCs haven't been to the dungeon yet and we're into our eight session.  It's basically ASE, but one of the things that drew me to ASE in the first place was the fact that the setting is so interesting.  The first six sessions dealt with the party's three-day walk to Denethix from the region outskirts.  Last week's session, they got their hands on some sick rock (which they were looking for)...and promptly lost/sold it (long story).  So last night's session was spent looking for new leads, and the players had a great time just knocking about Denethix.

I'm not sure what this means, except that I've found it productive to minimize planning ahead and follow the players' leads.  If your GM is just railroading you from crawl to crawl, then the railroading may be the real problem.  After all, if the GM is flexible, the PCs can probably say "screw this hole in the ground" and head off for greener pastures.  Try to take over the local thieves guild, etc.  

I had a group of players with the opposite problem.  I kept everything very open-ended while they were expecting (hoping?) for a railroad with a clear idea of where they were "supposed" to go.  They didn't like the adventure I had given them hooks for, but I had to stress to them that they didn't actually have to undertake it, as they had simply jumped on the first hook I barely mentioned.  The adventure in question was a heist that they could approach any way they wanted, but that only caused player paralysis.  I'm not saying that this was their "fault"...it was just their play style, and at the end of the day, that wasn't how I wanted to GM.  We made an amicable split, and I salvaged one of the players for my current ASE campaign.  This group LOVES openness and is in no rush to get to "the point".

Quote from: Steven Mitchell;970974Given the Star Wars topics going on at the moment, it's interesting (funny?, amusing?) to me how my view of SW almost exactly parallels some of the dislike/disinterest in dungeon crawls.  Thought it was kind of cheesy at first, and repeated exposure hasn't improved my reaction, to the point now where I'll go out of my way not to interact with it.  Makes me wonder how much of the dislike in inherent in the thing itself versus the personal experience with it.

Not really. I mean you *could* dungeon-crawl... if going around military complexes amounts to nothing but killing whatever is in there and taking their stuff without context is what you want to do.

In terms of wider gameplay - it's really no different than how I run my normal D&D games with some different setting conceits. Personal tastes and all that. My D&D games aren't dungeon-crawls for the same reason my SW games aren't dungeon-crawls. My games are larger, with larger scope. A dungeon-crawl in my game is almost just an adjective for a set purpose. Like Colonial Marines going on a "bug hunt". There might be some safe assumptions made. But beyond those, the circumstances will dictate the situation as needed.

Quote from: tenbones;971015Not really. I mean you *could* dungeon-crawl... if going around military complexes amounts to nothing but killing whatever is in there and taking their stuff without context is what you want to do.

In terms of wider gameplay - it's really no different than how I run my normal D&D games with some different setting conceits. Personal tastes and all that. My D&D games aren't dungeon-crawls for the same reason my SW games aren't dungeon-crawls. My games are larger, with larger scope. A dungeon-crawl in my game is almost just an adjective for a set purpose. Like Colonial Marines going on a "bug hunt". There might be some safe assumptions made. But beyond those, the circumstances will dictate the situation as needed.

Wait, I think we are not on the same page.  I wasn't talking about dungeon crawling in Star Wars.  Only that my reasons for disinterest in Star Wars seemed to strangely parallel the expressed reasons in this topic for disinterest in dungeon crawls (which I do enjoy somewhat).

Quote from: Dumarest;970919What makes it sardonic in your view?

sar·don·ic
adjective
grimly mocking or cynical

There are different tones one can take when playing any particular genre, but when we play sword & sorcery we tend towards the Conan-esque "ideals are for chumps".  It's the difference between "You can take our lives, but you can never take our freeeeedom!" and, well, crawling up the jakes and knifing a prelate in the backside so you can infiltrate a castle.

Quote from: daniel_ream;971073There are different tones one can take when playing any particular genre, but when we play sword & sorcery we tend towards the Conan-esque "ideals are for chumps".  It's the difference between "You can take our lives, but you can never take our freeeeedom!" and, well, crawling up the jakes and knifing a prelate in the backside so you can infiltrate a castle.

I guess my Wilderlands game must be more Sword & Planet then, there's definitely a lot of FREEEEDOM!!! going on. :D

Quote from: daniel_ream;970835I really, really like what Torchbearer does there.  Dealing with the spelunking and resource management is more tension than the combat.

