"Back to the Dungeon" aiming for the wrong target?

[Flexor the Mighty!]

What, solving traps is roleplaying? Dungeons that have traps in them aren't dungeon crawls? Tome of Horrors wasn't the ultimate expression of the dungeoncrawling experience?

Posts like this make Joshua Dyal say "Bah!" I just said a few posts ago that I don't like dungeoncrawls and avoid them like the plague. Dungeoncrawls don't offer an interesting experience to me, and I hardly need someone to tell me "yes, they do, you just don't realize it." I did not say that dungeon crawls don't allow any roleplaying, or that I'd rather be at the duchess's tea party flirting with Matt's PC or anything along those lines. Dungeon crawls just flat out aren't interesting to me.

I didn't say anything to you or address your post directly. I just threw mine out there take it as you will. I really don't care what you need or don't need someone to tell you.

Yes solving traps is the essense of roll playing, no dungons that have trap are not dungeoncrawls, the Tomb or horrors isn't the ultimate dungeon crawling experience. Read whatever you need to out of my posts, it doesn't matter to me.

 

[Praeco]

Some of my favorite moments in the game have been when my group is in a Dungeon.

And some of the worst moments when the group was in a Dragon!


*Chomp*

 

[Desdichado]

I didn't say anything to you or address your post directly. I just threw mine out there take it as you will. I really don't care what you need or don't need someone to tell you.

Yes solving traps is the essense of roll playing, no dungons that have trap are not dungeoncrawls, the Tomb or horrors isn't the ultimate dungeon crawling experience. Read whatever you need to out of my posts, it doesn't matter to me.

I know you weren't addressing me directly, but we obviously have a very different idea of what a dungeon crawl is. To you, a dungeon crawl is only walking from one room to the next killing things and taking their stuff? 'Coz to me, Tomb of Horrors was everything I didn't like about dungeon crawls. It was the epitome of the dungeoncrawl days of design. I would have preferred hacking and slashing to that. And solving puzzles is not roleplaying, because puzzles challenge the player not the character. Doesn't mean they can't be interesting (although I also despise the idea of puzzles in dungeons almost as much as I do the idea of random monsters in dungeons) but roleplaying it ain't.

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

A dungeon crawl is an adventure in a dungeon, they are fun, I like them. I prefer having to use my head to stay alive rather than just killing everything, and I find plenty of role playing fun just discussing what we are going to do with my fellow adventurers. Just becuase I think it's easiest to go and kill the adversary with a well placed sword in the back while he is sleeping doesn't mean the Paladin I'm playing thinks that's a good idea. You play your character, doing what he thinks best even if you know it's not. That's part of roleplaying IMO. Just as much as having a long in character discussion with the blacksmith, or the prince.

And I was being sarcastic there, the TOH IS the ultimate dungeon crawl. Any adventure that is centered around a dungeon is a DC, but to say a good 'crawl is not a fun thing isn't true IMO.

 

[Desdichado]

Ah, yes, well sarcasm is often difficult to spot on thread posts unless it's so blatantly obvious that you remove the point of being sarcastic in the first place.

Great, so dungeoncrawls are fun for you. They're not for me. I find them boring in the extreme. I have no interest in them. As long as that's all we're saying, I agree 100% and everything's cool. If you're telling me that dungeon crawls are fun, and that's a fact -- that's where I beg to differ!

 

[kenjib]

Hasn't this always been the strength of D&D though? You could also say that they are re-focusing on the core competencies of the game system. It's not just an issue of adventure design, but goes down even to the system.

Sure, you can run any type of game in D&D, but I think that other game systems have better support for social interaction, intrigue, motivation, narrative development, etc. D&D really leaves most of that up to improvisation and provides only the most bare bones support for these things.

 

[wolfen]

Non-Combat Interaction

I am not into the product-comparison angle of the thread-starter, but I do completely agree with the observation that D&D's strength is not its combat system. That is its marketing strength, its sales driver, its hook. But not its GAMING strength.

When I played D&D version 1, there were certain things that were "a given." The rules didn't spell out specific rules and formulas, but you generally knew that your obnoxious rogue (wis 10, Cha 9) was going to affect your interaction with the noble's guards. If the character said anything at all, the guards would be affected negatively. The DM was bright, the player knew his character -- no rules required.

In the new world, people are being trained to think like a computer program. They want predictable rules and processes, etc -- not an endless series of DM judgment calls.

The balance? WOTC should come out with a book for NON-COMBAT. For example, IMHO, non-combat ability checks for Wis/Int/Cha should be rolled in secret by the DM. Why should the player know that the character is being perceived as a fool? He should play according to what the character believes -- so only tell him what the character would know. After all, you know if you can lift the gate or bend the bar, but you should never be completely sure that you've convinced the dragon to help you. Maybe he sees through your diplomatic attempts to persuade him and is just playing along. You shouldn't see the die roll that says the dragon is persuaded.

