How prevalent are dungeons in your campaign?

Ulairi · February 17, 2018, 10:07:20 AM

A lot. But I classify castles, buildings, forest, and many other things as functionally the same as dungeons.

rgrove0172 · February 17, 2018, 10:52:01 AM

Quote from: Omega;10257821: Not really. More often the dungeon was just part of a larger adventure. Or there was no dungeon at all. There are buildings, forests, castles, towers, etc. And if you are including exploring houses as being a dungeon then I am sorry but unless your adventures are all about camping then you've run some dungeons. Possibly alot of them. And if you dont consider them dungeons then guess what? Alot of modules lack a central dungeon. And what about cave exploration? Is someones basement a dungeon?

2: Things havent changed at all.

3: Depends on the campaign. For example in the 8+ year long Spelljammer campaign I think Ive been in all of maybee 4 dungeons and that is being generous and including things like tombs and temples with a trapped entry hall and a central room.

In the ongoing tandem party campaign we have encountered so far not a single dungeon at all. Its all been things like a giant tree/tower, a mansion, and most recently what I suspect was a crashed spelljammer ship. Everything else has been swamp and forestcrawls, and sneaking around a fort.

GMing Hoard of the dragon queen there are only 2 dungeons in it. And the first is not till act 3. The 2nd is a few chapters later and its part of a larger area rather than the centerpiece.

Yes, I would have thought that obvious but to clarify - any large structure, bit it a cave, castle, temple, crypt, factory or whatever that the PCs wander though exploring and facing dangers is included for purposes of this discussion. Wandering through the woods would not be a dungeon, working your way through the maze of streets in an abandoned city probably would be.

Doom · February 17, 2018, 11:24:37 AM

Much dungeons here.

Granted, pouring money into Dwarven Forge kickstarters gives me strong motivation, but even pre-DF, there bulk of adventures occurred in underground environments, or in places that may as well have been underground (eg, the Hill Giant Stockade is pretty much a dungeon--most of the rooms in the stockade have no windows, even).

Larsdangly · February 17, 2018, 12:29:06 PM

People bitch about dungeons for various reasons, but the fact remains that they are a basically perfect organizing concept for any roleplaying game that involves exploration and mindless violence, which is pretty nearly all of them.

Ratman_tf · February 17, 2018, 01:48:46 PM

Quote from: Ulairi;1025853A lot. But I classify castles, buildings, forest, and many other things as functionally the same as dungeons.

I use the dungeon structure for a lot of things. It starts to bleed into location based structures, but the idea of "exits" and "rooms" is pretty flexible when you realize what it's doing. (Providing structure for the adventure)

Heavy Josh · February 17, 2018, 02:09:34 PM

In my sci-fi gaming, basically any setting for adventure where you can't leave easily or see the outside world is pretty much a dungeon: long lost research facilities, asteroid bases, underground ruins, etc. So I end up with a lot of "dungeons" in that sense.

But actual tombs/crypts? A little rarer, but not unheard of.

S'mon · February 17, 2018, 06:21:43 PM

Quote from: Ratman_tf;1025873I use the dungeon structure for a lot of things. It starts to bleed into location based structures, but the idea of "exits" and "rooms" is pretty flexible when you realize what it's doing. (Providing structure for the adventure)

Yeah, the D&D dungeon is a flow chart structure. If you're not using that structure you're not* running a dungeon. If you are running a woodland adventure with paths = corridors, clearings = rooms, and going off the trail is NOT DONE (get lost, thick brambles, etc) you are running a Dungeon in any meaningful sense. Examples include B5 Horror on the Hill, and various Fighting Fantasy gamebooks such as Forest of Doom, Scorpion Swamp, The Shamutanti Hills etc.

*Hence why 4e D&D, with its "only the encounter matters" paradigm, is commonly accused of "not feeling like D&D".

S'mon · February 17, 2018, 06:26:16 PM

Quote from: Heavy Josh;1025876In my sci-fi gaming, basically any setting for adventure where you can't leave easily or see the outside world is pretty much a dungeon: long lost research facilities, asteroid bases, underground ruins, etc. So I end up with a lot of "dungeons" in that sense.

Yes, if you go through them room by room. No, if you say "You trek through the abandoned research facility, until..."