That sounds pretty cool... I'll definitely have a gander for it.

Quote from: darthfozzywig;970910The reaction table in B/X and modest levels of creativity tend to generate tons of roleplaying opportunities. Just requires DM and players not to go "roll for initiative!" at every encounter.

Granted, a decent GM can make a crawl more than just a hack and slash. But quite a few people seem to like the 'kill and take the treasure' concept of play. Nothing wrong with it per se, but it's not really for me...

One other aspect of dungeon crawls is that it is generally a place which is antagonistic towards intruders or the adventuring party (which makes sense of course given the circumstances) so your roleplaying options can be limited. Unlike entering a village where a chaos cult exists. Overt action against the party is probably not desireble, as it will bring unwanted attention, etc. But the characters can and will have to interact with the whole village to root out the evil. nd decend into some kind of lair where they have their haven.

Quote from: The Exploited.;971175Granted, a decent GM can make a crawl more than just a hack and slash. But quite a few people seem to like the 'kill and take the treasure' concept of play. Nothing wrong with it per se, but it's not really for me...

One other aspect of dungeon crawls is that it is generally a place which is antagonistic towards intruders or the adventuring party (which makes sense of course given the circumstances) so your roleplaying options can be limited. Unlike entering a village where a chaos cult exists. Overt action against the party is probably not desireble, as it will bring unwanted attention, etc. But the characters can and will have to interact with the whole village to root out the evil. nd decend into some kind of lair where they have their haven.

This reminded me, I had one more inspirational article for ya: Published dungeons should be better (http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/2010/12/why-caverns-of-thracia-is-best.html)

That article goes into detail about why most dungeons suck, and how to make them fucking awesome. Also its a short, punchy little coffee-break read, so that's nice.

Quote from: The Exploited.;971175Granted, a decent GM can make a crawl more than just a hack and slash. But quite a few people seem to like the 'kill and take the treasure' concept of play. Nothing wrong with it per se, but it's not really for me...

One other aspect of dungeon crawls is that it is generally a place which is antagonistic towards intruders or the adventuring party (which makes sense of course given the circumstances) so your roleplaying options can be limited. Unlike entering a village where a chaos cult exists. Overt action against the party is probably not desireble, as it will bring unwanted attention, etc. But the characters can and will have to interact with the whole village to root out the evil. nd decend into some kind of lair where they have their haven.

Once again I'm sorry you've been subjected to such shitty dungeons run by shitty referees.

My long standing issues with dungeon crawls / megadungeons are due to:

• General preference for low (magic) fantasy.
• Without a lot of magic, almost no dungeon crawls make sense.

A large dwarf or goblin (or similar) complex? Makes sense.
A large abandoned former dwarf or goblin (or similar) complex, with a few different creatures who have wandered in, but is 90% empty? Makes sense.
A dragon's lair with perhaps a couple other creatures it allows to live there as guardians / warning systems. Makes sense.
A small underground lair for one type of creature. Makes sense.

A large dungeon crawl with lots of varied creatures? I've never enjoyed it.

• What do they eat? Why don't they kill / eat each other?
• Why do they hoard treasures that aren't really of use to them? Where are they getting those coins? What are they doing with them later?
• Who dug out all this earth in the first place? (Seriously. If we take Moria as the ur-dungeon, then note that it was built/used/expanded over 10,000+ years in that storyline. Most other worlds don't consider that extensive of a timeline.)
• What was it used for before all these creatures showed up?
• Why are all the rooms so cleanly square or rectangular?
• Who maintains everything so parts of the dungeon don't collapse?
• How do those traps work? Who maintains / restocks all those complex traps?
• etc.

It these are not issues for you, if you don't need internal consistency to have fun, and if you are happy to hand wave it all as magic or a mystery, then have fun beating things up and taking their stuff! It's just never really worked for me.


So how did we get here in the first place? I think it's as simple as the length of the original Monster Manual. With that much variety, there become a desire to use all of those wondrous creations. While the first few modules were focused (on giants or drow) or DID try to explain the weirdness (tomb of horrors, white plume mountain), no one wanted an entire adventure of fighting through a just a giant ant colony, so all the oddities started getting mashed up and dungeons lost cohesion.

I think the way we got here was because starting with DAs first blackmoor sessions, the players were exploring dungeons.  When Gary started using the concept, the first thing he did was draw up dungeons.

