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For a hobby built on imagination we sure do love retreading the same old dungeon cliches!

"Edgy" cult temples, abandoned mines, dark fortresses, caverns of unnatural evil, volcano tunnels, necromancer labs, creepy catacombs, haunted houses, slimy sewers, entrances to Hell... we're up to our eyeballs in professional and personal interpretations of these rote concepts. And of course video games are even more suffused with them.

Every now and then someone takes a big risk and goes way out on a limb... by applying an Egyptian or Mesoamerican veneer to one of the above! Oh shit, look out, we've got a maverick here!

In another thread I asked for examples of dungeons inside giant trees, expecting a healthy selection of what I thought was an obvious but not too overexposed idea. I got about two or three results.

As a collective, why are we so hidebound on this subject?

Dyson's Delves has a petrified purple worm.

Anomalous Subsurface Environment is whack.

As for the tree dungeon – it's a pretty damn good idea.

You're right, most dungeons are the same old same-old, but I guess the classics are inexhaustible. Which doesn't mean there's no room for novelty.

The Dungeon Is: a tessellated mosaic of Steve Buscemi staring into your very soul, each left nostril being a fissure deeper into the structure.

Better?

Quote from: Opaopajr;755979The Dungeon Is: a tessellated mosaic of Steve Buscemi staring into your very soul, each left nostril being a fissure deeper into the structure.

Better?

I once made a dungeon that was part of a fistula tract in a dragon's body, filled with demons and portals from another plane. It was a bit a fun and a nice change of pace, but I think players often do want to see familiar tropes and it is often the specifics of how those tropes are handled that matter to them.

To the OP, did you follow Dungeon during Paizo? They had a submission policy of not accepting things that were cliche or that had already been done to death. You might find some of the back issues useful if you are looking for differemt kinds of dungeons.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;755981To the OP, did you follow Dungeon during Paizo? They had a submission policy of not accepting things that were cliche or that had already been done to death.

In practice I found that while this policy did yield a few truly novel concepts, most of them were just especially florid versions of the Egypt/Mesoamerica example I gave.

I'm not saying there's anything wrong with the old standbys if your players still groove to them, I'm just surprised at how little we innovate (or at least copy fresher innovations).

Quote from: OpaopajrThe Dungeon Is: a tessellated mosaic of Steve Buscemi staring into your very soul, each left nostril being a fissure deeper into the structure.

Sold. When are you running it?

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;755970As a collective, why are we so hidebound on this subject?

A dungeon inside a tree, or inside a purple worm, or inside a dead god, or whatever, is still rooms connected by passages filled with monsters and treasure. The idea that changing the trappings makes a dungeon 'original' is silly.

How about a dungeon into John Malkovich's head?

http://www.reeldealmind.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/DSC0736-M5.jpg

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;755970For a hobby built on imagination we sure do love retreading the same old dungeon cliches!

"Edgy" cult temples, abandoned mines, dark fortresses, caverns of unnatural evil, volcano tunnels, necromancer labs, creepy catacombs, haunted houses, slimy sewers, entrances to Hell... we're up to our eyeballs in professional and personal interpretations of these rote concepts. And of course video games are even more suffused with them.

Every now and then someone takes a big risk and goes way out on a limb... by applying an Egyptian or Mesoamerican veneer to one of the above! Oh shit, look out, we've got a maverick here!

In another thread I asked for examples of dungeons inside giant trees, expecting a healthy selection of what I thought was an obvious but not too overexposed idea. I got about two or three results.

As a collective, why are we so hidebound on this subject?

Because a RPG will always be limited by its default setting premise.

We've seen stuff like that in video games for at least 30 years, so it is kind of strange that we don't see it more often in tabletop rpgs.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;755970As a collective, why are we so hidebound on this subject?

Yeah just all large human settlements are blocks surrounded by long narrow spaces used as pathway with various sections inhabited by specific social class or group. Don't get me started about it how it always about shopping at the stores.

Yes I am being sarcastic.

A boring dungeon is boring because it inhabited by boring people doing boring things. Want to make it more exciting make the inhabitant and what they are doing more interesting. The same with a city, wilderness or whatever. Exotic trappings/locale only go so far. In the end it comes back to what inhabitants the dungeon and what they are doing.

Quote from: Sacrosanct;756025We've seen stuff like that in video games for at least 30 years, so it is kind of strange that we don't see it more often in tabletop rpgs.

Computer AI only goes so far. So you have substitute it with something else to hole the player's interest. Tabletop RPGs don't have that issue.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;756014The idea that changing the trappings makes a dungeon 'original' is silly.

Quote from: EstarExotic trappings/locale only go so far. In the end it comes back to what inhabitants the dungeon and what they are doing.

Good points, but would you concede that some trappings are better for facilitating some content? Going back to the tree example, to me a swim up though a vertical shaft of viscous sap to reach and negotiate with a colony of possibly friendly giant burrowing insects feels more right amidst the tree trappings than it does amidst the shadow cult crypt trappings.

Quote from: jeff37923Because a RPG will always be limited by its default setting premise.

Well we're talking about fantasy right now, so in theory there is no limit, right? So why don't we take more advantage of that?

I remember several years ago we did an adventure inspired by a recent watching of Fantastic Voyage, but those seemed to be more of one-off style adventures.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;756035Well we're talking about fantasy right now, so in theory there is no limit, right? So why don't we take more advantage of that?

A distinct lack of imagination in the userbase is my own opinion.

Probably because I haven't brought a party into one in almost three decades. It's probably starved to death in the meantime.

Swords are overdone as well.  Try halibut.  Along with healing spells.  Whatever happened to rubbing dung on the wounds?

In seriousness, I'd suggest dungeons don't get much attention because they're not the point of the game.  That'd be the characters,  IMO, and those typically are all unique in some way.

Quote from: mcbobbo;756048In seriousness, I'd suggest dungeons don't get much attention because they're not the point of the game.  That'd be the characters,  IMO, and those typically are all unique in some way.

Good observation. Still, a character will play out very differently in different settings, right? A character making choices in the Warhammer 40k universe is going to be very unlike one making choices in the Exalted universe. So the dungeon you offer to the players could matter in a similar way. Tired cliché venues could encourage tired cliché characters and choices.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;756063Good observation. Still, a character will play out very differently in different settings, right? A character making choices in the Warhammer 40k universe is going to be very unlike one making choices in the Exalted universe. So the dungeon you offer to the players could matter in a similar way. Tired cliché venues could encourage tired cliché characters and choices.

No.  I disagree completely.  The player decides, not the GM.  The setting might influence superficial things but the core character won't change because of more creative dungeons.

Quote from: estar;756027A boring dungeon is boring because it inhabited by boring people doing boring things. Want to make it more exciting make the inhabitant and what they are doing more interesting. The same with a city, wilderness or whatever. Exotic trappings/locale only go so far. In the end it comes back to what inhabitants the dungeon and what they are doing.

Truth.


"In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort."

I would say that Bag-End was pretty run of the mill as far as hobbit holes go. It was interesting because of who lived there and the things he did.

For campaign play, I believe that how a given dungeon or similar locale fits natutrally into the flow of the area is more engaging than the factor.

That old abandoned house is probably not worth looking twice at-except why are there flashes of light seen coming from it at night, and who or what are those shadowy cloaked forms coming and going in the dead of night?

Quote from: estar;756027A boring dungeon is boring because it inhabited by boring people doing boring things. Want to make it more exciting make the inhabitant and what they are doing more interesting. The same with a city, wilderness or whatever. Exotic trappings/locale only go so far. In the end it comes back to what inhabitants the dungeon and what they are doing.

Couldn't agree more.

Quote from: mcbobbo;756048Swords are overdone as well.

While you're being sarcastic, there are no swords in the game Planescape: Torment *specifically* because Chris Avellone was sick and tired of swords all the time.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;756035Good points, but would you concede that some trappings are better for facilitating some content? Going back to the tree example, to me a swim up though a vertical shaft of viscous sap to reach and negotiate with a colony of possibly friendly giant burrowing insects feels more right amidst the tree trappings than it does amidst the shadow cult crypt trappings.

Swimming through tree sap adds nothing but the challenge of negotiating - and breathing in - a liquid filled passage, which can also be achieved with a flooded mine shaft, a cave complex in a cenote, an aqueduct under a city, et cetera, et cetera.

The tree itself isn't intrinsically interesting, and in fact it can become quickly limited and limiting. This is one of the reasons I don't care for 'theme' dungeons; it's also why I think big dungeons work better than small dungeons, because of the greater range of challenges the players must negotiate.

Frex, a dungeon set on the Elemental Plane of Fire can quickly become repetitive. Take a portion of an otherwise bog-standard dungeon complex and create a tear between the planes, which turns a portion of the dungeon into a molten hellscape, and now you have options for fire-related monsters and hazards without being limited to them exclusively.

Personally, I think that the reason why one resorts to recurring tropes, is because of two reasons:
One:
They are like modular parts, that you can put together as you like, in order to concentrate on other things, like story/plot/intrigues, characterization, or, y'know, Gaming.
Two:
You aren't really using tropes, but several tropes are deliberately interpreted to be wide, so even if the "mad scientist"s lab is run by goblins, and they have an overseer that is a Mage, the mage will easily be seen as the Mad Scientist, unless the GM clearly points it out.
It is, in that case, a situation of recognizing certain wellknown patterns, while at the same time ignoring less known patterns.

As for alternative dungeouns, i'd suggest a dungeoun that is practically run like a corporate building in Shadowrun .... but it is set in a fantasy setting- of course.
^_^

Quote from: estar;756027...

A boring dungeon is boring because it inhabited by boring people doing boring things. Want to make it more exciting make the inhabitant and what they are doing more interesting. The same with a city, wilderness or whatever. Exotic trappings/locale only go so far. In the end it comes back to what inhabitants the dungeon and what they are doing.

Quote from: jeff37923;756044A distinct lack of imagination in the userbase is my own opinion.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;756067...

That old abandoned house is probably not worth looking twice at-except why are there flashes of light seen coming from it at night, and who or what are those shadowy cloaked forms coming and going in the dead of night?

Yes! (Exploderwizard's suggestions now make me want to go figure out what the hell is going on in that house!)

I remember some advice (maybe a DM's guide?) suggesting you can use the construct of a "dungeon" adventure in a wilderness or urban setting as well. Instead of rooms you have "locales" and instead of hallways you have roads, pathways, game trails, rivers etc. You can connect them to be as linear or open as desired. Certainly different dressings could offer some unique obstacles or limits on movement, but after a couple dozen adventures you are going to get used to pretty much ANY obstacle the DM introduces. The DM should be making these different "dressings" feel unique.

It's the mysteries, and interesting NPCs, and strange creatures and even events (hurricane, festival, infrequent alignment of the three moons...) that make it fun.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;755970For a hobby built on imagination we sure do love retreading the same old dungeon cliches!

"Edgy" cult temples, abandoned mines, dark fortresses, caverns of unnatural evil, volcano tunnels, necromancer labs, creepy catacombs, haunted houses, slimy sewers, entrances to Hell... we're up to our eyeballs in professional and personal interpretations of these rote concepts. And of course video games are even more suffused with them.

Every now and then someone takes a big risk and goes way out on a limb... by applying an Egyptian or Mesoamerican veneer to one of the above! Oh shit, look out, we've got a maverick here!

In another thread I asked for examples of dungeons inside giant trees, expecting a healthy selection of what I thought was an obvious but not too overexposed idea. I got about two or three results.

As a collective, why are we so hidebound on this subject?

SSI's Pools of Darkness had you dungeoncrawling through... Moander's not-quite-dead body. Godcrawling?

Gearhead has you dungroncrawling a mad godesses/superweapon's womb. Wombcrawling???

Expedition to the Barrior Peaks has you Starshipcrawling.

Famin in Far-Go and Hor-Mel Horror had you exploring meat processing factories.

Baba Yaga's Dancing Hut had you exploeing a tesseract.

Quote from: mcbobbo;756066No.  I disagree completely.  The player decides, not the GM.  The setting might influence superficial things but the core character won't change because of more creative dungeons.

I'm not sure I follow. Wouldn't you say the same magic-hating zealously monotheistic vampire hunter is going to evolve differently in Ravenloft than in Planescape? Consider the opportunities, liabilities and choices she would face in one versus the other - are the differences superficial? If they are, why do we bother using any campaign setting other than Greyhawk?

Quote from: Black VulmeaSwimming through tree sap adds nothing but the challenge of negotiating - and breathing in - a liquid filled passage, which can also be achieved with a flooded mine shaft, a cave complex in a cenote, an aqueduct under a city, et cetera, et cetera.

Intelligent burrowing insects living inside a giant sacred tree are likely to have very different values, behaviors and objectives that the sort you would find inside the trash filled aqueduct of a city of thieves, and in the second example the fluid will likely poison you instead of making you sticky to everything you touch.

I see what you're saying about re-skinning challenges and all, but if we believe that there is value to players investing time and effort in making their characters aesthetically/behaviorally interesting then surely it's not unreasonable to expect the GMs to do a little more of the same for locales and their themes?

Quote from: Black VulmeaThe tree itself isn't intrinsically interesting, and in fact it can become quickly limited and limiting. This is one of the reasons I don't care for 'theme' dungeons; it's also why I think big dungeons work better than small dungeons, because of the greater range of challenges the players must negotiate.

Frex, a dungeon set on the Elemental Plane of Fire can quickly become repetitive. Take a portion of an otherwise bog-standard dungeon complex and create a tear between the planes, which turns a portion of the dungeon into a molten hellscape, and now you have options for fire-related monsters and hazards without being limited to them exclusively.

Good point. If I take "mish-mash" dungeons into account I'm sure I will find more variety tucked away inside them than what I was bemoaning in my initial post. That said, I have noticed a majority of mish-mash dungeons tend to just be combinations of the clichés I listed there!

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;756144I'm not sure I follow. Wouldn't you say the same magic-hating zealously monotheistic vampire hunter is going to evolve differently in Ravenloft than in Planescape? Consider the opportunities, liabilities and choices she would face in one versus the other - are the differences superficial? If they are, why do we bother using any campaign setting other than Greyhawk?

Considering for a moment the possibility that dungeons are equivalent in significance to CAMPAIGN SETTINGS, yes I would say that even then the setting's impact is going to be superficial in almost every case.  Assuming they are plane hopping and not groomed specifically for a given setting and assuming that their levels taken don't specifically anticipate being in one planar setting over another,  then yes,  same character in both campaign settings.

Now if you groom a character specifically for Ravenloft gaming it will reflect that.  Certainly.

But who grooms a character for one specific dungeon?

Quote from: mcbobbo;756146But who grooms a character for one specific dungeon?

Initial character preparation is not what I meant. Consider my choice of words in the previous post: opportunities, liabilities and choices. These are reactive. Whatever your character may be initially, she will be gradually formed by how she reacts to what she is presented. An naïve idealist druid will react (and therefore be formed) differently to a sacred tree theme than a filthy aqueduct under a city of thieves theme. Imagine a parallel universe scenario: the same character from potentially the same setting goes into two different dungeons and after several sessions of exploration emerges as two different people.

No, sorry.  I don't see these two people as different in any tangible way.  Dungeons aren't any more profound to adventurers than my work day is to me.  Campaigns, okay.  But every individual dungeon?  I think not.

Put it this way, why don't random wilderness encounters likewise shape characters along parallel universes?

Further, what goes on the sheet that demonstrates how the character has changed?

Loot I guess.  Can't think of much else.

Quote from: mcbobbo;756150No, sorry.  I don't see these two people as different in any tangible way.  Dungeons aren't any more profound to adventurers than my work day is to me.  Campaigns, okay.  But every individual dungeon?  I think not.

Put it this way, why don't random wilderness encounters likewise shape characters along parallel universes?

But random wilderness encounters do shape characters differently! The naïve idealist druid who encounters and makes decisions based on the following in the wilderness...

1. A charming con artist who robs her blind.
2. A massacring aberration mostly immune to the powers of nature she has always depended on.
3. A community of selfish villagers poaching endangered animals for sport.

... is likely going to start turning into a different person than the parallel universe version that runs into the following...
1. A cowardly and obvious thief open to being persuaded onto the right path.
2. A great sacred animal who must be subdued before it can be cured of the disease that maddens it.
3. A community of starving villagers forced to poach endangered animals for sustenance.

Quote from: mcbobbo;756150Further, what goes on the sheet that demonstrates how the character has changed?

But I wasn't talking about character sheets at all, just roleplaying and fun decision-making opportunities.
-

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;756152But random wilderness encounters do shape characters differently! The naïve idealist druid who encounters and makes decisions based on the following in the wilderness...

1. A charming con artist who robs her blind.
2. A massacring aberration mostly immune to the powers of nature she has always depended on.
3. A community of selfish villagers poaching endangered animals for sport.

... is likely going to start turning into a different person than the parallel universe version that runs into the following...
1. A cowardly and obvious thief open to being persuaded onto the right path.
2. A great sacred animal who must be subdued before it can be cured of the disease that maddens it.
3. A community of starving villagers forced to poach endangered animals for sustenance.



But I wasn't talking about character sheets at all, just roleplaying and fun decision-making opportunities.
-

All of this is up to the player running the character and whether they want to adapt their concept or not.

Quote from: mcbobbo;756153All of this is up to the player running the character and whether they want to adapt their concept or not.

Of course, but they can't adapt to liabilities, opportunities and choices that aren't presented to them (and if their play style and character never changes then I have to question the value of playing a roleplaying game rather than, say, Doom)

A novel encounter, a novel dungeon, or a novel campaign setting is a more intriguing thing or array of things for them to adapt to.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;756014A dungeon inside a tree, or inside a purple worm, or inside a dead god, or whatever, is still rooms connected by passages filled with monsters and treasure. The idea that changing the trappings makes a dungeon 'original' is silly.

In this I agree with Black Vulmea. A dungeon is a dungeon, IRL they are ordinarily tombs or prisons because that is the most plausible purpose for them and and going higher-concept at that level is not necessarily going to make them more interesting for long. Probably a more fruitful route is changing the PC's relationship to the dungeon.

I like ordinary dungeons. OMG, I'm hidebound! Oddly, I don't seem to be harmed by that.

I'd resist the temptation to reduce all dungeons to simply "rooms connected by passages filled with monsters and treasure."   Unique or unusual dungeons don't have to simply be skins or textures layered onto otherwise mundane floor-plans. Not only might they have unique and unusual contents and features (novel traps, monsters, an dungeon dressing), their very structure might substantially deviate from - or at least elaborate on - the basic rooms-and-passages model.

One could imagine, for example, a R'lyehian, non-Eucliean, Escheresque dungeon in which the usual rules of space and time behave differently than expected - full of strange spaces where gravity behaves irregularly, corridors loop and connect in counter-intuitive ways, spaces can be rearranged and transformed, and time can be manipulated.  Or a dungeon set inside a monster's digestive tract that's distinguished by periodic floods of food and digestive juices, including NPCs and buildings swallowed whole.  Perhaps a dungeon made of psychically malleable ooze that can be radically reshaped through acts of concentration, or a dungeon in which all doors are one-way portals connecting disparate locations across multiple planes of existence, or a dungeon that co-exists in multiple "phases" of existence that it requires characters to switch between.  At a less physical level, maybe a strange, moralistic dungeon where instead of the usual encounters there are ethical puzzles that reward or punish characters based on their virtues or vices.  That kind of thing.

Such complexes would be more than simply "reskinned" versions of banal temples and caves - they'd be fundamentally different kinds of dungeons, offering very different experiences at the level of navigation/exploration than the standard rooms & corridors model.

Of course, some "unique" dungeons might only be unusual cosmetically; I just think it's possible to imagine unorthodox dungeons that are novel on a more structural or fundamental level.

