D&D 5E Do You Delve?

[el-remmen]

I have recently been prepping a two level, 37 location dungeon lair - the rooms are a combination of natural caverns and pieces of sunken buildings of an ancient city broken apart and then reconnected by the current occupants' digging. Parts of it are unstable, parts show signs of work, heck in some places the PCs might be able to dig through walls to do their own renovations! I've got cultist patrols, a cellblock, a sunken church to a sloth god, and flooded chambers, a pump room run by zombies etc. . .

 

[prabe]

Do you mean you don't use the fictional dungeon environment? Or that you never explore a location based on a map with more than about 2 or 3 rooms?

I mean both of those.

 

[iserith]

Who doesn't love a good ol' fashioned game of &D?

 

[Charlaquin]

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).

But no structural difference, that’s my point. Sure, you’ll burn through more torches in 2 hours or whatever, but the gameplay is still fundamentally the same.

 

[Charlaquin]

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.

The only difference is that those scenes and transitions aren’t tied to a physical structure.

 

[Charlaquin]

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."

I agree that this dungeon is not a “dungeon”. The physical structure of the catacomb is incidental to the structure of the adventure.

 

[Charlaquin]

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.

Ah, then I think you’re defining “delve” quite differently than what I understood from the opening post. Yes, I do delve by this definition. Though I would argue that this type of play doesn’t necessarily require prep beforehand. It’s harder to do without prep, but it’s entirely possible.

 

[Kurotowa]

So, it comes up a lot when talking about D&D, and I’m wondering how unusual I actually am on this.

My group does not often “delve”. I don’t just mean dungeons. We do not often go to an adventure location, and follow a process that could be called “basically delving just using a city/forest/whatever instead of a dungeon”. It happens sometimes, but we don’t have fights that are just there to have multiple combat encounters, we don’t have anything resembling a “room by room” structure unless we are in a house or whatever and trying to find something, which isn’t especially common.

What about you? How close do you get toward the traditional dungeon experience?

Thank you for helping to crystalize this thought. Me and my brother got our start with D&D by transitioning from Heroquest, so the dungeon delve has a special place in our hearts. But these days, every time our group tries to stick a traditional dungeon run into our campaigns it always gets grindy and boring well before we're done. Working towards story objectives and narrative goals is just more fun for us.

In large part, I think it's because video games do it better. If you want to delve into an unknown dungeon, killing monsters and dealing with terrain hazards to fill your bags with loot, then retreat to a safe base camp to dispose of your treasure and resupply, and finally do it all over again... well, Diablo and its kin are right there. Offering infinite procedurally generated dungeons, vast arrays of character advancement and unique gear, and as much or as little of it as you want at any moment.

The unique lure of a TTRPG is that it has a story that's custom tailored for our PCs and their actions. We can make the choices and set the goals and never have to sigh and pick from the two or three pre-set options that are all the game devs programmed for. We're free in a way that video games can't come close to. So I believe that's why we lean towards games that take full advantage of that. And if I get that itch from some dungeon delving and loot grinding, Diablo is only a few clicks away.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

The only difference is that those scenes and transitions aren’t tied to a physical structure.

Then you’re not using a usable definition of delve, because it means “literally any story”.

 

[Charlaquin]

Then you’re not using a usable definition of delve, because it means “literally any story”.

I mean, “every adventure is a delve” was my initial assertion, so yeah. But, I think @TwoSix communicated what you meant by delve in a way I understand better. By that definition, yes, I do generally run delves. I believe that mode of play is what 5e is designed for (not that you can’t use it for other modes of play of course).