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I have to admit some puzzlement over the fascination of the some parts of the hobby with dungeons. Dungeons are prisons, not underground developments containing assorted neighbouring alpha predators. In the French form of Dungeons and Dragons, the title of the game is "Donjons et Dragons", which means "Castles and Dragons".

Correct 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.

As a video game, that works great, which would have been interesting if we didn't have video games. As an RPG, its a head scratcher. I love underground or abandoned building/spaceship/city crawls as much as the next man, but in my games they tend to have a purpose and focus. Indiana Jones after the artifact, Ripley out to rescue a child, the theme is retained throughout the dungeon, which makes sense. Its a rare and pleasurable occasion when players go into the lions den for a bearding.

So what do dungeons mean to you, and why are they interesting as opposed to quest-like endeavours? Do you prefer to keep them theme based, how do you work them?

I 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.

But whatever. YMMV and all that.

My view of classic dungeons was radically changed when I read the following musing on Philotomy's OD&D site here (http://web.archive.org/web/20110720002649/http://www.philotomy.com/#dungeon). (Note that the original site is down for some reason so I have resorted to using the Internet Wayback Machine to retrieve the page).

The idea of a dungeon without seeming purpose or explanation used to bother me, too.  Now I can see one mode of dungeon that just "is" - a malevolent force in itself, unexplainable and otherworldly.  I have to also admit that this view of the dungeon as a place where normal physical laws can be warped and the consequences braved for riches has also been influenced by "Roadside Picnic" by the Strugatsky brothers.  In fact, I was talking to some friends just the other night about playing some D&D in the near future with just such a setup.  


-TGA

I don't think I've used a "dungeon"[1] in a fantasy setting in quite possibly decades at this point.  They're an artificial metagame construct that simply makes no sense in most settings.

Something like a chthonic underworld from the Indo-European myths is a possibility, if you're going for a mythic/metaphoric feel; a necropolis or tomb complex also works.  But none of those is going to look much like a typical "dungeon".

I prefer ruined cities, temples to evil gods, undersea grottoes, soaring spired palaces, that kind of thing if I'm going to have a "dungeon".


[1] In the FRPG sense of the term

Whether the dungeon is presented it's full illogical glory or given a coherent theme and rationale doesn't really matter a whole lot to me and in the context of this discussion, from my perspective, the difference is a bit of a red herring.

What it comes down to I just prefer more urban adventures with crime, conspiracies, intrigue and investigation interacting with a variety of NPCs than exploration and survival based adventures with traps, puzzle and physical challenges.

Also I kind of like it when the opponents my character is fighting motivations extend beyond it wants to eat me or its protecting its territory. Where is the poetry in that?

Of course this is one of the many reasons the superhero genre rocks!

Here, it's simple:

We live above ground. There's sunlight, at least part of the time. We can see stuuf that's approaching us. We can seek high ground, to get a better view of the dangers. Some wilderness areas, like dense forest, change that, but even there, we feel we have escape options.

The "dungeon" is the opposite of that. We have no control of the environment, and if it's sprawling and includes one-way doors or chutes, we may wind up lost and unable to get back to a place we know. You have to "solve" the dungeon, like a puzzle, to get where you want and what you want.

Whether the dungeon is small and makes some kind of sense or is large and seemingly random is irrelevant. It's the whole "opposite of where we live, and therefore scary and a challenge" that's important. It has broad appeal. The other stuff is a matter of individual taste.

Should they have been called something other than "dungeons"? Like "labyrinth"? Maybe. But the first dungeon really was a dungeon, in addition to being a mythic dungeon, so that name stuck.

"Dungeon", in D&D terms, is shorthand for the place where D&D's magic happens -- where PCs interact with secrets, traps and puzzles, and with the setting's history; where monsters are fought and treasure acquired; in short, the go-to destination for adventurers seeking their fortune, which is the essence of D&D.

I mean, I'm just a kid who started gaming in the 90s, but I still got a couple of books back in the day (including my prized D&D RC) which referred to PCs as "adventurers" rather than "heroes". Small, but telling difference.

Clark Ashton Smith's Mount Voormitradeth ("The Seven Geases"), Fritz Leiber's House of Angarngi ("The Jewels in the Forest"), Robert E. Howard's lost city of Xuchotil ("Red Nails") and of course, Tolkien's Lonely Mountain ("The Hobbit") are some of the source fiction (pulp fantasy) templates for the D&D dungeon. See also our own Philotomy Jurament's "The Dungeon as a Mythic Underworld" essay (can't find a link right now, I'll link it up later).

The name "dungeon" probably originates with Gary Gygax's Castle Greyhawk dungeons; though Dave Arneson probably did it first, I suppose Gary did codify the idea and shape it into its modern form.

Quote from: The Traveller;582521I have to admit some puzzlement over the fascination of the some parts of the hobby with dungeons.

Because they're arguably the most robust game structure (http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/15140/roleplaying-games/game-structures-part-3-dungeoncrawl) ever developed for an RPG: Easy to prep; easy to run; easy to play.

QuoteI love underground or abandoned building/spaceship/city crawls as much as the next man, but in my games they tend to have a purpose and focus. Indiana Jones after the artifact, Ripley out to rescue a child, the theme is retained throughout the dungeon, which makes sense. Its a rare and pleasurable occasion when players go into the lions den for a bearding.

In that case, you love dungeons. Because that's what a dungeon is.

Slightly more complicate is the "megadungeon". When properly implemented, a megadungeon is basically a complete sandbox environment unto itself. While initial forays may default to nothing more than "look for treasure", over time the PCs will develop their own goals and agendas for the megadungeon complex.

For example, the megadungeon complex in my Ptolus campaign (which, much to my surprise, the players started exploring "because it was there") have resulted in them forming an alliance with a tribe of goblins; going on a search-and-rescue mission for a group of young explorers who got lost; selling the location of an arcane orrery to a major noble family; and then seeking vengeance after the noble family's research team was murdered by bad guys. (Among other things.)

(For more on that, check out Treasure Maps & The Unknown: Goals in the Megadungeon (http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/1900/roleplaying-games/treasure-maps-the-unknown-goals-in-the-megadungeon) and (Re-)Running the Megadungeon (http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/5/roleplaying-games/re-running-the-megadungeon).)

In either case, of course, you can also get the "this is just a bunch of random rooms with random stuff in them" thing happening. But that's just a badly designed dungeon. There are also badly designed mystery scenarios; it doesn't mean mysteries are a bad idea.

A 'dungeon' really means any site-based adventure with restricted movement.  Most often, it takes the form of a subterranean structure, but that's not required.  The hollowed out trunk of a great tree; a ginormous living creature, or a ship could all be 'dungeons', along with traditional worked passages or natural caves.  

As far as 'random assortment of alpha predators', that's not what you'd typically expect from a dungeon.  The 3.0 module 'Sunless Citadel and the module 'Forge of Fury' are good examples of what a dungeon COULD be.  

In Sunless Citadel, there was a fortress built by a dragon cult, but it collapsed into a canyon.  The upper levels of the fortress were then occupied by kobolds.  More recently, goblins have invaded and are pushing into the dungeon.  

The fortress sits above a natural warren of caverns, where a twisted druid tends an evil tree.  

In Forge of Fury, the dwarves had a fortress that was later captured by orcs.  The orcs are still there, but they don't occupy the full area.  Some less traveled ways are home to low-metabolism ambush predators (like a Lurker).  Meanwhile, Duergar from below are pushing up into the fortress as well.  A natural cavern accessible from the Dwarven stronghold has become the home for a black dragon.  

A good dungeon has a history - someone built it for a reason.  If the original occupants are gone, new occupants might have taken up residence, but they're going to have a reason.  But assuming a dungeon has more than one way in or out, there's no reason several groups couldn't occupy it, any differently than animals occupying nearby caves in the 'real world'.

Quote from: The Traveller;582521Dungeons are prisons, not underground developments containing assorted neighbouring alpha predators.

Yeah, and the game-world should totally have like gunpowder and indoor plumbing and electric trains run by shocking grasp spells!


:rolleyes:


Fucking Moria, dude. That's what dungeons are.

Yeah, Moria is a great dungeon. It starts with the watcher in the water colapsing the entrance, trapping everyone inside. Entrapment is great for games -- it totaly puts an end to the 15 miniute adventuring day and those endless round trips to the magic item store back in town.

Moria, like any good dungeon, serves to constrain the protagonists. Moria is not a dungeon in the strictly literal sense that it is a prison with prisoners. Moria is a dungeon in the metaphorical sense that it is a trap -- it captures and destroys anyone who lacks the decisiveness, wisdom, strength or luck to break free.

"We have barred the gates, but can not hold them for long. We cannot get out. They have taken the Bridge and the Second Hall. Frár and Lóni and Náli fell there. The pool is up to the wall at the Westgate. The Watcher in the water took Óin. We cannot get out. The end comes. Drums, drums in the deep. They are coming."

Dungeons are a fucking boring conceit that my own first group ditched within a few months of starting (along with modules) and I've never gone back to. I can't think of anything more tedious than coming up with an entire setting and tying the characters to it, then ignoring 99% of it to spend all your time down a hole fighting monsters in generic rooms.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;582640Fucking Moria, dude. That's what dungeons are.

Moria's actually a good example of what I'm talking about. It didn't exist as a place to explore and plunder, it was the route you took when a panopticon-guided army of mutant psychopaths on steroids armed with sharp metal infection delivery systems was waiting for you on the alternate road. It was very much a theme based dungeon, with the theme being "get out the other side as fast as possible".

The idea of the classical dungeon seems to have been a merging of the Lonely Mountain which was a bona fide greed and vengeance trip, albeit with one monster, and Moria/the Misty Mountains. Mechanically its level based, which video games as mentioned do a lot better these days. Of course back then there weren't any. As with many things at the dawn of the hobby, a most peculiar confluence of influences.

Some interesting comments though, TGA that article just reinforces what I'm saying about video games, while touching briefly upon the intrigue that can happen similar to a king's court. Why not just play in a king's court then? He's describing a puzzle box more than a living milieu. The unexplainable and otherworldly outpost thing is a nice twist, however it loses its edge if you're tripping over them twice a month.

Robust doesn't mean good, or perhaps better to say that dungeons are a great tool for creating dungeons rather than adventures. Yes you can have adventures in dungeons, but for many players the classical dungeon raises some fairly irritating metagame questions.

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

I don't feel etymologically comfortable calling an abandoned city or ship a "dungeon" to be honest, but that's just me. Maybe the term does have currency as a description of a closed boundary adventuring area.

Quote from: The Traveller;582700Moria's actually a good example of what I'm talking about. It didn't exist as a place to explore and plunder, it was the route you took when a panopticon-guided army of mutant psychopaths on steroids armed with sharp metal infection delivery systems was waiting for you on the alternate road. It was very much a theme based dungeon, with the theme being "get out the other side as fast as possible".

: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'.

Please, spare me the 'dungeon-as-plot-device' crap.

