Quote from: Declan MacManus;561245Glad to have you back B.T.

How was your vacation?

Who?  What?  Where?

Quote from: jhkim;561202From very early on in D&D, most dungeons were written up as keyed areas.  i.e. When you go into room #4, what you find there is what is in the room #4 description - including monsters.  This preparation implies that the dungeon is generally static - with exceptions as written in.

Like the trolls who patrol the area around their lair and are attracted by loud noises to other parts of their lair, or the search parties which will set out in the event a number of the sergeants of the guard go missing, or the head keepers who can communicate with the lesser keepers in another room, or the repeated references to alerts and extra guards and such.

All from the description of the Temple of the Frog. In Blackmoor. From 1975.

Those "exceptions as written in" have a long history, and strongly mitigate against the notion that a 'dungeon' is a static place.

Quote from: Marleycat;561263Who?  What?  Where?

The OP. Something about him is verrrry familiar....

Quote from: Declan MacManus;561351The OP. Something about him is verrrry familiar....

I want to give him a chance because he posted the same stuff at TBP and got thread banned for it. Never saw B.T. have the sack to actually post in the "viper den".

Quote from: Marleycat;561352I want to give him a chance because he posted the same stuff at TBP and got thread banned for it. Never saw B.T. have the sack to actually post in the "viper den".

Lol...I've made a hobby out of getting myself banned from there.  I mean...my god they actually tattle on eachother to the moderators. What a bunch of whiny pussies.

Anyway Azure Lord...I've decided that I don't like your tone, and therefore 5E will be the game for you. You will play it, you will evangelistically recruit players for it, and you will vociferously defend it from any any and all criticism whether valid or not.

No matter how many 4E-isms are hard-coded into 5E, be they healing surges, action points, paragon classes,  fighter powers, whatever...you will experience nothing but utter, unbridled joy when playing it. To make sure of this, I will have associates standing watch behind you with a cattle prod to remind you of just how much you love the game should the rictus grin of enjoyment ever slip from your face.

In short...you've just become 5E's biggest and most gushingly enthusiastic fan. Or else.

Quote from: Declan MacManus;561355Lol...I've made a hobby out of getting myself banned from there.  I mean...my god they actually tattle on eachother to the moderators. What a bunch of whiny pussies.

Anyway Azure Lord...I've decided that I don't like your tone, and therefore 5E will be the game for you. You will play it, you will evangelistically recruit players for it, and you will vociferously defend it from any any and all criticism whether valid or not.

No matter how many 4E-isms are hard-coded into 5E, be they healing surges, action points, paragon classes,  fighter powers, whatever...you will experience nothing but utter, unbridled joy when playing it. To make sure of this, I will have associates standing watch behind you with a cattle prod to remind you of just how much you love the game should the rictus grin of enjoyment ever slip from your face.

In short...you've just become 5E's biggest and most gushingly enthusiastic fan. Or else.

Now that's just mean man, mean!  I like it.

Quote from: jhkim;561189I'm curious what your standard was.  Do your PCs always take out an entire dungeon in a single day?  

There is no "easy" answer. When I started playing D&D, in 1984, my aim was, for the first games, to do things "by the book" (so to learn how things were done before whipping together my own adventures).

This quickly deteriorated, since it was obvious how some adventures had "A surpassing battle where the party clashes with armed violence and crackling spells against a battalion of goblins!!" - while the bandits in the nearby room continued to play cards like if nothing was happening. OTOH, if the adventure was calibrated for a "room by room" cleaning, then having the bandits storming into the battle would have unbalanced the encounter.

This led to my first form of "dynamism": fear of the unknown. Yes, maybe a room had only three goblins - and a door. If the party stopped and listened then they could hear more goblins beyond the door. Or maybe some of them just came into the room looking for ale before returning beyond the door.

And, of course, the more you waited, the more you risked the stray random encounter.

But things then quickly evolved from there. Why the characters had to "return to town" at all? Maybe after a raid they waited in the woods outside the dungeon, saw a goblin runner sent by the local leader to look for reinforcements and aced him. Or followed him, marked the position of the other goblin camp, and attacked it while the reinforcements were away.