That's just a very simple example. If these three mods were highlighted for NON-COMBAT/NON-MAGIC actions, D&D's gaming strengths would be fully realized, and obvious to all. The computer games would look like the restrictive simulations they are. Hell, maybe people would actually play the characters as represented by the ability scores!


wolfen

 

[Power_Munchkin]

hm

Why dungeons?

Because it makes commercial sense.

There are more computer game players than D&D players.

Diablo & Co. are popular games.

Thus the way to attract new players is to emulate computer experience with a twist (infinate dungeons, infinate solutions).

New players (that is players completely unfamiliar with pen & paper RPGs of any kind) start with dungeons because they're straightforward and familiar.

After a while people either stop playing or branch out into the whole "heavy roleplay" thing. From a commercial standpoint, they become a small niche market, because they want to create all their own stuff (setting, NPCs, etc.), rather than just pay for a uber-dungeon mod.

Not only are "heavy roleplayers" a smaller market, but they're also a much more fickle one. They all have "their own thing" (tm), and there is no guarantee that they'll like "your product X". Even if it's an excellent product, it might not mesh well with "their own thing" (tm), further marginalizing the market.

Dungeons on the other hand are fairly easy and cheap to create. It's all game mechanics and stat-blocks.

Dungeons are more profitable.

 

[Hawkshere]

So what? This thread isn't really about whether we as individuals really like dungeon crawls or not. Obviously, there IS a market for such games, and it remains a popular form - the evidence of that is everywhere. Equally obvious is the fact that not everyone enjoys it. These facts are all assumed in the premise of this thread, and I have no argument them.

However, I do take issue with other assumptions. First off, WotC doesn't publish adventure products anymore. That includes DUNGEON, which is now published by Paizo. The adventure scenario content they are generating now is all subsidary to specific supplements or small stuff on the website. I could be wrong, but i don't recall any future product announcements for anything resembling the classic "dungeon module". Secondly, the "Back to the Dungeon" marketing campaign is what, 3 years old now? It was used to push the 3E launch and Sunless Citadel and such. It's old news. It obviously struck a nerve (good or bad) with a lot of people, and therefore was probably a pretty successful way of promoting the revived D&D brand. It may still resonate somehow for some people, but it's ancient history for WotC marketing.

I don't think there's much to argue about here, and I'm not in the least surprised that this thread has blurred into arguments about personal opinion and style. Welcome to 2003, wave bye-bye to 2000.

I will support one tangent by saying that role-playing in a dungeon-based adventure is not self-contradictory, and so I believe that there is lots of opportunity for PnP games to provide gameplay that cannot be reproduced in software.

There's also an interesting inter-mixing of Hack-n-Slash vs. Dungeon Crawl terminology here. IMO, not all hacking takes place in dungeons, and dungeons are not exclusively hacking (but always have some element of hack, by definition). Way off topic, I'd say that Diablo is a much better dungeon crawl simulator than EQ (although the next EQ expansion may change that), even though EQ is a much better mass combat vs. beasties sim.

 

[ColonelHardisson]

Well if you have a lot of disposable minions ready to throw thier lives away to clear out traps and encounters I'm sure any module would become super easy. I would think it would have been a lot more fun to play the orcs than to play Robilar. That's one way around the problems, one that avoids having to use your head. That's like saying, "I'll send my hoarde of orcs in, then I'll walk in and clean up, just gimme the loot sheet". How boring can you get?

My point was that no era or edition of the game has been more conducive to problem solving than another. My example was of an early version of the game, played by the people who created it. As we see, there isn't much in the way of problem solving, just bulling one's way through. This was in direct reference to what I quoted, which I'll quote again for clarity:

Classic Gygax modules had plenty of overland action, then a dungeon that was more than just combat. There were logical puzzles and traps that required cunning and smarts to get past. Put a pure "hack and slasher" in the Tomb of Horrors and watch him die in 43 seconds.

(by the way, Robilar did survive, and looted much of the Tomb, using classic h&s methodolgy)

The example I gave, inspired by your mentioning of an early, classic example of a dungeoncrawl, was a Gygax written module (Tomb of Horrors), with Gygax as the DM and one of the early designers of D&D playing his most famous character. The result is, perhaps, the prime example of how many such dungeoncrawls were, and are, tackled - very little roleplaying, and only rudimentary problem solving. As you note above in the first passage I quoted, this seems fairly boring. Don't get me wrong; I like dungeoncrawls as much as the next grizzled grognard, and have championed them many times. However, as noted elsewhere on this thread, pen and paper RPGs are at a disadvantage when it comes to portraying action when compared to a computer game. The real strength of p&p RPGs is in the human interaction aspect of the game. Sure, much of the storyline can, and should, be provided by the DM (in my opinion), but some should also be written into the module itself, to give the DM something to work with, or ignore, at his whim. Not a book, not a railroaded plot, but something.