Then a lot of people starting playing RPGs for reasons antithetical to the concept of dungeons.

Quote from: EOTB;971217I think the way we got here was because starting with DAs first blackmoor sessions, the players were exploring dungeons.  When Gary started using the concept, the first thing he did was draw up dungeons.

Then a lot of people starting playing RPGs for reasons antithetical to the concept of dungeons.

There are lots of people starting playing RPGs who have never read Barsoom, or Conan, or Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser.

Not sure what that statement means. From early on a lot of those interested in RPing over dungeoncrawls were from sf/fantasy fandom. And Barsoom and 98 percent of Fafhrd and Grey Mouser stories have nothing to do with anything you could call a dungeon.

Quote from: TheHistorian;971213While the first few modules were focused (on giants or drow) or DID try to explain the weirdness (tomb of horrors, white plume mountain), no one wanted an entire adventure of fighting through a just a giant ant colony, so all the oddities started getting mashed up and dungeons lost cohesion.

In the early days, megadungeons were not cohesive. Nor were they intended to be cohesive. Their might be an ant colony on part of level 1 (giant ants, their victims, and parasites), hobgoblin caves on level 2 (hobgoblins, their prisoners, and maybe an ogre ally or ruler, and the giant's bowling alley on level 5 that still had giants who occasionally stopped by to bowl a few frames, but overall the intention was to present a medley of monsters.

Quote from: Voros;971265Not sure what that statement means. From early on a lot of those interested in RPing over dungeoncrawls were from sf/fantasy fandom. And Barsoom and 98 percent of Fafhrd and Grey Mouser stories have nothing to do with anything you could call a dungeon.

98%? Really? Its been decades since I read those books, but I recall several stories where John Carter of Mars went into some subterranean city. Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser spent a bunch of time shrunken in size and running around with the rat people in the walls and one entire F&G book was set in Quarmall which was a dungeon city.

I didn't crunch any numbers but exploring ruins only really appears in a few early stories. An entire book was not set in Quarmall, that was a novella. The only novel Leiber wrote with Fafhrd and Grey Mouser was the picturesque Swords of Lankhmar, which as I recall had no dungeon sequence of any importance. Most of their later stories take place on the sea, in winter landscapes and of course Lankhmar. Leiber clearly like to mix it up.

I haven't read all the Burroughs' Carter books but Princess of Mars, Swords of Mars and Chessmen of Mars have no dungeon sequences that I recall. Course to a hammer everything looks like a nail and often RPG readers seem to see a dungeon in every mention of ruins or lost city in a fantasy story.

Quote from: Voros;971288I didn't crunch any numbers

That was exactly what I was pointing out.

QuoteI haven't read all the Burroughs' Carter books but Princess of Mars, Swords of Mars and Chessmen of Mars have no dungeon sequences that I recall. Course to a hammer everything looks like a nail and often RPG readers seem to see a dungeon in every mention of ruins or lost city in a fantasy story.

If your definition of dungeon is exactly like a TSR D&D megadungeon then you are correct Mars and Newhon don't fit well. Neither does the fairly extensive underground portions of the Hobbit or The Fellowship of the Rings. But all three sources clearly inspired TSR D&D dungeons.

A novel's protagonist isn't likely to repeatedly enter the same dungeon do stuff for a while, leave, then come back later and do some different stuff.  Nor is a novel likely to feature many unrelated groups of protagonists who repeatedly enter the same dungeon do stuff for a while, leave, then come back later and do some different stuff. Intentionally the ability to run multiple groups on repeated trips was a feature of TSR megadungeon design philosophy. The needs of a novel are quite different. So unsurprisingly we don't tend to see exact or even very, very close matches.

To satisfy you I went and looked up a list of the Fafhrd and Gray Mouser stories and about five out of thirty seven (or thirty six if you don't count Swords of Lankhmar) could be said to be 'dungeon' adventures if you stretch that defintion. So about 14 percent.

Barsoom it seems to me is more of an influence on having fights against monsters, lost races and general high adventure than even perpherial dungeons. To say everystory with a city underground is a dungeon seems to be over-reaching. There is some kind of underground city in Chessmen but it is just a setting for a typical capture/rescue/arena sequence that could be anywhere.

