Quote from: Phillip;802951I do not see the game's underworld as a mere hole in the ground, any more than Annwn or the Sidhe is just that - or the caves of Ningauble or the Sea King's harem, or those of the Seven Geases, or the Fishing of the Demon Sea, or the Probable Adventure of the Three Literary Men; or the domains the Quest of Unknown Kadath, the Fortress Unvanquishable Save by Sacnoth, or the Tree of Swords and Jewels as mere suburbs subject to the civic laws of Materialists.

Arneson, Gygax, St Andre, Stafford, etc., were naturally not informed by works derived from nothing but the games they had yet to publish. What they had at hand was a heritage of myth and folklore, and modern fantasy by writers drawing from those same wellsprings.

What is the appeal of fantasy for a game, if not its boundless possibility? To reduce it to 'sensible' wizards and dragons standing in for cannons in a replay of the War of the Roses seems almost pointlessly thin gruel. Even thinner was the Deryni series, a dynastic romance with "psychic powers" that got medieval costuming but missed the medieval mind by a mile.

D&D and T&T were created not to simulate a particular fictional world, but to evoke the whole ocean of story involving dark labyrinths, fearsome monsters, cunning traps and puzzles, and wondrous treasures won at great peril. Faery and Dreamland, heavens and hells, do not "make sense" the way a Burger King in Poughkeepsie does - and those who love to fare Beyond the FieldsWe Know treasure that.

I find it hard to understand why anyone who accepts the guise of Beren and Luthien as werewolf and vampire to infiltrate Angband should suddenly expect Morgoth's fastness to be 'sensible'.

All very noble but it doesn't do that at all.
Some of the ideas are there and you could make your adventures into these things but the tools to do so are not in the box so to speak. The early published modules have none of that mystique and the games mechanics lend themselves far more to Fafhard and the Grey Mouser than they do to Gawaine and the Green Knight. The monster manual lacks any faery dust and even Diety and demigods was used more like a book of stuff to kill than to inspire any sort of entangled fantasy.
This is going to be default when a game is targetting young wargamers. Look at OG's posts for how the game was played, like a tank combat game or a skirmish. The game you describe requires emotional enagement with the setting and a willingness to do a lot more thesp than I think was present. I may be misreading it of course.

You are misreading. I am speaking of how I received D&D in 1976, when I was 10 years old. I partook then not at all of the thespian, my viewpoint being that of a fantasy version of  myself venturing by torchlight into the wonderland of giant mushrooms, magic wells, greedy dwarfs, etc. - for which my imagination was primed by tales of Aladdin, Jack the Giant Killer, and so many others.

And I cited but two of Fafhrd and Mouser's many ventures beyond the sensible affairs of Lankhmar's black togas; that you should regard them as contrary is hard for me to fathom.

Again, it seems odd that you invoke OG. Has he not also suggested that the game is the thing, that stuff that's fun is not to be disdained and discarded on account of not meeting some ivory-tower criterion based on history - when the subject at hand is not a simulation of history (of which we have plenty) but a game of fantasy?

Quote from: Phillip;803014You are misreading. I am speaking of how I received D&D in 1976, when I was 10 years old. I partook then not at all of the thespian, my viewpoint being that of a fantasy version of  myself venturing by torchlight into the wonderland of giant mushrooms, magic wells, greedy dwarfs, etc. - for which my imagination was primed by tales of Aladdin, Jack the Giant Killer, and so many others.

And I cited but two of Fafhrd and Mouser's many ventures beyond the sensible affairs of Lankhmar's black togas; that you should regard them as contrary is hard for me to fathom.

Again, it seems odd that you invoke OG. Has he not also suggested that the game is the thing, that stuff that's fun is not to be disdained and discarded on account of not meeting some ivory-tower criterion based on history - when the subject at hand is not a simulation of history (of which we have plenty) but a game of fantasy?

Fair points.
I think however that your experience differs from what I have seen of other early school play perhaps the age and your DM made the difference.
when I have run games for kids, right down to age 4 I fill the worlds with wonders and unfathomable secrets and sure they play themselves but at that age the barrier between the game, life and reality are blurry so that can happen. When I have played with young adults there is very little wonder and mostly its down to numbers and hitting stuff and takes on that much stronger gamer angle when the mechanics dominate the imagination.
The wargame angle of early games seems much more important. If characters die make a new character, don't get invested in your PCs they are just paper like the commandoes in your WW 2 skirmish game.

As for Fafhard and the Mouser you are correct I guess there is a split there between the Lankhmar stuff and the other. D&D is great at the Lankhmar stuff but I don't think does wonder very well.

The dungeon premise has nearly always been far more than a wargame, even in TSR's Dungeon Modules. Notable exceptions included the first (Steading of the Hill Giant Chief) and what was for many the first played (Keep on the Borderlands).