Quote from: The Traveller;582521I have to admit some puzzlement over the fascination of the some parts of the hobby with dungeons. Dungeons are prisons, not underground developments containing assorted neighbouring alpha predators. In the French form of Dungeons and Dragons, the title of the game is "Donjons et Dragons", which means "Castles and Dragons".

Dungeons are what they are because of the "founders effect". Because Arneson ran the Blackmoor Dungeon, Gygax ran the Greyhawk Dungeon, and because the two of them ran dungeons so did everybody else.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Founder_effect

If 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.

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.

So what do dungeons mean to you, and why are they interesting as opposed to quest-like endeavours? Do you prefer to keep them theme based, how do you work them?

Dungeons, as an locale to adventure in, endure because it very easy to explain to novice referee.

Draw a maze with rooms, then number each room, afterward write down what monsters, and treasures (if any) are in each room. Place the characters at the entrance and commence play.

While you could describe other adventures simply no other form of adventure has both the simplicity and the scope of action that the dungeon offers to novice players and referee. For the referee it is straightforward to setup, for the players there are choices with meaning at various points but not so many to be overwhelming. Most of this is due to the maze structure of a typical dungeon.

So the combination of the founder's effect and the benefits of the format as allow the dungeon to endure as a place to adventure.

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 (http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?t=21636) (which I've had the honor of setting in motion) offers an interesting start; Ben is now populating the "bandit level" (http://www.therpgsite.com/showpost.php?p=578383&postcount=79) 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 (http://roll1d12.blogspot.com.br/) and jaquaying your dungeon (http://www.thealexandrian.net/archive/archive2010-07c.html#20100723) are a good way of getting these things to happen.

So, what do you think?

D&D-style dungeons persist because they are superb vehicles for fun fantasy role playing.  They work.  They're fun.  They help facilitate a manageable structure and a good ongoing game.  They're fun.  Did I mention they're fun?

I agree there's also some "founders' effect" in there.  But you know why the "founders" used a lot of dungeon play?  Because dungeons work and they're fun and they help facilitate a manageable structure and a good ongoing game.

I'll say one thing, the new Judge Dredd movie is an awesome dungeon flic.

Quote from: Philotomy Jurament;582818D&D-style dungeons persist because they are superb vehicles for fun fantasy role playing.  They work.  They're fun.  They help facilitate a manageable structure and a good ongoing game.  They're fun.  Did I mention they're fun?

I agree there's also some "founders' effect" in there.  But you know why the "founders" used a lot of dungeon play?  Because dungeons work and they're fun and they help facilitate a manageable structure and a good ongoing game.

Two responses to this:

1) *BEEP BOOP* WHAT IS FUN? *BEEP BOOP*
2) But man, like...what's so deep about fun, man?

Seriously, though, as somebody who likes thespy storytelling crap, and somebody who's played some really friggin' pretentious White-Wolf games in high-school (It's about ~real~ role-playing, screw dungeons!), I do not get why other people don't get dungeons.

They're exotic locations of any construction type the GM can come up with filled with baddies that want to kill you and traps and puzzles and wondrous unexplainable things and treasure and it's basically everything adventures are made of in a format any Joe can put together and have fun with.

It's not the only way to play, it's not necessarily a better way to play, but it's a structure that has worked for years and been ported over to board-games and video-games with great success because it's such a solid, game-able concept.

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

The Raid.

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.

It is also used for caving expeditions and how they explore cave systems. For example the Krubera Cave in the Caucasus explored by the  Ukrainian Speleological Association or Cheve Cave in Mexico explored by Bill Stone's team.

Also various Arctic, Antarctica, African and South American expeditions were organized like this.

Do some reading before making pronouncements from on high.

Dungeons are like pizza.

Quote from: The Traveller;582700Moria's actually a good example of what I'm talking about. It didn't exist as a place to explore and plunder,

It was for the goblins when they killed the dwarves and took over.

Quoteit was the route you took when a panopticon-guided army of mutant psychopaths on steroids armed with sharp metal infection delivery systems was waiting for you on the alternate road. It was very much a theme based dungeon, with the theme being "get out the other side as fast as possible".

Many parties have had to run for their lives. What's your point?

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

Raiders of the Lost Ark is even better: it has traps, treasure, creepy-crawly things and magical shit that shouldn't be disturbed. Harryhausen's Sinbad movies are also great dungeon adventures.

Quote from: Spinachcat;582872Dungeons are like pizza.

Putting pineapple on them makes you retarded?

Quote from: Spinachcat;582872Dungeons are like pizza.

Yes. Some of them can be world class. Others are crap. There's a whole fast food industry built around them, but also some real good stuff, including the Italian home made variety which, when you've tasted the stuff, really makes you want to home cook pizzas yourself. There are actual restaurants that cook the real deal based on granma's recipe with a twist, and these are really worth checking out. But then there's always those dudes who only tasted the frozen stuff who come at you to rant about how much pizzas suck and they're unhealthy next to 'real food', you know, while in fact they don't know anything beyond the carton boxes and Pizza Hut and that asshole who kept delivering the stuff one hour late so of course ALL pizzas in the world are all delivered late and taste like crap, right? Right. Not a bad analogy now, all things considered.

I tend towards smaller, more realistic/plausible dungeons.  That's in no small part due to Rolemaster's thirty second adventuring day.  Crippled people and their friends in comas don't handle the second level of the dungeon very well.  :D

Quote from: Benoist;582885pizza analogy

Surprisingly accurate. A vicious circle of low expectations --> low effort --> low reward.

WRT pizza-related epiphanies, a few years ago, I was in Pistoia, a small town between Pisa and Florence, and at the end of our project meeting, the reception included a pizza-like delicacy that was perfection in simplicity. It is hard to express how much it was above other pizzas, even very good ones. Maybe they put cocaine in the flour or something. But those Italians knew something others don't.

Quote from: estar;582861Do some reading before making pronouncements from on high.

I'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?

Quote from: Elfdart;582879It was for the goblins when they killed the dwarves and took over.

The Balrog kicked out the dwarves in the first place. The orcs and goblins just made it their home after that. In the latter case it was a war.

Quote from: Elfdart;582879Many parties have had to run for their lives. What's your point?

The 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.

Quote from: Elfdart;582879Raiders of the Lost Ark is even better: it has traps, treasure, creepy-crawly things and magical shit that shouldn't be disturbed.

Yes, mentioned that already.

Quote from: BenoistYes. Some of them can be world class. Others are crap. There's a whole fast food industry built around them, but also some real good stuff, including the Italian home made variety which, when you've tasted the stuff, really makes you want to home cook pizzas yourself. There are actual restaurants that cook the real deal based on granma's recipe with a twist, and these are really worth checking out. But then there's always those dudes who only tasted the frozen stuff who come at you to rant about how much pizzas suck and they're unhealthy next to 'real food', you know, while in fact they don't know anything beyond the carton boxes and Pizza Hut and that asshole who kept delivering the stuff one hour late so of course ALL pizzas in the world are all delivered late and taste like crap, right? Right. Not a bad analogy now, all things considered.

Should I have put *TRIGGER WARNING* in the title? I haven't seen this many sandy vaginas since my beach porn phase.

Quote from: The Butcher;582816Black Vulmea is a bit over the line . . .

A bit?

Quote from: The Butcher;582816. . . 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.

Yeah, 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'm reaching my fill of it.

I've had this out w/ Benoist before and came to peace with his conception of 'dungeons.' It's not a form of the word I'm used to, but since I'm relatively new here and it's a regular lingua franca jargon around here, I use it here. The concept he refers to is something that I understand and use, but never termed it as such as dungeons had a more concrete understanding and set of tropes around it for me and most of the other people I played rpgs with.

Basically 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.

As a concept, I've been using this 'since forever'. However I just used the terms macro-network & micro-network (or similarly termed). To use the term "dungeons" caused/causes ambiguity with me and people with which I game. So I just learn which groups to use this jargon.

As for my conception of dungeon? It's usually a moderate-sized underground prison with multiple jail cells, interrogation rooms, and possibly an oubliette or two. Otherwise it's a very lethal subterranean complex, sometimes fashioned by intelligent beings (often ruins), sometimes naturally developed (caves), with it's own ecosystem (as life exploits any space it can, right?). They can be large or small, and generally a siren call to adventurers with lures of great treasure.

It's a far more concrete setting understanding and carries with it the baggage of previous play experience, naturally. It's not a playstyle I enjoy anymore because of my sheer ennui due to its oft repetition. It's like asking me to play an rpg and the first thing that lands on our group's plate is a winding quest to Save the World, again. It's just not fun anymore because I don't feel like I had a choice on what to play.

Now if I had a table explicitly state "we're going to clear out dungeons for fame and fortune!" I'd be cool with that. If I had a table explicitly state "in this sandbox we're going to use a matrix framework to emulate living world dynamism, just like a D&D dungeon!" I again would be cool with that. But to offer D&D without an explicitly stated premise and get the too familiar "go kill the goblins in the nearby cave... uh-oh, you've learned they're merely pawns in a plot to End the World!" I'm ready to leave. Had my fill of that, want to do anything else.

I'll also point out that from a 'the world is a real thing, with predictable responses', dungeons tend to make sense.  While in the medieval world, we see a lot of castles, we know that they're vulnerable to artillery and aerial assault.  Both of those things are easily replicated in a fantasy environment.  

A team of adventurers on griffon mounts or a flying dragon poses a real risk to a castle - but can largely be defended from a 'dungeon'.  In this sense, a dungeon is more like a World War II era bunker or the Maginot Line.  These are defenses that are hard to remove by traditional offenses, so require 'siege warfare'.

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.

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.

You hide the caches.

Quote from: The Traveller;583035Maybe 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.

Moria was a fairly empty place. And so were Greyhawk and Blackmoor. The latter can be read in First Fantasy Campaigns published by Judges Guild.

Quote from: LordVreeg;583066Just because hostilities are expected does not make it an invasion.  That is ridiculous, nor are the two terms mutually exclusive.

Quote from: Doctor Jest;583082Only if we're re-defining the word "invasion", because otherwise, that's a complete and utter bullshit statement.

I can pull sentences out of context of the comment and attack them too, folks. Although if you want to pointlessly quibble on semantics technically even a burglary is called a "home invasion", its a perfectly adequate use of the term, in particular with reference to the "de facto" qualifier.

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.

This.

Quote from: estar;583121You hide the caches.

That's not even going to be dignified with a response. I would however be interested to read your sources on Tolkien's dwarven subterranean colonisation tactics, since I'm not aware that there are any.

Quote from: estar;583121Moria was a fairly empty place. And so were Greyhawk and Blackmoor. The latter can be read in First Fantasy Campaigns published by Judges Guild.

Moria was like the sea - big and dark, but never empty.

Quote from: daniel_ream;582539I don't think I've used a "dungeon"[1] in a fantasy setting in quite possibly decades at this point.  They're an artificial metagame construct that simply makes no sense in most settings.
(...)
I prefer ruined cities, temples to evil gods, undersea grottoes, soaring spired palaces, that kind of thing if I'm going to have a "dungeon".