That said, I'd argue the relative paucity of novel dungeons has to do with a few main factors:

(1) Lack of creativity on the part of creators.  Things are starting to change, but the persistence of certain cliches and calcified tropes in fantasy gaming is undeniable.  So boring dungeons are common in part for the same reason that elves and orcs are common.  While gamers have broken with the status quo in a number of instances and continue to innovate, there are a lot of generic fantasy games out there that recycle the same ideas again and again - hence the recurrence of catacombs and ruined castles.

(2) The stereotypical dungeon is actually a pretty compelling setting, just intrinsically.  The idea of descending into the netherworld is a pretty significant motif in a lot of mythologies.  I think dungeons tap into a particular set of cultural and psychological fascinations that account in part of their continued popularity.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;756144Intelligent burrowing insects living inside a giant sacred tree are likely to have very different values, behaviors and objectives that the sort you would find inside the trash filled aqueduct of a city of thieves . . .

So could a group of nixies in the flooded ruins of a lakeshore town, or a tribe of locathah in a maze of sea caves.

And I think most classical engineers would object to their aqueducts being categorised as "trash filled." They provided drinkable water to large cities and kept down disease.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;756144. . . and in the second example the fluid will likely poison you . . .

People swim and dive in cenotes all the time.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;756144. . . instead of making you sticky to everything you touch.

Okay, so you've created an environment that makes the adventurers sticky every time they move through it, and a race of unusual creatures living there.

What's next? What does being sticky all the time do besides make the adventurers clumsy and uncomfortable? What happens once the adventurers get through the inevitable social misunderstandings that dealing with an 'alien' species entails? How do you make this an environment with repeat value? How do you avoid it becoming a one schtick pony?

This is why I think most 'theme' dungeons end up sucking.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;756144I see what you're saying about re-skinning challenges and all, but if we believe that there is value to players investing time and effort in making their characters aesthetically/behaviorally interesting then surely it's not unreasonable to expect the GMs to do a little more of the same for locales and their themes?

Exotic != "aesthetically/behaviorally interesting."

The problem with this reduction exercise you're engaged in Vulmea is where does it end? Where do you personally draw the line between frivolous superficial trappings and legitimate novel thought exercise?

For instance:

Quote from: Black VulmeaSo could a group of nixies in the flooded ruins of a lakeshore town, or a tribe of locathah in a maze of sea caves.

You really can't see any worthwhile difference between mind-controlling humanoid fey creatures dwelling in the tragic remnants of a human society and burrowing freak insects tunneling through the sacred flesh of a constantly growing biological phenomenon? Those two scenarios are really not different enough to justify any effort?

If that's the case, let me turn the exercise around, not as a jab at you but to determine where you draw your line compared to mine: Why do you run your personal campaign primarily in 17th century France when England would be more familiar to the players and the differences between the two cultures are objectively minor compared to the nixie-bug example above?

Taking it further and going back to the question I asked Mcbobbo, why are any of us running anything other than Dungeons and Dragons in the Temple of Elemental Evil of the Greyhawk setting if every "meaningful" novelty can be reskinned into it anyway?

Tree dungeons? Brambly Hegde have some really good ones.

(http://i644.photobucket.com/albums/uu167/harrietmm/bramblyhedgejillbarklem2_zps3e51a36f.png)

That tree would totally fall down in the first gale.

Enid Blyton's Magic Faraway Tree. A different adventure at the top every week.

Somewhere I have an image I did.... hold on.

Here we are. Lungs of the Storm Giant. (https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_EK4zT1NEiNWVc5U29pOEhhQlU/edit?usp=sharing)

For those times when you just have to inhale the party.

Here's a little thing that I have very rarely seen GM's do that make their dungeons boring, they do not try to engage the senses of the Player Characters.

How does the dungeon look? Yes, to a point. But how many times instead of giving a description of the room you get a list of contents instead? There is a chair in the room, so what? Is it warped by exposure to moisture with its fitted pieces popping apart?

How does the dungeon smell? This is a big pet peeve of mine since it seems to not be used often enough. The smell of things provides great atmosphere and helps immersion. Is it musty? Does the first breath you take make your nose itch and threaten to cause your character to sneeze?

It is a different world and most GMs fail to properly bring it to life.

Quote from: jeff37923;756228Here's a little thing that I have very rarely seen GM's do that make their dungeons boring, they do not try to engage the senses of the Player Characters.

How does the dungeon look? Yes, to a point. But how many times instead of giving a description of the room you get a list of contents instead? There is a chair in the room, so what? Is it warped by exposure to moisture with its fitted pieces popping apart?

How does the dungeon smell? This is a big pet peeve of mine since it seems to not be used often enough. The smell of things provides great atmosphere and helps immersion. Is it musty? Does the first breath you take make your nose itch and threaten to cause your character to sneeze?

It is a different world and most GMs fail to properly bring it to life.

A million times this. The passive reception of the environment is forgotten or ignored. Noises, smells, feelings, textures.

Quote from: Black VulmeaExotic != "aesthetically/behaviorally interesting."

Quote from: Shipyard LockedYou really can't see any worthwhile difference between mind-controlling humanoid fey creatures dwelling in the tragic remnants of a human society and burrowing freak insects tunneling through the sacred flesh of a constantly growing biological phenomenon? Those two scenarios are really not different enough to justify any effort?

I tend to fall with Shipyard Locked here.

It might be worth noting that even if most "unusual" dungeons don't deviate from the rooms-and-passages template, aesthetically and/or behaviourally interesting dungeons are also surprisingly rare.   I'd suggest that even superificial/cosmetic exoticism has its place, and can liven up some games after a series of more "classic" (or cliched) dungeons.

Not that there's anything wrong with the older, traditional dungeon, epsecially when given some kind of interesting twist.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;756214The problem with this reduction exercise you're engaged in Vulmea is where does it end? Where do you personally draw the line between frivolous superficial trappings and legitimate novel thought exercise?

I draw the line at whether or not superficial trappings actually make a game more fun to play.

You still haven't answered the question I asked upthread: you've got your tree and your sap and your intelligent bugs . . . now what? What do you expect the adventurers to actually do with any of this?

So many 'novel' settings fall apart when the players actually try to interact with them because the writer or referee is so busy patting herself on the back at being 'different' she forgot she was playing a game.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;756214You really can't see any worthwhile difference between mind-controlling humanoid fey creatures dwelling in the tragic remnants of a human society and burrowing freak insects tunneling through the sacred flesh of a constantly growing biological phenomenon? Those two scenarios are really not different enough to justify any effort?

Neither one is interesting in and of itself. You can make an exotic setting and fail to churn out one interesting thing that happens in it - see George Lucas and the SW prequels. Conversely, you can take tried and true formulas and fail to churn out one interesting thing with them, either - see anything ever done by Michael Bay.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;756214. . . Why do you run your personal campaign primarily in 17th century France when England would be more familiar to the players and the differences between the two cultures are objectively minor compared to the nixie-bug example above?

Because 17th century France is the default setting of Flashing Blades, and I wanted my campaign to be immediately accessible to gamers already familiar with the game.

And how do you know that 17th century England would be intrinsically more familiar than France to the players? One of my players is Scandinavian - 17th century Sweden and Denmark are far more familiar to him than either France or England. You are assuming facts not in evidence, and for no particular reason that I can see.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;756214. . . [W]hy are any of us running anything other than Dungeons and Dragons in the Temple of Elemental Evil of the Greyhawk setting if every "meaningful" novelty can be reskinned into it anyway?

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

Tell you what, I'll give you a hint. In the campaigns I run, I pile cliché on cliché on cliché, and yet no one's every called my campaigns boring. I know that clichés work for a reason: they are accessible and they are fun, or they would never have become clichés in the first place.

What makes a game fun to play isn't novelty-for-novelty's-sake. What makes a game fun to play, in my experience, is that the very first thing the referee does is ask, 'What do the adventurers DO?' Everything else flows from that, and not from, 'How can I make my setting SPECIAL?"

Why are there no great published adventures set in tree-dungeons? Because no one's made a great adventure and then set it in a tree and published it. If you make a great adventure, then you can set pretty much anywhere, because it's a great adventure.

Quote from: Steerpike;756345Not that there's anything wrong with the older, traditional dungeon, epsecially when given some kind of interesting twist.

One of the many lessons I took away from playing World of Warcraft is about dungeons and how to give them character.
None of the dungeons in WOW are old school zoo-dungeons full of randomly sorted creatures. All the dungeons/instances in WOW are living places with a strong background that is revealed in their exploration (at least to anyone who cares about such things). There are discernible reasons for all the stuff going on in them.
Some of them are wild, exotic things... castles that extend into other dimensions, floating ruins surrounding cores of magical energy, elemental planes of fire... but most are fairly mundane in their trappings... but still stocked full of 'story' and life. If I were dropped into any of them at random I'd pretty quickly know which one it was.
True, most of them are far too linear and have a scripted form of play that's anathema to what I want out of a TTRPG... but I'm pretty sure any dungeons I build are a lot more interesting for having WOW's as examples... and it's got little/nothing to do with the physical makeup of the dungeon itself and everything to do with what's going on there and why my PCs care enough to risk their lives over it.

Oh, and here is a fun little article on Goblin Punch about using WOW's boss fights as inspiration for some fun OSR big-bads (http://goblinpunch.blogspot.com/2014/06/boss-mechanics-from-world-of-warcraft.html).

EDIT: Actually, there are a couple of newer ones that are pretty close to a zoo dungeon... one being a prison, just a big room where inmates are randomly released to attack the party... another being an arena game where you just fight whoever gets sent in... those are just plain lazy.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;756367You still haven't answered the question I asked upthread: you've got your tree and your sap and your intelligent bugs . . . now what? What do you expect the adventurers to actually do with any of this?

Quote from: Black Vulmea;756367What makes a game fun to play isn't novelty-for-novelty's-sake. What makes a game fun to play, in my experience, is that the very first thing the referee does is ask, 'What do the adventurers DO?'

Very well.

The tree is important. The tree is suddenly ailing and could die. The interior of the tree is barely explored and poorly understood. It is unclear what exactly is weakening the tree, and simply going in there and killing or damaging anything you find wily-nily could do more harm than good. It is known that many of the living things inside the tree are benevolent but difficult to understand. The players will need to investigate this alien world to figure out how it works and pinpoint the source(s) of the problem.

At some point, to do so they will need to learn how to access deeper areas that do not currently have any passages into them, but they can't simply dig into the tree's flesh without training. They will need to communicate with the native burrowers who know what to chew through and what to leave alone. Trouble is, the party are speaking humanoids and the burrowers are clicking insects. Just imagine the undignified pantomime that could ensue.

Sufficient?

Quote from: Black VulmeaSo many 'novel' settings fall apart when the players actually try to interact with them because the writer or referee is so busy patting herself on the back at being 'different' she forgot she was playing a game.

This is a really good point, and might be an important reason as to why original dungeons are rare.  Designing and running traditional dungeons is pretty easy. It's hard to screw up designing a standard tomb complex, for example, and it's not very challenging creatively to think one up, map it, stock it with traps and monsters, and come up with a reason for the PCs to go there.  The groundwork has already been laid, it's all been done a million times before, and it's easy to find examples and templates for that kind of thing.

Designing something new on the other hand, and original and compelling and unique, is much more demanding on the DM.  Not only do you have to think outside the box in coming up with a unique concept, that concept has to be feasible and runnable in-game.  Some creators, as you point out, are going to nail the first and fall down at the second pretty quickly.

Ironically for a game of imagination, there's a lot of creative laziness out there.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;756451The tree is important. The tree is suddenly ailing and could die. The interior of the tree is barely explored and poorly understood. It is unclear what exactly is weakening the tree, and simply going in there and killing or damaging anything you find wily-nily could do more harm than good. It is known that many of the living things inside the tree are benevolent but difficult to understand. The players will need to investigate this alien world to figure out how it works and pinpoint the source(s) of the problem.

(http://stream1.gifsoup.com/view5/3360746/falling-asleep-on-subway-o.gif)

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;756451At some point, to do so they will need to learn how to access deeper areas that do not currently have any passages into them, but they can't simply dig into the tree's flesh without training. They will need to communicate with the native burrowers who know what to chew through and what to leave alone. Trouble is, the party are speaking humanoids and the burrowers are clicking insects. Just imagine the undignified pantomime that could ensue.

(http://i.imgur.com/O66AUHQ.gif)

Quote from: Steerpike;756468Designing something new on the other hand, and original and compelling and unique, is much more demanding on the DM.  Not only do you have to think outside the box in coming up with a unique concept, that concept has to be feasible and runnable in-game.  Some creators, as you point out, are going to nail the first and fall down at the second pretty quickly.

Ironically for a game of imagination, there's a lot of creative laziness out there.

Oh, is it pretentious wanker season again, already?

Give me a fucking break.

I thought I was agreeing with you...?

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

I agreed, and suggested that this was probably why novel dungeons were rare and traditional dungeons predominate - most people aren't sufficiently creative or thoughtful to make a novel dungeon actually work in a game, they get stuck at the level of concept and assume that's enough.  So we're stuck with either an endless prade of traditional dungeons (many of them awesome, but as a whole rather homogenous - and, after a certain point, a bit redundant) or attempts to make "novel" dungeons that just don't work because they fail at the level of execution, execution generally being easier in tried-and-true dungeons.

Man, no way to win with you...

"What adventurers DO with it?" is a subtly challenging question, as differing tables give wildly different results. It's asking why they should care, and that's about as easy to herd as cats. Basically it is asking if you know your players' interests enough to engage them.

I have trouble with organizing PCs into taking a hook, so I develop more hooks, especially wherever the PCs go. That said, it can kill a lot of prep, so at some point I just go in for the ask, "what are you planning to do next session (or which hook interests you most)?" ADVENTURE! as a descriptor only goes so far.

(edit: As an example, I as a player am more likely to engage the gossipy servants and seal up the dungeon than 'seek glory and honor!' So general appeals to "do what adventurers do!" is to me about as stale advice as asking me to drink cod liver oil for health and fun. However, a location is only as interesting by how much it engages its environment. It either has a relevant footprint to PCs/players, or not.)

As for the Big Tree with Alien Sentience Living Inside high concept, it has the problem of being an elaborate subject noun phrase without the verb or object part to give it momentum. If something is too alien at some point it is easier to ignore such things until a more opportune, or poignant, time to visit. Basically try to answer the "what's it doing?" and "why should I care?" aspect of the rococo peacock of a noun phrase — with extra points for brevity.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;756486[Smug image responses]

Hmm, nah, I don't buy your negativity here. You don't have to try and "win" this thread you know. Unless you have specific criticism for me to consider I still think that basic premise would do fine with my current player base and most potential players too, especially ones who grew up on Zelda and Final Fantasy.

Your previous posts were genuinely useful, thought-provoking challenges. Could we go back to that approach?

Quote from: Opaopajr(edit: As an example, I as a player am more likely to engage the gossipy servants and seal up the dungeon than 'seek glory and honor!' So general appeals to "do what adventurers do!" is to me about as stale advice as asking me to drink cod liver oil for health and fun. However, a location is only as interesting by how much it engages its environment. It either has a relevant footprint to PCs/players, or not.)

As for the Big Tree with Alien Sentience Living Inside high concept, it has the problem of being an elaborate subject noun phrase without the verb or object part to give it momentum. If something is too alien at some point it is easier to ignore such things until a more opportune, or poignant, time to visit. Basically try to answer the "what's it doing?" and "why should I care?" aspect of the rococo peacock of a noun phrase — with extra points for brevity.

Now this is a legit comment. While I have a player base that for the most part finds heroism, exploration, and experimentation to be motivation enough, it certainly wouldn't hurt to throw in a more material/mechanical hook in there for the more reticent types.

How about this: The tree is an entity strongly associated with life magic, and it has been known to naturally produce magic items within itself that have to do with life: Fruit that can resurrect, amber that can be crafted into armor of regeneration, etc. Of course these substances are rare, but if you explore the tree enough you're bound to find a few samples.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;756522Hmm, nah, I don't buy your negativity here. You don't have to try and "win" this thread you know. Unless you have specific criticism for me to consider I still think that basic premise would do fine with my current player base and most potential players too, especially ones who grew up on Zelda and Final Fantasy. .

If we look into the matter we may discover that when he isn't posting BV is really just a Rocky montage training for the next thread win. I wouldn't take it too personally, BV dishes that out to all of us, and that wasn't his A game. It could have been much more smug.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;756522How about this: The tree is an entity strongly associated with life magic, and it has been known to naturally produce magic items within itself that have to do with life: Fruit that can resurrect, amber that can be crafted into armor of regeneration, etc. Of course these substances are rare, but if you explore the tree enough you're bound to find a few samples.

A lure of greater goodies is a solid start. It's passable to me in a "go-getter" party. Would normally bore me to tears individually. But rpgs are shared social events as much as anything, we compromise often.

The problem with your first attempt was it was based in a Star Trek "explore and preserve everything!" mentality. Which can work for some groups, but requires active players, and who are on the same motivation page. Sadly so many fantasy campaigns do not start on that same motivation (and how many would get off the ground of those that do, I wonder); the base assumption is heroics and loot, or whatever the fuck Adventure! is being defined nowadays.

So your endangered and essentially closed system, as the bugs don't really interact with others, was an exercise in the exotic for exotic sake. It was a quest to preserve the obscure through linguistic challenge, specialized terrain travel, etc. Again, awesome sauce for the right audience, but assume your audience is nowhere near the ballpark in wanting to game the equivalent of oblique, cinema vérité with subtitles.

Holy cow is it impossible for me to disagree with the premise of this thread more.  "Unique" dungeons are a bitch to integrate into a mileu, often typified by awkward DM shoehorning.

You want to know what the hobby needs more of?

Generic manor house.
Generic tower.
Generic castle.
Generic longhouse.
Generic guildhouse.
Etc., etc.

Give me some generic examples of places where people actually live and work, and I will use the shit out of it.  And end the silly hole in the ground.  Make buildings.  People live in buildings, not holes in the ground.

But generic examples don't exist.  I have many castle adventures.  But they all have their unique twist.  I do not have a single castle to use as an example of what one might find inhabited by a Furyondian lord.

Quote from: Opaopajr;756534The problem with your first attempt was it was based in a Star Trek "explore and preserve everything!" mentality. Which can work for some groups, but requires active players, and who are on the same motivation page. Sadly so many fantasy campaigns do not start on that same motivation (and how many would get off the ground of those that do, I wonder); the base assumption is heroics and loot, or whatever the fuck Adventure! is being defined nowadays.

So your endangered and essentially closed system, as the bugs don't really interact with others, was an exercise in the exotic for exotic sake. It was a quest to preserve the obscure through linguistic challenge, specialized terrain travel, etc. Again, awesome sauce for the right audience, but assume your audience is nowhere near the ballpark in wanting to game the equivalent of oblique, cinema vérité with subtitles.

Fair. I guess I'm not interested in primarily running or playing stuff in a tabletop RPG that video or board games can provide more efficiently. If all the players want is monsters and loot in a sequence of generic rooms they can go do Diablo III (which I'm currently playing for exactly that).

To brainstorm a bunch of reasons why a giant tree might be a good place to actually adventure in:

(1) The Tree is actually the fortress of a megalomaniacal druid who is animating the forest to reclaim the deforested lands of men.  Groves of murderous trees have butchered farmers and woodsmen dwelling near the edges of the wood, and slowly the forest is moving, travelling towads the towns and cities.  Drinking the blood of sacrifices through its monstrous roots, its branches impaled with the bodies of wood-cutters and hunters, its bark caked with gore, the Tree is a kind of living stronghold from which the druid conducts his vile rituals.  The PCs are charged with stopping the druid's rampage for a reward.  There may also be captive NPCs held in the Tree, soon-to-be sacrificed.  As for treasure, the Druid is said to possess a powerful staff and other objects of power that aid him in his rites.  The dungeon is unique insofar as the druid is in full control of it - the sap, the roots, the branches.  He often uses Warp Wood to move around, so the interior isn't laid out in a strict room-and-passages model and often requires the PCs to hack their way through walls, which in turn angers the Tree.  Parasites, dominated animals, crazed nature-worshipping cultists, and druidic traps riddle the Tree.  Most of it is very dark - there are no torches, since there is no proper ventillation and the whole place is dangerously flammable, though the Druid may teleport to burning areas to Create Water or otherwise extinguish flames.  Simply infiltrating the tree is one of the hardest parts - its at the center of an army of awakened, angry trees.  The party might have to fly in somehow, or transform themselves into woodland beasts, or pose as cultists.

