D&D 5E Do You Delve?

[Shiroiken]

Absolutely! Delves help to detail out select locations of adventure. Dungeons, caves, ruins, forests, swamps, deserts, etc, all can provide session of explorations that work the same. Even just general ruins can provide a good session or two. Done well, they provide a nice limited sandbox for the party to play in, as they can choose how to proceed while staying within the DMs prepared area.

That's not to say that every adventure should be a delve. For our group, I'd say about 1/4 - 1/3 of adventures are delves. However, I'm currently putting together a megadungeon for one-shot play when the other DMs have to cancel, which would be entirely a delve.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Only occasionally and only short jaunts.

There are obviously a ton of types of delves, but I don't like the big dungeons where you have to camp in a monster hole or run out of and then into a monster hole to recharge abilities.

 

[TwoSix]

Do your adventures not consist of scenes connected by transitions?

Sure, but I think it's a pretty important distinction if those transitions separate scenes with geographic distance and the passage of downtime. Like, in a recent game I played in we bounced around multiple locations in Sharn trying to solve a mystery. Taking 2 hours of in game time to walk from a museum in an Upper district to a bar in a Lower district has both a narrative and mechanical difference than walking the 40' hallway from the crypt to the throne room (or some other dungeon room).

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Do your adventures not consist of scenes connected by transitions?

i mean maybe by the most technical possible definition, but at that point we are using a meaningless definition of “delve”, that includes literally all storytelling.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Sure, but I think it's a pretty important distinction if those transitions separate scenes with geographic distance and the passage of downtime. Like, in a recent game I played in we bounced around multiple locations in Sharn trying to solve a mystery. Taking 2 hours of in game time to walk from a museum in an Upper district to a bar in a Lower district has both a narrative and mechanical difference than walking the 40' hallway from the crypt to the throne room (or some other dungeon room).

Exactly. An investigation adventure also has scenes and transitions, but is definitely not a delve. A scene where we play out interviewing some witnesses after tracking them down, then go to the Sharn Inquisitive to look at their copy from the day being investigated, then back to base to compare notes with the guys who were chasing a suspects over bridges and on rooftops, then fighting off his friends, then finding out he wasn’t involved and just thought they were chasing him on behalf of a player we hadn’t considered before, is definitely not the same thing as going from location to location in a forest or a building procedurally exploring and dealing with challenges as they arise.

 

[Malmuria]

i mean maybe by the most technical possible definition, but at that point we are using a meaningless definition of “delve”, that includes literally all storytelling.

As the famous saying goes, "all the world's a dungeon, and all the men and women merely player characters"

 

[TwoSix]

Exactly. An investigation adventure also has scenes and transitions, but is definitely not a delve. A scene where we play out interviewing some witnesses after tracking them down, then go to the Sharn Inquisitive to look at their copy from the day being investigated, then back to base to compare notes with the guys who were chasing a suspects over bridges and on rooftops, then fighting off his friends, then finding out he wasn’t involved and just thought they were chasing him on behalf of a player we hadn’t considered before, is definitely not the same thing as going from location to location in a forest or a building procedurally exploring and dealing with challenges as they arise.

Yea. I mean, I understand @Charlaquin's point from a zoomed out view (you could put together a flow chart of both scenarios that look pretty similar), but I think that glosses over some pretty important distinctions between the types of scenarios.

 

[Don Durito]

I think a dungeon is a particular way of resolving actions and movement via exploration through space.

A forest can be a dungeon: "The trail you are on forks to the left and right, which one do you take?...Ok so you arrive in a small clearing; you can see an Ogre sitting on a log in the middle with a halfling tied to a stick; it appears he is about to roast him over an open fire. Two other trails snake out of this clearing to the North and to the Northwest. What do you do?"

And a Dungeon can be not a dungeon, procedurally: "You descend into the crypts below, dusty untouched tombs stretch before you in a mazelike web of corridors, somewhere in the middle of that is the ritual chamber. Tell me, how do you intend to go about finding that ritual chamber?".
"Can I make a religion roll to see if this particular catacomb is built on a standard plan? Perhaps I learnt the layout when studying for the priesthood?"
"Sure, go ahead. Ok under the expert guidance of the Cleric you arrive outside the central ritual chamber."

 

[TwoSix]

I think a dungeon is a particular way of resolving actions and movement via exploration through space.

A forest can be a dungeon: "The trail you are on forks to the left and right, which one do you take...ok so you arrive in a small clearing; you can see an Ogre sitting on a log in the middle with a halfling tied to a stick, it appears he is about to roast him over an open fire. Two other trails snake out of this clearing to the North and to the Northwest What do you do?"

And a Dungeon can be not a dungeon, procedurally: "You descend into the crypts below, dusty untouched tombs stretch before you in a mazelike web of corridors, somewhere in the middle of that is the ritual chamber. Tell me, how do you intend to go about finding that ritual chamber?".
"Can I make a religion roll to see if this particular catacomb is built on a standard plan? Perhaps I learnt the layout when studying for the priesthood?"
"Sure, go ahead. Ok under the expert guidance of the Cleric you arrive outside the central ritual chamber."

This. I think to really be a delve it requires some elements of map-and-key play and some prep beforehand, as well as a design goal of making the environment meaningful in play, not stage dressing for the interactive portion of the encounter.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Yea. I mean, I understand @Charlaquin's point from a zoomed out view (you could put together a flow chart of both scenarios that look pretty similar), but I think that glosses over some pretty important distinctions between the types of scenarios.

Absolutely.

I think a dungeon is a particular way of resolving actions and movement via exploration through space.

A forest can be a dungeon: "The trail you are on forks to the left and right, which one do you take?...Ok so you arrive in a small clearing; you can see an Ogre sitting on a log in the middle with a halfling tied to a stick; it appears he is about to roast him over an open fire. Two other trails snake out of this clearing to the North and to the Northwest. What do you do?"

And a Dungeon can be not a dungeon, procedurally: "You descend into the crypts below, dusty untouched tombs stretch before you in a mazelike web of corridors, somewhere in the middle of that is the ritual chamber. Tell me, how do you intend to go about finding that ritual chamber?".
"Can I make a religion roll to see if this particular catacomb is built on a standard plan? Perhaps I learnt the layout when studying for the priesthood?"
"Sure, go ahead. Ok under the expert guidance of the Cleric you arrive outside the central ritual chamber."

Well put.

This. I think to really be a delve it requires some elements of map-and-key play and some prep beforehand, as well as a design goal of making the environment meaningful in play, not stage dressing for the interactive portion of the encounter.

All of these three posts. Yes. Absolutely.

Even my most “dungeony” adventures haven’t been procedurally a delve. Travel is dots on a map, mostly.

The closest I come usually is probably when using The One Ring’s Journey rules, tbh.