Monte Cook's new Dungeonaday.com?

[Philotomy Jurament]

What is the point of a wandering monster, if the goal is the "quickly resolve fights" with them? I mean, if they are a nuisance to the flow of the game, why have them? As living piles of XP?

"Old school" wandering monsters present to challenge the PCs, but not necessarily as a combat encounter to be vanquished. Wandering monsters are a danger if you waste a lot of time, forcing you to spend party resources on them when you'd rather be spending those resources on your goal. They're certainly NOT living piles of XP, since the older editions do not reward you with much XP from monsters (a typical split is probably something like 80% of XP from treasure and 20% from monsters), and wandering monsters have little or not treasure. They're a challenge that is best met by avoiding them, wasting as few resources as possible. They're a nuisance, but certainly not pointless.

The handling of wandering monsters by a party is one measure of skill. A party engaging in "good play" will try to make efficient use of their time, not spending too much time sitting around or engaging in pointless tasks. They might have a plan for avoiding, distracting, or evading wandering monsters, rather than fighting them. As a result, that party will preserve their resources (hit points, spells, et cetera) and spend them on activities that have a greater chance of reward (i.e. treasure, in most cases) than that of a party that wastes a lot of time (more WM checks), bulls through and fights everything, et cetera.

 

[Philotomy Jurament]

Well, let's be honest, most of the henchmen (and maybe retainers) that people got back in the old days were used primarily as canon-fodder and treasure mules.

Nah, henchmen are usually valued and protected. Hirelings, on the other hand, may end up with a high mortality rate (although too much of that will usually have repercussions as morale drops, few people are willing to risk signing on, and the PCs get a bad reputation).

 

[Philotomy Jurament]

I'm not feigning ignorance. I know the whole story, Chainmail and all. It's just that it is my firm belief that that particular style of play went the way of the dodo some fifteen years ago. Sure, elements of it persist even today (in 4E more than 3.x), but I have yet to meet a person who likes to play the "all dungeon crawling, all the time" paradigm today.

I'm not sure that "all dungeon all the time" was ever an actual play-style. Even the original rules include material on the wilderness, et cetera. The dungeon is an important aspect of play, but far from the only aspect. Certainly the oldest campaigns (i.e. Blackmoor and Greyhawk) had huge campaign dungeons, but also wilderness, cities, politics, factions, wars, et cetera.

I love dungeons -- especially big home-brewed "campaign dungeons," but also smaller "lair-type" dungeons. However, I also love wilderness and town play (especially if the town is "civilization, ancient and wicked," in the Lankhmar mold). And I think that a good campaign dungeon will also (very naturally) have developed many aspects that are usually associated with more "sophisticated" role-playing (intrigue, recurring NPCs, politics, mysteries, et cetera).

 

[FormerlyDickensC]

Your experience is atypical.

Really? Well then could you explain to me how an "all crawl, all the time" type of game is fun. Such reminds me of FF Tactics, but with more headaches.

PS. I'm not trying to start a fight, I'd actually like to understand the appeal therein.

 

[Philotomy Jurament]

Really? Well then could you explain to me how an "all crawl, all the time" type of game is fun.

Well, as I mentioned, above, I think the idea of "all crawl all the time" is something of a straw-mannish concept. (Not only because even heavily dungeon-based campaigns have non-dungeon aspects, but also because I think many peoples' concept of a "dungeon crawl" is something of a caricature.) However, since I think that an entire campaign centered around a huge dungeon underworld is a viable (and fun) concept, I'll take a stab at this.

A campaign centered around a huge dungeon needn't lack the features of any other campaign, with many of these elements being present in the dungeon, itself. A well-designed campaign dungeon will have plenty of room for player choice and player decisions (where to go, when to go there). It will have factions and politics. It will have friendly and malignant NPCs, with some being recurring characters. It will have lots of role-playing opportunities (especially if the PCs are utilizing hirelings and henchmen). It will certainly have mysteries and puzzles, as well as combat. It will have secrets and sublevels that remain long undiscovered, and uncovering things like this will be a big reward (and bragging rights) -- "you'll never believe what we found on the second level in that big room with the obelisk -- yeah, the one you guys explored a few months ago." It will have a nearby town or city, and probably a wilderness around it (or nearby). In my experience, you don't even have to pre-arrange all these things -- they'll happen naturally, during play.