I regard the element of tricks, puzzles, mysteries and outright enigmas as essential to a proper dungeon. Even if one cares only for hacking and blasting, the endless variety possible when one need not ask 'how' - but "What if?" suffices - is surely one reason why fantasy swept Hannibal, Napoleon and Rommel from the center of the hobby-game world (as Gygax predicted in the foreword to D&D).

Quote from: Omega;802248Alot of mines if you looked at their floor plans do not follow a regular pattern. They follow the ore veins or the path of least resistance.
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Yes, but most D&D dungeons don't look like mines.  I'm not saying there aren't some real-world examples of potential dungeons, though; on the contrary, I think that there's something worth exploring in terms of using real-world examples to base dungeons on.

if you want a dungeon that makes sense you could get the lady of pain to send the party to one

Earthdawn's dungeons (the Kaers) made perfect sense. Underground cities were metahumanity shielded itself while a horde of extraplanar creatures ravaged the surface. Sometimes fiends would breach the Kaer's barrier seal, and would then proceed to corrupt the entire place and its inhabitants.

The hordes are gone from the surface, and people have colonized it again, but many Kaers remain sealed. Whether there are survivors inside or not, it's something up to adventurers to find out.

Quote from: JongWK;804162Earthdawn's dungeons (the Kaers) made perfect sense. Underground cities were metahumanity shielded itself while a horde of extraplanar creatures ravaged the surface. Sometimes fiends would breach the Kaer's barrier seal, and would then proceed to corrupt the entire place and its inhabitants.

The hordes are gone from the surface, and people have colonized it again, but many Kaers remain sealed. Whether there are survivors inside or not, it's something up to adventurers to find out.

Yes, in some settings you can create justifications for dungeons to look the way they do in that setting.

All the dungeons in Albion, for example, will be based on having rationales for their presence.

Currently running 1st Ed AD&D. Dungeons don't figure into it at all. There are abandoned monasteries, temples, ruins of castles, caverns, etc., but no dungeons mainly because we're playing a pseudo-Arabian/Mediterranean setting in which they make no sense, as you say, especially as there are no demihumans or most other fantasy tropes (like these bizarre dungeons lying around everywhere for no reason). Nobody has missed dungeons at all.

Quote from: Matt;805925Currently running 1st Ed AD&D. Dungeons don't figure into it at all. There are abandoned monasteries, temples, ruins of castles, caverns, etc., but no dungeons mainly because we're playing a pseudo-Arabian/Mediterranean setting in which they make no sense, as you say, especially as there are no demihumans or most other fantasy tropes (like these bizarre dungeons lying around everywhere for no reason). Nobody has missed dungeons at all.

Hmm.  Sounds like you described many 'dungeons' quite well.

Quote from: Old Geezer;802298Remember, when Phil Barker (Prof MAR Barker) razzed me about "what do all those monsters eat," I put a McDonald's on the sixth level of the dungeon.

"What do they eat?  They eat "FUCK YOU," Phil, that's what they eat."

Choosy monsters eat at the dungeon's Rat on a Stick franchise on level 4.  Ask for it by name!


-TGA

I've recently been reading about Shamanism, and something struck me. When dungeon delving, the characters are metaphorically (or 'actually' depending on the system and narrative etc) entering the underworld and meeting supernatural entities. They are banishing them (killing things), learning from them (taking their stuff, getting the magical information etc) or are being guided through an initiation of some kind (going up in levels).

You could quite happily draw comparisons between shamanic experiences, experiences with Fairies or other strange supernatural beings. But my point is that inadvertently the dungeon delve looks a bit like a prehistoric ritual experience played round a table with dice.

Does it make sense? Maybe not from a functional nuts and bolts perspective. But it makes sense from a cultural point of view where individuals are wanting to enter these sacred spaces and commune with "the other side" (whilst rolling dice and eating snacks). So on two levels: you have characters performing these acts by proxy for the players. And you have the players being guided through this experience by an elder or more attuned guide (the GM).  

Time to write a poncy degree thesis on the subject!

A bit about caves and things.

Yah, I'd agree with that.

"How did the dungeon come to be like that?" is answered in the same way as all the other questions players have about the game world.

"Interesting question. How will your character discover the answer?"

While they ponder that, I roll for wandering monsters.

Seriously, it's alright for some things to be mysterious, to remain unknown. What you call, "that makes no sense!" I call a "sense of wonder."

Quote from: BarefootGaijin;806088I've recently been reading about Shamanism, and something struck me. When dungeon delving, the characters are metaphorically (or 'actually' depending on the system and narrative etc) entering the underworld and meeting supernatural entities.

Yes. Sometimes this is even done literally, like in Arrows of Indra's Patala Underworld.