(2) The Tree is home to a family of evil Dryads.  They've been seducing local menfolk and bringing them to their Tree to serve as slaves, bedmates, and playthings.  The party encounters villages outside the forest consisting entirely of women - the only males are young boys and wizened old men.  All of the other men have been Charmed and forced to serve their Dryadic mistresses.  The PCs could attempt to kill the Dryads, or somehow strike a deal with them to return the men, or try to rescue the men some other way.  The catch?  The "monsters" in the tree, apart from various fey, animals, and the Dryads themselves, are Charmed male villagers, who for obvious reasons the PCs will be reluctant to kill.  Additionally, the Dryads can move around the Tree simply by walking into the walls and melding with it, reappearing wherever they please.  Their spies (birds, beasts) infest the woods, potentially warning them of the PCs' coming.

(3) The Tree is the abode of a tribe of ravenous squirrel-folk.  Its interior consists mostly of vertical passages, requiring the PCs to climb up and down them rather than walking through them.  Usually the squirrel-folk are peaceful, but recently their food stores are running dangerously low, and they've begun stealing food from every human farm and household in the area.  Without their own stores, those dwelling in such places will starve during the long winter.  The PCs must trek through the snowy woods to the Tree and then somehow reclaim the stores.  Its a heist more than a traditional crawl, and the "treasure" consists of nuts, grains, and other stores rather than gold or jewels - although the suirrel-folk are also known to hoard other trinkets, and their shamans possess certain relics that may also be valuable.  Things are complicated further by the nest of tamed dire ravens the squirrel-folk keep in the upper branches that assist them in their thievery and help defend the Tree from attack.

I think any of these would prove reall unique, novel experiences in an environment very different from a more traditional dungeon, with challenges unique to the setting and an unusual, organic structure, very veritcal and non-linear.  Fire spells would be enormously dangerous to use inside the Tree (in the latter 2 possibilities, burning the Tree would destroy the stores or kill the enslaved villagers, so it'd be a very bad idea).

The Gazetteer: Elves of Alfheim pretty much provides a city in the trees. So all these convolutions and contortions are a bit much. There already is a fantasy racial trope that provides a need for big ass trees to live in.

The druid angle is also pretty useful, as that is an accepted trope and readily portable to individual campaigns.

But Old One Eye is right, there really is a lack of generic usable, but interesting, foundational locales. The challenge is keeping the general shape but adding small accents. This way it is memorable, yet easily modified to repurpose.

Quote from: Old One Eye;756546Holy cow is it impossible for me to disagree with the premise of this thread more.  "Unique" dungeons are a bitch to integrate into a mileu, often typified by awkward DM shoehorning.

You want to know what the hobby needs more of?

Generic manor house.
Generic tower.
Generic castle.
Generic longhouse.
Generic guildhouse.
Etc., etc.

Give me some generic examples of places where people actually live and work, and I will use the shit out of it.  And end the silly hole in the ground.  Make buildings.  People live in buildings, not holes in the ground.

But generic examples don't exist.  I have many castle adventures.  But they all have their unique twist.  I do not have a single castle to use as an example of what one might find inhabited by a Furyondian lord.

Check out the Crooked Staff Productions website (http://old.enworld.org/CrookedStaffProductions/index.html). There are plenty of free PDFs of maps of generic homes, manor homes, city buildings, and fortifications to use in your games.

Quote from: jeff37923;756591Check out the Crooked Staff Productions website (http://old.enworld.org/CrookedStaffProductions/index.html). There are plenty of free PDFs of maps of generic homes, manor homes, city buildings, and fortifications to use in your games.

That is an excellent resource.  Thank you.  Probably going to get some game time in my future.

Know of anywhere that takes this as a starting point and fleshes it out with typical D&D style inhabitants?

Quote from: OpaopajrSo all these convolutions and contortions are a bit much. There already is a fantasy racial trope that provides a need for big ass trees to live in.

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

Apologies in advance if I'm misunderstanding.

Quote from: Old One Eye;756593That is an excellent resource.  Thank you.  Probably going to get some game time in my future.

Know of anywhere that takes this as a starting point and fleshes it out with typical D&D style inhabitants?

Yes. Several of the PDFs are set up in just that manner on the website. However, most do not. You just have to dig through them.

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

Apologies in advance if I'm misunderstanding.

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

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

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

Thread title might have worked better if it was:

Your Dungeon is Suck!

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

Your Dungeon is Suck!

I immediately thought the same when I first saw it. :D

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

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

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

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

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

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

Example (in deliberately silly style):

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

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

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

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

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

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

Apologies in advance if I'm misunderstanding.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fuck you and your meta bullshit.

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

I do - more on that in a moment.

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

Quite possibly, perhaps even probably.

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

Christ on fucking tree, I hope not.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Quote from: Haffrung;756803Some people are happy to eat Wendy's cheeseburgers their whole life. Some get a bit bored and enjoy the novelty of schwarma or vietnamese subs. That doesn't make cheeseburgers terrible.

I do agree. High concept requires high buy in, but if you can get those kind of players it is also high fun. That said, lowered expectations don't hurt either.

I've sort of given up on going to movies, concerts, and restaurants with whole swaths of friends and family, as they have a smaller measure of what I would call adventure in their souls. Still love them, but the new and experimental is just not for them. This is a social judgment and aesthetics thing, and not much more.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;756758So if I understand the past few posts correctly, the issue with the tree example as it stands now is that it currently has hooks for...

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

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

My 'issue' is that the premise sounds great-bloody-rivers-of-tears boring. Oooo, wacky pantomimes with alien bugs! That's what fantasy roleplaying games are missing!

Part of the enduring appeal of dungeon-exploring in roleplaying games - and remember, this applies to drifting spaceships and jungle temples and post-apocalyptic cities as well as bog-standard dungeons - is that player decision-making and goal-setting is put front and center. You don't seem to be interested in that at all; you have a story to tell, and you're casting about for ways to get the players to play along since it appears to be dawning on you at last that being exotic isn't inherently the same thing as being engaging.

Quote from: Steerpike;756786Sure, the Forgotten Realms may be more popular than Tekumel, but that doesn't mean that Tekumel is a "mistake" or that M.A.R. Barker should have just stuck to the cliches instead of writing Empire of the Petal Throne.  The hobby does not really need more Realms-clones and traditional fantasy worlds, it needs more Tekumels - more idiosyncratic, weird, wildly inventive settings.  At least that's what I think.

"Idiosyncratic, weird, wildly inventive" also means less immediately accessible. It carries with it an opportunity cost.

The problem implicit in the thread's underlying assumption is that there is this stultifying lack of imagination out there among gamers. I don't believe that's true; I believe that there are some gamers and designers who think they're a lot more clever than they really are, who mistake novel for interesting and look down on those who don't embrace their 'original vision.'

And then they go and design really boring adventures and rip others for 'not getting it.'

Quote from: Haffrung;756803Texture and tone have their own meaning.

I remember watching Van Helsing in the theatre - yes, please mock me mercilessly - and about twenty minutes in, leaning over to my wife and whispering, "I don't give a shit if any of these characters live or die."

Years later I had the exact same reaction to Avatar.

No amount of tone and texture covers up bad storytelling.

In my experience, tone and texture in a roleplaying game may add depth and facilitate engagement, but only if the understanding that this is a game first and foremost and the game-world exists to facilitate actual play is crystal clear to everyone around the table, especially the referee.

You want the players to explore a giant toadstool? Awesome, but remember what makes playing a roleplaying game fun in the first place isn't, 'Hey, we're in a giant toadstool!'

Quote from: Black Vulmea"Idiosyncratic, weird, wildly inventive" also means less immediately accessible. It carries with it an opportunity cost.

I think it's definitely true that novel dungeons are less immediately accessible, but in many cases this is a feature, not a bug.  A big part of the aesthetics of fantasy and science fiction is the much-discussed sense of wonder (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sense_of_wonder).  In essence, sense of wonder boils down to the idea that "alienation/estrangement is not always bad."

This sense of wonder is integrally linked to the unexpected and the new.  Old, well-established tropes can evoke this sense of wonder, but I'd suggest it's a lot harder for them to manage it.  So there's a similar "cost" to employing older tropes: yeah, it's more accessible, but arguably the better-established a trope becomes, the more familiar it is, the less it can evoke one of the central affective states of the genre.  Assuming that some players want to experience a sense of wonder as part of the experience of the game (which wouldn't be surprising, considering the centrality of the sense of wonder to SF/fantasy), they're going to be less and less satisfied with the old tropes unless they can be subverted or otherwise made new.

Quote from: Black VulmeaThe problem implicit in the thread's underlying assumption is that there is this stultifying lack of imagination out there among gamers. I don't believe that's true; I believe that there are some gamers and designers who think they're a lot more clever than they really are, who mistake novel for interesting and look down on those who don't embrace their 'original vision.'

I tend to agree, actually, that for the most part it's not actual gamers at fault at all.  I can name dozens of amateur creators, bloggers, and the like that craft settings and adventures I find wonderfully imaginative - some of them very strange (http://gloomtrain.blogspot.ca/), others very familiar (http://hillcantons.blogspot.ca/).  The problem, I think, is that a lot of game companies and big-time creators seem to either lack creativity or are so anxious about new or innovative products that they're reluctant to stray from well-established tropes, or at least to present well-established tropes in new and unexpected ways.  This is changing (Numenera comes to mind, for example, or even Eberron) but it's still rather prominent, I think to an unfortunate extent.  In terms of new products, I don't really need to see someone's version of Tomb of Horrors or whatever (unless you really make it interesting (http://www.lotfp.com/RPG/products/death-frost-doom)); I'd rather see something unexpected that can provide a fresh jolt of estrangement.

If someone's just making stuff for their home game or whatever, go nuts.  If they're asking money for their product, I may well look unfavourably on them if they're just using the same old tropes, unless they've really found a way to reinvigorate them.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;756905My 'issue' is that the premise sounds great-bloody-rivers-of-tears boring. Oooo, wacky pantomimes with alien bugs! That's what fantasy roleplaying games are missing!

Alright, this just seems like a matter of subjective taste here, and I'm having trouble figuring out where you're coming from. Tell you what, I've given off-the-top-of-my-head examples, so I'd like to see yours, and I really do mean than in a spirit of polite inquiry, not as a setup for "gotcha!" criticism. What kind of non-combat encounter do you consider interesting enough to pencil in between "20x20 room full of orcs" and "10x60 hallway with pendulum traps"?

Quote from: Black Vulmea;756905Part of the enduring appeal of dungeon-exploring in roleplaying games - and remember, this applies to drifting spaceships and jungle temples and post-apocalyptic cities as well as bog-standard dungeons - is that player decision-making and goal-setting is put front and center. You don't seem to be interested in that at all; you have a story to tell, and you're casting about for ways to get the players to play along since it appears to be dawning on you at last that being exotic isn't inherently the same thing as being engaging.

You got me fair and square there - I was initially thinking of a sandbox setup, but as soon as I said "the tree is dying and should be saved" I fucked that up.

So would your qualms be resolved if the pitch was more like this?:

"There's this gigantic tree over here on the map and its insides are known to organically generate items useful for resurrection and regeneration magic, but it's also full of weird critters and unknown shit. You guys can visit it if you want, or not, there's also the crypt of the scarlet mask-maker over here and the troll grottos over there. Whatever."

Quote from: Black Vulmea;756905The problem implicit in the thread's underlying assumption is that there is this stultifying lack of imagination out there among gamers.

Actually, I believe that is true. Over the last 20 years or so, Fantasy, as presented in books and games, has become the most hackneyed and narrow of genres. Even narrower that Westerns and Romance were in their day. It has become a lazy reader's (and author's) genre. People read fantasy expecting to have the same experience as the last 200 times they've read a fantasy novel. Same with fantasy RPGs.

That wasn't the case before the 80s. There used to be a lot more crossover between sci-fi, fantasy, and horror. And a lot of pretty unusual and original setting and premises. In short, it was genuinely fantastic. Now, fantasy tends to be about as fantastic and surprising as a trip to a suburban mall to buy Ben and Jerry's ice cream. You can no longer presume, as you once could, that someone interested in fantasy enjoys seeking out the novel and the unusual - in challenging their imagination.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;756758So if I understand the past few posts correctly, the issue with the tree example as it stands now is that it currently has hooks for...

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

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

You missed my issue that the bug tree is more awkward to place in the milieu than a castle full of humans.

Quote from: Old One Eye;756948You missed my issue that the bug tree is more awkward to place in the milieu than a castle full of humans.

Huh? Well ok, I guess it goes like this: Frontier town --> eldritch wilderness --> bug tree.

Don't feel too bad. I'm thinking of taking your bug tree and planting it as a full blown giant cicada society residing on the neglected continent of Osse in Forgotten Realms. So there will be whole mega eucalyptus forests with a hibernating species of giant bugs within them.

They will compliment my jellyfish empires isolating Osse's coasts and floating techno-egalitarian aboriginal (druidic) balloon cities. And Elminster and Drizz't have yet to grace these shores, either.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;756951Huh? Well ok, I guess it goes like this: Frontier town --> eldritch wilderness --> bug tree.

I have never run a campaign where bugs were a more common opponent than humans.  Hence, human castle has more potential utility than bug tree.

Quote from: HaffrungActually, I believe that is true. Over the last 20 years or so, Fantasy, as presented in books and games, has become the most hackneyed and narrow of genres. Even narrower that Westerns and Romance were in their day. It has become a lazy reader's (and author's) genre. People read fantasy expecting to have the same experience as the last 200 times they've read a fantasy novel. Same with fantasy RPGs.

I feel like though the gradual homogenization of fantasy is totally a thing, in recent years this is starting to be challenged.  China Miéville, Jeff Vendermeer, M. John Harrison, Alan Campbell, Garthx Nix, Neil Gaiman, arguably even people like George R. R. Martin and Joe Abercrombie have all been deviating pretty radically from the Tolkienian status quo.  RPGs seemed to lag behind a bit, but I do think things are improving at this point rather than getting worse.

Quote from: Old One EyeHence, human castle has more potential utility than bug tree.

I don't really get this logic, just personally.  I have a pretty good idea of what's inside a human castle, and some basic research can fill in the rest... I mean, I guess I see the utility of castle maps and stuff, but thinking up crazy ideas (and then actually making those ideas work) is much harder than filling in mundane medieval details.  Perhaps both have their place, but personally I'd rather see more stuff along the lines of The Ghost Tower of Inverness, Castle Amber, or Dead Gods, just to name a few, than I would, like, more along the lines of Castle Caldwell and Beyond.  Don't give me pantries, armouries, prison cells, and orc lairs, give me indoor forests and brains in jars and reliquaries full of killer bees!

The common stuff is the easy stuff to make up on your own and often improvise or gloss over in play (OK, I get that in a gritty historical campaign this might not be the case, or whatnot, and that's fine, but in general...).  The crazy, uncommon stuff is the hardest stuff to actually make work, so if I'm buying a product, or ven reading about one online, I'd rather see that.

Quote from: Steerpike;756980I feel like though the gradual homogenization of fantasy is totally a thing, in recent years this is starting to be challenged.  China Miéville, Jeff Vendermeer, M. John Harrison, Alan Campbell, Garthx Nix, Neil Gaiman, arguably even people like George R. R. Martin and Joe Abercrombie have all been deviating pretty radically from the Tolkienian status quo.  RPGs seemed to lag behind a bit, but I do think things are improving at this point rather than getting worse.

I like Mieville and the Vandermeers... people like Michael Cisco and K.J. Bishop... going back farther to M. John Harrison... it's not like people haven't been writing different sorts of fantasy all along the way... but little of it appeals in that easily digestible soap opera sort of way that drives the big series.
Mieville has talked about how Harrison's 'Viriconium' intentionally holds off any sort of 'domestication'... it keeps reasserting its desire to alienate the reader... keep him off guard by not being 'knowable'. It's kind of the opposite of what RPGs tend to do a setting... breaking everything into quantifiable, definable bits.
At one point though I'd heard Mieville was looking at some RPG based on the Bas Lag stories... using BRP... but that was a while ago.

Quote from: SimlasaAt one point though I'd heard Mieville was looking at some RPG based on the Bas Lag stories... using BRP... but that was a while ago.

I actually met Miéville at a conference a few years back and he insisted that the Bas-Lag rpg was totally going to be a thing, but it has yet to materialize.  I also learned that he dislikes point buy for interesting philosophical reasons and really wished he could have run Wraith: The Oblivion back in his gaming days :p

Paizo did a brief d20 primer on Bas-Lag that would work well as the starting point for a Pathfinder version of it.

It's definitely true that people have always been writing different sorts of fantasy, but I feel there was a period when people like Robert Jordan and Terry Brooks were a big thing, like in the mid-to-late eighties and most of the nineties, when Tolkienian-redux fantasy reached a kind of critical saturation point and you couldn't swing a dead cat without hitting an orc.

Quote from: Steerpike;756909I think it's definitely true that novel dungeons are less immediately accessible, but in many cases this is a feature, not a bug.

It can be, if it's done well.

But ask yourself this, which do you think had more players, Glorantha, Jorune, or Tékumel? Which of these three settings would you consider the most accessible to players? And yes, I'm deliberately taking D&D's published settings out of the mix entirely here, because that's simply not a fair comparison.

Here's an offshoot question from the one raised by this thread: do referees value originality in settings more than players do?

Quote from: Steerpike;756909This sense of wonder is integrally linked to the unexpected and the new.

I don't know that I agree with that.

Quote from: Steerpike;756909Old, well-established tropes can evoke this sense of wonder, but I'd suggest it's a lot harder for them to manage it.  So there's a similar "cost" to employing older tropes: yeah, it's more accessible, but arguably the better-established a trope becomes, the more familiar it is, the less it can evoke one of the central affective states of the genre.

Are we still talking about playing games here? Because the main thrust of my argument is something that may make an interesting novella or movie isn't necessarily the same thing that will make for an interesting roleplaying game.

Yes, one of the challenges of using familiar tropes is to keep them from feeling stale. I think this is one of the hallmarks of successful referees. That would be another thread topic actually: how do you keep familiar tropes fresh and engaging in a roleplaying game campaign?

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;756914Alright, this just seems like a matter of subjective taste here . . .

No, I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that creating a setting for a roleplaying game that doesn't put 'what do the adventurers DO?' front and center in its planning or design is objectively bad.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;756914What kind of non-combat encounter . . .

Y'know, that right there - "non-combat encounter" - is a whole mindset I would like to see die in a fire.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;756914. . . do you consider interesting enough to pencil in between "20x20 room full of orcs" and "10x60 hallway with pendulum traps"?

Why would I pencil it in between? The orcs have been trying for a week to get past the pendulums, losing eight of their number in the process. They'll offer to help the adventurers handle whatever's on the other side in exchange for a share of the loot.

Or five of the orcs make a sport out of hazing the sixth, and their latest stunt is to throw his favorite sword to the far end of the hall. He's already lost the tip of his nose and half his scalp trying to get it back, and in exchange for help retrieving it, he'll turn on his companions and lead the adventurers to a secret passage past a monster's lair.