[1] In the FRPG sense of the term

That's weird, I always thought that "ruined cities, temples to evil gods, undersea grottoes, soaring spired palaces" were "dungeons" in the FRPG sense of the term. (Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan, Temple of Elemental Evil, Blood Sea of Istar, Castle Ravenloft, High Clerist Tower...)

Quote from: Melan;582751Every time I read another "so why would people like dungeon" post nowadays, I just die a bit inside.

One convention that I regularly attend has a very large number of Das Schwarze Auge gamers. Some of them still mock D&D and dungeons to this day, without having played a single session.

Dungeonslayers has become quite a hit among those DSA gamers... The default DS module? An OSR one-page-dungeon style "Dungeon 2 Go (http://www.dungeonslayers.com/?page_id=236)".

So far, the irony has escaped them.

Quote from: StormBringer;582990I 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.

So very true, from the way the party is formed to the weird mirror room in the sorcerer's spire. Plus: witty banter at the camp fire.
Only the finale looks a bit scripted ("you arrive just in time to witness the ceremony") but then, Dragonlance was AD&D...

Quote from: The Traveller;583128I can pull sentences out of context of the comment and attack them too, folks. Although if you want to pointlessly quibble on semantics technically even a burglary is called a "home invasion", its a perfectly adequate use of the term, in particular with reference to the "de facto" qualifier.

Yes, you can and do.
But your comment was pretty simple, unless you'd like to explain it better, very easy to decipher.
 This statement,
"Any situation where you can expect hostile organised resistance is a de facto invasion, not an expedition. "
specifically sets the two terms, 'expedition' and 'invasion,' as mutually exclusive, and the use of the word, 'any' makes it an absolute global statement.  The term 'de facto' as a qualifier merely says that this is what happens in this situation, in fact if not by law, and has no mitigating properties.

So, unless there is something I am missing, (and I am all ears here), please excuse people for reading the words you wrote as they are written and not as you might have meant them.  Context has little to do with an absolute statement.

Quote from: The Traveller

Quote from: Originally Posted by daniel_reamWe're apparently redefining "dungeon" to mean "exploring Darkest Africa", so what the hell.

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

This.

Well, it seems that Dirk, Ben and a few others of us have diffrent ideas what makes a 'dungeon'.

Quote from: Dirk RemmeckeThat's weird, I always thought that "ruined cities, temples to evil gods, undersea grottoes, soaring spired palaces" were "dungeons" in the FRPG sense of the term. (Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan, Temple of Elemental Evil, Blood Sea of Istar, Castle Ravenloft, High Clerist Tower...)

Quote from: meWhen 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 beginning, but the 'exploration zone'?

So this term of 'Exploration Zone' seems to be what some of us could use interchangably and synonymously with the term 'Dungeon'.  This includes the subteranean exploration of the D series modules, which was days and days of travel, and I still think of it in the same way in some of my more recent adventure designs.

If you don't want to drift the definition of "dungeon", then "site-based adventure" is a reasonable if dull-sounding alternative term.

Quote from: LordVreeg;583174Yes, you can and do.
But your comment was pretty simple, unless you'd like to explain it better, very easy to decipher.
 This statement,
"Any situation where you can expect hostile organised resistance is a de facto invasion, not an expedition. "
specifically sets the two terms, 'expedition' and 'invasion,' as mutually exclusive, and the use of the word, 'any' makes it an absolute global statement.  The term 'de facto' as a qualifier merely says that this is what happens in this situation, in fact if not by law, and has no mitigating properties.

Eh you realise you've just said that the sky is indeed blue, but that doesn't make it blue.

Quote from: LordVreeg;583174So, unless there is something I am missing, (and I am all ears here), please excuse people for reading the words you wrote as they are written and not as you might have meant them.  Context has little to do with an absolute statement.

Definetely putting *trigger warning* in future titles

Quote from: LordVreeg;583174Well, it seems that Dirk, Ben and a few others of us have diffrent ideas what makes a 'dungeon'.

Yes, people have different ideas about things.

Quote from: Grymbok;583175If you don't want to drift the definition of "dungeon", then "site-based adventure" is a reasonable if dull-sounding alternative term.

Well I was reading that thead about James M apparently conning people and how everyone was looking forward to a good dungeon, and the incongruity of it just leapt out. Its even more of a pileup than "sandbox" and I'm afraid to get into what people think "gonzo" means.

I would like that last sentence stricken from the record, on the grounds that handbags would explode the thread.

At this stage its just people rehashing old arguments they think they're having anew. And LordVreeg seems to have discovered a grammatical Möbius loop of some sort.

The level of definition-douchebaggery got pretty high in this one, didn't it?

Personally, once the concepts are communicated clearly, I feel the onus of the communicator has ended.  Bitching about misuse of words seems less an RPG discussion and more a masturbatory exercise for people who like to think themselves as better than their peers.

Surely that was a side-effect, and not the intent, yeah?

:)

Quote from: LordVreeg;583174Well, it seems that Dirk, Ben and a few others  us have different ideas what makes a 'dungeon'.

So this term of 'Exploration Zone' seems to be what some of us could use interchangably and synonymously with the term 'Dungeon'.  This includes the subteranean exploration of the D series modules, which was days and days of travel, and I still think of it in the same way in some of my more recent adventure designs.

I will add that most of the terms being used "dungeons", etc are descriptive i..e describes what people actually do. They are not perfect fits because what they are describing are new types of entertainment/games.

In the late 60s the dungeon meant a underground prison. By the late 70s it took on the added meaning of a series of underground mazes with keyed rooms filled with monsters and treasure.

To confuse things further it turns out that that the keyed map concept could be applied to many other type of locations such as wildernesses, and cities. That there is a large overlap in what you do to prepare both.

And to add to the complexity it was found that because of the focus on the individual character,  roleplaying games have enormous flexibilty. Adventures and campaign can be created and run that don't involve much in the way of keyed locations at all. For example a murder mystery focusing on the player meeting various NPCs rather than detailing locations.

In truth nearly all role-playing campaigns are hybrid which the exact mix based on the referee and players interests and preferences.  It is rare when a session or a campaign is just all about one thing. A campaign centered around a dungeon could easily have a murder mystery or a solving a murder mystery could involve exploring a dungeon.

The dungeon continues to fascinate beyond it virtues of simplicity and ease of prep because a maze with keyed room is a blank slate.  To be filled with the contents of the referee own creation.  It doesn't have to be ruins filled with monsters and treasures. It can be an active lair requiring an invasion planned in a military style. It could be a vast network of caverns like the D series requiring expeditions similar to spelunking. Or anything else.

In Playing at the World, the esstential difference between RPGs and Boardgames/Wargames was the fact that RPGs are games in which anything can be attempted. That statement is not only true of the player side but the referee side. RPGs are also games where anything can be created for the players to experience.

So in the end is boils down to personal preference and individual tastes. Added to this is the fact some elements of roleplaying are going to be more popular than others. Dungeons happen to be one of those elements that proved to be enduring since the beginning of the hobby.

Quote from: The Traveller;583176Eh you realise you've just said that the sky is indeed blue, but that doesn't make it blue.

No.  I can't even see where you are getting that from, in all honesty.  You complained that your comment was taken out of context.  I broke down said comment, in which you made the statement that 'expedition' and 'invasion' are mutually exclusive if organized resistance is anticipated, with only the term 'invasion' being proper.

And I am aware people have different ideas about things, but we were talking about a specific term in this thread, and specific points and questions have been raised.
 How do you feel the term 'dungeon' compares with 'site-based adventure' and 'exploration zone'?

Quote from: LordVreeg;583174What else is a 'dungeon' in RPG terminology, especially if you go back to the beginning, but the 'exploration zone'?

Technically it's a graph (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graph_%28mathematics%29), which is what distinguishes it from an open city, necropolis, besieged keep, etc.

I don't really like the "site based adventure" expression because to me, what's being designed is not the adventure, but the means or tools for the GM to run the game so the PCs experience the adventure, i.e. the adventure is what you do in actual play, not what's in your notes.

I think the "exploration site" is a better equivalent.

Quote from: Benoist;583191I don't really like the "site based adventure" expression because to me, what's being designed is not the adventure, but the means or tools for the GM to run the game so the PCs experience the adventure, i.e. the adventure is what you do in actual play, not what's in your notes.

I think the "exploration site" is a better equivalent.

Yes, I have the same feeling.

Quote from: estar;583187I will add that most of the terms being used "dungeons", etc are descriptive i..e describes what people actually do. They are not perfect fits because what they are describing are new types of entertainment/games.

...

So in the end is boils down to personal preference and individual tastes. Added to this is the fact some elements of roleplaying are going to be more popular than others. Dungeons happen to be one of those elements that proved to be enduring since the beginning of the hobby.

An insightful summation, thanks.

Quote from: LordVreeg;583188No.  I can't even see where you are getting that from, in all honesty.  You complained that your comment was taken out of context.  I broke down said comment, in which you made the statement that 'expedition' and 'invasion' are mutually exclusive if organized resistance is anticipated, with only the term 'invasion' being proper.

I really don't care enough to argue it out with you.

I'm right though.

:p

Quote from: estar;583187How do you feel the term 'dungeon' compares with 'site-based adventure' and 'exploration zone'?

Quote from: Benoist;583191I think the "exploration site" is a better equivalent.

Dungeon really does have a very negative connotation. At best for most people stumbling in its an S&M fetish vibe, and other than our newest mod I'm not sure how many of us are into that sort of thing.

What, decadent orgies weren't a part of Roman politics?

Quote from: The Traveller;583194Dungeon really does have a very negative connotation.

Let's try this one more time. Somehow, when you think of pizza, the first and only thing that comes to mind is the frozen stuff, and when someone tries to tell you that is not representative of all a pizza can be, you basically resort to the notion that we're making shit up and agree we're like Ron Edwards and all that (Thanks, Daniel, fuck you too).

My God. Do you have any idea how stubbornly ignorant and entitled (yes, entitled: "I don't know what the fuck I am talking about but whatever! My opinion is just as good by virtue of being an opinion!") you sound right now?

Quote from: Benoist;583198My God. Do you have any idea how stubbornly ignorant and entitled (yes, entitled: "I don't know what the fuck I am talking about but whatever! My opinion is just as good by virtue of being an opinion!") you sound right now?

If this is affecting you physically, could you fire up the webcam there?

Yes, I get it, you like pizza. I'm just saying, read it, that the term has negative connotations which are jarring for me personally. I'm not saying you're wrong to enjoy a spot of dungeon crawling having seen one of your dungeon maps, and been duly impressed. That particular comment was in reponse to LV and I thought your own by way of continuing the conversation.

Quote from: The Traveller;583200If this is affecting you physically, could you fire up the webcam there?