This seems to just reinforce what I've said before: too often RPGers are obsessed with reading these books through a D&D lense come hell or high water.

Quote from: Voros;971299To satisfy you I went and looked up a list of the Fafhrd and Gray Mouser stories and about five out of thirty seven (or thirty six if you don't count Swords of Lankhmar) could be said to be 'dungeon' adventures if you stretch that defintion. So about 14 percent.

14% sounds far more likely than 98%.

To be fair, for Mars I was only considering the first few stories with John Carter. With the Mars stories I lost track and interest way before that series ran out of novels. I've read a number of them that I forgot. Like the one about the spiders that have [strike]human[/strike] Martian* heads. Not a human-headed spider. Actual human heads...from actual humans. :rolleyes:


* Yes I know virtually everyone on Mars is not actually human. But the author himself mostly includes only the most superficial of differences e.g. skin color.

Looks like you were editing while I was replying. Chessmen is where we start getting John Carter junior and Dejah Thoris junior. Also when my interest waned.

Quote from: Voros;971299This seems to just reinforce what I've said before: too often RPGers are obsessed with reading these books through a D&D lense come hell or high water.

Can't speak for others, but I'm old enough to have read the books before D&D was published (and did so). So for me, the lens focuses the other way.

I'm not saying there is no connection, Gygax listed those authors for a reason. Just saying I don't think they are as important to the game as that and often dealt with lots of material, the majority, that had nothing to do with D&D dungeons. I can't see what you'd learn about D&D dungeons from those books, they resemble D&D dungeons only in the most basic ways. They're more of value in terms of setting, magic, monsters and character.

REH's Conan stories fit the mould much better, as do stories like The Maze of Maal Dweb by Clark Ashton Smith (until the final twist).

Quote from: Voros;971313Just saying I don't think they are as important to the game as that and often dealt with lots of material, the majority, that had nothing to do with D&D dungeons. I can't see what you'd learn about D&D dungeons from those books...

Could just be that crotchety old guys who remember playing and DMing back in the day also fall into the categories of (a) people who read some of those books before (and while) they played D&D and (b) people who (unlike some folks today) didn't have a lot of trouble adapting to dungeon crawling and dungeon creation.

Are those causal or coincidental?

I don't know. But it seems better (and more reasonable) than trying to assert that we were innately smarter/better/faster than are the gamers of today, many of whom don't appear to have read the pulps stories from the 1930s, didn't play tactical wargames or miniatures battles before playing D&D, and whose notions of Orcs, Elves, Dwarfs (or Dwarves as Tolkien preferred), and Paladins are shaped by Warhammer and World of Warcraft instead of The Lord of the Rings and Poul Anderson.

Quote from: Voros;971299To satisfy you I went and looked up a list of the Fafhrd and Gray Mouser stories and about five out of thirty seven (or thirty six if you don't count Swords of Lankhmar) could be said to be 'dungeon' adventures if you stretch that defintion. So about 14 percent.

Barsoom it seems to me is more of an influence on having fights against monsters, lost races and general high adventure than even perpherial dungeons. To say everystory with a city underground is a dungeon seems to be over-reaching. There is some kind of underground city in Chessmen but it is just a setting for a typical capture/rescue/arena sequence that could be anywhere.

This seems to just reinforce what I've said before: too often RPGers are obsessed with reading these books through a D&D lense come hell or high water.

Sorry to interrupt the thread.

Voros, you're PM box is full.

Now back to your original thread.

Quote from: Bren;97130214% sounds far more likely than 98%.

To be fair, for Mars I was only considering the first few stories with John Carter. With the Mars stories I lost track and interest way before that series ran out of novels. I've read a number of them that I forgot. Like the one about the spiders that have [strike]human[/strike] Martian* heads. Not a human-headed spider. Actual human heads...from actual humans. :rolleyes:


* Yes I know virtually everyone on Mars is not actually human. But the author himself mostly includes only the most superficial of differences e.g. skin color.

Wouldn't that be 86%?

Quote from: Dumarest;971447Wouldn't that be 86%?

Yes.


Complementation and all that, but I suppose I could have been clearer.

"Those wargamers who lack imagination, those who don't care for Burroughs' Martian adventures where John Carter is groping through black pits..."

Gary Gygax, Dungeons & Dragons, 1st edition, vol. 1, "Men and Magic," p. 3 (TSR, 1974)

Back in the ancient times, there were plenty of DMs who did not like dungeons. Many of them played RuneQuest.

