Quote from: jibbajibba;582805I hate dungeons as well but Aliens is a great dungeon adventure.

Quote from: Soylent Green;582833I'll say one thing, the new Judge Dredd movie is an awesome dungeon flic.

Quote from: Spinachcat;582872Dungeons are like pizza.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;582909Yeah, reading this thread on top of another thread elsewhere about how random chaacter generation is 'stupid' and another about how character death is 'boring,' and it's the same thinly veiled excuse for pissing all over someone else, instead of just saying, 'Here's what I like and why.'

I watched Conan the Destroyer again last night.  It's like someone reached into the collective consciousness of all gamers and distilled all the awesome they found.  It's more AD&D than AD&D.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;582808I think I've reached, and maybe even exceeded, my threshold for intreweb assholes who say stupid shit like, 'Hit points don't make SENSE!' and 'Dungeons don't make SENSE!' and similarly vapid nonsense.

I love espionage games, but I don't like Spycraft. I don't care for a number of the design choices that went into it, and while there are features of the game that I like, the ones that I don't clank like a broken bell.

In no way and at no time would I be stupid enough to say that those choices don't make sense to me. I understand why they are the way they are - I just don't care for them when I play.

What I hear when I read inane crap like, 'They are ALIEN to me,' is a pretentious fucking douchebag looking to run down others for kicks, nothing more, 'cause I don't for a moment believe you're truly as stupid as you're willing to make yourself sound.

99% of all discussions about RPGs, indeed all discussions on the internet, can be explained by the phenomenon David Mitchell expounds upon here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sg_gj2UO2tU&list=PL1665576E7498BAB7&index=3&feature=plcp

It comes down to the fact that someone doesn't share your tastes, and is determined to argue you out of your wrong preferences, and make you understand how mistaken you really are about the things they dislike. They want to divest you of your wrong opinion.

Quote from: The Traveller;582904Should I have put *TRIGGER WARNING* in the title? I haven't seen this many sandy vaginas since my beach porn phase.

Please. Give me a break. I'm not the one who's asking for people to talk about their POVs and then somehow starts arguing every single point they bring up to "prove" he was right all along. I mean, you realize you are arguing right now about how Tolkien's fiction somehow wouldn't work as a D&D dungeon, right? I mean... duh? So hey, healer? Heal thyself.

Quote from: The Traveller;582904The point is that they didn't go in to find fortune and fame, the role of Moria was to provide a terrifying minefield for them to navigate as rapidly as possible.

So? A group of PCs may similarly be in a dungeon with the intent to traverse it and escape it as quickly as they can. Different groups of PCs may have different motives when approaching a particular dungeon.

In fact, even the premise of AEG's mediocre World's Largest Dungeon is an ancient celestial prison the PCs end up trapped in and need to find a way out of.

And the 5e playtest packet that had the Caves of Chaos outlined several different ways to approach that dungeon, including trying to negotiate with it's inhabitants to find out why they suddenly started raiding local settlements and find a peaceful solution.

A dungeon isnt a style of play or a set of motives. It's a place that exists in the game world. How the PCs interact with it is going to vary based on exactly what it is, who or what is in it, and what the PCs know about it, further modified by playstyle preferences.

What you seem to be assuming is dungeons are exclusively used in hack and slash adventures and that's never been true.

Quote from: Benoist;582998Please. Give me a break. I'm not the one who's asking for people to talk about their POVs and then somehow starts arguing every single point they bring up to "prove" he was right all along. I mean, you realize you are arguing right now about how Tolkien's fiction somehow wouldn't work as a D&D dungeon, right? I mean... duh? So hey, healer? Heal thyself.

You may note, upon closer inspection of the thread, that I'm not arguing everyone's points down, but mildly discussing some things I'm not clear on with like minded individuals, alongside some enjoyable sparring of a colourful nature. The internet, serious business eh.

I suspect you're somewhat jaded by previous arguments with people who really were railing against the idea of dungeons, full of sound and fury. This isn't one such, I'm always open to new ideas some of which have been presented superbly, but really its more constructive to light a candle than make sonorous pronouncements of a backhanded nature until you get a reply.

This for example, I did not know:

Quote from: Opaopajr;582914Basically Benoist talks about how dungeons are a macro-to-micro matrix framework. This template can then be used to structure setting for various premises. Thus you can use 'dungeon design' to create the political framework of a nation, the social network of a high school, or the varied environs of a subterranean space.

