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

[Tidus4444]

I rather disagree. I liked D2, and EQ, not because of the action (action in EQ? Heck no), but because of the rewarding feeling I get when I got my characters stronger. D&D does this better than ANYTHING I have ever seen before. I loved FFT for its really awesome class system and cool ways of getting your characters stronger. I love D&D, in part, because it has a class system that kicks incredible amounts of ass, and finding a new magic item is always fun. Diablo can't really compare. And that is my .02$

 

[Ranger REG]

Dungeon, Wilderness ... I swear these are metaphor for linear and non-linear based adventures.

I wonder how much more work... err, I mean tools, do you want to give the DM in the DMG?

Then again "Back to the Dungeon" is a subtle way of saying "Back to Basic," which in a way annoyed those longtime fans -- i.e., advanced users -- of the game.

Which brings to my next question: How much more information do we need in an essential "core rules"?

 

[Davelozzi]

I noticed that the 3.5 DMG table of contents appears to include more info on wilderness & urban adventuring than the 3.0 DMG. Look at the end of chapter 4. Of course, there's no page numbers so it's hard to say for sure, but it looks like they're covering more subtopics -- still not nearly as many as are devoted to dungeons, but it's something.

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/rs/20030708a

 

[Jody Butt]

I rarely deconstruct posts any more, but yours, Jody, had a few questions I was wondering if you'd answer for me.



This is true; however, even the worst-selling straighforward dungeon seems to sell better than the best plot-driven one. I suggest this is because most DM's feel they are capable of setting up their own plots in their own homebrews, and are more interested in challenging encounters than in intricate plots - the plots almost never map well to their home settings.

What I meant there was that WotC's modules weren't selling well enough for Hasbro. I wasn't trying to compare story-based modules to dungeon crawls. I was just talking about WotC's modules not selling well enough, in general.

RE your question about 3rd party vs. official modules:

If I buy the FRCS, I want official modules for the FR. If I buy LGH, I want official modules for GH. That's what I was getting at, there.

 

[Spatula]

Also, a clarification - I love well constructed dungeons which offer a good mix of different types of play, but have noted what is perhaps an overemphasis on combat in the 3E WotC dungeons. "Back to the Dungeon" doesn't necessarily have to mean this, but it seems to have been borne out that way.

Which WOTC modules are you talking about, exactly? I only own a few of the Adventure Path series, and none of the mega-modules, but most of the ones I do have have ample roleplaying opportunities built into them. Not all of them are even set in a dungeon.

 

[rounser]

Mainly CotSQ and RttToEE. "Negotiate with the factions" and "you could disguise yourself" don't constitute roleplaying opportunities beyond anything which you could do in Keep on the Borderlands. i.e. They're no-brainers. Not RttToEE's fault, because it was emulating the original, and that didn't offer much outside that vein either.

 

[rounser]

Dungeon, Wilderness ... I swear these are metaphor for linear and non-linear based adventures.

I wonder how much more work... err, I mean tools, do you want to give the DM in the DMG?

If you want to change the culture of the way the game is run, arguably the best place to influence that is in the DMG. If the DMG gave comparable depth to running wilderness and urban scenarios as it did to running dungeons, then almost assuredly the way D&D was played would change. It doesn't, because it has page space limitations, and perhaps the assumption that if you're worrying about wilderness you must be an experienced DM and don't need the help (which in a way is fair enough, and mirrored by the Basic set/Expert set assumption that newbie DMs do dungeons and wilderness adventuring is a more advanced concept).

The 1E, 2E and 3E DMGs pay lip service to wilderness scenarios through suggestions on wandering encounters, getting lost and terrain types and the like, yet they don't present an "adventuring use" for wilderness apart from a place to get waylaid by random encounters whilst travelling somewhere. The 3E DMG arguably does a better job than the others by discussing status quo encounters, which are much a part of the wilderness.

If you turned that around, perhaps with guidelines for presenting the wilderness-as-dungeon in the DMG, for instance (e.g. I'm thinking to some of the Dragonlance Classics modules which used this approach a bit, if not altogether successfully), then maybe the way the average DM views and uses the wilderness might change such that it becomes more relevant to the game, just as dungeons are. Surely this is a good thing?

 

[Gizzard]

Mainly CotSQ and RttToEE. "Negotiate with the factions" and "you could disguise yourself" don't constitute roleplaying opportunities beyond anything which you could do in Keep on the Borderlands. i.e. They're no-brainers.

I'm not sure what you are asking for then, other than the perviously mentioned "invitation to tea with the Duke's Third minor Assistant." ;-)

Role playing is the interaction; if "negotiation" doesn't count I am not sure what does. I hope you're not looking down on negotation in CotSQ or RttToEE because there's a blunt hammer waiting to smack you in the face if you fail as opposed to a cutting rejoinder from the Duke's assistant. :-/

 

[Ranger REG]

What I meant there was that WotC's modules weren't selling well enough for Hasbro. I wasn't trying to compare story-based modules to dungeon crawls. I was just talking about WotC's modules not selling well enough, in general.

Well, anybody knows that's a given. I don't think that Wizards have any long-term plan to continue publishing adventure modules except for the first few months of 3e debut, just to get newbies as well as veteran players to make full use of the new ruleset.

RE your question about 3rd party vs. official modules:

If I buy the FRCS, I want official modules for the FR. If I buy LGH, I want official modules for GH. That's what I was getting at, there.

Is it necessary to set that parameter? Of course it is individual choice, but some third-party adventures can be used in any campaign IF the DM knows how to incorporate them. But if you're looking for shortcuts then Dungeon is about as official as it can get. Despite the magazine is being published under a different label (Paizo), Wizards allowed them to be "100% official," even getting Wizards employees to submit adventures tailored to any one of their published campaign settings.

Another alternative is the adventures provided on Wizards' web site for free.

 

[Desdichado]

I'm not sure what you are asking for then, other than the perviously mentioned "invitation to tea with the Duke's Third minor Assistant." ;-)

Role playing is the interaction; if "negotiation" doesn't count I am not sure what does. I hope you're not looking down on negotation in CotSQ or RttToEE because there's a blunt hammer waiting to smack you in the face if you fail as opposed to a cutting rejoinder from the Duke's assistant. :-/

Roleplaying is playing a role, typically one that you don't normally play, i.e. yourself. That's not synonymous with acting and dialogue, although it's often treated that way around here.