Quote from: mcbobbo;756153All of this is up to the player running the character and whether they want to adapt their concept or not.

Of course, but they can't adapt to liabilities, opportunities and choices that aren't presented to them (and if their play style and character never changes then I have to question the value of playing a roleplaying game rather than, say, Doom)

A novel encounter, a novel dungeon, or a novel campaign setting is a more intriguing thing or array of things for them to adapt to.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;756014A dungeon inside a tree, or inside a purple worm, or inside a dead god, or whatever, is still rooms connected by passages filled with monsters and treasure. The idea that changing the trappings makes a dungeon 'original' is silly.

In this I agree with Black Vulmea. A dungeon is a dungeon, IRL they are ordinarily tombs or prisons because that is the most plausible purpose for them and and going higher-concept at that level is not necessarily going to make them more interesting for long. Probably a more fruitful route is changing the PC's relationship to the dungeon.

I like ordinary dungeons. OMG, I'm hidebound! Oddly, I don't seem to be harmed by that.

I'd resist the temptation to reduce all dungeons to simply "rooms connected by passages filled with monsters and treasure."   Unique or unusual dungeons don't have to simply be skins or textures layered onto otherwise mundane floor-plans. Not only might they have unique and unusual contents and features (novel traps, monsters, an dungeon dressing), their very structure might substantially deviate from - or at least elaborate on - the basic rooms-and-passages model.

One could imagine, for example, a R'lyehian, non-Eucliean, Escheresque dungeon in which the usual rules of space and time behave differently than expected - full of strange spaces where gravity behaves irregularly, corridors loop and connect in counter-intuitive ways, spaces can be rearranged and transformed, and time can be manipulated.  Or a dungeon set inside a monster's digestive tract that's distinguished by periodic floods of food and digestive juices, including NPCs and buildings swallowed whole.  Perhaps a dungeon made of psychically malleable ooze that can be radically reshaped through acts of concentration, or a dungeon in which all doors are one-way portals connecting disparate locations across multiple planes of existence, or a dungeon that co-exists in multiple "phases" of existence that it requires characters to switch between.  At a less physical level, maybe a strange, moralistic dungeon where instead of the usual encounters there are ethical puzzles that reward or punish characters based on their virtues or vices.  That kind of thing.

Such complexes would be more than simply "reskinned" versions of banal temples and caves - they'd be fundamentally different kinds of dungeons, offering very different experiences at the level of navigation/exploration than the standard rooms & corridors model.

Of course, some "unique" dungeons might only be unusual cosmetically; I just think it's possible to imagine unorthodox dungeons that are novel on a more structural or fundamental level.

That said, I'd argue the relative paucity of novel dungeons has to do with a few main factors:

(1) Lack of creativity on the part of creators.  Things are starting to change, but the persistence of certain cliches and calcified tropes in fantasy gaming is undeniable.  So boring dungeons are common in part for the same reason that elves and orcs are common.  While gamers have broken with the status quo in a number of instances and continue to innovate, there are a lot of generic fantasy games out there that recycle the same ideas again and again - hence the recurrence of catacombs and ruined castles.

(2) The stereotypical dungeon is actually a pretty compelling setting, just intrinsically.  The idea of descending into the netherworld is a pretty significant motif in a lot of mythologies.  I think dungeons tap into a particular set of cultural and psychological fascinations that account in part of their continued popularity.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;756144Intelligent burrowing insects living inside a giant sacred tree are likely to have very different values, behaviors and objectives that the sort you would find inside the trash filled aqueduct of a city of thieves . . .

So could a group of nixies in the flooded ruins of a lakeshore town, or a tribe of locathah in a maze of sea caves.

And I think most classical engineers would object to their aqueducts being categorised as "trash filled." They provided drinkable water to large cities and kept down disease.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;756144. . . and in the second example the fluid will likely poison you . . .

People swim and dive in cenotes all the time.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;756144. . . instead of making you sticky to everything you touch.

Okay, so you've created an environment that makes the adventurers sticky every time they move through it, and a race of unusual creatures living there.

What's next? What does being sticky all the time do besides make the adventurers clumsy and uncomfortable? What happens once the adventurers get through the inevitable social misunderstandings that dealing with an 'alien' species entails? How do you make this an environment with repeat value? How do you avoid it becoming a one schtick pony?