Its a personal preference. I love them. They work for me. But I've run plenty of overland fantasy stuff.

In fact, I doubt my campaigns in TSR's settings - Dark Sun, Spelljammer, Ravenloft and Planescape - had many dungeons as adventures. Certainly rare compared to my home grown OD&D campaigns which have lots and lots of dungeons.

Quote from: Bren;971302To be fair, for Mars I was only considering the first few stories with John Carter. With the Mars stories I lost track and interest way before that series ran out of novels. I've read a number of them that I forgot. Like the one about the spiders that have [strike]human[/strike] Martian* heads. Not a human-headed spider. Actual human heads...from actual humans. :rolleyes:


* Yes I know virtually everyone on Mars is not actually human. But the author himself mostly includes only the most superficial of differences e.g. skin color.

What, are you talking about the kaldanes (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaldane) in Chessmen of Mars? They didn't look much like humans (or Barsoomian) heads, and they weren't from actual humans. They were almost entirely brain, and rode about on the nearly brainless rykors that they bred to resemble red Martians without heads, to the nervous system of which they could connect.

They are the only monster I ever had in my OD&D dungeon that actually got a horrified reaction from a player (when the kaldane mage disconnected from the rykor the PCs killed and scuttled away).

The hero met giant spiders in a later book (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Fighting_Man_of_Mars), but they didn't have human/Martian heads; the depraved ruler of Ghasta had tapestries (woven from the threads spun by those spiders) painted with depictions of "spiders with the heads of beautiful women, and women with the heads of spiders" but "in all the figures that were depicted there was nothing represented as nature had created it. It was as though some mad mind had conceived the whole."

I sure wish Dungeon Masters would stop coming to my house, abducting me, and making me play their dungeon-only campaigns.

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.

Quote from: Bren;971862A 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.

The various anecdotes of the development of Runequest highlight that Stafford ran a roleplaying heavy campaign in Glorantha and Perrin ran a more D&Dish style campaign focused on Pavis and the Big Rubble. Of course when it came to publishing stuff it going to be a blend so Pavis has a lot of roleplaying elements, and Dragon Pass has various "dungeons" to explore for example the Rainbow Caves of Apple Lane.

I am relating this because there was lots of reasons that people played Runequest 2e back in the day. While there was lot of support for the roleplaying side, you have to keep in mind that the Runequest rules were a merger of Stafford's ideas behind the Glorantha setting and Perrin's SCA combat experience. And promoted as as having a rich campaign setting AND a more "realistic" combat system.

This is why for much of the late 70s and early 80s Runequest was perhaps the 2nd most popular fantasy RPG behind D&D. It appealed multiple types of players.

Quote from: Bren;971862Griffin Mountain was published before The Big Rubble

Big Rubble in part is a compilation of earlier released products including Balastor's Barrack as you mention. Apple Lane is about a dungeon crawl and a combat encounter that could be straight out of D&D 4e. As you stated Snakepipe Hollow is pretty much a sprawling dungeon.

Again Glorantha attracted the roleplayers but dungeon crawling were very much part the Runequest campaign I knew about in my neck of the woods.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;971820Add 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.

Oh I remember some of the "good ol' days" of those kind of games. I would emerge like a giant umber-colored bog-beast, covered in corn and peanuts. It only made me stronger. I washed off and dove back in. I survived the Bad Dungeoncrawl Wars.

And thus, I'm the man I am today.

Quote from: estar;971965

Nothing here I particularly disagree with. I ran Runequest back in the day and I'm well aware of the antecedents, so I'm just going to assume you're directing this post at people in general rather than me in particular. :)

You can only do so many years of dungeon crawling before most dungeons become routines. And the cure for that usually isn't megadungeons (or negadungeons).  The cure is to switch around setting, making adventuring locales different, putting more of a political or social focus on the games, and then, once in a while, bringing back a standard dungeon when people aren't bored to death of them.

That's what made Dark Albion such a successful campaign.

Quote from: RPGPundit;972552You can only do so many years of dungeon crawling before most dungeons become routines. And the cure for that usually isn't megadungeons (or negadungeons).  The cure is to switch around setting, making adventuring locales different, putting more of a political or social focus on the games, and then, once in a while, bringing back a standard dungeon when people aren't bored to death of them.