Or the orcs are gambling using treasure collected from previous adventurers killed by the pendulums. Or the orcs are engaging in a drinking contest, and are so besotted that they mistake the adventurers for the evil wizard's emissaries and offer to shut off the trap to let them pass. Or the orcs are emissaries from two different tribes arguing over who's going to lead the next raid on a nearby human settlement - should one or both groups of emissaries not return, then the tribes could end up going to war with one another instead. Or one of the orcs was captured by the other five, and is being forced to guide them through the dungeon - he's trying to lead them into the pendulum trap so he can escape, if he can just figure out a way to avoid getting killed himself.

Not original. Not novel. But hopefully interactive.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;757146No, I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that creating a setting for a roleplaying game that doesn't put 'what do the adventurers DO?' front and center in its planning or design is objectively bad.

I have no idea how the bugs don't meet this criterion. The players can choose to try and interact with them or not, ignore their overtures and kill them for loot or not, never go into the bug section of the dungeon or not, come up with a clever way of getting into the hidden sections of the dungeon without burrowing bugs or not.

I literally cannot see how my example is objectively stultifying compared to your orc one. Is a language barrier challenge inherently boring? Are more-likely-to-be-friendly-than-not encounters inherently boring?

Is it because you still think I was railroading? Did you see the rest of what I said in that post? Here, I'll repeat it:

QuoteYou got me fair and square there - I was initially thinking of a sandbox setup, but as soon as I said "the tree is dying and should be saved" I fucked that up.

So would your qualms be resolved if the pitch was more like this?:

"There's this gigantic tree over here on the map and its insides are known to organically generate items useful for resurrection and regeneration magic, but it's also full of weird critters and unknown shit. You guys can visit it if you want, or not, there's also the crypt of the scarlet mask-maker over here and the troll grottos over there. Whatever."

Quote from: Steerpike;756980George R. R. Martin.

I consider Martin Game of Thrones as the standard of how to take bog standard fantasy tropes and make them new again. He does this by treating Westeros as a real place that happens to have magic and fantastic elements.

The trick of Westeros isn't in kewl stuff but in creating interesting characters doing interesting things.

There is nothing wrong with far out stuff either. The takeaway is that setting is the spice, the meat of a good book are the characters doing something interesting. Likewise heart of a good tabletop campaign is not the setting but the players experiencing interesting situations as their characters.

Another example is Breaking Bad, I don't make a habit of watching show about drugs, and crime. I don't think the genre sucks but I have other things I want to watch with my time. But Breaking Bad is written really well in my opinion. Written well enough that I will take the time to watch the show. Again what make Breaking Bad so good is interesting characters doing interesting things.

Quote from: Steerpike;756909In essence, sense of wonder boils down to the idea that "alienation/estrangement is not always bad."

This sense of wonder is integrally linked to the unexpected and the new.  

I think the 'alien/estrangement' stuff is a great spice, but it needs something to play off of... a background that is NOT alien or strange. As much as I like Jorune it IS a harder setting to pull off than 20s/modern era Call of Cthulhu... despite CoC being able to serve up far weirder things than Jorune.

Quote from: Steerpike;757019It's definitely true that people have always been writing different sorts of fantasy, but I feel there was a period when people like Robert Jordan and Terry Brooks were a big thing, like in the mid-to-late eighties and most of the nineties, when Tolkienian-redux fantasy reached a kind of critical saturation point and you couldn't swing a dead cat without hitting an orc.

I'm not too aware of what's going on in mainstream fantasy literature these days. I do follow the 'New Weird' authors and blogs and such... but little of that makes it into B&N and when I AM in a bookstore looking at the fantasy stuff it all looks like Gothic Romance novels to me... soap opera vs. weird tales of adventure.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;757146But ask yourself this, which do you think had more players, Glorantha, Jorune, or Tékumel? Which of these three settings would you consider the most accessible to players?

Kind of beside the point but this does start me wondering how Jorune might have fared if it had been a supported D&D setting... ala Dark Sun... rather than being an obscure game I seldom saw represented on store shelves (except in San Francisco).
Being present and available and having a well known publisher goes a long way to increasing some players' willingness to engage with a setting.

I saw a good bit of RQ/Glorantha stuuf on shelves but I've NEVER seen a Tekumel product in a B&M store.

Quote from: SimlasaI think the 'alien/estrangement' stuff is a great spice, but it needs something to play off of... a background that is NOT alien or strange.

A lot of people agree, including creators (I think James Raggi is of this opinion) and, for the most part, good old H.P. Lovecraft, hence the incredibly detailed Miskatonic region.

Quote from: Black VulmeaBut ask yourself this, which do you think had more players, Glorantha, Jorune, or Tékumel? Which of these three settings would you consider the most accessible to players? And yes, I'm deliberately taking D&D's published settings out of the mix entirely here, because that's simply not a fair comparison.

Honestly, I don't have sufficient data or enough knowledge of the fan communities around those settings to answer truthfully.

I will say, though, that I don't think popularity is the only criteria by which to evaluate a setting.  Weird settings and adventures, by their very nature, aren't going to interest as wide an audience, but they might appeal to a particular subset of the audience much more than a generic setting would.  So you might be able to find more Glorantha players overall, but those players who do like something like Tékumel might like it a lot (not that there aren't rabid Glorantha fans, too).  I'm just saying that it takes all sorts, and I'd rather see diversity than homogeneity.

Similarly, I'm not too enamored by the idea that accessibility is what really counts.  I don't necessarily want more accessible settings and adventures; I feel there are a lot of those out there already.  Sometimes things that are less accessible can be richer and more rewarding and enjoyable (or at least enjoyable in different ways) than those with a broader appeal (though not in all cases, or uniformly).

Quote from: Black VulmeaAre we still talking about playing games here? Because the main thrust of my argument is something that may make an interesting novella or movie isn't necessarily the same thing that will make for an interesting roleplaying game.

We are still talking about games, but specifically fantasy and science fiction games.  I feel like a significant amount of the appeal of fantasy/sf roleplaying games is derived from their genre; I don't think that's especially controversial.  Like, I wouldn't be talking about the "sense of wonder" if we were discussing WWII roleplaying games, for example, or even strict historical roleplaying games more generally.  Those genres have their own pleasures and affects and aesthetics.  I'm not saying the aesthetics of a fantasy/sf rpg are identical to those of a fantasy/sf novel or film, but I also don't think they're completely divorced.  D&D has been consciously inspired by literature since the beginning, so I think an analysis of D&D and its ilk from a literary perspective is relevant and useful.

I'm certainly not saying that the "sense of wonder" a game may inspire in players is the only criteria to use when evaluating a product or a game, though.  There are lots of other considerations that need to be factored in.

Quote from: Black VulmeaI don't know that I agree with that.

Other aspects of the sense of wonder could include remoteness, exoticity, grotesquerie, strangeness, sublimity (awe, immensity, infinitude), surreality, inexplicability, etc.

It's true that some fantasy in particular seems to veer away from the sense of wonder and dwell more in the familiar, nostalgic, and comforting.  Personally I don't especially care for that kind of fantasy, but I'll admit that for some players those values may be important, and potentially more generic settings might suit them better.  It takes all sorts - but that's precisely the point, there needs to be diversity rather than just more of the same.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;757162Is a language barrier challenge inherently boring?

No. Designing a challenge which is to be solved by wacky pantomime hi-jinks is.

Quote from: estar;757169The trick of Westeros isn't in kewl stuff but in creating interesting characters doing interesting things.

"Interesting characters doing interesting things" is the holy-fucking-grail. It's amazing to me how many referees seem to miss this very simple thing.

Quote from: Steerpike;757498Weird settings and adventures, by their very nature, aren't going to interest as wide an audience, but they might appeal to a particular subset of the audience much more than a generic setting would.

Yeah, I'm sure if you look hard enough, long enough, you'll find a group of gamers absolutely passionate about The Shab-al-Hiri Roach.

At which point, one has to ask, who fucking cares? I imagine - and I say 'I imagine' because I have absolutely no plans whatsoever to find out - I could find a group of people in the intrewebs who enjoy fucking one another while covered in each other's shit, but that tells me nothing about how most people enjoy sex.

The premise of this thread is that gamers are "hidebound," "retreading cliches" rather than being 'creative' or 'original' or whatever it is that ShipLock seems to think is missing from 'the hobby.' The premise is flawed, as it assumes that 'originality' would inherently make the hobby better. For the reasons cited in this thread, that ain't necessarily so.

If you want to keep posting, 'But i'm right, too!' posts, please, be my guest, but don't be surprised when I don't respond to them.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;758073No. Designing a challenge which is to be solved by wacky pantomime hi-jinks is.

But that's only one way of working through it, and only certain groups will attempt it and be into it, while others will try other stuff, as I mentioned before. Or not deal with the encounter at all, and that's fine too. Again, I'm aware of what exploration and sandbox style mean.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;758073At which point, one has to ask, who fucking cares? I imagine - and I say 'I imagine' because I have absolutely no plans whatsoever to find out - I could find a group of people in the intrewebs who enjoy fucking one another while covered in each other's shit, but that tells me nothing about how most people enjoy sex.

But that is an extreme example. A simple giant tree isn't out of place in D&D and most players would grasp it instantly, yet the premise is rarely used. I'm not wondering why we don't see more Steve-Buscemi's-Nostril dungeons, I'm wondering why we don't see more totally-in-the-scope-of-fantasy-with-only-a-little-more-effort dungeons.

Quote from: Black VulmeaAt which point, one has to ask, who fucking cares? I imagine - and I say 'I imagine' because I have absolutely no plans whatsoever to find out - I could find a group of people in the intrewebs who enjoy fucking one another while covered in each other's shit, but that tells me nothing about how most people enjoy sex.

But... I care.  Lots of gamers care.  Any gamer dissatisfied with the current overabundance of cliched dungeons and the relative scarcity of weird, novel dungeons cares.  People like me, Shipyard Locked, and some of the other voices in this thread...

There's a happy medium between super-weird niche stuff that only 6 people will like and accessible hyper-generic stuff that takes no risks at all but that everyone will be like "meh, that's OK I guess."

Lamentations of the Flame Princess is a great example of the kind of product I'm talking about.  It sits somewhere between very generic (the setting itself is pretty much Early Modern Europe) and batshit crazy original (bizarre singing plants, mutant death saints, perverted Lovecraftian sex-demons).  It deploys some older, familiar tropes, subverts others, and introduces some that are utterly weird and unnerving.

Quote from: Black VulmeaIf you want to keep posting, 'But i'm right, too!' posts, please, be my guest, but don't be surprised when I don't respond to them.

We don't need to do that again.  I think you've admitted that weird dungeons can be done well, it's just tough to do so.

Ultimately, I think we can agree to disagree as to whether creators should be focused on just keeping old tropes from going stale or perfecting the execution of more original concepts.

For something to be considered weird, there must be a standard that is considered normal or generic to be deviated from. A steady diet of weird ends up making weird the standard.

There is a definite place in gaming for the generic and normal.

Quote from: jeff37923For something to be considered weird, there must be a standard that is considered normal or generic to be deviated from. A steady diet of weird ends up making weird the standard.

There is a definite place in gaming for the generic and normal.

Absolutely agree.

In fact, many would suggest that the Weird is most powerful and poignant when it erupts from the normal - when what seems familiar and comfortable and mundane gets disturbed, violated by the surreal and grotesque.  Arguably this is a different aesthetic experience than the "sense of wonder" - if sense of wonder is the affect primarily of science fiction, generated by exposure to the new/exotic and unexpected, the cosmic and the vast, then the weird affect is much more associated with horror, with an overriding sense of wrongness.  Fantasy, really, probably lies somewhere between the two most of the time.

Even a Weird dungeon, then, might benefit from having some mundane elements, not only to hook players but to actually heighten the Weird by contrast with the banal.  What seems to be a normal cave is eventually exposed as the fossilized entrails of a dead titan that a lich is attempting to revive.  What looks like an everyday wizard's tower on the outside becomes an extradimensional nightmare-labyrinth of infinite proportions on the inside.  Beneath a sleepy medieval village slumbers an unfathomable alien god whose psychic emanations are slowly driving the locals to acts of psychotic violence.  Etc.

People leave normal to go find weird, that is your adventurer.

Quote from: dragoner;758188People leave normal to go find weird, that is your adventurer.

I'm reminded here of a post I rather liked on Grognardia* about the Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun:

http://grognardia.blogspot.com/2008/11/retrospective-forgotten-temple-of.html

key quote...

QuoteThen there are the gnomes. No, I don't find gnomes disturbing, but I do find the use of the gnomes as the framing device for the module to contribute to WG4's creepiness. See, Gygaxian gnomes have more in common with garden gnomes than with the post-Dragonlance mess we call "gnomes" nowadays. They're these unassuming woodland guys who hang out with badgers and moles and are renowned for their trickster natures. Take that image and juxtapose it against an ancient temple dedicated to an avatar of Ultimate Evil and you have to admit that it's jarring.

* Yeah yeah, James is a horrible fraud, I still think he was on point sometimes.

I'll have to read that module again, because we played it, and I don't remember Gnomes; but that was a long time ago.

Mostly I remember the freezing in the dark part on the lower levels.

In my opinion, the challenge with weird settings isn't in designing them, but in truly allowing the PCs to engage or not.  I see that in the examples given people are saying "go there or not", but in my experience, once a DM has taken the time to create something they consider truly unique it is very hard for them to not find a way to force it into play even if under the mere illusion of player choice.

Does that mean it is bad to design weird/unique areas?  No.  Just that the hardest part of it is to create it, assign it interesting things that could become useful in the campaign, and then be content with the possibility it is never chosen for exploration by the players.

Using the tree as an example, in addition to the ideas that Steerpike presented upthread, I would first decide what aspects of this unique creation would intersect with typical adventurer desires.  Perhaps this weird oak tree doubles all druid spell stats when its leaves are collected as components in a full moon; perhaps the intelligent bugs possess a unique magical weapon of some kind (let's say - an intelligent dancing blade that was created in, and has knowledge of, a famous but lost city of ruins) due to randomly and violently encountering its previous possessor; perhaps the first acorn the tree produces every year heals all diseases, regenerates all lost limbs, and removes all curses but also turns the healed person's skin to bark until the next acorn drops.  Then, as PCs use sages or divination to find answers to the various problems they are trying to solve, the tree might come into play.

Also I would put in an arc of events that the PCs hear about at some point, that could either be a hook or simply happenings that underscore the world is a living place apart from the PCs, depending on what they did with them.  Maybe over the course of a year the bugs would appear and no one knows where they come from, as they are entirely alien to the area, and this progresses over time to concern from the local druids and rural folk as they are rapidly overtaking the forest.  Or a feared wizard is seen in the woods splitting open large oak trees with lightning bolts, and no one knows why.  If the PCs choose not to take the hook then he obtains the sword and the knowledge it has, and the lost city is found.  But the wizard now has greater power, and indirectly threatens a greater area.

By setting up these two aspects - the characteristics and the events - the players through the course of normal play may choose to interact with the tree for their own purposes (and may never choose to).  And in that circumstance, I feel that players more often appreciate with a sense of wonder the unusual that they encounter.  Too often when players that enjoy driving the action in a campaign are routed through something just because the DM is proud of his creation, the unique feature is just another obstacle that has to be dealt with in order to get the McGuffin that the DM has decreed represents success in the scenario.  (More passive players who simply want the DM to give them a good story to participate in may not feel this way, of course)

But the hard part, I feel, is for the DM to bring out this creative thing and possibly be content that it never is directly used in the campaign, but done simply for the joy of building a fantastical world.

I find weird settings over-rated. What's original about a game isnt the setting elements or location, but the choices & personalities of the people playing. I could use the same dungeon layout for 30 years and the game would be entirely unique to each group that went through.

On the flip side, when playing with the same group of people, there are limitless interesting things to do in an rpg besides exploring dungeons, so anyone who is stuck on that as the be all end all of the rpg experience is simply suffering from a failure of imagination

Well said TristramEvans... weird and novel dungeons/settings might not be necessary for a fun game, but there's also no reason to stick strictly to traditional dungeons, as if they were the only viable location for adventuring.

Quote from: estar;757169I consider Martin Game of Thrones as the standard of how to take bog standard fantasy tropes and make them new again. He does this by treating Westeros as a real place that happens to have magic and fantastic elements.

The trick of Westeros isn't in kewl stuff but in creating interesting characters doing interesting things.

Very very true. Of course, he also does the subverting of tropes, but more with characters.  I mean, you have aragorn, conan and elric all die in the first book.

Quote from: estar;757169I consider Martin Game of Thrones as the standard of how to take bog standard fantasy tropes and make them new again. He does this by treating Westeros as a real place that happens to have magic and fantastic elements.

The trick of Westeros isn't in kewl stuff but in creating interesting characters doing interesting things.

Actually, I think he took a fairly standard historical fiction of the sort that has fallen from popularity, added loads of gratuitous sex and violence, and ended up with a series that came across as very original because:

A) It was marketed as fantasy, and
B) Fantasy has become such a tired genre that realistic historical intrigue was strikingly original to many fans.

Without changing very much (and certainly not the character-driven stuff that fans find so engaging), a Song of Ice and Fire could have been historical fiction. Would it have been as popular? I doubt it. Sadly, for reasons I can't fathom, a large part of the fiction market today has an unshakeable antipathy to history.

Quote from: Haffrung;758915Actually, I think he took a fairly standard historical fiction of the sort that has fallen from popularity, added loads of gratuitous sex and violence, and ended up with a series that came across as very original because:

Wasn't it at least partially based on the War of the Roses?

Quote from: TristramEvans;758314I find weird settings over-rated. What's original about a game isnt the setting elements or location, but the choices & personalities of the people playing. I could use the same dungeon layout for 30 years and the game would be entirely unique to each group that went through.

This so much.  If your dungeon is boring, it's because you lack interaction and moving parts in your dungeon.  Dressing up the scenery doesn't fundamentally fix it.

Nothing against theme dungeons - if you have the basics (interactivity, choices, consequences) in place themed dungeons can be awesome.  But if your dungeon is boring, it's probably because you don't have those things, and adding the themey-ness won't fix the fundamental issue.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;758073No. Designing a challenge which is to be solved by wacky pantomime hi-jinks is.

It's not an interesting decision.  It's a quirk.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;758073"Interesting characters doing interesting things" is the holy-fucking-grail. It's amazing to me how many referees seem to miss this very simple thing.

I'll add in "making interesting choices" as well.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;758073The premise of this thread is that gamers are "hidebound," "retreading cliches" rather than being 'creative' or 'original' or whatever it is that ShipLock seems to think is missing from 'the hobby.' The premise is flawed, as it assumes that 'originality' would inherently make the hobby better. For the reasons cited in this thread, that ain't necessarily so.

If the hobby is stagnant, it's (IMO) because we've spent twenty years stripping players of decisions outside of what feats they're going to take in their character build.

Quote from: Steerpike;758121But... I care.  Lots of gamers care.  Any gamer dissatisfied with the current overabundance of cliched dungeons and the relative scarcity of weird, novel dungeons cares.  People like me, Shipyard Locked, and some of the other voices in this thread...

What makes a game interesting is tension, hard choices, difficult decisions, and complex situations where your actions have consequences.  If things are boring, it's almost certainly because you're missing those things.  As most railroady games are.

I'm not arguing that many games can get boring and cliche.  I'm disagreeing that the cause is the wallpaper on the walls, rather than the lack of any meaningful interaction or decision-making.

It's like the common RPG bullshit that "humans are boring characters".  Because, you know, almost every character in fiction *forever* has been human, and they're clearly all boring.

As others have pointed out, nobody seems to think aSoIaF is dull, and that's not even "by the numbers", it's actually got less "weird" elements than most fantasy.  What does it have?  Tension, interesting characters, consequences of actions and a living world.