It was not totally "sandboxy", but immediately the game became more fun, realistic and dynamic.

Today my DMing style is much different. The world around the players is quite dynamic, and their actions always have consequences. When possible, however, I try to plan the next action scene around the concept of "set piece", like in a movie. It is quite rare that we have more than a battle per session, but I try to make each one of them memorable.

Just two stats: some days ago I mentioned how I just ended a 13 years long campaign. Number of dungeons: TWO. And one was an escape tunnel from a besieged castle. Think about it: two dungeons in 13 years.

And the last year (yes, year) covered FIVE DAYS in the game world. It was a long, drawn out, descent towards the finale. The characters slept two times. Nearing the end you could just feel the fatigue - and not only rule-wise: it was, literally, a psychological feeling we shared during the game. A player told me how it bordered on anguishing - which was the whole point. Another player told me how, after the last session, she slept for 12 hours straight. Stuff of legend.

Really: "returning home to recharge" my ass.

Quote from: jhkim;561202I think this is a natural product of how dungeons are typically designed and prepared.  From very early on in D&D, most dungeons were written up as keyed areas.  i.e. When you go into room #4, what you find there is what is in the room #4 description - including monsters.  This preparation implies that the dungeon is generally static - with exceptions as written in.

From personal experience, I admit that this seemed to frequently happen in practice. But it wasn't by design: Wandering encounters were a systemic way of modeling active dungeon complexes and many early published modules actually refer to specific monsters being drawn in from neighboring encounter areas.

For example:

Temple of the Frog (1976), the third keyed location: "The guards reserve barracks houses 40 men who are on alert to reinforce endangered
areas of the town and answer other special alarms."

Palace of the Vampire Queen (1976), room 2-5: "If attacked, Orcs in Rm 8 will come to join the fight" (And this is a module with a "key" which consists almost entirely of a table containing room numbers and monster counts.)

G1 Steading of the Hill Giant Chief (1978): The wandering monster tables also feature several creatures which are specifically from keyed rooms. Also includes notes like "noise from this place will attract no attention whatsoever". (Note the implication that the designers are assuming that DMs are normally having noisy parties draw attention from nearby locales.)

In short, I don't think this is something that can be ascribed to the "early days of the hobby". From very early on it's clear that Arneson and Gygax were running very active and reactive dungeon complexes; specific procedures for accomplishing that were coded into the rules of OD&D; and the earliest modules (including those written by people other than Gygax and Arneson) indicate that the lessons were being learned and widely understood.

In practice, I suspect neophyte DMs tend to ignore those extra layers because they add complexity. The "move from keyed room to keyed room and everything is static" method of running a dungeon is a stage that many DMs start with. The decent ones, however, rapidly stop doing that.

I have some very adventure-savvy players and the 15 minute day is just not a problem. OK, so there's no wizard in the party, so the urge to head back only kicks in when healing starts running low. But I've also run parties with wizards and that's never been a problem either. Often, a day in the dungeon will run over two days of real time.

Yes, my dungeons are reactive, rival parties put the pressure on etc. Three other things though:

1. Much of my sessions are spent not in combat, but in exploration and problem solving. Yesterday for example, my players didn't roll once to hit, but had a lot of tension (and saving throws) dealing with the strange magical features of a dwarven shrine.

2. The 15 minute day assumes that, for example, wizard spells are usable against any enemy, interchangeably. But compared to normal D&D in my system, wizards get more spells to start with but cannot use duplicate spells in one day. If you blow your magic missile against the skeletons you still have your sleep spell and detect magic waiting for the right kind of opportunity to use.

3. My players understand that they are playing to have fun rather than min-max a combat system. When they do engage in tactical thinking, it's as their characters would do. While there should be systems designed to cage and channel the kind of dicks who really should be playing Magic instead, I'm under no obligation to use that system or to open my game to those people.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;561397In short, I don't think this is something that can be ascribed to the "early days of the hobby". From very early on it's clear that Arneson and Gygax were running very active and reactive dungeon complexes; specific procedures for accomplishing that were coded into the rules of OD&D; and the earliest modules (including those written by people other than Gygax and Arneson) indicate that the lessons were being learned and widely understood.