LOL we're not there yet. ;)

Quote from: The Traveller;583200Yes, I get it, you like pizza. I'm just saying, read it, that the term has negative connotations which are jarring for me personally. I'm not saying you're wrong to enjoy a spot of dungeon crawling having seen one of your dungeon maps, and been duly impressed. That particular comment was in reponse to LV and I thought your own by way of continuing the conversation.

OK. It does puzzle me that the 'dungeon' would be reminding you of S&M instead of what they've been in the context of RPG gaming since its inception, though, especially considering we're on a gaming forum here. It doesn't bother me at all, the same way it wouldn't bother a medievalist calling the central tower of the castle's high court a 'dungeon'. I honestly don't even see the point of bringing it up, besides talking about the likes of BADD, Jack Chick and Pat Pulling, i.e. people we really shouldn't give a shit about in the first place.

If the intent is to start talking about how 'dungeon' is a bad word we shouldn't be using, we might as well excise devils and demons from AD&D, switch the feel of the game to ren fairs and fairies and ... wait. That's been tried somewhere before, hasn't it? :D

Quote from: Benoist;583205OK. It does puzzle me that the 'dungeon' would be reminding you instantly of S&M instead of what they've been in the context of RPG gaming since its inception, though. It doesn't bother me at all, the same way it wouldn't bother a medievalist calling the central tower of the castle's high court a 'dungeon'.

Well if you invite someone round for an enjoyable dungeon crawl and they show up clad in a black rubber catsuit casually sporting a stiff seven foot leather paddle over their shoulder and a bucket of hot oil in the other hand, don't say you weren't warned.

I wasn't really involved with RPGing for about ten (plus) years, so I don't have the inbuilt associations I guess.

Quote from: Benoist;583205If the intent is to start talking about how 'dungeon' is a bad word we shouldn't be using, we might as well excise devils and demons from AD&D, switch the feel of the game to ren fairs and fairies and ... wait. That's been tried somewhere, hasn't it?

Devils and demons are devils and demons though, they aren't a code word for anything that fights back. I'm not arguing with you here, just pondering the lineage of the word at this stage, which has been fairly adequately outlined.

Quote from: The Traveller;582700Moria's actually a good example of what I'm talking about. It didn't exist as a place to explore and plunder, it was the route you took when a panopticon-guided army of mutant psychopaths on steroids armed with sharp metal infection delivery systems was waiting for you on the alternate road.

You're missing the forest for the trees here: Moria is a great literary example of a megadungeon specifically because it is a blank slate upon which many goals can be written. For the Fellowship it's a highway. For Balin it's a seat of power. Gandalf went to Moria years earlier in his search for Thrain. Aragorn had been there previously, as well, for reasons which are not specified.

Arguing over whether Balin's mission is most accurately described by the word "expedition", "colonization", or "invasion" is irrelevant.

Quote from: The Traveller;583209Well if you invite someone round for an enjoyable dungeon crawl and they show up clad in a black rubber catsuit casually sporting a stiff seven foot leather paddle over their shoulder and a bucket of hot oil in the other hand, don't say you weren't warned.

This, OTOH, is simply idiocy of the highest order. Whether you're talking RPGs or pop culture, the term "dungeon" is best known today for its D&D associations. Then there's the historical dungeon as prison. Then, somewhere below that, is the association with a sexual fetish. Do a Google search. Educate yourself.

Context is often important to meaning.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;583211This, OTOH, is simply idiocy of the highest order.

Serious Business, this internet.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;583211Whether you're talking RPGs or pop culture, the term "dungeon" is best known today for its D&D associations.

I wouldn't agree with this. You might be surprised how many people have heard of dungeons but not dungeons and dragons. Or who have heard of D&D but don't know the first thing about it. Or are just not going to associate it with the word first. And if they do, how many of those are going to think of "underground prison" regardless. I get the feeling you might have an inflated impression of the influence D&D has on popular culture these days.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;583211Then, somewhere below that, is the association with a sexual fetish.

No, that's it, life of the party of the year award goes to Justin Alexander. Hands down. I know its only September but we can close the voting.

Quote from: Benoist;583198Let's try this one more time. Somehow, when you think of pizza, the first and only thing that comes to mind is the frozen stuff, and when someone tries to tell you that is not representative of all a pizza can be, you basically resort to the notion that we're making shit up and agree we're like Ron Edwards and all that (Thanks, Daniel, fuck you too).

My God. Do you have any idea how stubbornly ignorant and entitled (yes, entitled: "I don't know what the fuck I am talking about but whatever! My opinion is just as good by virtue of being an opinion!") you sound right now?

You think?  a few people read a statement written by the esteemed Traveller, make the mistake of interpreting it as written, take the time to break the damn thing down for him, and then says he doesn't want to take the time to explain himself in his own thread?

Not that this site is of consequence enough to rile a soul, but a willful conflation of terminology and a tendency to quit every field once challenged doesn't really make up high-quality thread.

Hey, Justin, not that it would fit into the pattern, but you know you can check what search terms starting with dungeon are used in Google the most to get a handle on the popular use of the term.  A quick analytics is easy.
https://adwords.google.com/o/Targeting/Explorer?__c=1000000000&__u=1000000000&ideaRequestType=KEYWORD_IDEAS

Quote from: LordVreeg;583227Not that this site is of consequence enough to rile a soul

Could have fooled me.

Quote from: LordVreeg;583227Hey, Justin, not that it would fit into the pattern, but you know you can check what search terms starting with dungeon are used in Google the most to get a handle on the popular use of the term.  A quick analytics is easy.
https://adwords.google.com/o/Targeting/Explorer?__c=1000000000&__u=1000000000&ideaRequestType=KEYWORD_IDEAS

Just to mention in passing, you're supporting the guy who seemed to seriously believe I was postulating a sound surprise spanking for Ben by a stiletto heeled domination expert. Better idea, run down the street and take a straw poll of people asking them the first word that springs to mind when they hear "dungeon".

Just remember to turn on the webcam first eh.

Quote from: The Traveller;583234Just to mention in passing, you're supporting the guy who seemed to seriously believe I was postulating a sound surprise spanking for Ben by a stiletto heeled domination expert. Better idea, run down the street and take a straw poll of people asking them the first word that springs to mind when they hear "dungeon".

Just remember to turn on the webcam first eh.

Somehow, I think I get it.  
I get the idea, and the difference, as well.

Not only does the word 'dungeon' not necessarily mean 'underground prison' in this context, but it really was quite by coincidence that Gygax and Arneson started using that word in the first place.  Hanging up on whether S&M is more or less popular than D&D is an odd choice.

Words frequently have multiple meanings, and even multiple pronunciations, and I'm not convinced that the complainants are genuinely struggling with this concept.

Ham-handed example -
I'm confident that, being on some form of broadband, you are aware of the word 'router'.  Base word, 'route', sounds like 'r-ow-t'.  Unless you're talking about a 'route', as in a highway, such as 'route 66' (or at Sonic 'route 44') - pronounced like 'root'.  Again, same base word, and when you analyze it just a tiny bit, same base meaning as well.  Yet you'll never, ever, ever hear anyone complaining about his internet 'rooter'.  Why?

Context.

Quote from: mcbobbo;583250Context.

Even better, take the sentence, "Want to play in my dungeon?"  Say it in your FLGS.  Say it in a swingers' club.  Say it as a 14th century monarch to a poacher.  Context is important.

The whole word meaning/language argument comes off as stupid and trollish, to me.

Quote from: Philotomy Jurament;583253The whole word meaning/language argument comes off as stupid and trollish, to me.

Well, I've already clarified that earlier.

Although if this had been a troll thread, hypothetically, it would have been an epic success.

Quote from: Benoist;583198(Thanks, Daniel, fuck you too).

If I take a pizza, and then I fold it in half and quickly fry it in oil, do I still have a pizza (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panzerotti)?

In archaeology, there's a tradition where all dig sites of a particular culture are named after the very first dig site of that culture (i.e. a Catal Hoyuk-style site).  This causes all manner of problems when, as is frequently the case, the first dig site is not at all representative of the overall culture.  Imagine if the very first thing you excavated five thousand years from now was the Lincoln Memorial at the National Mall; from that point forward, all dig sites - strip malls, residential suburbs, ruined skyscrapers - would be referred to as "seated giant" sites, or some such.

That's what's going on here.  A "dungeon" is simply one way of implementing a graph-based interactive environment, but because it was the first such implementation, every graph-based interactive environment is called a "dungeon" whether it's anything that actually looks like a dungeon.

So fuck you right back, you fat greasy frog; if you spent less time looking for things to trip your butthurt mangina triggers, you might be able to contribute to the conversation instead of whining and insulting people.

You know how I know you're a pretentious bastard, The Traveller?

You act like one, and your avatar matches how you act :)

This whole thread reads like you're holding your nose up at what you perceive to be badwrongfun, and then coaching your words to avoid a quote that says that despite the theme being obvious.

Quote from: daniel_ream;583262If I take a pizza, and then I fold it in half and quickly fry it in oil, do I still have a pizza (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panzerotti)?

In archaeology, there's a tradition where all dig sites of a particular culture are named after the very first dig site of that culture (i.e. a Catal Hoyuk-style site).  This causes all manner of problems when, as is frequently the case, the first dig site is not at all representative of the overall culture.  Imagine if the very first thing you excavated five thousand years from now was the Lincoln Memorial at the National Mall; from that point forward, all dig sites - strip malls, residential suburbs, ruined skyscrapers - would be referred to as "seated giant" sites, or some such.

That's what's going on here.  A "dungeon" is simply one way of implementing a graph-based interactive environment, but because it was the first such implementation, every graph-based interactive environment is called a "dungeon" whether it's anything that actually looks like a dungeon.

So fuck you right back, you fat greasy frog; if you spent less time looking for things to trip your butthurt mangina triggers, you might be able to contribute to the conversation instead of whining and insulting people.

The dungeon in the context of this hobby here we are talking about has meant an exploration site from the inception of the D&D game. Now the OD&D rules meant it as an "Underworld" setting, as opposed to the Wilderness which was organized and played using hex map (Outdoor Survival board or other) and adapted protocols, but it's been extrapolated to mean "ruins", "castles" and all sorts of other exploration sites since at least Tegel Manor in 1977. Technically, I think we could go back to the original levels of Castle Greyhawk based on Alice in Wonderland and King Kong and the like which, later, would spawn EX1 and EX2, but whatever.

(http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_DSs2bX13hVc/SWY_qxqegcI/AAAAAAAAAjw/1MecEUjZLcw/s1600/tegelmanor.jpg)

So you can keep yapping all you want about whatever has fuck all to do with the conversation (You know we are talking about D&D right?), try to obfuscate the exchange by making appeals to the stupid amongst us, drown us under a crapton of irrelevant pedantic bullshit and act all mightier-than-thou, but the fact of the matter remains, as far as D&D dungeons are concerned, you do not know what the fuck you are talking about. So... fuck you more, princess! ;)

Quote from: daniel_ream;583262This causes all manner of problems when, as is frequently the case, the first dig site is not at all representative of the overall culture.