(Incidentally, I have a new musing on creating an old-school dungeon up on my site.)

 

[Sammael]

But see, Wulf is saying that the majority of people enjoy the "all dungeon all the time" style of play, which my own empirical evidence denies. Out of the dozens and dozens of role-players I've met over the years, I cannot name a single one who actually enjoys having a dungeon in a campaign for more than a couple of sessions (followed by a much longer period of non-dungeon play, e.g. wilderness, urban, or planar adventures).

I live in Europe, so that may make a difference, but I actually started playing RPGs during my 3-year stay in the US (some 12 years ago), and the people I played with there weren't exactly hot on dungeons either. I recall a time when one of my friends pulled out a 1st edition DMG and generated a random dungeon to show how ridiculous the concept was. We played in it for humor value and laughed at the randomly-generated nonsense.

To me, Diablo does dungeons much better than an average human DM. Descent is more fun for a dungeon boardgame experience than D&D. YMMV.

 

[Philotomy Jurament]

I recall a time when one of my friends pulled out a 1st edition DMG and generated a random dungeon to show how ridiculous the concept was. We played in it for humor value and laughed at the randomly-generated nonsense.

This is a good example of what I mean when I say that many people seem to have a view of "dungeon crawling" that is little more than caricature. If what you're describing were really the extent of dungeon-based play, I'd reject it as unsuitable, too.

To me, Diablo does dungeons much better than an average human DM. Descent is more fun for a dungeon boardgame experience than D&D.

I find Diablo to be a terrible bore, as a model for dungeon exploration. I agree with you that Descent is more fun for a dungeon boardgame, but I don't think that D&D's dungeon-based play is anything like a boardgame and its limitations, so the comparison holds little value, in my opinion.

 

[Jack99]

To me, Diablo does dungeons much better than an average human DM. Descent is more fun for a dungeon boardgame experience than D&D. YMMV.

Sacrilege!

 

[ProfessorCirno]

Gentlemen, I like dungeons.

Gentlemen, I like dungeons.

Gentlemen, I love dungeons!

I like dark and musty tombs. I like dank sewers. I like mysterious temples. I like forbidden jungles. I like haunted manors. I like eldritch ruins. I like foreboding castles. I like monster infested forests. I like underwater caverns.

In moors, on highways, in trenches, in plains, on tundra, in desert, on sea, in sky, in mud, in marshes, I love every aspect of dungeons that takes place on your choice of setting.

I like blowing away the enemy with the thunderous roar of a line of sorcerers throwing fireballs all at once. When an enemy is shot to pieces after being thrown high in the air, my heart dances. I like crushing the enemy wizards with the divine power on our priests. When I mowed down the enemy who fled screaming from the burning war horse with an magic missiles, my heart leapt.

I like it when fighters plow through the enemy's lines with their long swords all in line. I remember being moved when seeing new level ones, filled with panic, stabbing an already dead kobold again and again...

Seeing an AD&D thief being strung from a lamppost in the street is unendurably exciting. Seeing a captive be coup de graced with a piercing shriek as my own hand falls was spectacular.

When the pitiful resistance came bravely with their small short bows, and we destroyed them and a good chunk of the city with the metamagic'd Maw of Chaos, I was at my height.

I like it when we are destroyed with the morning dew. It is a sad thing when the town one is supposed to protect is trampled, and the women and children violated and killed. I like being squashed and destroyed by the goblin and the kobold's amount of material resources. Being followed by goblin and kobold forces and having to crawl around on the ground like a pesky insect is the ultimate disgrace.

Gentlemen, I desire a dungeon that is like hell! Gentlemen, my companions in the forums, who follow me...gentlemen, what do you desire? Do you desire dungeon as well? Do you desire a dungeon of no mercy? Do you desire a conflict that stretches the limits of iron, wind, lightning and fire to the limit, one that will kill all the NPCs in this setting?

Very will then, we shall have Dungeonaday!

 

[carmachu]

But, hey, if this discussion is better helped by painting me as an overgrown child pitching a fit, knock yourself out.

*shrug* I enjoy your stuff. I enjoy monte's stuff. But I dont always agree with every thing either of you or he do or say. I call'em like I see them.