D&D (2024) What could One D&D do to bring the game back to the dungeon?

[Micah Sweet]

It’s not about the monetary expense, it’s about the logistical considerations of light sources. As @reelo pointed out, carrying a torch or lantern occupies a hand, which can limit a character’s ability to wield weapons, manipulate spell components, or interact with the environment, unless they use action economy resources to put it down at the start of combat. More importantly though, it’s something you have to take into consideration when planning a delve into the dungeon. How many torches or vials of oil are you going to bring? Those take up inventory space/weight, and they can be a limiting factor on how long you can remain in the dungeon. Or would do, if the Wizard couldn’t just cast Light whenever they want. “Torches/lanterns go out” is also a standard dungeon complication, which doesn’t really matter if the players are relying on cantrips for light instead of torches or lanterns.

A  lot of these are caused by cantrips in general. Mage Hand, Light, every attack cantrip. All of these allow easy, magical ways to circumvent what used to be a challenge.

 

[Vaalingrade]

No, that's actually not true at all. Gen Y was a completely separate generation that NOW makes up the first half of Millennials, while the second half of the Millennial generation is what was called Millennials back when product marketing people still cared about Gen Y.

Gen Y was just the first dumb name they came up with for us before they settled on the dumb name they blame for not using fabric softener and wasting money on diamonds.

'Millennial' is just a word for 'heretic who broke from the Old Ways and must be made to pay for it.

 

[Charlaquin]

A  lot of these are caused by cantrips in general. Mage Hand, Light, every attack cantrip. All of these allow easy, magical ways to circumvent what used to be a challenge.

Yeah, cantrips as they work in 5e definitely get in the way of a lot of the traditional dungeon delving challenges. One way to fix this problem might be to have all spells require material components to cast, and have all material components be expended on casting, unless otherwise noted. Have a generic unit of spellcasting components, and limit how many units can be carried in a component pouch. That basically gets you back around to individual spell preparation, since you’d have to choose how many castings of each of your spells to bring components for. Cantrips wouldn’t cost spell slots, but you’d need to plan ahead how many times you wanted to be able to use each one, and they would come at the opportunity cost of room for components of other spells.

 

[Desdichado]

Gen Y was just the first dumb name they came up with for us before they settled on the dumb name they blame for not using fabric softener and wasting money on diamonds.

'Millennial' is just a word for 'heretic who broke from the Old Ways and must be made to pay for it.

Gen Y was the obvious name to call a generation that followed Gen X.

Your description of Millennial sounds like something a Boomer would say, but what "Old Ways"? The "Old Ways" that the Boomers created after they themselves broke from the Old Ways? I often think that Boomers and Millennials tend to butt heads so much because they're actually so much alike and they see reflections of each other in their counterparts. Except that, for some reason, it's cool when they're the ones doing it and lame when it's the other generation doing the same thing.

Meanwhile, us Gen-Xers are sitting here quietly on the sidelines commiserated with our Gen-Y younger brothers and sisters about the mess that Boomers and Millennials have created, shaking our heads and doing our own thing. It's been estimated that up to a third of Gen-X was aborted. I wonder if things would have been different had our generation been nearly 50% bigger, but I guess we'll never know. In the meantime, Boomers and Millennials suck up all of the attention, so much so that they've literally planted their flag like conquerors in generations adjacent to them; Boomers have swallowed up Generation Jones, at least according to marketing and cultural pundits, and Millennials have swallowed up Gen Y. Because nobody seems to know what to say about them.

They don't know what to say about Gen-Xers other than that we're supposedly cynical, but we're too far removed from either for anyone to suggest folding us in to some other generation.

 

[Charlaquin]

Gen Y was just the first dumb name they came up with for us before they settled on the dumb name they blame for not using fabric softener and wasting money on diamonds.

'Millennial' is just a word for 'heretic who broke from the Old Ways and must be made to pay for it.