That's what made Dark Albion such a successful campaign.

Badda Bing! Said it better than I could...

The point about going back to a dungeon once in a while is spot on. Because at that stage, they would be a novelty again and seem fresh. Unlike the predictable 'day in day out' affair of the 80s.

No, that's too reasonable. There MUST be a objectively WRONG way and a RIGHT way to play.

I like the campaign dungeon as the always-there default activity and occasional quest hub. It makes it a reliable resource to ensure a game can always happen. But there definitely needs to be tons of other stuff going on that the players can do if they want.

Quote from: S'mon;972637I like the campaign dungeon as the always-there default activity and occasional quest hub. It makes it a reliable resource to ensure a game can always happen. But there definitely needs to be tons of other stuff going on that the players can do if they want.

I have seen this used quite effectively, and it seems to be the default mode of play for the really early stuff (Blackmoor Castle Dungeon, Greyhawk, etc). The open campaign table-style of play (and the modern "Wilderlands-style" that formalizes some of this) helps there.

But the other thing that I have seen make this really work are NPC Adventurer Parties. I remember in one large dungeon we ran into a locked wooden door that some-one had modified a view-slot into. It was a party of elven mages and fighters who had been entering the dungeon once a month and had secured a "long rest room" that only they had they key for, about 3-4 turns (@ full speed not exlporation speed) into the first level - right nearby the 2nd level stairs. They were uber paranoid, as they had to re-clear the first level each time they cam back (evil cultists, and spontaneously generating goblinoids from "the black pits" were a feature of the dungeon). Our party worked out a deal with them to trade mapping information by leaving notes for each other, and we left a bag with 10 GP in the room in front of their camp-room as a show of good faith (they still never even opened the door while we were there). That type of stuff is GOLD for role-playing in the dungeon. I didn't get to continue that campaign, but I always wanted to find out what faction of elves they were with (gods were they paranoid) and make a more formal alliance against the goblins.

Or, and I almost pulled this complete arc off against some players while I GM'd Earthdawn: have a "rival" adventuring group that shows up every once in a while and competes for the adventure's treasure/goals/etc. Not enemies, just another party that has slightly different specialties, so maybe they get to the macguffin before the player do. Then, while the players are off following their own thread in the sandbox, have a rumor arrive that their rivals have been COMPLETELY wiped out while attempting to tackle the local megadungeon. If that doesn't set a hook to go back and re-explore that dungeon, then a week or so later, have one of the rival's come back as a form of undead and attack the player's party (trying to steal something specific, or kidnap some-one they have a link to, etc). Make sure the undead NPC is identified by others in the act. "Wait?! I thought she was DEAD?!?!"

Quote from: Telarus;972679I have seen this used quite effectively, and it seems to be the default mode of play for the really early stuff (Blackmoor Castle Dungeon, Greyhawk, etc). The open campaign table-style of play (and the modern "Wilderlands-style" that formalizes some of this) helps there.

Yeah, I've been using Caverns of Thracia & Dyson's Delve together in my Wilderlands game - either alone is too small but together they provided a suitable campaign dungeon for several years of play. Now though Dyson's Delve has been pretty heavily Delved I should probably bring in another one, Stonehell maybe...

Quote from: The Exploited.;972582Badda Bing! Said it better than I could...

The point about going back to a dungeon once in a while is spot on. Because at that stage, they would be a novelty again and seem fresh. Unlike the predictable 'day in day out' affair of the 80s.

Even in the '80s my friends and I never did much spelunking and dungeoneering. So for me a dungeon would actually be the novelty. I've always played wrong. :p

HERETIC! Burn the Witch!!

To me Greyhawk was always about the City campaign.

I have no problem with dungeon crawls but I do think too much emphasis is placed on them. Finding out where the dungeon is, getting there and getting back, as well as the consequences are every bit as important but in most published adventures (and quite a few homemade ones), they're given short shrift.

Quote from: Voros;972725HERETIC! Burn the Witch!!

To me Greyhawk was always about the City campaign.

Haven't read or played Greyhawk, but that sounds more like what we did. We spent most of our time in one city or another with forays into the wilderness when we had a reason to venture out there. Most "dungeons" were natural cave complexes or ruins of temples or cities or castles. One memorable dungeon was a sort of grotto. There weren't really and Wacky Funhouses Built By Mad Wizards. But we still had a lot of fun.