I learned this from Justin Alexander's blog - structure matters, and using the right structure matters. Eg in a play by email game the "D&D Dungeon" structure is a terrible, terrible choice. If the environment is basically empty/threatless, it's also a terrible choice. My attempts to use it in 4e D&D did not go well, either. Running tabletop 5e D&D, it's fantastic.

Use the right structure for the right game.

Edit: See here - http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/15126/roleplaying-games/game-structures

Teodrik · February 17, 2018, 07:49:12 PM

I have run very few dungeon modules. I find creating dungeons boring so I seldom have any in my own stuff. I like dungeons as a player but find it boring running them myself.

Heavy Josh · February 17, 2018, 10:09:00 PM

Quote from: S'mon;1025899Yes, if you go through them room by room. No, if you say "You trek through the abandoned research facility, until..."

I learned this from Justin Alexander's blog - structure matters, and using the right structure matters. Eg in a play by email game the "D&D Dungeon" structure is a terrible, terrible choice. If the environment is basically empty/threatless, it's also a terrible choice. My attempts to use it in 4e D&D did not go well, either. Running tabletop 5e D&D, it's fantastic.

Use the right structure for the right game.

Edit: See here - http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/15126/roleplaying-games/game-structures

Oh, I agree. I almost never do a "room by room" style dungeon crawl, even when the party is neck deep in a long lost underground research facility. They do go from "interesting place" to "interesting place" however. Because I tend to avoid dungeon crawls, and my players know that I'm not going to make them say "we check for traps". I don't want standard operating procedures to slow down the game.

But that's not what the question in the thread topic; it is, however, the question in the OP. So I guess I should have said that I rarely run dungeon crawls, even in science fiction settings underground in ancient facilities with mutant monsters.

AsenRG · February 17, 2018, 10:22:33 PM

Quote from: rgrove0172;1025860Yes, I would have thought that obvious but to clarify - any large structure, bit it a cave, castle, temple, crypt, factory or whatever that the PCs wander though exploring and facing dangers is included for purposes of this discussion. Wandering through the woods would not be a dungeon, working your way through the maze of streets in an abandoned city probably would be.

Using this definition, they might vary from occasional to nonexistent;).

Psikerlord · February 19, 2018, 02:38:41 AM

Lots of dungeons, towers, temples, ruins etc on offer. I consider the wilderness trek to get to/from the dungeon part of the same adventure, however.

More fluid faction based city scenarios are rarer I think because (i) they're simply harder to do, and (ii) often yield less reliable/concrete loot (instead offering benefits as fame/reputation, loyalty, favours, political clout, etc).

ThatChrisGuy · February 19, 2018, 10:32:11 AM

They are there in my GURPS fantasy gameworld, as it started out as a AD&D campaign world and got moved when I switched to GURPS. Dungeon crawling's seldom been a campaign focus, though, and on at least two occasions PC groups entered a dungeon, got pasted in the first couple of rooms, and never went back (or, in one case, went back to one after a 15 year real-time gap between visits.)

Haffrung · February 19, 2018, 12:30:38 PM

It's interesting that the current zeitgeist around dungeons (judging by published adventures and forum topics) are small dungeons (15 or fewer rooms) peppered through a larger adventure path or sandbox setting, or megadungeons. Nothing in between. All of the mindspace around dungeons has shifted to megadungeons.

What ever happened to the 2 to 5 level dungeon? Caverns of Thracia and the Dark Tower are praised to the heavens, but nobody is even trying to create dungeons of that scale that anymore. The only ones that come to mind are the Tomb of Abysthor and Lost City of Barakus, and those are both 15 years old. Even the Dungeon Crawl Classics game eschews dungeons. What's up with that?

Steven Mitchell · February 19, 2018, 02:25:26 PM

Quote from: Haffrung;1026102What's up with that?

Preferences on campaign pacing, maybe? That is, a mega-dungeon is a campaign. That's what the campaign is about, and almost all the focus. A small complex is one that you do as part of a single adventure, most likely. The intermediate dungeons are either a short-campaign, or a multi-adventure thing within a larger campaign. I can see why that might not be appealing to anyone outside a sandbox. With a sandbox, go do something now, then go away and do something else, then come back later and try again--that's great. It's variety in the sandbox and rewards decision making, but it is still possible to eventually clear the thing out. For another campaign, it could feel a little strange.