I don't agree with it, I think its an "everything starts to look like a nail" situation, preferring to model my own personal political frameworks as much as possible on actual political frameworks, but what is a discussion forum for if not discussion.

Quote from: Doctor Jest;583001What you seem to be assuming is dungeons are exclusively used in hack and slash adventures and that's never been true.

That was stated pretty clearly in the OP, in fairness. I'm starting to think its the nomenclature more than anything else, naturally semi-closed environments with an assortment of hazards have a place in RPGs, I use them all the time. Very interesting discussion though.

Quote from: The Traveller;583002I suspect you're somewhat jaded by previous arguments with people who really were railing against the idea of dungeons

It's probably part of it, yes.

Quote from: The Traveller;582904I've done some mountaineering if its any good to you. Are you trying to say that Dwarven colonist-invaders are going to use the same tactics as spelunkers?

Yes.

Quote from: estar;583024Yes.

Late in.
By my PCs have always 'expeditioned' more than they have 'adventured or dungeoned'.  Sometimes there has been some fame and fortune, but normally very goal oriented.  And often the goal is to get in and out, or sometimes just through, alive.

Quote from: estar;583024Yes.

How so, in the expedition style you leave undefended caches of food and supplies for people to pick up as they go along. Colonial expansions call those forts since they are defended. Any situation where you can expect hostile organised resistance is a de facto invasion, not an expedition.

Maybe in the case of Moria there was no resistance but that doesn't seem to make sense in light of the ensuing difficulties. Even if there wasn't any opposition you'd expect the dwarves to take an offensive stance from the get-go, and maintain it too.

The difference between the two may be the amount of violence involved but both strategically and from an adventuring point of view that's a fairly massive difference.

Quote from: The Traveller;583035How so, in the expedition style you leave undefended caches of food and supplies for people to pick up as they go along. Colonial expansions call those forts since they are defended. Any situation where you can expect hostile organised resistance is a de facto invasion, not an expedition.

Maybe in the case of Moria there was no resistance but that doesn't seem to make sense in light of the ensuing difficulties. Even if there wasn't any opposition you'd expect the dwarves to take an offensive stance from the get-go, and maintain it too.

The difference between the two may be the amount of violence involved but both strategically and from an adventuring point of view that's a fairly massive difference.

Wrong.
Just because hostilities are expected does not make it an invasion.  That is ridiculous, nor are the two terms mutually exclusive.

The search for the source of the Nile, btw, could be considered a dungeon in my book.

Quote from: The Traveller;583035. Any situation where you can expect hostile organised resistance is a de facto invasion, not an expedition.
.

Only if we're re-defining the word "invasion", because otherwise, that's a complete and utter bullshit statement.

We're apparently redefining "dungeon" to mean "exploring Darkest Africa", so what the hell.

Seriously, this is reaching Ron Edwards-level of malapropism here.

Quote from: daniel_ream;583090We're apparently redefining "dungeon" to mean "exploring Darkest Africa", so what the hell.

Seriously, this is reaching Ron Edwards-level of malapropism here.

When you do this long enough, you can draw out the adventure, set the encounters and traps and difficulties, place the area interchanges, and there is no difference.
 What else is a 'dungeon' in RPG terminology, especially if you go back to the begining, but the 'exploration zone'?

Seriously.

I'm currently running a game that's going on over 2 years of weekly play that's a post-apocalypse genre with dungeon adventures.

This is the first time I've "returned to the dungeon" since... I guess high school.

It's awesome.

Dungeons, because anything can exist there, can be extremely intense play. In a dungeon environment, it's not unusual for everything to be trying to kill you. It's also possible for things to be insanely arbitrary or surreal (in the game I'm running, there's a psychotic, sadistic, schizophrenic computer that's in charge of the mega-dungeon complex -- it sets traps designed to be terrifying, creates hybrid creatures out of nightmares, etc.).

The game has all kinds of sophisticated roleplaying opportunities as well. It's far from "just" being about going into The Complex and coming back with loot -- but it's centered around dungeon based play and after two years of this, it's still gripping.

Dungeons are great environments because they can be extremely easy to run, but can also be very rewarding for experienced players (game-master inclusive). I recommend thinking of them as a medium or a genre -- you can use dungeon-based play to tell whatever story you want.

BTW: I'd like to share of the materials I've put together. I've seen people post threads with links to graphics and stuff. I'm not sure how to do that. If someone would send me a PM, explaining it, that would be awesome.

Cheers,
-E.