D&D 5E What Don't You Like About Dungeons?

[iserith]

Dungeons are great. But they take too long to get drawn up and to maneuver around (the dungeoncrawl part). Meanwhile, just adventuring out in the world only needs a few set pieces drawn out and the rest described.

I suspect that prep time has caused the dungeon to fall out of favor for many DMs. There are a lot of tools out there now, however, that greatly reduce that time.

DMs making it into a plodding exercise is a separate matter and one that I imagine turned a lot of players off over the years.

 

[Dioltach]

Dungeons are great. 80s music is great. Now I want to create an 80s themed dungeon.

(Giving this a moment's thought, it could work. Rooms themed around particular songs. "You spin me round", "Take my breath away", "I'm on fire", "Maneater", even "Wake me up before you go-go".)

 

[MNblockhead]

I've been running a D&D 5e megadungeon campaign for almost three and a half years. So, yeah, I guess I like dungeons.

But the thing with a sufficiently large and diverse megadungeon is that it is more like an exploration area with different regions, factions, environments, etc.

I'm not really pro or anti any setting. You can have a good and engaging campaign entirely in one megadungeon or a series of smaller dungeons. Same with an urban-setting campaign. You can run an awesome campaign that takes place in one large city. But that could also become repetitive. Same with wilderness hex crawls. You could have a great campaign focused on them, or they can become repetitive.

 

[John R Davis]

Dungeons are good as long, as with every bit of the game, they are interesting.
As long as there is lot to see, push, pull, take, break, chat, fight, reveal, learn, etc. Same as city and wilderness.

 

[Corinnguard]

I suppose one thing I don't like about dungeons is that they don't really provide any mental challenges for the party. It's mostly physical. You travel down a corridor, you deal with monsters, you might come across some treasure, and you might come across some traps. Now the mental challenges I am speaking of aren't making a number of skill checks. I am talking about things like riddles and puzzles the party must solve in order to enter the next part of the dungeon or to open up the treasure vault. Stuff where a skill check isn't going to be handy, and where it's more a matter of being lucky/unlucky.

 

[R_J_K75]

In any edition, I always found their prevalence in game worlds unbelievable, especially mega-dungeons. Even with magic, the cost, time. man-power etc to build them, then stock them with traps, and monsters just always seemed pretty unrealistic and unbelievable. Granted I understand that its a fantasy game and the first iterations were based on the premise of the dungeon crawl which is the only reason I can suspend disbelief just enough to accept them as part of the game. As a player I find anything over 10 rooms or so repetative and boring. As a DM designing a dungeon with any more than 10 rooms is challenging to keep it fresh and come up with new ideas, so I use them very infrequently. If Im a player and the game is mostly dungeon crawling it rarely holds my attention for any more than 2-3 sessions before I lose interest.

 

[Professor Murder]

They are tedious. Both as a DM and as a player for me.

 

[ViArca]

For those missing the 80's sound, you can pick up a Yamaha DX7 synthesizer on ebay for around $700.
But first remind yourself what every song sounded like:

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

I suppose one thing I don't like about dungeons is that they don't really provide any mental challenges for the party. It's mostly physical. You travel down a corridor, you deal with monsters, you might come across some treasure, and you might come across some traps. Now the mental challenges I am speaking of aren't making a number of skill checks. I am talking about things like riddles and puzzles the party must solve in order to enter the next part of the dungeon or to open up the treasure vault. Stuff where a skill check isn't going to be handy, and where it's more a matter of being lucky/unlucky.

Not sure if serious .....

Not go all historical .... wait, OF COURSE I'M GOING HISTORICAL, that's almost as likely as hating on bards ...

But the whole origin of dungeons in D&D and the genesis of so-called "skilled play" was that it provided mental challenges. In addition, they didn't over-rely on skill checks back then for, um, pretty obvious reasons.

To get back to the OP's point-
I think dungeons are great. I think that, in 5e, you have to approach dungeons and dungeon design differently because we don't really use a skilled-play model anymore. We do have skill checks for a lot of things. Traps, and trap design, is no longer a priority. We don't really look at resource management. And magic is much more plentiful in terms of spellcasting and innate character abilities, and at a much earlier level. For that reason, the use of a dungeon qua dungeon in the older style just doesn't carry the same connotations; mega-dungeons, or "dungeons" in the sense of B4, wherein you are dealing with different factions and solving mysteries as opposed to simply going from room to room and looting.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

For those missing the 80's sound, you can pick up a Yamaha DX7 synthesizer on ebay for around $700.
But first remind yourself what every song sounded like:

Or, you know, you could listen to any number of great bands today that are resurrecting that sound. Everyone from the Weeknd to the 1975 to Auragraph to Dana Jean Phoenix.

Or go with "classic" 80s revival like the Chromatics and Desire.