Do the problems you're describing have analogues in RPG settings, though?  I think outside of pedantry, everyone basically 'gets' what a dungeon is.  Is this not the case?

Quote from: The Traveller;582521As a video game, that works great, which would have been interesting if we didn't have video games. As an RPG, its a head scratcher.

Going back to the OP for a minute - why?

Why does a video game being strong at something necessarily mean that RPGs shouldn't use it?

E.g. hit points.  Video games are much better at tracking hit points, damage - really anything to do with numbers - because they're always, necessarily, tied into a really, really powerful calculator.

I'm sure there are other examples, so what are you seeing here that I'm not?

Quote from: mcbobbo;583250Ham-handed example -
I'm confident that, being on some form of broadband, you are aware of the word 'router'.  Base word, 'route', sounds like 'r-ow-t'.  Unless you're talking about a 'route', as in a highway, such as 'route 66' (or at Sonic 'route 44') - pronounced like 'root'.  Again, same base word, and when you analyze it just a tiny bit, same base meaning as well.  Yet you'll never, ever, ever hear anyone complaining about his internet 'rooter'.  Why?

Context.

As it happens, here in the UK we pronounce it "rooter". Unless we're talking carpentry, in which case it's a "rowter".

Quote from: Grymbok;583285As it happens, here in the UK we pronounce it "rooter". Unless we're talking carpentry, in which case it's a "rowter".

No shit?  That's hilarious, considering I just labeled it as impossible...  Oh well, learn something new every day.

If it helps, though, I did just have this same conversation with an Israeli coworker.  She's using the 'ow' pronunciation, but only in the internet appliance case.  It actually took some convincing to get her to believe that they were in fact the same word.  So I blame the English.

Quote from: mcbobbo;583274I think outside of pedantry, everyone basically 'gets' what a dungeon is.  Is this not the case?

It seems pretty clear to me that it's not.   I think that if you were to ask the vast majority of D&D players that don't hang out on OSR fora what a "dungeon" was, they'd tell you it was an underground structure of connected rooms filled with monsters and traps.  Whether the design and placement of such is arbitrary or nonsensical is irrelevant to the definition.  In fact, many of the early TSR modules explicitly refer to the ruined keep or castle or city and the dungeon underneath it.

The dungeon being an underground complex is, I would argue, an essential part of the definition for the vast majority of players.  The fact that a tower, a keep, a manor house, a ruined city, a necropolis, etc. can be designed and run the same way as a dungeon doesn't make those things "dungeons" in any useful sense of the word - it means that all those things and dungeons are examples of a specific class of game design that doesn't have a very good name yet.

Look at it this way: if people consistently used the word "Dragon" to mean "any monster" (the same way they mean "monster" to mean "anything not a PC"), don't you think there'd be a bit of understandable confusion?

Give up, people. The Traveller is argüing in bad faith and choosing not to engage actual responses.

Let's focus on avenues that can lead to actual, constructive outcomes. For instance:

Quote from: daniel_ream;583189Technically it's a graph (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graph_%28mathematics%29), which is what distinguishes it from an open city, necropolis, besieged keep, etc.

I'm not sure this is an actual, valid distinction unique to dungeons. Dungeons aren't typically plotted as graphs, but as maps, with well-defined metrics; they can certainly be plotted as graphs (cf. Melan diagrams (http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/168563-dungeon-layout-map-flow-old-school-game-design.html)), but so can any map with features. Just about everything that can be mapped is a graph. The classic use of graphs in RPGs, for me, is V:tM's relationship diagrams.

But maybe I'm misunderstanding your point, so I'd be glad if you could elaborate.

Quote from: daniel_ream;583288Look at it this way: if people consistently used the word "Dragon" to mean "any monster" (the same way they mean "monster" to mean "anything not a PC"), don't you think there'd be a bit of understandable confusion?

No, actually, even in this extreme case I'd wager that people can figure it out.  Specifically because if/when the 'dragon' is an actual 'dragon' it gets described with a precedent 'type'.  So there are 'dragons' and there are 'Gold Dragons' which are two different things.

Not that I'm saying anyone actually does this.  I'm only saying that making 'dragon' functionally equivalent to 'monster' does and changes nothing.

Quotemon·ster/ˈmänstər/
Noun:   
An imaginary creature that is typically large, ugly, and frightening.

If it were a problem, you could object to it now, without changing it to 'dragon'.  In no way is a pony (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/pony.htm) a 'monster'.  It is not imaginary, not typically large, nor ugly, nor frightening.  Yet, here it is in the same category as the 'Giant Bombardier Beetle' and the Tarrasque.

But since it is commonly assumed that we can move from the less specific 'monster' to the more specific 'pony' there is no objection.

And I only chose pony because it defies all three (edit - four, sorry) of the definition-criteria above.  Many of the other entries defy two and many more defy at least one.

So I'll have to assume the objection to 'dungeon' not adhering to 'underground European prison that probably never actually existed in the first place' isn't being made in good faith.

Quote from: daniel_ream;583288It seems pretty clear to me that it's not.   I think that if you were to ask the vast majority of D&D players that don't hang out on OSR fora what a "dungeon" was, they'd tell you it was an underground structure of connected rooms filled with monsters and traps.  Whether the design and placement of such is arbitrary or nonsensical is irrelevant to the definition.  In fact, many of the early TSR modules explicitly refer to the ruined keep or castle or city and the dungeon underneath it.

The dungeon being an underground complex is, I would argue, an essential part of the definition for the vast majority of players.  The fact that a tower, a keep, a manor house, a ruined city, a necropolis, etc. can be designed and run the same way as a dungeon doesn't make those things "dungeons" in any useful sense of the word - it means that all those things and dungeons are examples of a specific class of game design that doesn't have a very good name yet.

Look at it this way: if people consistently used the word "Dragon" to mean "any monster" (the same way they mean "monster" to mean "anything not a PC"), don't you think there'd be a bit of understandable confusion?

No, no doubt about the possible confusion. I do see your point that a dungeon has an 'outside of the RPG' connotation of underground.  While Tegel Manor and Under the Storm Giant's Castle certainly meet most of our criterion of an 'exploratoin site' and therefor, a Dungeon, I can understand your point that someone outside the industry may have some isues due to the connotation.

Quote from: The Traveller;583128I can pull sentences out of context of the comment and attack them too, folks. Although if you want to pointlessly quibble on semantics technically even a burglary is called a "home invasion", its a perfectly adequate use of the term, in particular with reference to the "de facto" qualifier.

A burglary as a "Home Invasion" doesn't fit your narrow definition either. You said an invasion is "Any situation where you can expect hostile organised resistance" which is hardly true of burglary. In fact, most burglars avoid burglaring anywhere they can expect hostile, organized resistance, choosing instead to burglar places where no one is present to offer hostile, organized resistance.

So your own example runs contrary to your stated definition.

Quote from: The Butcher;583291But maybe I'm misunderstanding your point, so I'd be glad if you could elaborate.

I would hazard a guess that a graph has nodes and edges (links), which are roughly analogous to rooms and corridors.  Rooms would be the 'action sites', and corridors would be the 'connections' between those actions.   It rather breaks down except in the broadest of terms, because a room can very well be a connection devoid of interactions, while a corridor can be the locus of a variety of different actions.

At 10,000ft, the physical structure of most dungeons can be said to look like a graph for the most part.  Once you get on the ground and start interacting with it, the similarities readily disappear.  Certainly, you could simply call a 'hallway' a 'node' if action takes place there, but the action is often unplanned (ie, random encounters).  Mathematical graphs are typically static, because you are trying to determine relationships among data points, if there is one.  Dynamic graphs are generally for representing physical systems, like a computer (or social) network where nodes are added or removed arbitrarily.

That said, graphs are not a terribly inappropriate way of visualizing a dungeon, or how players would possibly interact with it.  Certainly, it could demonstrate an unintended shortcut that allows the party to bypass much or all of the rest of the structure.  Over on Google+, there is an #rpgdevs group, and it was suggested using Tufts University's VUE software to map out adventures or dungeons, which I am experimenting with.

Quote from: LordVreeg;583298No, no doubt about the possible confusion. I do see your point that a dungeon has an 'outside of the RPG' connotation of underground.  While Tegel Manor and Under the Storm Giant's Castle certainly meet most of our criterion of an 'exploratoin site' and therefor, a Dungeon, I can understand your point that someone outside the industry may have some isues due to the connotation.

Castles would count as Dungeons, as Dungeon, in addition to a prison (often underground), has a dictionary definition of the keep or stronghold of a castle. The D&D definition is additive to the dictionary one.

The thing is you can have locations in a game that are dungeons in the techincal sense of the world without the playing it as a dungeon crawl, because said dungeons are free of monsters, traps or treasure. And you can run dungeon crawls in locations that aren't technically dungeons or even underground.

But we've sort of got to decide which of these we talking about otherwise this thread will keep going around in circles.

Quote from: The Butcher;583291I'm not sure this is an actual, valid distinction unique to dungeons. Dungeons aren't typically plotted as graphs, but as maps, with well-defined metrics; they can certainly be plotted as graphs[...], but so can any map with features. Just about everything that can be mapped is a graph. The classic use of graphs in RPGs, for me, is V:tM's relationship diagrams.

But maybe I'm misunderstanding your point, so I'd be glad if you could elaborate.

Erg.  I'm not sure I can, except to say "take a first-year course in graph theory".  I'm not being condescending; this is some fairly abstract theoretical stuff and can be hard to get your head around.

A dungeon[1] can be mapped as a graph (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graph_theory), where "interesting locations" are the nodes and the not terribly interesting parts are the edges.  Note that in general this does not mean rooms == nodes, hallways == edges; a trap in a hallway is a node, but the thirty feet of empty corridor leading up to it is probably an edge.

I think this is pretty distinct from, say, a hexcrawl, and you can see this if you map a hexcrawl as a graph.  Rather than looking something like this (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:6n-graf.svg), a hexcrawl looks like an even pattern of nodes all connected to the six adjacent nodes forever, like chainmail.

That distinction - the constraints on traversing the nodes due to the limited paths imposed by the edges connecting them - is the distinction between a dungeon and an open site plan like a ruined city or town, where something as simple as a Fly spell means you can go to any location you fancy.

Note that I'm ignoring, obviously, the use of things like Dimension Door or Teleport or Passwall or a team of crack dwarven miners[3] that let you go wherever you want in a dungeon; leaving that aside for a moment, I think there is a very valid distinction between the way PCs are expected to traverse a typical dungeon, and the way they would be expected to traverse a hexcrawl, or a political negotiation, or something not so easily represented as a graph.


[1] Where I'm defining a dungeon as "an underground complex of connected rooms filled with monsters and/or treasure"[2]

[2] Which makes my earlier point: if I have to keep saying "what I mean by 'dungeon'", then the word "dungeon" has ceased to be a useful signifier of anything.

