Quote from: Black Vulmea;582708:banghead:

Moria is a huge dwarven castle and mine complex from which they extracted the most valuable mineral in Middle-earth.

Try telling Balin that it wasn't a place to explore and get rich, or die tryin'.

The dwarves moved into Moria in force, it was a colonisation effort, and partly a war. They weren't aware there was a Balrog in the depths. They didn't send in lone rag tag bands of freeswords piecemeal to make the place safe.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;582708Please, spare me the 'dungeon-as-plot-device' crap.

It may or may not have been a plot device, but it sure wasn't a classical dungeon.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;582708:banghead:

Moria is a huge dwarven castle and mine complex from which they extracted the most valuable mineral in Middle-earth.

Try telling Balin that it wasn't a place to explore and get rich, or die tryin'.

The best depiction of Moria is in Lord of the Rings Online. I never "got it" with the MERPS version but after playing through it on Lord of the Rings Online I finally saw its possibilities and the possibilities of Megadungeons in general.

Quote from: The Traveller;582710The dwarves moved into Moria in force, it was a colonisation effort, and partly a war. They weren't aware there was a Balrog in the depths. They didn't send in lone rag tag bands of freeswords piecemeal to make the place safe.


It may or may not have been a plot device, but it sure wasn't a classical dungeon.

The style of exploration the Dwarves used is known as the expedition style. You have a large group that moves into an area and sets up a base. Then you split up into smaller group to explore the immediate area. After you have a sense of the place, you develop what you want to systematically explore. You send out smaller groups to setup caches and once those are setup you send out small exploration parties in various direction to systematically explore.

Doesn't sound incompatible with a typical roleplaying campaign at all. There is a lot of opportunity for small scale action with an expedition.

Also back in the day some adventuring groups did this with Blackmoor and Greyhawk. Particularly if they found a safe haven or a group they could ally with on a lower level.

So it is very much part of the dungeoneering tradition.

Quote from: estar;582714The style of exploration the Dwarves used is known as the expedition style.

Expedition style is a mountaineering term for setting up a series of camps on a mountain.

QuoteExpedition style (or "siege" style) refers to mountaineering which involves setting up a fixed line of stocked camps on the mountain which can be accessed at one's leisure, as opposed to Alpine style where one carries all of one's food, shelter, equipment etc. as one climbs.

It has nothing to do with this:

Quote from: estar;582714You have a large group that moves into an area and sets up a base. Then you split up into smaller group to explore the immediate area. After you have a sense of the place, you develop what you want to systematically explore. You send out smaller groups to setup caches and once those are setup you send out small exploration parties in various direction to systematically explore.

Another term saved from hapless hijacking. What you're describing is colonisation, as I said. And what happens when colonisers meet resistance is they pile on more and more troops until the resistance goes away.

Quote from: estar;582714Doesn't sound incompatible with a typical roleplaying campaign at all. There is a lot of opportunity for small scale action with an expedition.

No doubt, but the cavalry are rarely far away in colonisation efforts, which makes it a substantially different game. That's more of a military game.

This is the problem with too-wide definitions of ad hoc terms, they come to mean so much that they are eventually meaningless.

The dungeon as an adventure format, a way to organize the unknown ripe for exploration, is actually one of the most (if not THE most) efficient, ergonomic structure of play RPGs came up with in their 40ish years of existence. It was an evolutional stroke of genius, and it endures because of it.

I came to this realization too, in 1983 at ten years old, that the "dungeons" in Dungeons & Dragons didn't reflect actual dungeons in the historical sense. About two minutes later I got over it. In D&D, the dungeons are just like the dragons: fantasy.

Quote from: Benoist;582523I have the completely opposite reaction to yours. I wonder why, after the advent of the internet, with so much information now available to explain exactly what a dungeon is and can be at a game table, with so much variety readily available out there, ... why it is that so many gamers still don't get what dungeons are, how they can be used for great effects in an ongoing campaign, and cling to the horror stories they've heard or experienced themselves with this sucky DM raping childhoods running some bland "door-monster-treasure-repeat" game that led nowhere, and STILL believe that's the be-all, end-all of all dungeon crawling experience.

When we were in the late 80s early 90s, with so many games that had to have a marketing that differenciated them from the ancestor, D&D, by basically saying that the rules where more this and less that than D&D, "Call of Cthulhu is much more evocative and more lethal," "RuneQuest is more 'realistic'," and so on... fine. It was easy to just drink the kool aid back then and think "D&D wasn't really an RPG compared to this really cool game we have now." Now? Today? Gamers shouldn't have the luxury to pretend that D&D is a "proto role playing game" that "always sucks and is boring in play" blah blah blah. Honestly. Now that's just being stubborn, to me.

This, right here. Every time I read another "so why would people like dungeon" post nowadays, I just die a bit inside.

Then I shrug my shoulders and continue enjoying dungeoneering.

Quote from: The Traveller;582710It may or may not have been a plot device, but it sure wasn't a classical dungeon.

The 'classical' D&D dungeon is a construct specific to the game, but it's inspired by both real-world and literary examples.

Seriously, it's not that fucking difficult - unless you're a pretentious douchebag.

Quote from: The Traveller;582521Correct me if I'm wrong here, but basically dungeons are normally seen as a more or less disconnected series of rooms with increasingly more dangerous challenges as groups progress.

You're wrong.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;582774Seriously, it's not that fucking difficult - unless you're a pretentious douchebag.

