Quote from: Steerpike;756594Trying to understand your point here, but I'm a little confused.  Are you saying that because Elves live in trees they're the only race that gets to get used in relation to trees?  It seems that the whole point of the thread here is to imagine ways to move away from the usual fantasy tropes that've already been thoroughly explored (and sometimes done to death), like the elven tree-city, and imagine alternatives.

Apologies in advance if I'm misunderstanding.

This is why I said that imagination is lacking in the userbase.

Ask yourself the questions: What would a dwarven tree look like? Where would it grow? How would lumber be harvested? Answer those and I bet you get some ideas for adventures that were not dull and tired.

Totally agree, jeff.  That's kind of what I was getting at before - for a genre that's supposed to be about wild imagination and fantasy there's an awful lot of homogeneity out there.

Thread title might have worked better if it was:

Your Dungeon is Suck!

Quote from: JasperAK;756602Thread title might have worked better if it was:

Your Dungeon is Suck!

I immediately thought the same when I first saw it.

Quote from: Steerpike;756601Totally agree, jeff.  That's kind of what I was getting at before - for a genre that's supposed to be about wild imagination and fantasy there's an awful lot of homogeneity out there.

You can have homogenous adventure locations as long as they are presented in a way that engages the senses of the PCs. Sometimes it is all in the presentation.

Quote from: jeff37923You can have homogenous adventure locations as long as they are presented in a way that engages the senses of the PCs. Sometimes it is all in the presentation.

Oh, totally.  One of the games I run is a bog-standard megadungeon crawl set in a giant castle and associated crypts, cellars, and dungeons.  It can totally be done well, even spectacularly.  I've nothing against a well-done traditional dungeon.  It's just a bit tiresome when it seems like that's the only game in town, when the fantasy genre is so limitless and holds so much potential for wild invention.

But I think that Black Vulmea is quite right when he points out that people who try to think outside the box often miss the forest for the trees, to mix metaphors... novel dungeons can get wrapped up sort of self-indulgently in their own uniqueness rather than presenting a fun place to run a game in.  That's a problem, but not an insoluble one, I think.

Rather than come up with a specific idea for something the PCs need to do (like the tree idea), I prefer to come up with a dynamic situation that's likely to lead to lots of cool stuff happening.

Example (in deliberately silly style):

A long time ago, some giants had a castle and a bunch of tunnels under the castle, and some purple worms and ghouls tunneled through and accidentally connected it to various caverns and stuff. Some giant wizard did an experiment that ended up with the entire labyrinth entering stasis. Furthermore, it's in a magically unstable area so that failed teleportations, elemental rifts, and mysterious disappearances all tend to dump people and monsters here.

Right around the time the player characters get involved, the dungeon unfreezes and there's suddenly dozens of factions and solitary monsters crowded together. That's Day 1. The dungeon politics play out while the adventurers are exploring, and depending on their actions or failures, a major power could end up organizing, conquering the dungeon area, and spilling out into the overworld. Up to the PCs whether they're fighting against that, running away, cooperating with it, or even the powers that organized it.

I think that's ideal, Zeea.  It might run the risk that Black Vulmea identified (i.e. getting hung up on concept and failing at the level of game-ability) but with forethought I don't think it has to.

A lake made of acid, in which mushroom "islands" sprout (that you have to hop one to another to navigate successfully)?

Actually, about to run an arc that features an air ship navigating into the troposhere, where there is a floating chunk, a couple hundred square miles or so, in which there is a jungle containing various creatures brought forth through "dimensional portals."  It's really just a re-structured hex crawl with the party in search of a macguffin.

Quote from: Steerpike;756594Trying to understand your point here, but I'm a little confused.  Are you saying that because Elves live in trees they're the only race that gets to get used in relation to trees?  It seems that the whole point of the thread here is to imagine ways to move away from the usual fantasy tropes that've already been thoroughly explored (and sometimes done to death), like the elven tree-city, and imagine alternatives.

Apologies in advance if I'm misunderstanding.