Quote from: Steerpike;758121Ultimately, I think we can agree to disagree as to whether creators should be focused on just keeping old tropes from going stale or perfecting the execution of more original concepts.

Doing "weird" and "novel" is fine - once you've got the basics down.  Picasso learned to draw and paint very, very traditionally before he started in abstract art.  That's why he's a master, and you can't tell the difference between many abstract artists and children randomly splotching paint on paper.

You've gotta have the basics down before you can advance the art.

Quote from: robiswrongAs others have pointed out, nobody seems to think aSoIaF is dull, and that's not even "by the numbers", it's actually got less "weird" elements than most fantasy. What does it have? Tension, interesting characters, consequences of actions and a living world.

Absolutely.  I am an enormous fan of A Song of Ice and Fire, and have been for over a decade.  It's probably my single favorite fantasy series apart from perhaps the Gormenghast books.  And it's not especially weird, you're totally right.  If anything it embraces the whole medieval fantasy thing way more authentically than most works in the genre.  In a certain sense it actually subverts a lot of standard fantasy tropes, I suppose, because it doesn't sanitize anything and depicts a medieval society unflinchingly, but it's still a very generic world in a lot of ways.

But I also love China Miéville's Bas-Lag books, and those are weird as all get out - and part of why I like them isn't just their execution, their plots and characters, it's their strangeness, the fact that they have mosquito-people and Time Golems and punishment factories and demented arachnid aesthete-gods.  Their weirdness is part of the draw; the fact that they employ non-traditional tropes is relevant to their appeal, and I don't think it can be dismissed as, like, a decorative element.  Those books also include well-told stories and well-drawn characters and everything, and those are still fundamental in their own right, but the weird is more than just set dressing.

I'm not saying the weird needs to overwhelm the generic entirely, or that weird settings and games are the only worthwhile ones.  That would just be replacing one homogeneity with a different one.  Rather, I'm saying that I think there's room for both.  If I seem to be critiquing generic settings, it's only in saying that they're a bit too predominant, that I wish there was a little more diversity.

Quote from: robiswrongDoing "weird" and "novel" is fine - once you've got the basics down. Picasso learned to draw and paint very, very traditionally before he started in abstract art. That's why he's a master, and you can't tell the difference between many abstract artists and children randomly splotching paint on paper.

You've gotta have the basics down before you can advance the art.

Couldn't agree more.  I think most novice GMs are probably best served by starting with very familiar, generic modules and dungeons.  That's certainly what I did.

But veteran creators who are producing products for the community at large - from them I'd rather see a few stranger, more innovative products.  Not that generic products need to stop being made, or anything.  Just that variety is a good thing.

And I agree that dungeons that fail may not be suffering from a bad theme so much as bad moving parts.  But that doesn't mean that themes and scenery and aesthetics don't mean anything, or aren't worthy of consideration.

Quote from: Steerpike;758936And I agree that dungeons that fail may not be suffering from a bad theme so much as bad moving parts.  But that doesn't mean that themes and scenery and aesthetics don't mean anything, or aren't worthy of consideration.

And I don't think anybody is really arguing with that.

I think what people arguing is what they're interpreting as "your dungeon is boring?  Stick it in a weird setting!" which they view as counterproductive.

If your dungeon is boring, fix the basics.  If you've already got interesting dungeons, weirdness can add spice and novelty, but spice and novelty don't mean jack if the meat is rotten.

I mean, give me a well-cooked steak and I can eat that day after day.  If you've got a crappy piece of meat that's not cooked well, all the sauces and garnish you can pile on it won't help.

To continue the book analogy, it's not that the weirdness is just set dressing, especially if it's written well.  But if it's not written well, and isn't engaging, and doesn't have interesting characters or plots, the weirdness won't help it one damn bit.

Fair enough, robiswrong, and I don't disagree with anything you said there.

On the flipside, it seems to me that no one here who's defending the idea of a non-traditional dungeon is suggesting that things like the basics of good design are unimportant, or that weird dungeons don't need to be thought-out and run properly.  Of course an original idea doesn't an interesting dungeon make.  I don't think Shipyard Locked was arguing that all a boring dungeon needed to become un-boring was a change of decoration or a weird setting - he was just noticing that a lot of the common dungeon locales have become somewhat overused.

I hope we can all agree that yes, of course even the most unorthodox dungeon needs to be well-made to be effective.  But that doesn't mean, I think, that the desire to make weird, unusual dungeons is at all misguided or foolish, or even, in a sense, "unnecessary."

EDIT: Thought of a better way of saying what I wanted to say: the basics/fundamentals of dungeoncraft do matter, but that doesn't mean they're all that matters.

Or, to put it another way: form is absolutely important, but that doesn't mean that content doesn't count.

Quote from: Steerpike;758948I hope we can all agree that yes, of course even the most unorthodox dungeon needs to be well-made to be effective.  But that doesn't mean, I think, that the desire to make weird, unusual dungeons is at all misguided or foolish, or even, in a sense, "unnecessary."

Right. Furthermore, while I can understand why homebrewers might avoid the unusual because it is more difficult, it seems odd that professional designers working for pay haven't led the way in pioneering slightly more creative fare. Why are the video game designers (cliché-dependent as they are too) showing more effort overall?

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;759066Right. Furthermore, while I can understand why homebrewers might avoid the unusual because it is more difficult, it seems odd that professional designers working for pay haven't led the way in pioneering slightly more creative fare. Why are the video game designers (cliché-dependent as they are too) showing more effort overall?

they get paid more.
If your job pays more there is more competition for places so you cherry pick the most able.

Quote from: Shipyard LockedRight. Furthermore, while I can understand why homebrewers might avoid the unusual because it is more difficult, it seems odd that professional designers working for pay haven't led the way in pioneering slightly more creative fare. Why are the video game designers (cliché-dependent as they are too) showing more effort overall?

Yeah, if anything the situation is the opposite.  A very quick comb through some forums and blogs quickly turns up such gems as Planet Motherucker (http://talesofthegrotesqueanddungeonesque.blogspot.ca/2013/05/welcome-to-planet-motherfucker.html) and The Clockwork Jungle (http://www.thecbg.org/wiki/index.php?title=Clockwork_Jungle), such inventive monsters as the Lichwife (http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.ca/2013/12/the-lichwife.html) and the CronoMagno Golem (http://falsemachine.blogspot.ca/2012/12/cromagnogolem.html)... yet if you unfocus your eyes, Golarion, Points of Light, Greyhawk, Faerun, even the Warhammer World, they all look kinda the same (not that they're all bad, they're just rather samey).

This is moving beyond the dungeon, or course, but I really do think it has to do with the idea of risk.  Designers and publishers want their game to succeed, they see what's succeeded in the past (D&D!) and then they tend to make a version of that thing.  Even with stuff like Shadowrun, which is a great setting in a lot of ways, it feels a bit like they felt "well, we'd better include Orks and Elves..."

But there's a gorwing number of exceptions to this, especially from smaller publishers and those consciously making science fiction or horror games rather than strictly fantasy ones.

Quote from: robiswrong;758927Wasn't it at least partially based on the War of the Roses?

Yes. And while Martin was very much a sci-fi, fantasy, comic-book, weird-stuff fan and author in his early days, he has admitted that in the last 20 years he reads a lot more history and historical fiction than fantasy. History is more chock full of drama than the entire fantasy genre. But again, for reasons I don't understand, many younger readers today will not read history or historical fiction. And I'm not talking about just 14 year olds. Those 14 who read only fantasy have become 44 year olds who read only fantasy. And that's kinda sad. Maybe the desire for escapism has become so desperate that the escape has to be into other worlds altogether, and not just into another time or place on earth. Or perhaps history is too unfamiliar and weird for an audience that doesn't want to be challenged at all.

Quote from: Haffrung;759087Yes. And while Martin was very much a sci-fi, fantasy, comic-book, weird-stuff fan and author in his early days, he has admitted that in the last 20 years he reads a lot more history and historical fiction than fantasy. History is more chock full of drama than the entire fantasy genre. But again, for reasons I don't understand, many younger readers today will not read history or historical fiction. And I'm not talking about just 14 year olds. Those 14 who read only fantasy have become 44 year olds who read only fantasy. And that's kinda sad. Maybe the desire for escapism has become so desperate that the escape has to be into other worlds altogether, and not just into another time or place on earth. Or perhaps history is too unfamiliar and weird for an audience that doesn't want to be challenged at all.

I read mainly history books and my feeling is people who don't like them sometimes just haven't found the right kind of history book yet. It is like reading anything else, you have to find a category that interests you. With history you don't just have different time periods but also different approaches and lenses. I think most peoples' primary experience with history is through overviews covering a long period of time in a specific place or region (i.e. A Concise History of Byzantium). That may have something to do with the difficulty they experience getting into it.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;759094I read mainly history books and my feeling is people who don't like them sometimes just haven't found the right kind of history book yet. It is like reading anything else, you have to find a category that interests you. With history you don't just have different time periods but also different approaches and lenses. I think most peoples' primary experience with history is through overviews covering a long period of time in a specific place or region (i.e. A Concise History of Byzantium). That may have something to do with the difficulty they experience getting into it.

Absolutely. Consider the relative success of certain sensationalist types of historical documentary or drama like most of the History channel's fare or The Tudors.

My Dark Albion campaign has certainly been a big success, being historical, different from standard games, and yet not "subverting" old tropes.

Quote from: Steerpike;758121I think you've admitted that weird dungeons can be done well, it's just tough to do so.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;759066Furthermore, while I can understand why homebrewers might avoid the unusual because it is more difficult . . .

Are you two fuckers done sucking each other's dicks for being so much cleverer than the rest of us yet?


Nothing you clowns are describing is hard. Doing it well can be. But the thing is, the exact same thing is true of working with familiar tropes. Fun is fun, and boring is boring, no matter how you dress it up.

There was a post I read years ago on Big Purple by a guy who was describing a starship that travelled between star systems when a giant who struck space with a hammer caused it to move from one place to another. Another poster, not missing a beat, wrote, 'So it's a jump drive then?'

A Honda Civic with a spoiler and racing wheels and its exhaust pipe cut at the catalytic converter may look and sound like a street racer, but it's still just a motherfucking Honda Civic.

Until you understand what makes a great game-setting great, none of the rest of this shit matters, and if you do understand what makes a great game-setting great, then it matters even less. That's why I keep Ladybird's quote about "five kobolds in a room" in my signature.

Steerpike, do you actually understand what makes settings like Planet Motherfucker or The Metal Earth fun? It's that they are well-done pastiches of familiar tropes that put what the adventurers do front and center.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;759843Until you understand what makes a great game-setting great, none of the rest of this shit matters, and if you do understand what makes a great game-setting great, then it matters even less. That's why I keep Ladybird's quote about "five kobolds in a room" in my signature.

QFMFT.

Weird dungeons are hard to do well, sure.  But so are regular ones.  And the things that make regular dungeons fun are *exactly the goddamn same* as the things that make weird dungeons fun.

QuoteAnd the things that make regular dungeons fun are *exactly the goddamn same* as the things that make weird dungeons fun.

Then I ask again, to you and Vulmea and anyone else who is using this reductive line of thought:

Why are we playing anything other than Greyhawk D&D if that's all we really needed and our desire for novelty is an immature pursuit of meaningless window dressing?

What setting are you using and why did you waste time setting it up when all that matters are the basic building blocks?

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;759855Then I ask again, to you and Vulmea and anyone else who is using this reductive line of thought:

Why are we playing anything other than Greyhawk D&D if that's all we really needed and our desire for novelty is an immature pursuit of meaningless window dressing?

What setting are you using and why did you waste time setting it up when all that matters are the basic building blocks?

You're misunderstanding what I'm saying.  I'll try an analogy.

Let's say you're cooking, and making steak, and it tastes bad.  The answer isn't to use weird exotic ingredients.  The answer is to learn how to cook a fucking steak properly.

If you know the basics of cooking, you can make awesome steak.  You can also make awesome all kinds of things, because variety ain't bad.

But you can't cover up fundamentally bad cooking with exotic ingredients.

Nobody is arguing that weird dungeons are bad.  Nobody.  Just like very few people, if anybody, would argue that exotic ingredients in food are bad.

The only argument you're hearing is that if you can't make a steak right, learn the damn fundamentals before you start screwing with exotic ingredients.  And if your dungeon isn't fun, then figure out how to make a dungeon fun first, then apply whatever weirdness you want on top of it.  Because if you don't have the basics of what makes a dungeon fun down right, then it doesn't matter if it's a dungeon or a tree or a spaceship or the inside of a decaying giant, it's going to be fucking boring.

Quote from: Black VulmeaSteerpike, do you actually understand what makes settings like Planet Motherfucker or The Metal Earth fun? It's that they are well-done pastiches of familiar tropes that put what the adventurers do front and center.

Of course that's absolutely part of it - but part of it is also that it's surreal and gonzo and bizarre, that it's smashing a lot of disparate pieces together in a really cool and strange and compelling way.

Black Vulmea, I thought you didn't want to go back and forth forever in a conversation that ends in a stalemate?

It's obvious you don't care about whether a setting or dungeon is weird/novel/unique and that your preferences are by and large more conservative and traditional, that you prefer the familiar because it's easier to run games with familiar tropes and for you dressing and cosmetics are essentially irrelevant to the actual fun - by your logic any effort made on doing something different is wasted effort because all the DM should care about is execution.  

OK.  That's fine!  I'm not trying to "convert" you to the weird.  I understand your point of view.  I don't agree, but that's OK; we don't have to agree.  But that doesn't mean others' preferences are illegitimate, and you're not going to magically convince me to give up designing or playing in unusual settings and dungeons.  If all you can contribute to the thread that's explicitly about novel dungeons is to keep crowing that novelty doesn't matter, don't act exasperated if the people actually interested in the concept disagree.

Quote from: Black VulmeaBut the thing is, the exact same thing is true of working with familiar tropes. Fun is fun, and boring is boring, no matter how you dress it up.

For me - and some others - part of the fun is the way it's dressed up.

But seriously... if you don't want to have this endless conversation, as you keep protesting, then stop having it.  If you do want to keep talking, then stop complaining about the conversation.  Maybe you could help come up with ways to overcome the common stumbling blocks that those designing unorthodox dungeons run into.

EDIT: robiswrong above has it exactly right IMO.  Fundamentals are absolutely essential, and weird ideas can't compensate for their lack.  I think we can probably consider that part of the discussion "settled."

Quote from: Steerpike;759872It's obvious you don't care about whether a setting or dungeon is weird/novel/unique and that your preferences are by and large more conservative and traditional, that you prefer the familiar because it's easier to run games with familiar tropes and for you dressing and cosmetics are essentially irrelevant to the actual fun - by your logic any effort made on doing something different is wasted effort because all the DM should care about is execution.  

Quote from: Black Vulmea;756741My favorite published D&D adventure, and one of the adventures which has a lasting impact on how I approach roleplaying game campaigns generally, is The Lost Abbey of Calthonwey, which features an abbey that is whisked away to another dimension for many years, then suddenly reappears. The inhabitants are not in stasis per se, but the conflict which set the abbey's disappearance in motion continues.

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

Yeah, I don't quite think that's what Black Vulmea's saying.

I think that, much like me, he's saying that the basics of interaction, exploration, and decision-making are first and foremost, and that the setting is of secondary importance - good design + "bland" setting = fun, good design + gonzo setting = fun, bad design + any setting = no fun.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;759855Why are we playing anything other than Greyhawk D&D if that's all we really needed . . .

Dude, I hate to break this to you, but most gamers are playing familiar pastiche D&D and it's all they really need.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;759855What setting are you using and why did you waste time setting it up when all that matters are the basic building blocks?

I'm using 17th century France for one campaign and 1980s Cold War for another.

No magic. No monsters. No elves. No giant trees. Just mundane history.

Quote from: Steerpike;759872It's obvious you don't care about whether a setting or dungeon is weird/novel/unique and that your preferences are by and large more conservative and traditional, that you prefer the familiar because it's easier to run games with familiar tropes . . .

Either you don't really understand what me or anyone else wrote in this thread, or you really are just a wildly pretentious douchebag.

Either way, I'm done with you.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;759879I'm using 17th century France for one campaign and 1980s Cold War for another.

No magic. No monsters. No elves. No giant trees. Just mundane history.

But why bother when all the true player agency and conflict you need is covered by Greyhawk, right?

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;759893But why bother when all the true player agency and conflict you need is covered by Greyhawk, right?

And now you've gone full-frontal stupid.

I'm done with you as well.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;759893But why bother when all the true player agency and conflict you need is covered by Greyhawk, right?

At this point I'm pretty sure you're just trolling.  But for the sake of trying to have an actual conversation, I'll give it one last shot.

There's two situations here.

Situation 1:

Designer: "Hey, I've made a lot of dungeons, and know how to make them interesting.  I think I'll mix the next one up a bit by setting it inside of a living tree."
Me/Black Vulmea:  "Cool, sounds neat."

Situation 2:

Designer:  "Dungeons are boring.  So boring.  So I'm going to stick it in a tree."
Me/Black Vulmea:  "A boring dungeon in a tree is still fucking boring.  Why don't you figure out the basics of making stuff not suck rather than worrying about changing the wallpaper?"

Nobody's objecting to weird settings.  The only thing that anybody is saying is that if you're making boring-ass dungeons, you won't fix that by putting them in wacky settings.

And yeah, I think BV could probably run a great Greyhawk game.  Or 80s Cold War.  Or a great dungeon in a fucking tree.  The setting is *secondary* (but still worth considering) compared to the basics of having characters do interesting shit and make interesting decisions and having them deal with the consequences of those decisions.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;759894And now you've gone full-frontal stupid.

I'm done with you as well.

Evasion.

What can you do with your 17th Century France that you can't do with Greyhawk?

Is it the culture you want? That's just window dressing by the standards you've set up.

Is it courtly intrigue? Set up a couple of competing baronies in Greyhawk, human nature is the same all over.

Is the presence of elves bothersome? Sideline them, or just don't worry since they aren't that different from humans anyway. Window dressing again.

Is it the lack of magic? Just restrict classes at the start of the game and don't feature any caster NPCs. Although of course subjectively many players find that quite... what are the gifs for that again... ah yes:

(http://stream1.gifsoup.com/view5/3360746/falling-asleep-on-subway-o.gif)

(http://i.imgur.com/O66AUHQ.gif)

Really, you've been playing this reductive and subjective game all thread long and now you you're going to shut it down when the shoe's on the other foot? You can dish it, but not take it?

Too bad, I actually did appreciate several of your insights despite the pointless nastiness attached to them.

Quote from: robsiwrongI think that, much like me, he's saying that the basics of interaction, exploration, and decision-making are first and foremost, and that the setting is of secondary importance - good design + "bland" setting = fun, good design + gonzo setting = fun, bad design + any setting = no fun.

I am completely on-board with this.  Black Vulmea, if this is what you're trying to communicate, yes, I agree.  I feel like I've said this a whole bunch and that people somehow don't believe me, but once more for the record: I fully concur that novelty is of secondary importance to basics!  I just feel that that doesn't mean that setting is totally unimportant, it's just of secondary importance.

Quote from: robiswrongNobody's objecting to weird settings. The only thing that anybody is saying is that if you're making boring-ass dungeons, you won't fix that by putting them in wacky settings.

It feels like Black Vulmea is kind of objecting when he says things like this...

Quote from: Black VulmeaDude, I hate to break this to you, but most gamers are playing familiar pastiche D&D and it's all they really need.

...but it can be surprisingly hard to get a straight answer out of him.  I'm going to go ahead and assume he's not actually objecting and that he's just being a bit of a dick because that's just how he rolls.

I really think we are all agreed that good basics/fundamentals are of primary importance.  Which means that we can all stop arguing about it!