Alright ladies, put down the handbags before someone's mascara gets smudged. I'm not trying to tell anyone what to enjoy, just figuring out the persistence of the phenomenon.

I run games in the big wide open, preferring to let the group nudge themselves along the route and acting or reacting in ways which may or may not have been prepared by myself beforehand. Moreso in situations where I've set up a chain of events and set things in motion. I enjoy the segments of the game where the lost city or reefed ship gets infiltrated, but they'd be few and far between usually. The idea of running games where they are a regular occurence is a bit alien.

If that doesn't work for you, fair enough.

Quote from: The Traveller;582700Mechanically its level based

That's the convention today, but originally modules were not meant for regular table-top play. They were designed for tournaments. They became insanely popular, however, and so TSR produced them since they sold well. But that was never meant to be a "typical" dungeon.

QuoteSprawling underground communities with their own ecosystems, politics and factions that could legitimately stand up to scrutiny are a different issue

No, they aren't. Because aside from some published modules which were designed for Tournament Play (and thus were designed with progressively harder challenges as one went, as it was part of the competition), the Old School dungeons I saw at the table were, in fact, not anything like what you seem to think they were.

Rather, they were set up in a way that made sense. They could be a smallish community to a largish one to an entire underground setting (megadungeons) but they weren't the CRPG standard of you have Giant Bees in a room next to a Troll and they never leave their rooms. I know that's a common belief, but it's not true.

The whole point behind Gygaxian Naturalism was to try to make a plausible "dungeon" ecosystem http://grognardia.blogspot.com/2008/09/gygaxian-naturalism.html

Quotebut then again looting those might be somewhat akin to invading a whole country, like the goblins in the Misty Mountains. Nobody in their right mind not also heading a lengthy column of craggy dwarves would set foot inside the place.

That's what Hirelings and Henchmen are for. You plotted expeditions, brought lots of people with you, and retreated or laid low when things got too hot. It wasn't so much an "invasion" as it was a "raiding party". Get in, grab the goods, get out.

Quote from: The Traveller;582719Expedition style is a mountaineering term for setting up a series of camps on a mountain.

It has nothing to do with this:

Another term saved from hapless hijacking. What you're describing is colonisation, as I said. And what happens when colonisers meet resistance is they pile on more and more troops until the resistance goes away.


No doubt, but the cavalry are rarely far away in colonisation efforts, which makes it a substantially different game. That's more of a military game.

This is the problem with too-wide definitions of ad hoc terms, they come to mean so much that they are eventually meaningless.

I hate dungeons as well but Aliens is a great dungeon adventure.

Quote from: The Traveller;582783I'm not trying to tell anyone what to enjoy, just figuring out the persistence of the phenomenon.

The "persistence of the phenomenon" is that it's fun to explore a sprawling ruin and find treasures while hazarding monsters and traps out to kill you.

It's not gawddamn rocket surgery.

Quote from: The Traveller;582783The idea of running games where they are a regular occurence is a bit alien.

I 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.

Quote from: estar;582709If want to read a exhaustive analysis of "why dungeons?" read Playing at the World by Jon Peterson. Particularly all of section 1 and section 3.2.1.1 Maps and Dialogs. The Mines of Moria was part of why dungeons so readily used. Although other factors were important as well.

I might point you more to Section 2.5.1, which is specifically about the conceptual origins of dungeons. It too starts by asking why on earth a dungeon would be a place of adventure, then it looks at some sources in Howard, Leiber, and yes, Tolkien, to find an answer. There are plenty of dungeon crawls in the literature, though more so in the Hobbit than in LotR when it comes to Tolkien.

Quote from: The Traveller;582783Alright ladies, put down the handbags before someone's mascara gets smudged. I'm not trying to tell anyone what to enjoy, just figuring out the persistence of the phenomenon.

Black Vulmea is a bit over the line, but he does have a point. Most "What's the deal with dungeons???" threads consist of someone asking what's so fun about dungeoneering, and then shooting down all arguments presented.

Speaking as someone who's relatively new to the joys of dungeoneering, and who cut his D&D teeth on urban and wilderness adventures, there's a wealth of writing on OSR blogs, and on OSR-friendly forums like this one, about the joys of dungeon exploration. Benoist's megadungeon thread (which I've had the honor of setting in motion) offers an interesting start; Ben is now populating the "bandit level" with interesting characters and plots who go far beyond the classic, Munchkin-like "kick down door, fight monster, loot treasure" idea that so many people have.

Quote from: The Traveller;582783I run games in the big wide open, preferring to let the group nudge themselves along the route and acting or reacting in ways which may or may not have been prepared by myself beforehand. Moreso in situations where I've set up a chain of events and set things in motion. I enjoy the segments of the game where the lost city or reefed ship gets infiltrated, but they'd be few and far between usually. The idea of running games where they are a regular occurence is a bit alien.

If that doesn't work for you, fair enough.

The "megadungeon" is essentially just a dungeon, or a complex of several communicating dungeons, large enough to entertain the players and GM for a whole campaign. If the levels are big enough, and diverse enough in their population, that PCs will need to think their way through more than the usual hazards (e.g. ally with one monster tribe against another, as Jeff mentioned it happened in his game, or lay a ghost to rest by investigating his demise and finding and destroying an evil artifact), I'd say it's a very viable way to run a campaign.

As for "the group nudge themselves along the route and acting or reacting in ways which may or may not have been prepared by myself beforehand", well, random tables and jaquaying your dungeon are a good way of getting these things to happen.

So, what do you think?