Absolutely not. The issue is brevity and clarity in presentation. You could take each of those three paragraphs you gave and pare them down. You need the essence of the locale and residents, and then add hooks to give reasons to engage. Sold as a ready-made package becomes more unwieldy.

Vengeful evil druid with mobile war dungeon is a taller order for campaign repurposing. Druid with mobile dungeon is considerably easier. Attached hooks give variations on the idea. Like the difference between an ice cream scoop shape, a scoop of chocolate ice cream in a sundae cup, and a peach marble praline sundae with pistachio and caramel toppings. Each step has more to disassemble to get to the foundational basic scoop.

Think LEGOs! Hard for some to be creative with an already constructed Technics battery powered crane design. Gotta deconstruct and figure out the why of interlocking pieces before re-synthesizing into one's own thing. Not the Technics crane's fault, and perfectly enjoyable to others, but comes with its own repurposing challenges to DIYers. Hence the likely pushback here.

A good newspaper issues its corrections and retractions right up front, so let me start with this.

Quote from: Steerpike;756497I thought I was agreeing with you...?

Your point seemed to be that making a novel dungeon actually gameable and playable was hard to do, and that most who attempted it failed due to their own laziness - getting wrapped up in their concept and not taking the time or thought to translate it into an actual thing to be used in a game.

I sincerely apologize for completely misreading your earlier post. Yes, that's pretty close to what I was getting at, though I wouldn't use laziness to describe it - I've found it tends to be more of a blind spot that afflicts some designers and gamers, in that they simply forget that they are creating an imaginary world that is supposed to be interactive for a group of players with often diverse goals and interests.

Again, I'm very sorry for misinterpreting what you wrote.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;756522Hmm, nah, I don't buy your negativity here.

My negativity can be neither bought nor sold. It is given away freely, like charity, or the clap.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;756522You don't have to try and "win" this thread you know.

Fuck you and your meta bullshit.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;756522Unless you have specific criticism for me to consider . . .

I do - more on that in a moment.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;756522. . . I still think that basic premise would do fine with my current player base . . .

Quite possibly, perhaps even probably.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;756522. . .  and most potential players too . . .

Christ on fucking tree, I hope not.

Now, going back to that specific criticism, Opaopajr, Steerpike and Zeea really hit the high points here.

Quote from: Opaopajr;756506As for the Big Tree with Alien Sentience Living Inside high concept, it has the problem of being an elaborate subject noun phrase without the verb or object part to give it momentum.

Quote from: Steerpike;756610But I think that Black Vulmea is quite right when he points out that people who try to think outside the box often miss the forest for the trees, to mix metaphors... novel dungeons can get wrapped up sort of self-indulgently in their own uniqueness rather than presenting a fun place to run a game in.  That's a problem, but not an insoluble one, I think.

Quote from: Zeea;756668Rather than come up with a specific idea for something the PCs need to do (like the tree idea), I prefer to come up with a dynamic situation that's likely to lead to lots of cool stuff happening.

This is pretty much everything I disagree with in your approach right here.

I agree with Steerpike that it's not an insoluble problem, but the first step is recognizing the a problem exists in the first place, which is why, as I noted above, I believe it's a blind spot rather than laziness. I think you example and, more specifically, your reaction to criticism of your example, demonstrates that.

Quote from: Steerpike;756673I think that's ideal, Zeea.  It might run the risk that Black Vulmea identified (i.e. getting hung up on concept and failing at the level of game-ability) but with forethought I don't think it has to.

My favorite published D&D adventure, and one of the adventures which has a lasting impact on how I approach roleplaying game campaigns generally, is The Lost Abbey of Calthonwey, which features an abbey that is whisked away to another dimension for many years, then suddenly reappears. The inhabitants are not in stasis per se, but the conflict which set the abbey's disappearance in motion continues.

Most importantly, it offers an open-ended, dynamic situation which the adventurers can engage in different ways, and even leaves room for expansion and customisation by the referee.

So if I understand the past few posts correctly, the issue with the tree example as it stands now is that it currently has hooks for...

heroic players (save the tree),
explorer players (figure out how the world inside the tree work),
and acquisitive players (obtain the life magic items inside the tree)...