What I'm trying to say is that a novel setting or dungeon can further enhance the experience, and make things even more fun for players: that even if the uniqueness of a dungeon isn't the most important element of fun, it is one element that can contribute to fun.

Rather than continue arguing about something we all agree on - that novelty doesn't compensate for bad design - why not work to think about ways to execute novel dungeons better?  Just because novelty isn't a requirement for a good dungeon doesn't mean it doesn't have value.

EDIT: Attempting an analogy here (well, it's barely an analogy, since it's so close to what we're talking about, but humour me).

Dungeons are like buildings.  If a building is poorly made but has great decorative elements and an inventive layout, it's still a shitty building.  Sound engineering needs to be priority 1.  Anyone who claims that ornamentation or inventive layouts are more important than the building staying up is just plain wrong.

But that doesn't mean that a building can't be enhanced through ornamentation or a cool layout, and if all the buildings being constructed are all homogenous and samey and traditional, it's not unfair to look at the situation and say "You know, we should try out some new things."  Sure, the old buildings still work just fine, but they could still be improved, or at least varied.  A hypothetical critic who says "we don't need any new buildings, the old style was fine and all that matters is engineering, why are you trying to fix what isn't broken?" would be missing the point.  The people arguing for new building designs aren't claiming that we should forget engineering or that the old buildings are badly made or don't function.  They just want to try something new to relieve the potential monotony.

Trying out new layouts and designs for buildings is hard, because you still need to get the engineering right for everything to stay up, and since you're not working with the familiar pattern, things can go wrong more easily.  But that doesn't mean that new, innovative designs shouldn't be attempted, right?

So let's talk about ways to implement ornamentation and innovation while still getting the engineering right.

Quote from: Steerpike;759901Rather than continue arguing about something we all agree on - that novelty doesn't compensate for bad design - why not work to think about ways to execute novel dungeons better?

The key is to think about player interaction first and foremost, and what the 'novelty' means at a fundamental level.

What does it mean to have a "dungeon" inside a tree?  Who lives there?  How do their societies interact?  What are the tensions and scarcities?  If it's just a regular dungeon with "tree innards" pasted on top of the typical "stone walls", then there's no real point.

Similarly, all the detail and other stuff only matters if the players interact with it.  How does this stuff impact what the players *do*, and how its denizens react?

A good dungeon isn't just a static list of enemies to kill.  It's a big machine, and pushing one of the parts will have reactions elsewhere - what 'parts' are there to push, and what reactions will that cause?

As I said, these are all, fundamentally, the *exact same things* you think about when building *any* dungeon.

Y'know, an example from Black Vulmea on how to take "tree dungeon" dressing and provide "adventuring fundamentals" meat and potatoes would be an interesting study on resolving where you two sides are not seeing eye to eye.

But then pages have gone by and I think another meta-conversation is going on.

It's like someone is arguing silhouette and fit, and another is arguing for new fabrics and colors.

Quote from: Opaopajr;759960Y'know, an example from Black Vulmea on how to take "tree dungeon" dressing and provide "adventuring fundamentals" meat and potatoes would be an interesting study on resolving where you two sides are not seeing eye to eye.

First, there's little I could say about what makes a good adventuring environment that Benoist didn't already cover in his thread about megadungeon design.

Second, it's not the kind of adventuring location that I'm likely to include in a fantasy game-world, because it's so obvious a geographic feature that it should have an extensive cultural and perhaps metaphysical presence as well, more akin to a fantasy town than a dungeon. A dungeon can be under your feet and completely unknown - a skyscraper-like tree isn't likely to go unnoticed.

So right from the giddyup there's nothing about 'giant tree' that screams dungeon adventure at all. As a fantasy town, there might be something there, a sort of vertical Erelhei-Cinlu - communities of wood elves in the trunk and gnomes near the roots, a green dragon mother and her young prowling high in the branches with whom they keep a precarious truce, colonies of giant ants that live off sap and in turn provide resources to the other dwellers in the tree, giant bats living in cavities in the tree, giant spiders which prowl the trunk and set their webs between limbs, wyverns that dodge the dragons among the branches, molds and mushrooms with various hallucinogenic and alchemical effects, myconids down among the roots with the gnomes, sylvan creatures such as sylphs, pixies, and a nymph in a cavity-grotto, an oracular dryad-like 'tree-mother,' external threats from hobgoblin and goblin raiders egged on by the dragons, and a circle of spaced-out - remember the mushrooms! - druids who see themselves as guardians of the tree, mostly to the annoyance of the xenophobic elves.

As to what the adventurers do, there's dragon treasure and trinkets gathered by the various and sundry predator lairs, and fungi to harvest for their magical properties, but ultimately this is about the relations between the communities in the tree, and that means power struggles, conflicts over resources, trade, and such. The gnomes in the base of the tree are the friendliest of the bunch, but they are also hard-pressed by threats from beyond the bark and beneath the roots. They trade with the elves, when the elves can be bothered, as the enigmatic and xenophobic elves trust no one very much. The dragons use the elves as a buffer but actively work to undermine - literally - the gnomes through their goblinoid allies, but never so much that the elves take a burgeoning interest. The druids are a thorn in everyone's sides, as they attempt to worm their way into the different communities, but their intelligence on what each of the communities is up to gives them a significant advantage.

As far as the tree itself, it suffers from the limitations of a dungeon-in-a-stovepipe; that said, there could be some fun 3D mapping challenges in the cavern-like system of cavities through the heartwood. This is an environment with a high degree of verticality, so rope ladders, pulley systems for elevators, and the like provide an interesting challenge for mobility, and as the adventurers gain access to more advanced magics, aerial movement among the branches presents a new and interesting opportunity as well.

And tree sap is a dangerously sticky hazard, not a pathway, in my conception of the fantasy tree. Crystalized sap blocks off cavities, hiding old elvish shrines containing mystical lore carved into the bark walls of the cavities.

As a town, there is external trade as well, and the politics which come with that, which means the closer to the tree they approach, the more rumors the adventurers should pick up. Neighboring treants treat the tree with reverence, but they post a threat to incautious forest travellers, and high and gray elves visit, despite their uncouth and unwelcoming kin.

So, factions, mysteries, intrigue, challenge - I could do something with this, I guess, if I was at all interested in plopping a giant fucking tree down somewhere in my setting.

Black Vulmea, that is really awesome and really gives me hope... I want to have conversations where we write stuff like that rather than bickering about things that really don't matter!

I think the Erelhei-Cinlu comparison is spot on - towns of that sort can totally function as "dungeons" of a certain kind.

It'd be fairly easy to "dungeon up" your write-up even more for those that preferred a classic crawl style scenario to a  town adventure - make the wood elves tree-huggers of the "protect the woodlands" extremist variety that kill all those who "pollute" the woods, the gnomes as flesh-eating tunnel-dwellers, that kind of thing.  There could be lots of reasons for adventurers to seek the tree - rescuing captives of the elves' (very Hobbit-ish) before they're ritually put to death, for example.  Or maybe an exiled Elf-prince wants vengeance against his traitorous brother who now rules the tree and hires the adventurers to help him, promising them fabled jewels from the royal trove.  Etc.

Though the tree is skyscraper-tall, magic and the forest itself could conceivably make it a lot harder to find.  There could also be lots of tunnels and burrows in amongst the roots, where things like giant earthworms, dire badgers, packs of ferrets, vermin swarms, and oozes could lurk.  They might include the Gnome burrows but also the cellars and vaults of the elves.

That reminds of this book that is all jungle Green World or something. Each tree being so large that they literally an ecosystem to itself.

Unoriginal themes for dungeons seem to me to be much less of a problem than dungeons that simply aren't good-or aren't any better than slinging random dungeon results at the wall.

It's like you hand 6 module writers 2 pieces of bread and a pot of jelly and a pot of peanut butter and you get:

Writer 1 stacks one piece of bread then the second piece of bread, then pb, then j
Writer 2-pb, j, bread, bread
Writer 3-j, pb, bread, bread
Writer 4-bread, bread, j, pb
Writer 5-j, bread bread, pb
Writer 6-pb, bread bread j

..and not one person thinks "Oh, right, it should go: Bread THEN peanut butter and jelly, then the OTHER piece of bread on top."

Once I see any dungeon of any substantial size which manages to nail down basics like "lay out the dungeon so you can use it", "don't split room descriptions in half", "don't include mundane information", "don't just make it monsters alone", "have complex tricks and traps", "don't have all the monsters be the same" then I might get bored and start asking for tree dungeons instead of underground stone ones.

But right now, man: baby steps. The art is in its infancy.

Quote from: Steerpike;760028Black Vulmea, that is really awesome and really gives me hope... I want to have conversations where we write stuff like that rather than bickering about things that really don't matter!

Yes, that was good, lots of constructive ideas.

Crucially, there were these acknowledgements:

Quote from: Black VulmeaSecond, it's not the kind of adventuring location that I'm likely to include in a fantasy game-world... I could do something with this, I guess, if I was at all interested in plopping a giant fucking tree down somewhere in my setting.

An acceptance of subjectivity makes for more better dialogue.

I'd just like to point out that in the wake of this thread's discussion I've been suffering from analysis paralysis as I try to put together a D&D setting. I'm second guessing all my "clever" ideas, wondering if I'm just being pretentious for no real benefit to the table experience. Progress is slow, and I'm sometimes tempted to toss the whole thing and just adapt the old Fighting Fantasy world for 5e.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;766460I'd just like to point out that in the wake of this thread's discussion I've been suffering from analysis paralysis as I try to put together a D&D setting. I'm second guessing all my "clever" ideas, wondering if I'm just being pretentious for no real benefit to the table experience. Progress is slow, and I'm sometimes tempted to toss the whole thing and just adapt the old Fighting Fantasy world for 5e.

Just put in a bunch of stuff you would find fun to explore and interact with as a player. Don't worry about internal consistency or what people on this board think. If the stuff you would find fun is weird, then go with that.

Quote from: Marleycat;760047That reminds of this book that is all jungle Green World or something. Each tree being so large that they literally an ecosystem to itself.

Green Sky, in Below the Root and two more novels by Zilpha Keatley Snyder.

Had it in my dungeons.

Yes, there are planets in my dungeons -- 'in' being a highly malleable relationship in a wonderland that is sometimes in a bottle on a mantlepiece 'inside' the world . . .

Black Vulmea's example also points out the importance of context.

Saying that I want to make a 'weird dungeon'... slapped like a decal on top of whatever setting... seems quite random. Weird for the sake of weird.

Saying my setting has forests of enormous trees... extrapolating to the thought that someone at some time has probably tried to crawl up and live in one... and/or that the trees evolved their own dungeon-like ecosystems... has more atmosphere and meaning and use to me because it's very much a part of the world around it and in that way not really 'weird' at all... but it's got flavor/atmosphere.

Something atmospheric I've considered stealing from WoW: there is an area in Pandaria ruled by the insectoid Klaxxis. The area has some HUGE trees that the Klaxxis seem to revere as gods. Each tree has it's own name. The Klaxxis culture is centered on these trees and their sap (the sap seems to be currency, food and sacred relic all-in-one).
They build their homes around, on and in them (there are 'dungeon' instances set in some of them)... as do some other creatures.
There are opposing factions of Klaxxi though... as well as ancient Klaxxi heroes preserved in amber waiting to be awakened.
It's all a lot more alive, interesting and complex than it strictly needs to be for the purposes of WoW... since Players have no real impact/consequences from any of it outside of the preset videogame railroad... but it could shine in a TTRPG.

Quote from: Simlasa;766619Something atmospheric I've considered stealing from WoW: there is an area in Pandaria ruled by the insectoid Klaxxis. The area has some HUGE trees that the Klaxxis seem to revere as gods. Each tree has it's own name. The Klaxxis culture is centered on these trees and their sap (the sap seems to be currency, food and sacred relic all-in-one).
They build their homes around, on and in them (there are 'dungeon' instances set in some of them)... as do some other creatures.
There are opposing factions of Klaxxi though... as well as ancient Klaxxi heroes preserved in amber waiting to be awakened.
It's all a lot more alive, interesting and complex than it strictly needs to be for the purposes of WoW... since Players have no real impact/consequences from any of it outside of the preset videogame railroad... but it could shine in a TTRPG.

Good call!

Don't forget to mention that the Klaxxi, like every insectoid race in WoW, are creations and servants of the Cthulhuesque Old Gods. And even then they're split on how to react to Empress Shek'Zeer's possession by the Sha of Fear (technically a fragment or echo of the dead Old God of Pandaria, Y'Shaarj). And the anti-Sha faction recruits the PCs to find and release the sleeping, amber-encased Paragons even as the Sha-dominated Empress orders the invasion of Pandaren lands in violation of a millennial truce. :D

WoW's "lore" is full of such pearls, that can make for awesome tabletop gaming material. But this is certainly the best to come out of a boring-as-fuck expansion.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;756914Alright, this just seems like a matter of subjective taste here, and I'm having trouble figuring out where you're coming from. Tell you what, I've given off-the-top-of-my-head examples, so I'd like to see yours, and I really do mean than in a spirit of polite inquiry, not as a setup for "gotcha!" criticism. What kind of non-combat encounter do you consider interesting enough to pencil in between "20x20 room full of orcs" and "10x60 hallway with pendulum traps"?

Making the dungeon interesting is the referee's JOB.  Perhaps if your orcs actually rolled for reaction to the players and had the possibility of speaking to them instead of "just like a computer game mindlessly attacking" it would be more interesting.

There are no boring dungeons.  There are only boring referees.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;756914"There's this gigantic tree over here on the map and its insides are known to organically generate items useful for resurrection and regeneration magic, but it's also full of weird critters and unknown shit. You guys can visit it if you want, or not, there's also the crypt of the scarlet mask-maker over here and the troll grottos over there. Whatever."

"Let's kill the weird critters and take over the tree."  And if the tree dies, "Fuck it, let's see if we can sell any of the bits of the dead tree."

And then "Let's sail to the Island of Horny Women and find the Red-Headed Huge-Hootered Winklekisser."

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;759893But why bother when all the true player agency and conflict you need is covered by Greyhawk, right?

Are you stupid, or are you an asshole, or do you just have really really bad reading comprehension?

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;766460I'd just like to point out that in the wake of this thread's discussion I've been suffering from analysis paralysis as I try to put together a D&D setting. I'm second guessing all my "clever" ideas, wondering if I'm just being pretentious for no real benefit to the table experience. Progress is slow, and I'm sometimes tempted to toss the whole thing and just adapt the old Fighting Fantasy world for 5e.

Make up some shit you think will be fun.
Play the game.
If not fun toss it and make up some other shit you think will be fun.
Repeat until fun.




In my experience, "clever" comes across as pretentious and boring, or else random and bullshit, about 99 44/100 per cent of the time.

As has been said repeatedly, if you can't run a basic dungeon in a fun manner, putting Groucho Marx false nose, mustache, and eyeglasses on it won't help.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;766460I'd just like to point out that in the wake of this thread's discussion I've been suffering from analysis paralysis as I try to put together a D&D setting. I'm second guessing all my "clever" ideas, wondering if I'm just being pretentious for no real benefit to the table experience. Progress is slow, and I'm sometimes tempted to toss the whole thing and just adapt the old Fighting Fantasy world for 5e.

Let the setting build itself. Don't try and craft a complete ready made world. No setting completely survives contact with the players anyhow. Just create enough to get started and get to playing. Ideas to expand on what you have will present themselves through what happens in the campaign.

D&D games take place (ideally) in a world in motion. Such a place is constantly changing and evolving and if you try and "finish" creating a world before you start playing then you will never get to play.

Quote from: Old Geezer;766701Are you stupid, or are you an asshole, or do you just have really really bad reading comprehension?

Well that post is severed from its context. Earlier in the thread every idea I proposed what dismissed on the basis that it could be done in a conventional setting with just a bit of re-skinning and that I was being foolish to seek novelty. That line on my part was trying to see where exactly some of the posters drew the line on reductiveness.

If it makes any difference I regret that post.

Quote from: The Butcher;766646Don't forget to mention that the Klaxxi, like every insectoid race in WoW, are creations and servants of the Cthulhuesque Old Gods.

Actually, I wasn't aware of that. I knew of Cthun's meddling with Silithid and the inhabitants of Ahn Kiraj... but not that it extended to all insectoids. I suspected the Sha might be Old One related...but haven't seen that spelled out yet (just got to 90).
I love the old Silithid/Kiraj stuff so I guess it figures I'd be a fan of the Klaxxi as well.

QuoteBut this is certainly the best to come out of a boring-as-fuck expansion.

I'm not fond of the Pandas but otherwise I've enjoyed Pandaria... much more than Cataclysm, which was pretty but never felt much of a destination... Deathwing didn't interest me much as an archvillain compared to Illidian or Arthas.

Sorry for the slight thread derailement...

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;766719Well that post is severed from its context. Earlier in the thread every idea I proposed what dismissed on the basis that it could be done in a conventional setting with just a bit of re-skinning and that I was being foolish to seek novelty. That line on my part was trying to see where exactly some of the posters drew the line on reductiveness.

If it makes any difference I regret that post.

I'll apologize for the "stupid or asshole" part.

But I sat down and read this thread in one go, and honestly, it seemed like a lot of the time you weren't actually reading what was being said.

But we all do that from time to time, I guess.

Quote from: The Butcher;766646Good call!

Don't forget to mention that the Klaxxi, like every insectoid race in WoW, are creations and servants of the Cthulhuesque Old Gods. And even then they're split on how to react to Empress Shek'Zeer's possession by the Sha of Fear (technically a fragment or echo of the dead Old God of Pandaria, Y'Shaarj). And the anti-Sha faction recruits the PCs to find and release the sleeping, amber-encased Paragons even as the Sha-dominated Empress orders the invasion of Pandaren lands in violation of a millennial truce. :D

WoW's "lore" is full of such pearls, that can make for awesome tabletop gaming material. But this is certainly the best to come out of a boring-as-fuck expansion.

Speaking for myself I got tired as fuck of WoW's "lore."

And the bug creatures are just monsters in different skins.  That's one of the huge differences between computer games and TTRPGs.  Computer games are much better at impressive visuals, but TTRPGS are much better at complex interactions between PCs and NPCs.

Quote from: Simlasa;766721I've enjoyed Pandaria... much more than Cataclysm, which was pretty but never felt much of a destination... Deathwing didn't interest me much as an archvillain compared to Illidian or Arthas.

IMHO, WoW lore has been wandering in a desert ever since they wrapped up the Warcraft III storyline with the end of WotLK. Cataclysm and MoP both have been underwhelming fluff-wise.

Currently I'd say the best fantasy video game fluff out there is Elder Scrolls (ran by TSR alumnus, Lawrence "White Plume Mountain" Schick), with Guild Wars (also managed by an ex-TSR employee, Jeff "Marvel Superheroes" Grubb) a distant second. But I admit to not being familiar with Dragon Age.

Quote from: Old Geezer;766742And the bug creatures are just monsters in different skins.

That's how I feel about a HUGE chunk of what's in the average Monster Manual... blue goblin, red goblin, silver goblin... yawn. But the bugs we're talking about have a decent bit of character/complexity/culture to explore. You can make friends, sort of, with at least one faction... learn some of their secrets.

QuoteThat's one of the huge differences between computer games and TTRPGs.  Computer games are much better at impressive visuals, but TTRPGS are much better at complex interactions between PCs and NPCs.

Agreed, which is why I think a good chunk of WoW's content is kind of wasted on the railroady videogame format where it can't really reach the potential it would have in a TTRPG.

Quote from: Old Geezer;766738But I sat down and read this thread in one go, and honestly, it seemed like a lot of the time you weren't actually reading what was being said.

Considering that the discussion starts by dismissing other gamers as "hidebound," "retreading the same old dungeon cliches," that shouldn't be too surprising.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;767581Considering that the discussion starts by dismissing other gamers as "hidebound," "retreading the same old dungeon cliches," that shouldn't be too surprising.