This is why I think most 'theme' dungeons end up sucking.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;756144I see what you're saying about re-skinning challenges and all, but if we believe that there is value to players investing time and effort in making their characters aesthetically/behaviorally interesting then surely it's not unreasonable to expect the GMs to do a little more of the same for locales and their themes?

Exotic != "aesthetically/behaviorally interesting."

The problem with this reduction exercise you're engaged in Vulmea is where does it end? Where do you personally draw the line between frivolous superficial trappings and legitimate novel thought exercise?

For instance:

Quote from: Black VulmeaSo could a group of nixies in the flooded ruins of a lakeshore town, or a tribe of locathah in a maze of sea caves.

You really can't see any worthwhile difference between mind-controlling humanoid fey creatures dwelling in the tragic remnants of a human society and burrowing freak insects tunneling through the sacred flesh of a constantly growing biological phenomenon? Those two scenarios are really not different enough to justify any effort?

If that's the case, let me turn the exercise around, not as a jab at you but to determine where you draw your line compared to mine: Why do you run your personal campaign primarily in 17th century France when England would be more familiar to the players and the differences between the two cultures are objectively minor compared to the nixie-bug example above?

Taking it further and going back to the question I asked Mcbobbo, why are any of us running anything other than Dungeons and Dragons in the Temple of Elemental Evil of the Greyhawk setting if every "meaningful" novelty can be reskinned into it anyway?

Tree dungeons? Brambly Hegde have some really good ones.

That tree would totally fall down in the first gale.

Enid Blyton's Magic Faraway Tree. A different adventure at the top every week.

Somewhere I have an image I did.... hold on.

Here we are. Lungs of the Storm Giant.

For those times when you just have to inhale the party.

Here's a little thing that I have very rarely seen GM's do that make their dungeons boring, they do not try to engage the senses of the Player Characters.

How does the dungeon look? Yes, to a point. But how many times instead of giving a description of the room you get a list of contents instead? There is a chair in the room, so what? Is it warped by exposure to moisture with its fitted pieces popping apart?

How does the dungeon smell? This is a big pet peeve of mine since it seems to not be used often enough. The smell of things provides great atmosphere and helps immersion. Is it musty? Does the first breath you take make your nose itch and threaten to cause your character to sneeze?

It is a different world and most GMs fail to properly bring it to life.

Quote from: jeff37923;756228Here's a little thing that I have very rarely seen GM's do that make their dungeons boring, they do not try to engage the senses of the Player Characters.

How does the dungeon look? Yes, to a point. But how many times instead of giving a description of the room you get a list of contents instead? There is a chair in the room, so what? Is it warped by exposure to moisture with its fitted pieces popping apart?

How does the dungeon smell? This is a big pet peeve of mine since it seems to not be used often enough. The smell of things provides great atmosphere and helps immersion. Is it musty? Does the first breath you take make your nose itch and threaten to cause your character to sneeze?

It is a different world and most GMs fail to properly bring it to life.

A million times this. The passive reception of the environment is forgotten or ignored. Noises, smells, feelings, textures.

Quote from: Black VulmeaExotic != "aesthetically/behaviorally interesting."

Quote from: Shipyard LockedYou really can't see any worthwhile difference between mind-controlling humanoid fey creatures dwelling in the tragic remnants of a human society and burrowing freak insects tunneling through the sacred flesh of a constantly growing biological phenomenon? Those two scenarios are really not different enough to justify any effort?

I tend to fall with Shipyard Locked here.

It might be worth noting that even if most "unusual" dungeons don't deviate from the rooms-and-passages template, aesthetically and/or behaviourally interesting dungeons are also surprisingly rare.   I'd suggest that even superificial/cosmetic exoticism has its place, and can liven up some games after a series of more "classic" (or cliched) dungeons.

Not that there's anything wrong with the older, traditional dungeon, epsecially when given some kind of interesting twist.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;756214The problem with this reduction exercise you're engaged in Vulmea is where does it end? Where do you personally draw the line between frivolous superficial trappings and legitimate novel thought exercise?

I draw the line at whether or not superficial trappings actually make a game more fun to play.

You still haven't answered the question I asked upthread: you've got your tree and your sap and your intelligent bugs . . . now what? What do you expect the adventurers to actually do with any of this?

So many 'novel' settings fall apart when the players actually try to interact with them because the writer or referee is so busy patting herself on the back at being 'different' she forgot she was playing a game.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;756214You really can't see any worthwhile difference between mind-controlling humanoid fey creatures dwelling in the tragic remnants of a human society and burrowing freak insects tunneling through the sacred flesh of a constantly growing biological phenomenon? Those two scenarios are really not different enough to justify any effort?