Well, it was. That’s rapidly becoming what “Zoomer” means, while “Miliennial” is slotting into the socially ignored space “Gen X” used to occupy. Only reason “Gen X” hasn’t taken over as “Old folks whose fault everything is,” is because “Boomer” is a much punchier-sounding epithet.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Well, it was. That’s rapidly becoming what “Zoomer” means, while “Miliennial” is slotting into the socially ignored space “Gen X” used to occupy. Only reason “Gen X” hasn’t taken over as “Old folks whose fault everything is,” is because “Boomer” is a much punchier-sounding epithet.

Nah, Millennials are still the ones everyone hates. The Zoomers are, at worst, the weird kids who have a legit beef with us because we invented the meme culture that destroyed them.

Then we have the Last Generation, who will never know how it feels to turn 50.

 

[Desdichado]

It is 100% true that generations are arbitrary and vaguely defined. It is also true that by most definitions, Gen Y is another name for Milennials. It may also be true that there are some definitions by which Gen Y is a separate generation between Gen X and millennials, and these definitions may have once been more common than they are now. These categories are socially constructed, and are subject to drift over time. There’s no central authority governing what the definitions of generations are, so one certainly could consider Gen Y a distinct generation, and one wouldn’t be wrong. But it wouldn’t be consistent with the current most commonly used definitions.

It is ALSO true that if generations are arbitrary and vaguely defined, as opposed to being plotted against some kind of specific marker, that they're pretty useless as labels.

And it is ALSO true that Gen Y existed long before the Millennial label existed, and was used extensively to describe the folks between Gen X and Millennials for years. You say that there's no central authority, but I say it's curious that there was a sudden shift that seemed to cascade to all pundits at once, as if they were a school of fish or a flock of birds, but those of us watching it happen in realtime are mystified and kind of thrown off by the sudden shift. There's context to actually having been there and seen it happen first-hand, after all.

Which is why, to change the subject, I sometimes wonder how much Millennial OSRians like Ben from Questing Beast, or presumably you, really play the same way that older Gen-Xers did when the games being retrocloned were actually new and current. The rulesets may be more or less the same, but there's a whole lot of context that is different. I suspect that there are big, significant gaping chasms between the playstyle of my game in 1981 and Questing Beast's game in 2022 even if the rules are functionally identical.

 

[Mistwell]

I'd love to see a modern version of D&D refocused on dungeon exploration, and with a new revision/spiffying up/half edition/whatever of 5E in One D&D, I wonder what rule tweaks could they do to the 5E chassis to make it work well as a dungeon crawler (as @overgeeked called it)?

The biggest issues with 5E as a good dungeon crawl game are that the exploration pillar is essentially ignored, especially in regards to resource management and environmental elements (like lighting). I think shoring up some DCs for common exploration tasks as well as upping the use of tables can help. More importantly though would be the curtailing of a lot of spells and class abilities that obviate dungeon exploration challenges. Light should not be a cantrip, for eample.

Thoughts?

We've used it for primarily dungeon crawling for a decade now and it works great. I don't even know what you're going off about on this one? Light? Exploration ignored? You want tracking of rations and arrows or something and think that would enhance dungeon crawling?

I wouldn't mind some more guidelines I suppose. Spell out how much time passes to search 5 feet of space. A better breakdown of perception versus investigation. Some more clarity for surprise. Some clarity on how far noise carries in a dungeon for various tasks, like breaking down a door. DCs for listening at a door and unsticking a door. Those sorts of things.

 

[Desdichado]

Well, it was. That’s rapidly becoming what “Zoomer” means, while “Miliennial” is slotting into the socially ignored space “Gen X” used to occupy. Only reason “Gen X” hasn’t taken over as “Old folks whose fault everything is,” is because “Boomer” is a much punchier-sounding epithet.

Also because the Boomers are literally still there occupying those roles.

 

[Mistwell]

And terrible.

It's not. It can be great, and we've been adventuring there for the past 6-7 months and it's great. But I agree it does need a good DM to make it work well.

We're currently on the level with the forests and the elf who runs it. We accidentally burned down her forest with an ill placed fireball, and she gathered a ton of giant bats to wear us down and then summoned some terrifying planar creature to hunt us down and kill us. We had to flee. It was awesome. We're worried she's following and will start turning Waterdeep against us.