[3] ISTR someone defeating the Tomb of Horrors exactly this way, by using such to tunnel around all the traps without ever using magic.  This is an excellent example of someone realizing that the dungeon is a graph and deciding to break out of the implied restrictions.

Quote from: Grymbok;583175If you don't want to drift the definition of "dungeon", then "site-based adventure" is a reasonable if dull-sounding alternative term.

I've always preferred Indoor and Outdoor, which are (a) relevant to the game: weapon/spell ranges (b) self-explanatory and (c) nearly impossible for even the pettifogging fucktards in this thread to waste bandwidth arguing over for several pages.

If you can imbed a graph within a node then you can easily recreate a megadungeon, right?

Sort of relates to my mildly improper term usage of macro-micro matrices. But considering matrix is one of the two predominant methods to construct graphs, I don't feel I'm too off the mark. Considering some cool usage of graphing we saw in a topic here (Village of Hommlet, IIRC), and Venn diagraming for social relationships (spheres of influence), I'd say "graph" is the best term to use here. It avoids ambiguity by becoming a broader concept (with refined internal usage) that'll generally be understood by the largest amount of people, inside and outside the hobby.

Or we could continue a semantic war and compartmentalize shared game concepts to specialized community jargon. Either is fine with me. I like this place, but it isn't the be-all-end-all of my gaming, and I've learned to float between social circles before.

Quote from: Philotomy Jurament;583253The whole word meaning/language argument comes off as stupid and trollish, to me.

Notice, too, that he ignores every other aspect of the conversation in order to obsessively focus on his S&M nonsense.

Pure trolling.

Quote from: mcbobbo;583276Going back to the OP for a minute - why? Why does a video game being strong at something necessarily mean that RPGs shouldn't use it?

I don't think it's a matter of "thou must not". But if you're talking about that kind of pure kick-down-the-door, hack 'n slash there's really no question that CRPGs deliver it in a vastly superior form: Faster resolution. Prettier graphics. Better soundtrack. And so forth.

So if you're a player looking for that kind of gameplay, you're going to be a lot more satisfied with a CRPG.

And the segment of the market that is looking exclusively for that kind of gameplay is, for all intents and purposes, lost to the tabletop RPG industry/hobby.

True story...when I first moved to New Orleans nigh 20 years ago, I went to the French Quarter.

"Alright, there's gaming here, a place called the Dungeon!"....I went in, and hilarity ensued, or would have had I not left once I saw that it, well, wasn't "that kind" of dungeon.

Quote from: mcbobbo;583276I'm sure there are other examples, so what are you seeing here that I'm not?

I was talking about level based challenge control there, I think the Pundit had a thread railing against the same concept recently. Players should have a pretty good idea whether or not they can take a trio of trolls without needing to look it up on a chart, or at least that's how I work it. Of course in my system player ingenuity can turn most combats on their head within the mechanics and without fate points, its pretty flexible that way. Also it makes the unknown that much more thrilling.

Quote from: Elfdart;583368I've always preferred Indoor and Outdoor, which are (a) relevant to the game: weapon/spell ranges (b) self-explanatory and (c) nearly impossible for even the pettifogging fucktards in this thread to waste bandwidth arguing over for several pages.

That's not (I think) the level of distinction that's being argued about here though.

The fun thing is that "RPG theory" tends towards theorywank so much that nearly 40 years after D&D was released it's still difficult to have this kind of conversation.

Anyway - there's a couple of camps arguing here, but at least one of them seems to be using "dungeon" as a synonym for "any mapped location that the exploration of can provide for an interesting RPG session". This comes back to Benoist's post in another thread that the three main times of "adventure models" (broadly - content the GM can generate to support the creation in play of an adventure) are dungeon/exploration zone, investigation, and relationship network.

There's another camp that I think is arguing that a "dungeon" is necessarily a walled environment, because it is a defining feature of a dungeon that any given location can be approached by a limited number of paths. Therefore a wilderness adventure is something different, even if it is purely presented as a "series of interesting locations on a map" in the way of a classic dungeon.

Quote from: daniel_ream;583326Erg.  I'm not sure I can, except to say "take a first-year course in graph theory".  I'm not being condescending; this is some fairly abstract theoretical stuff and can be hard to get your head around.

A dungeon[1] can be mapped as a graph (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graph_theory), where "interesting locations" are the nodes and the not terribly interesting parts are the edges.  Note that in general this does not mean rooms == nodes, hallways == edges; a trap in a hallway is a node, but the thirty feet of empty corridor leading up to it is probably an edge.

I think this is pretty distinct from, say, a hexcrawl, and you can see this if you map a hexcrawl as a graph.  Rather than looking something like this (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:6n-graf.svg), a hexcrawl looks like an even pattern of nodes all connected to the six adjacent nodes forever, like chainmail.

That distinction - the constraints on traversing the nodes due to the limited paths imposed by the edges connecting them - is the distinction between a dungeon and an open site plan like a ruined city or town, where something as simple as a Fly spell means you can go to any location you fancy.

That was actually pretty informative, thanks.

Now, do you feel graph theory has any tricks & tips to offer to the discerning dungeon-building DM?

Quote from: Grymbok;583413Anyway - there's a couple of camps arguing here, but at least one of them seems to be using "dungeon" as a synonym for "any mapped location that the exploration of can provide for an interesting RPG session". This comes back to Benoist's post in another thread that the three main times of "adventure models" (broadly - content the GM can generate to support the creation in play of an adventure) are dungeon/exploration zone, investigation, and relationship network.

And just to make things more complex, these types of adventures exist in the context of a larger campaign. So what happens in actual play are hybrid situations. For example the party launches an investigation because of their relationship with the locals and part of it involves exploring a underground dungeon and an unsettled forest, both involving various factions of the locals.

There is no clear dividing line. My advice is not to try to cram things into a particular box but look at the campaign as a place that actually exists. Then devire the individual elements you need to focus on. Then use the best tools to craft each individual element.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;583391I don't think it's a matter of "thou must not". But if you're talking about that kind of pure kick-down-the-door, hack 'n slash there's really no question that CRPGs deliver it in a vastly superior form: Faster resolution. Prettier graphics. Better soundtrack. And so forth.

So if you're a player looking for that kind of gameplay, you're going to be a lot more satisfied with a CRPG.

And the segment of the market that is looking exclusively for that kind of gameplay is, for all intents and purposes, lost to the tabletop RPG industry/hobby.

I find it tragic to exclude them, though.  RPGs aren't as good at action, but they are also more flexible, which means they can be action when they have to be and something else entirely when they don't.

I've put in a lot of time on Deus Ex lately (Steam had a sale...) and I find even that game's options rather lacking.  I'm playing this sneaky, 'don't kill anybody' guy mostly just for the challenge of it.  But there's no way to do the 'boss fights' that way.  I have to use ample lethal force until the cut scene kicks in, there's simply no other way to do it.

An RPG could satisfy me in that latter way, too, but the computer game can't.

Just for the lulz to provide an example, this is about what a complete graph of the board for Clue looks like.  Throw a couple of edges on the outside connecting two nodes on each side for the secret passages.  The labour intensive part is putting the weights for the edges in there.  Obviously, the secret passages would have weights of one each, while the others range from three to 27 or so.

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/92/Complete_graph_K9.svg/200px-Complete_graph_K9.svg.png)


That is a very simple nine-room layout.  Each vertex has a degree of 8, so there are 72 edges to deal with.  Even a minimally more complicated dungeon will quickly get out of hand, especially if there is the arbitrary insertion or removal of nodes (wandering monsters) and every action site is a node.

The better use of graphs would be to plot out the adventure overall, or NPC relations and interactions, national relations, keeping track of supply and demand for more accurate economics mini-games, or even the rivalries and associations between the denizens of a dungeon.

I have nothing against the basic dungeon, I love it in fact, but in both my Albion game and my Arrows of Indra setting, I made a point of having "no Dungeons", but what I mean by that is no "dungeons-for-dungeon's-sake".

In albion what you have are castles, catacombs, tombs, burial mounds, caves, even underground cities.

In Arrows of Indra there's lost temples, ruined cities, and the nearly-infinite cavern complexes of the Patala Underworld.

You just don't have anything that's a dungeon just because... dungeon!


RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;584024You just don't have anything that's a dungeon just because... dungeon!


RPGPundit

I would think that applies to any setting which is logically thought out and developed.

Quote from: RPGPundit;584024You just don't have anything that's a dungeon just because... dungeon!


RPGPundit

That's how the gelatinous cube came about, wasn't it?  They needed to have a reason for something that keeps the dungeon from looking like a macabre episode from Hoarders.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;584035I would think that applies to any setting which is logically thought out and developed.

Quote from: Sacrosanct;584041They needed to have a reason for something that keeps the dungeon from looking like a macabre episode from Hoarders.

Putting those two ideas together explains a random encounter from a dungeon I ran about twenty-five years ago, which consisted of two goblins with brooms, a toothless old wolf pulling a dog cart full of debris, and an orc overseer with a whip.

Quote from: The Traveller;582521As a video game, that works great, which would have been interesting if we didn't have video games. As an RPG, its a head scratcher.

...So what do dungeons mean to you, and why are they interesting as opposed to quest-like endeavours? Do you prefer to keep them theme based, how do you work them?

Back in 1970-71, there wasn't much in the way of video games. The dungeon adventure concept certainly influenced computer-game designers after D&D was published.

Just as D&D spun off from wargames, so further forms have spun off from it. The "role-playing" term was a bit irksome at first, borrowed as it was from psychotherapy. By the late '70s, some people were pretty insistent that their particular interpretation of what it means is central to "proper" or "good" RPGs.

The dungeon provides an easy focus for the start of a campaign. Remember that the campaign as Arneson and Gygax developed it was a "massively multi-player" affair with the strategic elements of a wargame campaign. Maybe World of Warcraft satisfies many people today, just as other video games have scratched other itches better than paper-and-pencil games did.

They remain, however, very different experiences to many others. We enjoy face-to-face dungeon games for reasons that include the reasons people get together to play card games and board games.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;584035I would think that applies to any setting which is logically thought out and developed.

I've seen plenty of D&D dungeons that really make no sense when you think about it. Just a big mess of corridors and rooms that go on for level after underground level with no better explanation of why they're there other than "a wizard did it" (which still doesn't explain WHY he would do it that particular way).
Which is all fine, if you decide in your setting that this is just something that happens; insane wizards making vast multi-level dungeons with no apparent coherent plan or concept.

But in Albion and AoI I wanted to do things different.

RPGPundit

The sources of my fascination with "dungeons" in RPGing, other than the great fun of the RPG dungeons themselves are:

- The movies Alien and Aliens
- Much of the Raiders of the Lost Ark franchise
- The invasion of the Death Star to free the Millennium Falcon
- the Mines of Moria
- numerous James Bond film segments
- parts of the myth of Perseus
- Labyrinth
- Hogwarts
- the hedge maze in Colonial Williamsburg
- ACC's Rama books
- many other mythical, literary and cinematic sources who's specifics I can't currently remember but that I'm sure exist (such as parts of the Thieves World and Fritz Leiber stories and the Beowulf saga).