Neither one is interesting in and of itself. You can make an exotic setting and fail to churn out one interesting thing that happens in it - see George Lucas and the SW prequels. Conversely, you can take tried and true formulas and fail to churn out one interesting thing with them, either - see anything ever done by Michael Bay.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;756214. . . Why do you run your personal campaign primarily in 17th century France when England would be more familiar to the players and the differences between the two cultures are objectively minor compared to the nixie-bug example above?

Because 17th century France is the default setting of Flashing Blades, and I wanted my campaign to be immediately accessible to gamers already familiar with the game.

And how do you know that 17th century England would be intrinsically more familiar than France to the players? One of my players is Scandinavian - 17th century Sweden and Denmark are far more familiar to him than either France or England. You are assuming facts not in evidence, and for no particular reason that I can see.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;756214. . . [W]hy are any of us running anything other than Dungeons and Dragons in the Temple of Elemental Evil of the Greyhawk setting if every "meaningful" novelty can be reskinned into it anyway?

You've yet to demonstrate you have the first clue about what makes a novelty "meaningful." Figure that out, and maybe it will become clear.

Tell you what, I'll give you a hint. In the campaigns I run, I pile cliché on cliché on cliché, and yet no one's every called my campaigns boring. I know that clichés work for a reason: they are accessible and they are fun, or they would never have become clichés in the first place.

What makes a game fun to play isn't novelty-for-novelty's-sake. What makes a game fun to play, in my experience, is that the very first thing the referee does is ask, 'What do the adventurers DO?' Everything else flows from that, and not from, 'How can I make my setting SPECIAL?"

Why are there no great published adventures set in tree-dungeons? Because no one's made a great adventure and then set it in a tree and published it. If you make a great adventure, then you can set pretty much anywhere, because it's a great adventure.

Quote from: Steerpike;756345Not that there's anything wrong with the older, traditional dungeon, epsecially when given some kind of interesting twist.

One of the many lessons I took away from playing World of Warcraft is about dungeons and how to give them character.
None of the dungeons in WOW are old school zoo-dungeons full of randomly sorted creatures. All the dungeons/instances in WOW are living places with a strong background that is revealed in their exploration (at least to anyone who cares about such things). There are discernible reasons for all the stuff going on in them.
Some of them are wild, exotic things... castles that extend into other dimensions, floating ruins surrounding cores of magical energy, elemental planes of fire... but most are fairly mundane in their trappings... but still stocked full of 'story' and life. If I were dropped into any of them at random I'd pretty quickly know which one it was.
True, most of them are far too linear and have a scripted form of play that's anathema to what I want out of a TTRPG... but I'm pretty sure any dungeons I build are a lot more interesting for having WOW's as examples... and it's got little/nothing to do with the physical makeup of the dungeon itself and everything to do with what's going on there and why my PCs care enough to risk their lives over it.

Oh, and here is a fun little article on Goblin Punch about using WOW's boss fights as inspiration for some fun OSR big-bads.

EDIT: Actually, there are a couple of newer ones that are pretty close to a zoo dungeon... one being a prison, just a big room where inmates are randomly released to attack the party... another being an arena game where you just fight whoever gets sent in... those are just plain lazy.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;756367You still haven't answered the question I asked upthread: you've got your tree and your sap and your intelligent bugs . . . now what? What do you expect the adventurers to actually do with any of this?

Quote from: Black Vulmea;756367What makes a game fun to play isn't novelty-for-novelty's-sake. What makes a game fun to play, in my experience, is that the very first thing the referee does is ask, 'What do the adventurers DO?'

Very well.

The tree is important. The tree is suddenly ailing and could die. The interior of the tree is barely explored and poorly understood. It is unclear what exactly is weakening the tree, and simply going in there and killing or damaging anything you find wily-nily could do more harm than good. It is known that many of the living things inside the tree are benevolent but difficult to understand. The players will need to investigate this alien world to figure out how it works and pinpoint the source(s) of the problem.

At some point, to do so they will need to learn how to access deeper areas that do not currently have any passages into them, but they can't simply dig into the tree's flesh without training. They will need to communicate with the native burrowers who know what to chew through and what to leave alone. Trouble is, the party are speaking humanoids and the burrowers are clicking insects. Just imagine the undignified pantomime that could ensue.

Sufficient?