Quote from: Dumarest;972721Even in the '80s my friends and I never did much spelunking and dungeoneering. So for me a dungeon would actually be the novelty. I've always played wrong. :p

I think a couple of us have been playing it wrong too!

Bitchin'! :)

Quote from: The Exploited.;972784I think a couple of us have been playing it wrong too!

Bitchin'! :)

If youre ever in the San Diego area let me know; I can show you how badly I run D&D games. I mean, I hardly even use hobbits, for the love o' Mike. :D

Quote from: Dumarest;972814If youre ever in the San Diego area let me know; I can show you how badly I run D&D games. I mean, I hardly even use hobbits, for the love o' Mike. :D

Damn! I'm based in Europe.

A man that hardly uses Hobbits?! That's sweet music to my ears. :) Now, if we can only get rid of those happy Elves next, we will be doing very well. ;)

Quote from: The Exploited.;972825Damn! I'm based in Europe.

A man that hardly uses Hobbits?! That's sweet music to my ears. :) Now, if we can only get rid of those happy Elves next, we will be doing very well. ;)

Sadly I am not enamored of any of the "Tolkien triumvirate" of hobbits, elves, and dwarves, so I'm always playing fantasy games wrong by using a humanocentric setting more inspired by Robert E. Howard  and Arabian Nights stories.

If I never see a party of human, elf, dwarf, and hobbit again, it will be too soon.

Quote from: Dumarest;972814If youre ever in the San Diego area let me know; I can show you how badly I run D&D games. I mean, I hardly even use hobbits, for the love o' Mike. :D

So what do you throw, run with and kick in your Rugby games?

--
"I wanted the feeling of romance and the sense of wonder I had known as a kid. I wanted the world to be what they had promised me it was going to be — instead of the tawdry, lousy fouled-up mess it is.
I had had one chance — for ten minutes yesterday afternoon. Helen of Troy, whatever your true name may be — And I had known it ... and I had let it slip away.
Maybe one chance is all you ever get." Oscar Gordon

Quote from: Voros;972599No, that's too reasonable. There MUST be a objectively WRONG way and a RIGHT way to play.

And there is. The Wrong way is to insist that no one ever go into a dungeon again, or to demand that all D&D play should only be in dungeons and only dungeons exactly the way the Holy Gygax made them.

Quote from: RPGPundit;973683And there is. The Wrong way is to insist that no one ever go into a dungeon again, or to demand that all D&D play should only be in dungeons and only dungeons exactly the way the Holy Gygax made them.

So we're cool with the way the Holy Arneson (may His name be blessed) made them?

That darn Gygax keeps making me play his way and I'm getting sick and tired of it.

Quote from: Harlock;973692So we're cool with the way the Holy Arneson (may His name be blessed) made them?

Pardon?

Quote from: Dumarest;972845Sadly I am not enamored of any of the "Tolkien triumvirate" of hobbits, elves, and dwarves, so I'm always playing fantasy games wrong by using a humanocentric setting more inspired by Robert E. Howard  and Arabian Nights stories.

If I never see a party of human, elf, dwarf, and hobbit again, it will be too soon.

Gary Gygax would have loved you (according to Gronan) he was not pleased with being badgered into having elves and dwarves and hobbits.  The evidence is there, given his diatribe about how non-human races with their level caps, are not the spirit of D&D, in 2e.

There's a certain charm in dungeon crawling, i think that not many people can deny that.

Quote from: WillInNewHaven;972870So what do you throw, run with and kick in your Rugby games?

Snotlings, of course, the way Lord Sigmar intended!

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;970238If you don't like dungeon crawls, don't play them.

Okay, we're done here.  Somebody fetch me a beer.

Still waiting for my damn beer.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;973800Still waiting for my damn beer.

Any time you like. However, you knew we were going to spend a hundred more posts investigating our navels.

Quote from: WillInNewHaven;972870So what do you throw, run with and kick in your Rugby games

We play Trollball like proper gamers. Go round up a few more trollkin.

I just decided that there is a Horrible Menace but that the PCs will be useless until level 20 or so, so Lord Gronan has set up the dungeon as a Darwinistic training grounds for would be heroes.

"Lawful is not the same as NICE, Cupcake."