Quote from: Sigmund;584341The sources of my fascination with "dungeons" in RPGing, other than the great fun of the RPG dungeons themselves are:

- The movies Alien and Aliens
- Much of the Raiders of the Lost Ark franchise
- The invasion of the Death Star to free the Millennium Falcon
- the Mines of Moria
- numerous James Bond film segments
- parts of the myth of Perseus
- Labyrinth
- Hogwarts
- the hedge maze in Colonial Williamsburg
- ACC's Rama books
- many other mythical, literary and cinematic sources who's specifics I can't currently remember but that I'm sure exist (such as parts of the Thieves World and Fritz Leiber stories and the Beowulf saga).

You forgot Big Trouble in Little China.  :)

Also, my perennial favourite Platonic Ideal of how a AD&D session should go, Conan the Destroyer.  Hell, after Conan was released from the gladiator pits, the rest of Conan the Barbarian would make a pretty damn good AD&D session, too.

Quote from: StormBringer;584343You forgot Big Trouble in Little China.  :)

Also, my perennial favourite Platonic Ideal of how a AD&D session should go, Conan the Destroyer.  Hell, after Conan was released from the gladiator pits, the rest of Conan the Barbarian would make a pretty damn good AD&D session, too.

Totally.  I actually really liked CtD.  Yeah, it's cheesy, but if you watch it the way it was meant to be, and appreciate the cheesiness of it as intentional, it's a great movie, and an awesome one for a typical D&D adventure party.  It was a much more accurate movie of a D&D session than the actual D&D movie was.

Speaking of D&D movies, Wrath of the Dragon God was pretty good, and 'felt' like an adventure to me.

Quote from: Sacrosanct;584346Totally.  I actually really liked CtD.  Yeah, it's cheesy, but if you watch it the way it was meant to be, and appreciate the cheesiness of it as intentional, it's a great movie, and an awesome one for a typical D&D adventure party.  It was a much more accurate movie of a D&D session than the actual D&D movie was.

No kidding.  When I saw the first D&D movie, I was like "Have these people even heard of D&D prior to this?"  The second one was a little better, but somehow those crazy de Laurentiises got it exactly right almost two decades earlier.

Quote from: RPGPundit;584329I've seen plenty of D&D dungeons that really make no sense when you think about it. Just a big mess of corridors and rooms that go on for level after underground level with no better explanation of why they're there other than "a wizard did it" (which still doesn't explain WHY he would do it that particular way).
Which is all fine, if you decide in your setting that this is just something that happens; insane wizards making vast multi-level dungeons with no apparent coherent plan or concept.

AFAIR, in Skarka's urban fantasy RPG Underground the layout of subway lines was not because of transportation needs but because of something similar to "ley lines". The numerous trains and people traveling along those lines constantly recharge the "supernatural battery" of the city.

Maybe mystical hot spots require the weird architecture of classic AD&D dungeons (Temple of Elemental Evil, Tomb of Horrors) for an unhindered flow of magic.
That would open up new possibilities of dealing with dungeons - what happens if the characters disturb the pattern by causing cave-ins? Is the dungeon layout deducible by a magic-user? ("Can I make a Spellcraft roll to identify the rune this dungeon layout is similar to?")

Quote from: Peregrin;582844I do not get why other people don't get dungeons.

Because most people play in "clear the dungeon" mode, and that's boring. And, because it's so prevalent, that's what most people think dungeons are, and they think it's all dungeons can be.

With no goals, there's no investment, with no investment, the dungeon becomes a meaningless series of combats, which can happen anywhere. The same thing would be true of a city: if your only goal was to "kill everything in the city", and all you did was raid one static room after another, you'd be fucking bored.

Adding goals makes a difference. There's a reason you're there, some motivation to fight through the place (or sneak through or negotiate passage, or whatever).

But there's also a different mode, the "fantasy fucking Vietnam" mode that's by itself alien to me. I understand why dungeons can be fun, but the dungeon-as-a-raid mode is alien to me. I've never had a chance to play that way, and I'm interested in learning more about it.

Quote from: Doctor Jest;582785You 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.

Cool. Yes. That's exactly what I'm talking about. Give me some more of this.

What did you do, why did you do it, and what about it thrilled you?

Assume I know nothing about the Gygaxian mode, start with the most elemental, simple pieces and explain it to me. That's the kind of article I'm looking for.

Quote from: The Butcher;582816Most "What's the deal with dungeons???" threads consist of someone asking what's so fun about dungeoneering, and then shooting down all arguments presented.

And that's NOT what I want to do. This isn't a "convince me you're really having fun" question, it's an actual "I've never played that way (FFV), what's it like?" query.

All this recent talk of dungeoneering has got me hankering for a serious dungeon crawl. None of this namby pamby mincing around checking for traps and prodding doors open, I want natural caverns with irregular blasts of boiling steam from a nearby geyser system which heats some caverns enough to support a natural ecosystem such as appears around marine lava vents.

I want steep inclines slick with lime deposits, crawlspaces so narrow that characters have to divest themselves of their equipment including armour to get though, and some of those underwater, bubbling mud pots containing god knows what. I want denizens that know how to use these natural features for attack and defence.

The ruins of ancient temples that subsided aeons ago half calcified and overgrown with stalagmites wouldn't go amiss either. Cracks and crevices, howling ravines and thundering rapids in the deeps with damp ridges for the group to edge along, toxic and flammable gas pockets, earthquakes and inclines, inexplicable ice. The very environment itself should be among the worst dangers.

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.

Whence the notion of disconnection?

Apart from Ken St Andre's Dungeon of Gristlegrim, I have a hard time thinking of things fitting that description; it's not usual in my experience.

QuoteAs a video game, that works great, which would have been interesting if we didn't have video games.

We certainly didn't have D&D-ish video games until after we had D&D to imitate!

Some people happen to enjoy playing games with human beings, not just with computers. Why is that hard to grasp?

Quote from: StormBringer;584343Also, my perennial favourite Platonic Ideal of how a AD&D session should go, Conan the Destroyer.  Hell, after Conan was released from the gladiator pits, the rest of Conan the Barbarian would make a pretty damn good AD&D session, too.

Conan the Barbarian is a great model for a first adventure. The foray into the tower of serpents feels like d&d to me. The destroyer has pretty classic set-up as well (i remember at least one fo my GM's using that premise).

Quote from: Phillip;651095Whence the notion of disconnection?

I think he meant "discrete", in the sense that most young DM's ran "clear the dungeon" campaigns, where things in Room B seldom changed, no matter what players did in Room A, next door. Ran it right off the key, in other words, and didn't evolve the setup.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;582909A bit?


Yeah, 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'm reaching my fill of it.

Wait...how the hell can a character death be boring?

Quote from: Bill;651103Wait...how the hell can a character death be boring?

I assume people were saying that frequent character death is boring. If you die once or twice every 6-8 hour session, well not everyone likes that kind of game.

Quote from: Daddy Warpig;651101I think he meant "discrete", in the sense that most young DM's ran "clear the dungeon" campaigns, where things in Room B seldom changed, no matter what players did in Room A, next door. Ran it right off the key, in other words, and didn't evolve the setup.

Well that and commenting on the op without reading the intervening hundred and thirty odd posts is a bit silly, there was some good discussion amidst the rageposting and personal abuse.

"Why the Underworld?" is like, "Why the starship Enterprise or the Stargate?"

It's a conceit for having myriad possibilities within easy reach!

The structure of 'levels' provides a rough guide for assessing risk and reward.

The DM can provide the kernels for all sorts of interesting situations. The players can seek what happens to interest them without much worry that they're on a road to nowhere. Whether the branches are marked by subterranean or submarine tunnels, forest paths, rune-covered plinths, different kinds of cloud, or what have you, they always lead to adventure of some sort.

A different take on dungeons here (http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?t=24231), I used this method to set up a several million square kilometer dungeon with thousands of levels.

Quote from: Daddy Warpig;651105I assume people were saying that frequent character death is boring. If you die once or twice every 6-8 hour session, well not everyone likes that kind of game.

If you die that often, its not really an rpg to me.

The reason I say this is that long term character developement is what defines an rpg to me.

A character that dies after one day of existance had no chance to develope the magic of his existance.


That being said, the real risk of loss and death is very important to me in an rpg.

A quick death every day does not really work for me.

Quote from: Bill;651721That being said, the real risk of loss and death is very important to me in an rpg.

A quick death every day does not really work for me.

I agree with both these points.

Quote from: Phillip;651121The DM can provide the kernels for all sorts of interesting situations. The players can seek what happens to interest them without much worry that they're on a road to nowhere. Whether the branches are marked by subterranean or submarine tunnels, forest paths, rune-covered plinths, different kinds of cloud, or what have you, they always lead to adventure of some sort.

I think a part of what gets some people is the straight-laced ten foot wide corridor feel to many dungeons. A far more hair raising and interesting exploration game for me would be something that captures this:

(http://www.gogetadventure.com/images/view/363-caving.jpg)

(http://www.buckdenhouse.co.uk/images/caving_02.jpg)

(http://www.balitourismboard.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/caving-indonesia.jpg)

Note that has nothing to do with resource management, it's about a completely arbitrary 3-D environment where you might have to crawl for hundreds of meters with your back rubbing the roof and your belly on the floor. Maybe part of that would be submerged, and you've no idea how far underwater you have to go. That's a dungeon crawl, and good luck keeping a torch lit. Scattered about the place would be artifically or naturally widened caverns and so on as well.

Now mix that in with standard dungeon monsters and traps and you have a truly terrifying experience, the stuff of legends. Dealing with monsters who live in that environment most of their lives and know it back to front would be tough going even for the mightiest adventurers. I mean two orcs would be enough to hold off a large force, they just stand outside a crawlspace and poke the bits that emerge with spears. It's the kind of game that would reward cunning tactics.

Variety is key. Apparently, you've somehow encountered only a 10'-wide-corridor environment. If all you had encountered was a crawl-on-your-belly environment, no doubt that would be stale.

QuoteNow mix that in with standard dungeon monsters and traps...

"Standard?" Wherever you're coming from as same old same, maybe it would be a change of pace for me, because the very notion of 'standard' is pretty antithetical to my dungeoneering experience.

I would hazard a guess that if you play for a few years, then even your quaint notion of the underworld as only a literal hole in the ground might wear thin.

Quote from: Phillip;651943"Standard?" Wherever you're coming from as same old same, maybe it would be a change of pace for me, because the very notion of 'standard' is pretty antithetical to my dungeoneering experience.

Surely though that's why the minis and dungeon tiles are so wildly popular, that's the standard mode of dungeon play?

Quote from: The Traveller;651947Surely though that's why the minis and dungeon tiles are so wildly popular, that's the standard mode of dungeon play?

While the tools might be standard, the characters and places these tools symbolize in the game world might be far from standard.

I mean, these ...