In practice, I suspect neophyte DMs tend to ignore those extra layers because they add complexity. The "move from keyed room to keyed room and everything is static" method of running a dungeon is a stage that many DMs start with. The decent ones, however, rapidly stop doing that.

You're claiming that the designers never intended that a DM would present the description of room #9 when the adventurers came to room #9.  I don't buy this.  

In my opinion, dungeons were intentionally designed with neophyte DMs in mind - with the full expectation that neophytes would run them this way, because doing so is easy and fun.  That is the whole strength and beauty of D&D, and what made it take off in a way that no other RPG ever has.

I'm sure the designers also expected that experienced DMs would vary from this.  Experienced DMs would make modules their own in lots of different ways, or simply not use modules at all.  However, what the modules were designed for is easy, simple, fun play by ordinary people.  This is especially true of the early modules, which were written for more of the general public rather than for experienced grognards.  

I consider this a good thing, and wish that more games would be written like that.

Quote from: jhkim;561414You're claiming that the designers never intended that a DM would present the description of room #9 when the adventurers came to room #9.  I don't buy this.

I'd respond to this, but I've decided not to respond to gross illiteracy today.

Try me again tomorrow.

Quote from: Sacrosanct;561135me three

Oh, and Bill?  You said you're a fan of 4e?  Welcome to the site.  You're the kind of person this forum needs more of.  I.e., a fan of a system most people here aren't of, but yet having well thought out and reasonable opinions.  It seems most of the self described 4e fans here are 4vengers, so it's nice to get a reasonable viewpoint of 4e that isn't coming from a fanboi.

It can be difficult at times to distinguish personal preference from what is actually good or bad about a game system. However, there are things I feel 4E did right, and things it did wrong. I would add that people tend to crucify whatever rpg/computergame/book/movie that is not on their 'personal favorite list' ...it's human nature.

Quote from: Marleycat;561164What? You sure you play 4e? Quit trying to inject logic into this conversation.[/QUOTE


Sorry; I will try to be more irrational!  

Quote from: Bill;561437

Quote from: Marleycat;561164What? You sure you play 4e? Quit trying to inject logic into this conversation.

Sorry; I will try to be more irrational!  

Much better.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;561397From personal experience, I admit that this seemed to frequently happen in practice. But it wasn't by design: Wandering encounters were a systemic way of modeling active dungeon complexes and many early published modules actually refer to specific monsters being drawn in from neighboring encounter areas.

For example:

Temple of the Frog (1976), the third keyed location: "The guards reserve barracks houses 40 men who are on alert to reinforce endangered
areas of the town and answer other special alarms."

Palace of the Vampire Queen (1976), room 2-5: "If attacked, Orcs in Rm 8 will come to join the fight" (And this is a module with a "key" which consists almost entirely of a table containing room numbers and monster counts.)

G1 Steading of the Hill Giant Chief (1978): The wandering monster tables also feature several creatures which are specifically from keyed rooms. Also includes notes like "noise from this place will attract no attention whatsoever". (Note the implication that the designers are assuming that DMs are normally having noisy parties draw attention from nearby locales.)

In short, I don't think this is something that can be ascribed to the "early days of the hobby". From very early on it's clear that Arneson and Gygax were running very active and reactive dungeon complexes; specific procedures for accomplishing that were coded into the rules of OD&D; and the earliest modules (including those written by people other than Gygax and Arneson) indicate that the lessons were being learned and widely understood.

In practice, I suspect neophyte DMs tend to ignore those extra layers because they add complexity. The "move from keyed room to keyed room and everything is static" method of running a dungeon is a stage that many DMs start with. The decent ones, however, rapidly stop doing that.

Don't forget a section in the 1e DMG that offers guidelines on what happens when a party assaults a lair, then what would happen when they come back a week later.  You had examples of a giant ant lair, an orc outpost, a fortress, etc.

Dungeons were never meant to be static things.  The original LBBs said as much (admittedly by implication for the most part).