... but no adequate hook for more passive players who would need the tree and its inhabitants to seriously affect their game world's situation before they consider going in? The tree has to attack or otherwise disturb the status quo actively, rather than simply having it's slow death be a bad thing in itself?

Quote from: Steerpike;756468Designing something new on the other hand, and original and compelling and unique, is much more demanding on the DM

Certainly. But it's usually unnecessary. The usefulness of cliches and cheese is that they're evocative, players get an immediate mental image and get into the game session. Whereas if you're entirely original people get confused, with a great deal of effort they can get into things, but this is after all a hobby.

If originality were more popular than cliches and cheese, then Tekumel would be more popular than D&D.

"Don't let yourself get too worried about all this talk about roleplaying [...] the ultimate object of all this is for everyone to have fun, not to recreate some form of high dramatic art." - Dungeoneer

Quote from: Kyle AaronCertainly. But it's usually unnecessary. The usefulness of cliches and cheese is that they're evocative, players get an immediate mental image and get into the game session. Whereas if you're entirely original people get confused, with a great deal of effort they can get into things, but this is after all a hobby.

I get what you're saying.  It's possible to run games for years without ever straying from cliches, and those games could very well be fun.

To me, though, one of the best things about D&D and roleplaying in general is that its inherently creative.  It requires imagination and the theatre of the mind, even if you use miniatures or whatever.  There's no special effects budget and no real limit on what can be imagined.  So why impose one?  Why keep running the same stuff again and again when literally anything is possible within the bounds of the hobby?  Especially since some of the cliches have become so incredibly overused.

Again, don't take this as me just slagging the traditional dungeon - like I said, one of my games is literally just a big, bog-standard crawl, and that can be totally fun.  But it's much like fantasy literature for me... I don't want to read Tolkien and his derivatives for ever.  Give me Moorcock and Miéville and Vance and Wolfe once in awhile.  Just because I enjoyed Gormenghast or The Dark Tower doesn't mean that I suddenly think Lord of the Rings sucked.

I say this as much as a DM and creator than as a player.  The DM is a participant to, and his or her fun matters as well.  That doesn't justify railroading or otherwise making pretentious, unplayable modules or whatnot (i.e. putting the DM's fun before the player's), but if the DM is bored with designing and running the same-old familiar dungeons I think that's reason enough to start thinking up new stuff.

Quote from: Kyle AaronIf originality were more popular than cliches and cheese, then Tekumel would be more popular than D&D.

Well, that's kind of the nature of cliches inherently, isn't it?  But after a while even the most beloved tropes start to get a little tired.  Especially in a hobby that empowers the imagination.  Sure, the Forgotten Realms may be more popular than Tekumel, but that doesn't mean that Tekumel is a "mistake" or that M.A.R. Barker should have just stuck to the cliches instead of writing Empire of the Petal Throne.  The hobby does not really need more Realms-clones and traditional fantasy worlds, it needs more Tekumels - more idiosyncratic, weird, wildly inventive settings.  At least that's what I think.

Surely the very existence of this thread and many of those speaking within it shows that not everyone is eternally satisfied with the same fantasy tropes, right?

Quote from: Black Vulmea;756367You've yet to demonstrate you have the first clue about what makes a novelty "meaningful." Figure that out, and maybe it will become clear.

Texture and tone have their own meaning. That's as true when you're around a table playing an RPG as when you're reading a novel or watching a movie. Just as there's more to a novel than 'what happens next', there's more to an adventure than the decision tree of where to go and what to do.

I don't care how good a DM you are, the 73rd time your players are presented with walking down a ten-foot wide corridor of dressed stone, checking wooden doorways for locks and traps, they're going to lack a lot of the magic they felt the first 20 or 30 times they had that experience.

Some people are happy to eat Wendy's cheeseburgers their whole life. Some get a bit bored and enjoy the novelty of schwarma or vietnamese subs. That doesn't make cheeseburgers terrible.