I've already admitted my attitude was pretentious and I've been re-examining my assumptions in light of the discussion. How many times do I have to surrender in one thread? Fine, I'll also say my wording in the first post was thoughtless and undiplomatic.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;767607Fine, I'll also say my wording in the first post was thoughtless and undiplomatic.

It's also honest. The "wording" isn't the problem - your contempt is.

And then you turned petulant when you discovered that other gamers responded to your 'creative ideas' with, 'Yeah, that pretty much sucks donkey ball-sweat.' The rest of the thread was you lashing out over your hurt fee-fees.

ShipLock, if you come away from this thread with anything, I hope it's the understanding that gamers who use familiar tropes aren't necessarily doing so by rote, and that a referee's or designer's first priority is to create a setting or an adventure that the players want to play, not to demonstrate how 'original' they are.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;767702It's also honest. The "wording" isn't the problem - your contempt is.

And then you turned petulant when you discovered that other gamers responded to your 'creative ideas' with, 'Yeah, that pretty much sucks donkey ball-sweat.' The rest of the thread was you lashing out over your hurt fee-fees.

ShipLock, if you come away from this thread with anything, I hope it's the understanding that gamers who use familiar tropes aren't necessarily doing so by rote, and that a referee's or designer's first priority is to create a setting or an adventure that the players want to play, not to demonstrate how 'original' they are.

That's a good point.  A lot of the old tropes are useful because they let you start playing right away without a massive "data dump."  Even Tekumel had a "foreigner's quarters" where mysterious strangers would approach you in bars and hire you to go on an expedition into the underworld beneath Jakalla.

Or as C.S. Lewis said, "It is the duty of the artist to take us to new areas of thought and feeling, but they must start in a place we understand."  or words to that effect.

1) The dungeon game basically is geared to being first and last a fun "just a game," only incidentally -- if at all -- a faithful simulation of anything. Insistence on verisimilitude or literary fidelity has become fashionable, but it tends to raise needless barriers to fun. It's like demanding that caped crusaders or giant mecha must be sensible.

The same holds for D&D hit points. If you must over-think the thing, then do it with your "groovy fun" thinking cap on. Otherwise, play sommething else instead of torturing yourself (and others with your belly-aching).

2) For inspiration, try going beyond increasingly incestuous "genre fantasy." The displacer beast was inspired by a story by SF grand master A.E. Van Vogt, a representative of Golden Age weirdness only a little behind Cordwainer Smith. The magic system, ioun stones, and some other things, drew on Jack Vance, who created many more bizarre milieus than just the Dying Earth. (Try "The Moon Moth" for one.)

Michael Shea, very much in the style of Vance and Leiber, has a pretty flavorful underworld in "The Fishing of the Demon Sea," and I heartily recommend all his tales of Nifft the Lean.

Robert Silverburg's The Man in the Maze (1969) is just one of many SF "dungeon" prototypes, and rather tame as those go, but of course has interesting psychological elements. His Majipoor is definitely not just another stop in The Tough Guide to Fantasyland.

The Guide's compiler, Diana Wynne Jones, has herself written such tales as Howl's Moving Castle.

Neil Gaiman, Alan Moore and Warren Ellis come to mind as just a few reasons one might find some comicbooks worth reading.

Urth of the New Sun, the Glittering Plain, Perdido Street Station, the Drawing of the Dark, etc., offer interesting material more or less in the "sword and sorcery" genre itself, but why stop there? Try John Crowley's Little, Big or Robert Holdstock's Mythago Wood.

Gygax and/or Moldvay may have mentioned Abe Merritt (The Face in the Abyss, The Moon Pool, "The People of the Pit," etc.); John Bellairs (The Face in the Frost); Philip Jose Farmer (World of Tiers, Riverworld, etc.); William Hope Hodgson (The Night Land, The House on the Borderland, etc.); Dennis Wheately (The Devil Rides Out, etc.); Robert Heinlein (Glory Road, The Number of the Beast); Jack Chalker (Well of Souls); Clifford D. Simak (City, Goblin Reservation, Where the Evil Dwells); Piers Anthony (Xanth); Hugh Cook (Wizard War series); Winsor McCay's Little Nemo; Roger Zelazny; Lord Dunsany;  Clark Ashton Smith; H.P. Lovecraft; James Branch Cabbell; E.R. Eddison; Fletcher Pratt; C.S. Lewis; Andre Norton; C.L. Moore; John Myers Myers; Mervyn Peake; Wonderland, Oz, Doctor Dolittle, Andrew Lang's Fairy Books, the Arabian Nights, and others.

Quote from: Phillip;767711Michael Shea, very much in the style of Vance and Leiber, has a pretty flavorful underworld in "The Fishing of the Demon Sea," and I heartily recommend all his tales of Nifft the Lean.

I had a DM strongly influenced by Shea (and Vance). We had some incredible campaigns adventuring in surreal demon-haunted landscapes like something out of a Hieronymus Bosch painting enacted to a Black Sabbath soundtrack. We had a city of religious fanatics who fed passerby to their giant slime god, vampiric elves riding purple worms through deserts of bones, giants making wine out of fermented people, huge floating eyes burning peasants to cinders, packs of chromatic steel apes capturing people for use in experiments by a mad wizard, a pirate paddle-ship driven by a captive demon, and a city of shark worshippers ruled by a lich. Magic items included the mummified head of a pixie made you cast the shadow of a pit fiend, a set of glass-steel armour inlaid with thousands of tiny bones, ruby fangs of the darkling, and jade breast-plate that turned your skin green and your hair to chrome.  When you've drunk such heady wine, it's difficult to get jazzed about saving farmers from a band of goblins.

Haffrung, that sounds absolutely amazing.  It's exactly that kind of "heady wine" that I wish there was more of.

Phillip, that's an excellent bibliography of Weird fantasy.  I might add Jeff Vandermeer's Ambergris books and M. John Harrisons's Viriconium sequence to the list; also Lord Dunsany and, of course, Michael Moorcock.

All I was ever trying to say in this thread was basically, "With such abundantly rich possibilities for fantasy, why limit ourselves unnecessarily?  With work and forethought, we can have well-designed dungeons and wild ideas!"

Quote from: Steerpike;767722Haffrung, that sounds absolutely amazing.  It's exactly that kind of "heady wine" that I wish there was more of.

Phillip, that's an excellent bibliography of Weird fantasy.  I might add Jeff Vandermeer's Ambergris books and M. John Harrisons's Viriconium sequence to the list; also Lord Dunsany and, of course, Michael Moorcock.

All I was ever trying to say in this thread was basically, "With such abundantly rich possibilities for fantasy, why limit ourselves unnecessarily?  With work and forethought, we can have well-designed dungeons and wild ideas!"

Favorites of mine, too! (I added Dunsany in an edit).

I'm delighted to see there's more -- and more widely available -- Vandermeer than the chapbook I bought years ago.

Michael Cisco is another I've been enjoying. The Vandermeer's led me to him. Trippy stuff. The protagonist of his first book is a golem, sent out to find a mysterious collection of words. Weird but playful stuff.

Having but started Dave Duncan's Magic Casement, my preliminary assessment is that he puts a creative spin on familiar things.

L. E. Modesitt, Jr.'s Magic of Recluce series and David Drake's Lord of the Isles series have a similar quality.

The set of five Swords Against Darkness anthologies edited by Andrew J. Offutt is an excellent collection of sword and sorcery stories, some with pretty novel touches. He also co-wrote the Tiana/War of the Wizards trilogy with Richard K. Lyon, and contributed Hanse Shadowspawn to Thieves' World.

The Fantastic Swordsmen (Lin Carter, ed.) is a little sampler of classic tales, illustrating some of the creativity in the pre-frp genre.

Black Gate is probably the top genre-oriented magazine today. Besides new work, it has reprinted such stories as Charles Tanner's "Tumithak of the Corridors" (a 1930s epic in which the hero's quest is upward from the safety of the depths to the monstrous perils of the surface).

The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction is the premiere venue for the wider field of fantasy.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;767702ShipLock, if you come away from this thread with anything, I hope it's the understanding that gamers who use familiar tropes aren't necessarily doing so by rote, and that a referee's or designer's first priority is to create a setting or an adventure that the players want to play, not to demonstrate how 'original' they are.

I try to question my assumptions and learn from my mistakes.

Quote from: Old Geezer;767704That's a good point.  A lot of the old tropes are useful because they let you start playing right away without a massive "data dump."  Even Tekumel had a "foreigner's quarters" where mysterious strangers would approach you in bars and hire you to go on an expedition into the underworld beneath Jakalla.

Or as C.S. Lewis said, "It is the duty of the artist to take us to new areas of thought and feeling, but they must start in a place we understand."  or words to that effect.

Yes, I think that contributes to the enduring popularity of games such as D&D ánd Traveller, and the perennial interest in comicbook-superhero games. The basic ideas are familiar enough, but once we're started we can ring even more changes than with a Western, gangster, spy or war game.

By and large, the big commercial successes tap into genres already established elsewhere. Vampire, for instance, road the coattails of Anne Rice's novels.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;767861I try to question my assumptions and learn from my mistakes.

And how's that working out for you?

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;766460I'd just like to point out that in the wake of this thread's discussion I've been suffering from analysis paralysis as I try to put together a D&D setting. I'm second guessing all my "clever" ideas, wondering if I'm just being pretentious for no real benefit to the table experience.

Okay, which assumptions are you questioning? What mistakes do you think you made, and what did you learn from them?

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;766460I'd just like to point out that in the wake of this thread's discussion I've been suffering from analysis paralysis as I try to put together a D&D setting. I'm second guessing all my "clever" ideas, wondering if I'm just being pretentious for no real benefit to the table experience. Progress is slow, and I'm sometimes tempted to toss the whole thing and just adapt the old Fighting Fantasy world for 5e.

Do you have existing players as a GM?  If so, you're doing something right.  One person's fantastical is another person's gonzo, one person's elegant is another person's simplistic, etc.

Just post everything here, we'll tell you when you're being the Ridley Scott who made Alien and Blade Runner vs. the Ridley Scott of Prometheus. :D

Also, if the PCs are engaged with the people of Havenhill Township who you've breathed life into and made real, then heading into the Chasm of Chaos to eliminate the humanoid tribes that threaten them isn't trite or hackneyed, it's urgent, important, exciting and scary.

Stephen King can't plot his way out of a paper bag, and half the time can't even finish the book well, but Characterization - my god that makes it all worthwhile.

Life isn't very original, yet somehow we still find ways to enjoy it, don't we?

I'm concerned about "over-gonzoing" the setting I'm preparing for 5e. Now of course a little gonzo is good, I want this thing to be a little novel, but it still has to be accessible to the new players I'm hoping to introduce to the game.

For instance, my concept didn't originally use the basic non-human race array (dwarf, elf, halfling, etc) but I've decided to make a few spaces in the world for them after all for the benefit of players who really like them.

I've reduced, reined in, or dropped a lot of weird ideas, trying to stick to a few that I think actually add something to the play experience instead of simply pleasing my artistic quirks. It's hard to judge.

I'm using reincarnation rather than the standard D&D afterlife for one, with all the consequences that can entail for social structures and magic. Enlightenment is a possible but mysterious outcome that can leave behind magic effects when a person dies - I think this can be an alternative way of adding interesting beneficial (or harmful) magical effects to the landscape.

A greater reliance on home brewed aberration creatures alongside a complete absence of undead, demons and "orc/goblin/ogre" style creatures is a second conceit. This doesn't even need to be stated to the players, just a background detail they may consciously pick up on or not, but it should change the feel of the thing.

The increased presence and prominence of intelligent magic items I mentioned in another thread is a third. I just like the roleplaying opportunities they present, and I think players do too.

One thing that I have to keep in mind is that my typical player (established or likely recruit) is a video gamer, and video gamers see some fantasy tropes far more often than others and actually do complain about them. I'm not sure I could get past their eye-rolling negative first reaction to present an original take on an especially common idea, but I can try.

The whole campaign document (intended for my eyes only) is hovering at 15 pages right now. I'll probably post it here in time, then prepare a one-page player handout that the curious can look at (or not, accessibility means getting to the actual play as soon as possible I think).

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;769503I'm concerned about "over-gonzoing" the setting I'm preparing for 5e.

Dude, you can't overgonzo 5e.  Thaumaturgy alone sweeps every DCC image ever drawn under the rug.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;769503. . . I want this thing to be a little novel, but it still has to be accessible to the new players I'm hoping to introduce to the game.

That's a good starting point, in my experience.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;769503For instance, my concept didn't originally use the basic non-human race array (dwarf, elf, halfling, etc) . . .

What were you planning to use in their places? Or were you planning on going all-human?

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;769503I've reduced, reined in, or dropped a lot of weird ideas, trying to stick to a few that I think actually add something to the play experience instead of simply pleasing my artistic quirks. It's hard to judge.

What makes it hard to judge?

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;769503I'm using reincarnation rather than the standard D&D afterlife for one . . .

Do you think that would be fun for the players? If so, why?

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;769503Enlightenment is a possible but mysterious outcome that can leave behind magic effects when a person dies - I think this can be an alternative way of adding interesting beneficial (or harmful) magical effects to the landscape.

Could you give an example of this?

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;769503A greater reliance on home brewed aberration creatures alongside a complete absence of undead, demons and "orc/goblin/ogre" style creatures is a second conceit.

Are you prepared to have a range of challenges as they increase in ability? Are these "aberration creatures" just Cthulhoid horrors, or can they be negotiated with, allied with, or served? How do they relate to the setting?

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;769503This doesn't even need to be stated to the players . . .

I disagree. If you let them create characters thinking they're playing D&D, but the cleric's and paladin's ability to turn undead is useless because there are no undead in the setting, then that can be off-putting for some players. Moreover, why would a character raised in the setting not know there are no undead or fiends or whatnot?

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;769503The increased presence and prominence of intelligent magic items I mentioned in another thread is a third.

I glanced at that thread - it struck me as change-for-change's-sake.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;769503One thing that I have to keep in mind is that my typical player (established or likely recruit) is a video gamer, and video gamers see some fantasy tropes far more often than others and actually do complain about them. I'm not sure I could get past their eye-rolling negative first reaction to present an original take on an especially common idea, but I can try.

Must you constantly talk down about other gamers? Put your fucking ego in a box - it's not serving you well.

My advice?

Play it as written first.  THEN start to fuck around with it.

Quote from: CRKrueger;769511Dude, you can't overgonzo 5e.  Thaumaturgy alone sweeps every DCC image ever drawn under the rug.

When did Thaumaturgy kill your father? :D

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;769503One thing that I have to keep in mind is that my typical player (established or likely recruit) is a video gamer, and video gamers see some fantasy tropes far more often than others and actually do complain about them. I'm not sure I could get past their eye-rolling negative first reaction to present an original take on an especially common idea, but I can try.

The ONLY response to that that involves even the TINIEST bit of self respect is "This is my world.  It is full of stuff I like.  You don't have to play.  And if you give me any shit about it, you can kiss my sister's black cat's ass."

If my players complained and gave me eye rolling negative first reactions, I'd tell them to go fuck themselves.

Quote from: Old Geezer;769719My advice?

Play it as written first.  THEN start to fuck around with it.

Yeah, this.

If the designer is halfway competent, he's done more testing of the game before publication than you have on your first read-through.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;769643What were you planning to use in their places? Or were you planning on going all-human?

Dragonborn = They're popular with my players and I like them.
Kenku (paizo tengu style) = I want to experiment with a player race that has quicker access to flying and I like their sneaky carrion vibe.
Wilden = Plant people fit in with the starting region concepts I've been toying with, and I like the idea of a naive newly created race in a world of established ones.
Others depending on player interest.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;769643What makes it hard to judge?

Well, as this thread demonstrated, what I assume is obvious ain't necessarily so. Consider your next question about the reincarnation thing:

Quote from: Black Vulmea;769643Do you think that would be fun for the players? If so, why?

Before this question the coolness of the concept seemed evident, but now I have to wonder what I'm overlooking or overvaluing. I guess it allows for things like...
... players can interact with their past lives under certain circumstances.
... resurrection magic is fraught with ethical questions and cultural taboos.
... the emphasis is on the overall pursuit of wisdom rather than adherence to a specific deity's precepts.
... a different attitude towards the meaning of death, the afterlife, and what is worth pursuing in life creates different cultural flavors than the more familiar med-euro paradigm. I kind of want to clash the two and get religious conflicts out of that. I want to work something like the Cathar heresy into the setting.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;769643Could you give an example of this?

At the moment of death each intelligent creature undergoes some mysterious test of the collective wisdom of all their lives to date. If they pass, they transform into a permanent pattern of swirling energy on the mortal realm that radiates a specific supernatural effect that has something to do with whatever their final insight was. For instance, there could be one who reveals the leadership potential of anyone who approaches it (and is therefore both highly valued and detested for the effect it has on the selection of local leadership). These "ascended" creatures cannot be moved or destroyed, except by the intelligent weapons described further below.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;769643Are you prepared to have a range of challenges as they increase in ability? Are these "aberration creatures" just Cthulhoid horrors, or can they be negotiated with, allied with, or served? How do they relate to the setting?

I homebrewed 85% of my creatures in 3e and 4e, so doing it in 5e will be a doddle. While they are meant to be unnatural "glitches" in the natural order of the world they aren't Cthulhoid nightmares so much as weird mutants, as I'm not going for a cosmic horror vibe. Some of them are mindless beasts, some of them are charming depraved artists who build crazy dungeons as an act of self-expression.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;769643I disagree. If you let them create characters thinking they're playing D&D, but the cleric's and paladin's ability to turn undead is useless because there are no undead in the setting, then that can be off-putting for some players. Moreover, why would a character raised in the setting not know there are no undead or fiends or whatnot?

I wasn't specific about how I've handled it in the past, sorry. Players who took classes that have features relating to creature types I don't use (usually undead) are notified and compensated, but everyone else is free to ask about it if they consciously notice it. Of course their characters would know some stuff, but in an exploratory game I prefer not to share the majority of the bestiary. Part of the appeal of homebrewing is the surprise factor.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;769643I glanced at that thread - it struck me as change-for-change's-sake.

Welp, I really like the concept and I'm sticking to that gun. I'm open to the idea that pushing it too hard as a core setting conflict would be too pretentious, and that I should just restrict myself to an unusually high number of well realized intelligent weapons lying around like in any other D&D setting. I'm on the fence about it.

Quote from: Old Geezer;769719My advice?

Play it as written first.  THEN start to fuck around with it.

Well I wasn't looking at major rule changes, but at this point yes, I'm seriously tempted to run a straightforward module first.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;769825Dragonborn = They're popular with my players and I like them.

Okay.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;769825Kenku (paizo tengu style) = I want to experiment with a player race that has quicker access to flying and I like their sneaky carrion vibe.
Wilden = Plant people fit in with the starting region concepts I've been toying with, and I like the idea of a naive newly created race in a world of established ones.

As a player, do you ever say to yourself, 'Man, I've always wanted to play a sentient plant new to the world!'

What do you think playing these races brings to the campaign that the traditional races, or something close to them, do not? Why should I as a player be more interested in playing these races?

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;769825Before this question the coolness of the concept seemed evident, but now I have to wonder what I'm overlooking or overvaluing. I guess it allows for things like...
... players can interact with their past lives under certain circumstances.
... resurrection magic is fraught with ethical questions and cultural taboos.
... the emphasis is on the overall pursuit of wisdom rather than adherence to a specific deity's precepts.
... a different attitude towards the meaning of death, the afterlife, and what is worth pursuing in life creates different cultural flavors than the more familiar med-euro paradigm. I kind of want to clash the two and get religious conflicts out of that. I want to work something like the Cathar heresy into the setting.

So, resurrection is available, but frowned upon?