(https://fbcdn-sphotos-c-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-prn1/525885_10150924465653976_821111867_n.jpg)

(https://fbcdn-sphotos-f-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-frc3/579960_10150924465783976_1786294380_n.jpg)

(https://fbcdn-sphotos-d-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-snc7/385666_10150924465713976_1561637787_n.jpg)

... use standard miniatures props and tools, and yet the places depicted are not exactly what you might expect in whatever you define as your "standard" fantasy fare. I know, because my wife (third pic) and I came up with them.

Quote from: Benoist;651958While the tools might be standard, the characters and places these tools symbolize in the game world might be far from standard.

I mean, these ...

... use standard miniatures props and tools, and yet the places depicted are not exactly what you might expect in whatever you define as your "standard" fantasy fare. I know, because I and my wife (third pic) came up with them.

I see what you're saying and having read your megadungeon thread appreciate the awesome, but how would you encompass the kind of spelunking experience depicted earlier?

I mean you run into ten orcs, kill one, and the combat is over since you have to haul the body back through a tunnel for thirty minutes to get past it, every crevice holds a potential horror, some chambers are only a meter high but much wider so all you see is Rec2-style glimpses of the goblin archers firing at you sidelong, severe claustrophobia, that sort of thing.

Quote from: The Traveller;651962I see what you're saying and having read your megadungeon thread appreciate the awesome, but how would you encompass the kind of spelunking experience depicted earlier?

I mean you run into ten orcs, kill one, and the combat is over since you have to haul the body back through a tunnel for thirty minutes to get past it, every crevice holds a potential horror, some chambers are only a meter high but much wider so all you see is Rec2-style glimpses of the goblin archers firing at you sidelong, severe claustrophobia, that sort of thing.

Role playing. I mean this is really the key. It's about the description of the environment and ensuring that it provides a variety of threats, situations, decors that keep the exploring party on its toes. If the party plays a bunch of sessions thinking it's all "same old same old" and they basically play it on automatic pilot like it's a piece of cake they've seen before, then something's gone wrong IMO, because that's not how the underworld is supposed to feel in an adventure game like Dungeons & Dragons.

1 meter high ceilings, areas of the dungeon taken over by dangerous fumes, a vertical passage having to be climbed over hundreds of meters... hell yeah! See, when I read this:

Quote from: The Traveller;651090All this recent talk of dungeoneering has got me hankering for a serious dungeon crawl. None of this namby pamby mincing around checking for traps and prodding doors open, I want natural caverns with irregular blasts of boiling steam from a nearby geyser system which heats some caverns enough to support a natural ecosystem such as appears around marine lava vents.

I want steep inclines slick with lime deposits, crawlspaces so narrow that characters have to divest themselves of their equipment including armour to get though, and some of those underwater, bubbling mud pots containing god knows what. I want denizens that know how to use these natural features for attack and defence.

The ruins of ancient temples that subsided aeons ago half calcified and overgrown with stalagmites wouldn't go amiss either. Cracks and crevices, howling ravines and thundering rapids in the deeps with damp ridges for the group to edge along, toxic and flammable gas pockets, earthquakes and inclines, inexplicable ice. The very environment itself should be among the worst dangers.

I think you'd enjoy playing a game at my game table. And when you're passed the gas pockets and ravines and crawled your way through hundreds of meters of tight underground rapids to emerge in a man-made labyrinth sprawling before you, you should feel like it's just the beginning of the adventure now, and not the end. It's not going to be a piece of cake, and those orcs? People say they tatoo their flesh with acid and build statues out of the body parts of the slain, friend and foe alike. There's one such horrors with a skull set into a mound of severed, rotting arms and legs intertwined just in front of you as you emerge from the stream, as a matter of fact, with a centipede coming out of its dead, dislocated jaw bone right now...

What do you do?

I'm working on a new megadungeon, based on what I've leaned from my current one, and one of the design goals is to turn the spelunking up to 11.

Quote from: Benoist;651965Role playing. I mean this is really the key. It's about the description of the environment and ensuring that it provides a variety of threats, situations, decors that keep the exploring party on its toes.

So the tiles are representative of irregular cavern areas where appropriate?

Quote from: Benoist;651965I think you'd enjoy playing a game at my game table. And when you're passed the gas pockets and ravines and crawled your way through hundreds of meters of tight underground rapids to emerge in a man-made labyrinth sprawling before you, you should feel like it's just the beginning of the adventure now, and not the end.

I'm more talking about the confined spaces and dripping deathtraps being where the monsters and money are, keeping the more regular areas to a minimum. It sort of makes sense when you consider the probable prevalence of natural cave systems over man made underground constructions.

Quote from: Benoist;651965It's not going to be a piece of cake, and those orcs? People say they tatoo their flesh with acid and build statues out of the body parts of the slain, friend and foe alike. There's one such horrors with a skull set into a mound of severed, rotting arms and legs intertwined just in front of you as you emerge from the stream, as a matter of fact, with a centipede coming out of its dead, dislocated jaw bone right now...

What do you do?

Gently grasp the worn leather grip of my short falchion which is known as make your mark, and pull it from my yellow grin before I emerge dripping from the chill underland waters, moving silently forward, of course! That's fantasy fucking Vietnam.

Quote from: Planet Algol;651971I'm working on a new megadungeon, based on what I've leaned from my current one, and one of the design goals is to turn the spelunking up to 11.

Yes! Load it up here I'd love to see some interpretations of the nightmare that is caving, aka heavy metal dungeons.

One of the things I like about spelunking dungeon sections, as well as the LOTFP encumbrance systems that tracks bulky/oversize objects:

A descending tunnel stacked with tight turns that you have to crawl on your belly through? So much for your tower shield, long bow, 10' pole, spear/polearm, zweihandler, mule, portable ram, etc.

Even fancy plate mail might be a problem squeezing through some of the crevices in the deeps. You'll have to leave your armour of continual light +5 behind, oh ice-eyed paladin! Cavers have a fairly minimal amount of equipment in real life, pretty much clothes, lights, and rope along with a few other bits and pieces. It might be interesting to work out what caver-dungeoncrawlers would carry.

Light:

• magical light sources, prone to antimagic zones or dispels
• infravision spells
• biological light sources, some kind of fantasy fireflies in a jar
• chemical light sources
• and good old fashioned lanterns, torches and candles

The latter might present some problems due to the omnipresent moisture, plus torches are very smoky and eat up the air, but if there was a light source that could be quickly reignited after being dampened that would do it. Some sort of a flintlock/lantern maybe.

Rope: lots and lots of it, some knotted, along with tackle and climbing equipment, iron spikes, spiked boots etc.

Breathing straws, magic to allow one to breathe underwater. Magic in general would be very handy, size shrinking or polymorph spells, gaseous form would be ideal for getting around.
EDIT: right up until you ran into a submerged passage. Damn this is a hardcore environment.

A budgie to warn against dangerous gases.

Weapons: short stabbing weapons would be best, shortswords, spears, crossbows since they can be fired and reloaded on your stomach, which could be handy for crossing wide gaps by firing grapnels over. Bows could be fired sideways but it wouldn't be easy. Longswords and polearms would be right out.

Armour: chain and leather at most. Chain would probably be better since it wouldn't get heavier when wet, although it is noisy. Shields are a non starter. Helmets with some sort of inbuilt candle or lantern might be handy.

Non flammable oil for getting through tight spaces.

Quote from: The Traveller;651976So the tiles are representative of irregular cavern areas where appropriate?

Absolutely. One of the things I do when I start using this sort of terrain in a game is tell the players "whatever you see on the table, this might not look *exactly* like this in the game. A pillar might be alive. A wall might curve differently. You don't see the ceiling heights. What you see is a space representation, an approximation, not an exact replica of what's going on in the game. Don't count squares. Just look at the set up and imagine it all moving in your head. Trust the descriptions rather than the pawns."

It's incredible how easy it is to then "switch" your mind to the appropriate frame so you can enjoy the game as a role playing game, instead of a tactical skirmish game, and it really doesn't take much more than that with most players, in my experience. It's like switching a light bulb on and off, really.

Quote from: The Traveller;651976I'm more talking about the confined spaces and dripping deathtraps being where the monsters and money are, keeping the more regular areas to a minimum. It sort of makes sense when you consider the probable prevalence of natural cave systems over man made underground constructions.

That's why I alternate set-ups in a game between full-blown 3D, 2D tact-tiles where I can draw whatever I describe however I see fit, and not using mats at all. I can basically select the appropriate aid or tool for the right job or area depicted in the game.

Quote from: The Traveller;651976Gently grasp the worn leather grip of my short falchion which is known as make your mark, and pull it from my yellow grin before I emerge dripping from the chill underland waters, moving silently forward, of course! That's fantasy fucking Vietnam.

You see an exit into a man-made corridor leaving this area towards the south. It is located behind the grotesque mass of body parts you just noticed. The centipede crawls away, eastward, and doesn't seem to pay you any attention. There is a smell of burnt oil in the air. You hear a low growl at a distance, echoing from somewhere to the south through the corridor. It seems far away, and yet is perfectly audible. You hear drops of water hitting the surface of the still waters. This place is awfully quiet. This might explain it...

Quote from: Benoist;652074It's incredible how easy it is to then "switch" your mind to the appropriate frame so you can enjoy the game as a role playing game, instead of a tactical skirmish game, and it really doesn't take much more than that with most players, in my experience. It's like switching a light bulb on and off, really.

I see, yes. Generally I just describe the area to the players and maybe scribble a rough depiction of the area on paper, it wouldn't be unusual for me to not draw out any rooms in advance at all.

Quote from: Benoist;652074You see an exit into a man-made corridor leaving this area towards the south. It is located behind the grotesque mass of body parts you just noticed. The centipede crawls away, eastward, and doesn't seem to pay you any attention. There is a smell of burnt oil in the air. You hear a low growl at a distance, echoing from somewhere to the south through the corridor. It seems far away, and yet is perfectly audible. You hear drops of water hitting the surface of the still waters. This place is awfully quiet. This might explain it...

Didn't think the carrion beast would be much trouble, this meat is still walking around! I check my gear for anything that might rattle or clank and bind it up, seems like noise travels well down here, and briefly poke at the bonepile with the falchion, surprising what you can learn going through peoples' trash sometimes.

I haven't time for this! No, stop, I mean it! Hahaha! Ah gaming is my achilles heel. I will now abandon the thread for fear of becoming more ensnared.

Quote from: The Traveller;652103I check my gear for anything that might rattle or clank and bind it up,

As a tangential aside, when I DM and a player takes such action, I like to point out that I'm DMing under the assumption that the characters are basically competent and know what they're doing, so in that example I'm assuming that all of the characters, especially thief-types,  are taking similar measures.

Certainly, however, if you had lost an item of gear in the previous crawling, or the thief had pickpocketed your magic dagger, you rope had been replaced by a rope mimic which is slowly relocating to a more ambush advantageous position, etc. such action would have a good chance of revealing it.