For a moment, put aside the 'search for enlightenment' stuff - what are the practical, game implications for a player character who is reincarnated? How exactly is this supposed to work?

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;769825At the moment of death each intelligent creature undergoes some mysterious test of the collective wisdom of all their lives to date. If they pass, they transform into a permanent pattern of swirling energy on the mortal realm that radiates a specific supernatural effect that has something to do with whatever their final insight was. For instance, there could be one who reveals the leadership potential of anyone who approaches it (and is therefore both highly valued and detested for the effect it has on the selection of local leadership). These "ascended" creatures cannot be moved or destroyed, except by the intelligent weapons described further below.

So, a reskinned magic fountain, then.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;769825I homebrewed 85% of my creatures in 3e and 4e, so doing it in 5e will be a doddle. While they are meant to be unnatural "glitches" in the natural order of the world they aren't Cthulhoid nightmares so much as weird mutants, as I'm not going for a cosmic horror vibe. Some of them are mindless beasts, some of them are charming depraved artists who build crazy dungeons as an act of self-expression.

Okay, but my question is, what are the ways in which players interact with these mutants? Do these mutants have cultures? organise societies? or are they horrors lurking on the edges of civilisation?

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;769825Of course their characters would know some stuff, but in an exploratory game I prefer not to share the majority of the bestiary.

Consider what the player characters are likely to know. Is it, 'Here be mutants,' or do these things arise spontaneously?

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;769825Part of the appeal of homebrewing is the surprise factor.

What makes something a surprise is a recognizable baseline from which it diverges. Nothing by surprises means the game-world could be completely random.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;769825Welp, I really like the concept and I'm sticking to that gun.

Okay.

What does it do for the players? for the campaign?

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;769825I'm open to the idea that pushing it too hard as a core setting conflict would be too pretentious, and that I should just restrict myself to an unusually high number of well realized intelligent weapons lying around like in any other D&D setting.

:confused:

Quote from: Black Vulmea;770022As a player, do you ever say to yourself, 'Man, I've always wanted to play a sentient plant new to the world!'

What do you think playing these races brings to the campaign that the traditional races, or something close to them, do not? Why should I as a player be more interested in playing these races?

As a racial perk, the plant character doesn't have to participate in census surveys.

The census bureau doesn't count plants or candy bars.

Quote from: Rincewind1;769721When did Thaumaturgy kill your father? :D

It didn't, it turned him into a slo-mo special effect Neo wannabe, which is arguably worse. :D

Disclaimer: I did not just claim D&D will kill your parents.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;770022As a player, do you ever say to yourself, 'Man, I've always wanted to play a sentient plant new to the world!'

When I first saw the race entry, yes, it sounded good to me, and one of my player played one, although heavily re-flavored. But yes, I realize it's a bit niche and could face the chopping block.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;770022What do you think playing these races brings to the campaign that the traditional races, or something close to them, do not? Why should I as a player be more interested in playing these races?

The kenku flies, which is an option players don't typically get to play around with but frequently ask about in my experience. Why not build the opportunity into the setting? Also, there's something about the Paizo and WotC art for this race that just sparks "sneaky bastard" character ideas that don't feel the same with halflings (although could arguably emerge from goblins or kobolds).

Quote from: Black Vulmea;770022So, resurrection is available, but frowned upon?

Sure, or at least frowned upon in some regions but not others, for extra conflict spice.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;770022For a moment, put aside the 'search for enlightenment' stuff - what are the practical, game implications for a player character who is reincarnated? How exactly is this supposed to work?

I guess I was going to figure it out during the design process or when the players decided it was something they wanted to explore/exploit.

Perhaps some supernatural phenomena can cause you to randomly acquire traits of past lives, which can be a good or bad thing depending on the circumstances?

Quote from: Black Vulmea;770022So, a reskinned magic fountain, then.

Yes, but with the distinction that no wizard or god was needed to put it there, which allows certain setting assumptions to work better.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;770022Okay, but my question is, what are the ways in which players interact with these mutants? Do these mutants have cultures? organise societies? or are they horrors lurking on the edges of civilisation?

90% horrors lurking on the edges of civilization, 10% infiltrators/subverters.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;770022Consider what the player characters are likely to know. Is it, 'Here be mutants,' or do these things arise spontaneously?

Some are established strains, but new ones are emerging all the time from the aftereffects of an ancient mistake.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;770022What makes something a surprise is a recognizable baseline from which it diverges. Nothing by surprises means the game-world could be completely random.

Well aside from ideas I've been discussing the civilized places would be pretty standard fantasy, so civilization will be the baseline and the wilderness will be the surprises.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;770022What does it do for the players? for the campaign?

What intelligent weapons usually do to/for D&D players and campaigns, but with a higher frequency.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;770022:confused:

Well let me use the example of dragons. In most D&D campaign settings dragons are standard feature but not super significant to the setting. In some atypical settings there are almost no dragons (Ravenloft), a lot more dragons than usual (Dragonlance), or dragons are a major component (Council of Wyrms). These adjustments have an impact on the flavor of the place.

So now switch in intelligent items for dragons. What I'm deciding is whether I have more intelligent items than usual or whether they are a major component.

I guess nowadays I'd be called an "everything and the kitchen sink" kind of D&Der -- but that was a part of the game's basic appeal. It wasn't limited to a particular little world, like fantasy games that were in a sense just historical gaming redux. It was more like the anything-goes multiverses of Marvel and DC comics, before there was a decent game specifically for that genre.

With wide-open options, the players can choose for themselves what to explore!

Quote from: Black Vulmea;770022What makes something a surprise is a recognizable baseline from which it diverges. Nothing by surprises means the game-world could be completely random.

MMmmmmm, yes and no.  "Learn empirically" has a certain type of fun to it, and that's how Greyhawk started.  There were goblins and ogres and giants and a few other mythological critters... and if it was human sized we figured it was "about like a man" and if it was other we figured it was "tough."  But Greyhawk was FULL of "What the fuck is THAT?" and that was a lot of the fun.

For that matter, one of these years I'm going to sit down and totally redo my monster list to include bogles, nackers, and other small creatures and redo the stats on absolutely every other creature.  A pseudomedieval fantasy game that includes living gargoyles is a good idea, but my gargoyles will NOT match the D&D gargoyle.

Q.v. that old Dragon article about "We shout 'November' and the Clickclicks all fall dead."

Quote from: Black VulmeaWhat makes something a surprise is a recognizable baseline from which it diverges. Nothing by surprises means the game-world could be completely random.

This gives me an idea for a campaign premise.

The players are from a stereotypical, generically traditional Tolkienian redux fantasy world full of "the usual" - Elves, Halflings, Dwarves, Humans, Dragons, Orcs, etc.  Nothing special, all very familiar and expected, nothing we haven't seen before many times.

The campaign, though, is built around the discovery of this setting's New World, which is completely batshit insane, high-weird and exotic and surreal, and seems, to the explorers, "completely random" - the stuff they're encountering doesn't fit at all into their world-view.  So they're expecting to find, like, new subraces of Goblins or Elves but instead they discover a civilization of shapeshifters and villages built on the backs of giant reptiles and tribes of angry armadillo-folk and groves of sentient fungi and 100 foot tall golems made entirely of wood... nothing could have a proper archetypal/mythic precedent.  The explorers all use Vancian magic but they find completely unrecognizable forms of magic/psionics on the new continent that utilize totally different systems.  There are no kingdoms, no organized churches, no thieves' guilds.  Mechanically, the NPCs don't even use the same character classes they do.

Could be a really fun kind of game.  There'd be a kernel of "normalcy" in the form of the players themselves, but everything else would be eight-eyed giants and butterfly-gods and vampiric ferns, just an onslaught of unrelenting strangeness.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;770036The kenku flies, which is an option players don't typically get to play around with but frequently ask about in my experience. Why not build the opportunity into the setting? Also, there's something about the Paizo and WotC art for this race that just sparks "sneaky bastard" character ideas that don't feel the same with halflings (although could arguably emerge from goblins

Be VERY wary of giving your players a flying character, unless flying foes are more common.  We have a Kenku AND a plant person in our current campaign (the latter because the player is a snowflake who likes Farscape).  The flying PC changes EVERYTHING when it comes to scouting, combat, and terrain challenges. I'll never allow one again. And the plant character we have is just plain weird (but the player is, too, so I guess to be expected).

In the early '80s, my usual starting point was a pan-dimensional city called Cynosure -- not exactly as in the Grimjack comics, but same basic idea.

A common patron was the Multiversal Trading Co. (from the Arduin Grimoire). That situation was sort of like Larry Niven's Svetz, the "Picnic in Paradise" of Joanna Russ's Alyx, or H. Beam Piper's Paratime and Lord Kalvan.

Quote from: cranebump;770724Be VERY wary of giving your players a flying character, unless flying foes are more common.  We have a Kenku AND a plant person in our current campaign (the latter because the player is a snowflake who likes Farscape).  The flying PC changes EVERYTHING when it comes to scouting, combat, and terrain challenges. I'll never allow one again. And the plant character we have is just plain weird (but the player is, too, so I guess to be expected).

Well I'm planning on handling it the way 3.5 handled raptorans and Pathfinder handles its tengus: You only get to glide until about 5th level (when spellcasters get the Fly spell), at which point you gain time-limited flight (and at the cost of a feat in Pathfinder). In effect it grants the player a casting of the Fly spell.

What rule system did you use?

Quote from: cranebump;770724Be VERY wary of giving your players a flying character, unless flying foes are more common.  We have a Kenku AND a plant person in our current campaign (the latter because the player is a snowflake who likes Farscape).  The flying PC changes EVERYTHING when it comes to scouting, combat, and terrain challenges. I'll never allow one again.

If you know there's going to be flying PCs I don't see why it's such a big deal. They create their own set of complications and dangers because as soon as they're off the ground to any degree they become a target.
Sure they're excellent for scouting... but they're usually out there alone... and there are other flying things that eat flying things. They usually can't carry much so no dropping huge rocks from the sky (and the higher they go the worse the aim/wind buffeting). They can scoot up cliffs and out of pits... but in a setting with flying opponents lots of folks are going to take measures against them. Bad weather and high winds will keep them grounded.
Besides, most fantasy games have magic that will let characters get up into the air... at least for a while... so I don't see it as a huge issue.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;770036I guess I was going to figure it out during the design process or when the players decided it was something they wanted to explore/exploit.

So you were going to introduce a major setting conceit without first figuring out how it would affect the players' experience.

This lies at the heart of what I've been talking about through most of this thread.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;770861So you were going to introduce a major setting conceit without first figuring out how it would affect the players' experience.

This lies at the heart of what I've been talking about through most of this thread.

Exactly.

The player experience is what matters.  It is Alpha and Omega.  The things you put in your setting or dungeon or scenario should be put in to improve the players' experience.

Putting in a major feature without thinking through "how does this impact the actual, at the table gameplay" puts the cart before the horse.  It's a symptom of approaching design from a perspective other than "how do I make a fun game."

This tells me that your criteria for including things is something other than "what will make this fun?"  Maybe it's making a neat world.  Maybe it's exercising your creativity.  Maybe it's just doing something different.

And when "fun game" isn't your primary goal, then it should be no surprise that your game ends up "dull and tired."

Quote from: Black Vulmea;770861So you were going to introduce a major setting conceit without first figuring out how it would affect the players' experience.

This lies at the heart of what I've been talking about through most of this thread.

Hence my doubts and analysis paralysis.

But I do think you're slightly undervaluing the effect that a  proven reincarnation/enlightenment-based afterlife would have on NPCs and their societies compared to a "choose your deity(ies) and obey their precepts" one. The conceit also helps explain things like my "dead enlightened people are the main source of benevolent magical effects in the world" conceit, which is intended to make player wizards and clerics feel more unique and special (they would be among the pioneers of new magical styles).

I should also mention the intelligent weapons are also meant to undercut the "everything revolves around spellcasters" feel of standard D&D by changing the source of one of the key non-spellcaster power ups. The weapons steal life force and use it to manufacture more of themselves (and other magic devices), so fighter-types have done just fine without casters for a long time.

But yes, at this time the reincarnation thing is sitting on the chopping block as I contemplate how useful it is.

QuoteAnd when "fun game" isn't your primary goal, then it should be no surprise that your game ends up "dull and tired."

I'm going to spin this off into another, more focused thread to discuss the value of flavor for flavor's sake in games.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;770872I'm going to spin this off into another, more focused thread to discuss the value of flavor for flavor's sake in games.

I'm not sure it's necessary.  Flavor is a good, and useful thing.

Let me try to rephrase it a bit differently.  Sid Meier said that a game is a series of interesting decisions.  A game gets "dull and tired" primarily because the decisions become uninteresting - the optimal path gets known.  Keeping the decisions interesting is the meat of the game.

But meat ain't enough.  You need spice, too, and that's where "flavor" comes in.  And it's a useful thing, but it's secondary.

You're likely going to achieve what you optimize for.  If your primary focus is "flavor", then you'll probably create flavor.  But whether you'll create interesting decisions is debatable.  And vice versa.

*But* - interesting decisions are *harder* than flavor.  And things made for "flavor" can very easily tweak the decisions and make them uninteresting (ie, obviously optimizable), while on the other hand, a series of interesting decisions will generally bring in a flavor *of its own*.  The flavor of "making it through a dungeon in a commando raid" is very different than the flavor of "pitting dungeon factions against each other" is very different from the flavor of "exploring a trap-filled hellhole".

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;770872But I do think you're slightly undervaluing the effect that a  proven reincarnation/enlightenment-based afterlife would have on NPCs and their societies . . .

I don't give a shit how it affects "NPCs and their societies" until I first consider how it affects the players and their characters.

I can run bog-standard 1e AD&D with religious systems based on ancestor worship or nature spirits instead of 'the gods,' without fundamentally changing how the players and their characters interact with the game. Again, that's just reskinning for flavor, like your reskinning magic fountains as 'ascended beings' or whatever.

But you seem to be talking about changing a major conceit, and you've given nothing but cursory thought to how that affects the other people around the table. To me, that's setting-creation-as-masturbation.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;770872I should also mention the intelligent weapons are also meant to undercut the "everything revolves around spellcasters" feel of standard D&D . . .

There's no such thing as "standard D&D" - frex, 3e borked the limitations on magic-users and other spell casters that work just fine in 1e.

You're fixing a problem you have with a version of the game, not a problem everyone has with the game, so don't feed me crap about "standard D&D."


As OG notes upthread, you don't really seem to be listening to the answers other posters are giving you; you seem more interested in validation than criticism. It's not like this is the first time you've asked this question (http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?t=28413) - or some variation on it (http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?t=29287) - and do you remember how that went?

Quote from: Technomancer;713314It doesn't need to be original, but it helps if it is interesting.

Quote from: RunningLaser;713320The older I get, the less I care about that sort of thing.

Quote from: Piestrio;713394In my experience settings that are billed as "novel" are usually a detriment to play.

Quote from: Philotomy Jurament;713397"Cool" is a lot more important than "original."  And there's a lot to be said for a setting that people can understand without having to learn all sort of new things or needing to adjust their default assumptions.

Quote from: Old Geezer;713417The vast majority of people just want to play the fucking game.

Also, your originality is not as original as you think.

Quote from: therealjcm;713429Players care about a fun game. Time spent chasing originality is always better spent putting in more fun.

Quote from: jeff37923;713556Just because something is original does not mean that it is good.

Quote from: Just Another Snake Cult;713561Personality is more important to me than originality.

Quote from: Kiero;714067I don't give a toss about originality for it's own sake, the only thing I care about is that it's good.

Quote from: Simlasa;714201Having an imaginative/creative GM is much more important to me than how 'original' a setting is. Someone creative can make the old stuff new again... while a hack can suck the flavor out of anything.

Quote from: S'mon;714213I'd go so far as to say that for RPG purposes, originality tends to be a negative. It's a good thing when players can immediately grasp the setting by reference to established genre tropes, such as Sword & Planet, Space Opera, Superheroes, etc. Broadly speaking, the more derivative the better.

Quote from: Soylent Green;713352Mostly I want a setting to be accessible. The quicker the characters feel at home in it, the sooner the game get's good.

Quote from: Herr Arnulfe;714089A couple of my gaming friends have asked why I'm uninterested in developing settings. For them, setting development is what it's all about, whereas I'm happy to run games in pre-made settings. For me, it's all about originality of situations, and that doesn't require setting originality . . .

And I think the root of the problem's you're having are also found in that thread.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;713671A metaphor that was offered to me in a conversation on this subject:

The GM is a musician, the adventure is a piece of music, and the campaign setting is the instrument.

Personally I think that's a horrible metaphor. It ignores the dynamic relationship between the referee and the players, relegating the latter to an audience to be entertained.

Since repeating the same arguments you first heard seven months ago doesn't seem to be helping, let's try a different tack - tell me about a successful campaign that you've run.

To go with a musical metaphor, I'd say the DM is more like the conductor and maybe a bit like the composer, the players are clearly the musicians, and the game is the actual music.

Creating music that's well structured and musically sound is clearly priority 1.  But just because the classical pieces are great doesn't mean there's no room for rock and roll.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;771019Since repeating the same arguments you first heard seven months ago doesn't seem to be helping, let's try a different tack - tell me about a successful campaign that you've run.

Touché.

My last 4e (essentials) campaign. Deadline was coming up, so I gave up on making an elaborate heartfelt setting halfway through* and just made a quick standard sandbox one, albeit with an American countryside flavor and lots of inspiration from old Saturday morning cartoons. No funky races, no funky cosmology, no funky mechanics, but my preferences did shape things (de-emphasized undead, emphasized elementals, etc.). The players generated a large amount of the setting information through their actions.

It was a blast for everyone. Far more successful than my recent 7th Sea campaign patterned off the Brothers Grimm movie (which the players requested).

* I didn't want to "misuse my favorite ideas" if it wasn't perfect was my reasoning at the time.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;771019But you seem to be talking about changing a major conceit, and you've given nothing but cursory thought to how that affects the other people around the table.

I'm posting my doubts about it on a message board for blunt criticism. I'm considering binning most of the project and recycling the better material in a premade setting partly because of that criticism. I think that's more than cursory thought.

Quote from: Black VulmeaThere's no such thing as "standard D&D" - frex, 3e borked the limitations on magic-users and other spell casters that work just fine in 1e.

You misunderstand, I was referring to the way that the standard assumption is that spellcasters make the magic items non-spellcasters often need to wield reality bending effects, so in the end it's still all about the spellcasters. It just felt like something I wanted to tinker with for flavor reasons, wouldn't really affect the players unless they wanted to make something of it. I could just as easily bypass it by saying gods make all the magic items or whatever.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;771061I'm posting my doubts about it on a message board for blunt criticism. I'm considering binning most of the project and recycling the better material in a premade setting partly because of that criticism. I think that's more than cursory thought.

Actually, I think the point here is that you were going to make a major change to resurrection/reincarnation in your setting without thinking about the impact on actual play.

Nobody is suggesting binning the setting.  The only thing anyone is saying is "hey, if you're going to make a change like that, think through how it impacts the play experience."

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;771061You misunderstand, I was referring to the way that the standard assumption is that spellcasters make the magic items non-spellcasters often need to wield reality bending effects, so in the end it's still all about the spellcasters. It just felt like something I wanted to tinker with for flavor reasons, wouldn't really affect the players unless they wanted to make something of it. I could just as easily bypass it by saying gods make all the magic items or whatever.

But... this is what's bothering a lot of us.  It reads like "I don't really have a good idea for how magic items appear, I just want it to be not the way it usually happens."

Which is a recipe for a bad game, honestly.  "Changing shit just for the sake of changing shit" I cannot un-recommend heartily enough.  If you say "It would be cool if magic items were actually god shit, literally," well, that's different, but the difference is you STARTED with the idea, rather than "Change X for the sake of change."