Castle Maure - Not All That

[D'karr]

Very well said Erik.

 

[mearls]

As far as these old adventures are concerned, in my experience there are two kinds of players, and they break down roughly by when the players learned how to play D&D. The groggiest of the grognards know when to retreat. They know to be careful because the traps and monsters are not always 100% appropriate for the level of the characters in question. Sometimes, they remember, Lareth the Beautiful has a staff of striking, so if everyone's wounded it's best to retreat, regroup, and come back later.

The other style of player (and I realize I'm oversimplifying this considerably) is more likely to assume that the challenges are more or less perfectly balanced for their character, and that the dungeon essentially exists to be defeated, and to be defeated rather handily and easily. These guys are more likely to press forward even when everyone is approaching 0 hit points, because they want to "finish" in one go.

I've seen this too, and I think it ties back into how D&D has changed over the years.

I wonder if the concept of what a dungeon is has changed over time. Back in the day, almost every adventure was a dungeon. Nowadays, there's a much broader range of adventures supported in the game and via published adventures. I wonder if gamers today just assume that the dungeon is where you fight lots of monsters. The problem solving and roleplay abilities they use in urban or wilderness adventures fall by the wayside. In olde tymes, those skills were in play in the dungeon. There wasn't this idea that dungeons were for fighting and looting, and nothing else. The (incorrect) idea that roleplay and problem solving were things you couldn't do in dungeons hadn't spread yet.

 

[Grimstaff]

One very telling sign with regards to experienced old-style dungeon crawlers and players who cut their teeth post-dragonlance was their reaction to the Golem on level 1. My old-timers were perfectly happy to just avoid the thing altogether, while the 2e fellows ran right up to it for some toe-to-toe. Needless to say, the golem took an immediate player kill, and pursued the two remaining "valients" into the secret tunnel to the north, where it spewed firey breath across their now-cowardly backsides. Both dropped, and were only narrowly healed in time by the other guys, who got a good chuckle out of it. THat was a valuable lesson to them that the Big Bad Guy isnt always in the last room of the last level. In fact, they were terrified for quite a while by what they would run into next, reasoning that everything else would be tougher! Of course, it wasn't long before they ran into the Symbol of Death on the next level, but that's another story...

 

[Dr_Rictus]

As a gm, you have a power called discretion. You can focus the adventure where you want. If the party enters several rooms with boring gnolls and cool murals, you can say, "After slaying several rooms full of gnolls, the party begins to realize that the murals on the walls are very cool...."And then go deep into background discussion.

Ugh. If I ever had a DM tell me what my character's subjective judgement of the wall murals was, I'd be sorely tempted to hand him the character sheet and walk away. Whose character is it, anyway?

 

[Numion]

I think mearls is right only if your players play a bunch of videogames. Most people that Ive played with over the past twenty odd years who cut their teeth on old gygax or were totally new but didnt play videogames were good players in the sense of surviving and employing multiple tactics, parleys, negotiations, checking background, etc. Video game players simply do not ever do this without extensive dm coaching. gygax himself has opined that many modern players today tend to die like mayflies in his dungeons because they are simply too one tracked to ever run away. My own experience with modern videogame type players is similar -- one 17 year old gamer addict that we played with lost more characters in a month than I have in 27 years of playing.

If you read my post you'd know that my beef wasn't that my players' PCs died in Castle Maure, because, well, they didn't. My beef was that all the cool background stuff is easily missed or overlooked by the PCs because it isn't easily accessible nor is it required to complete the adventure, which makes it boring.

Personal opinion, the first level of maure castle is really good and evocative, the lower levels are ok, the statuary level is also pretty good. Banewarrens is one of the worst, least imaginative dungeons Ive ever seen (ok its better than 'Puppets', 'Gargoyles', the first Dragonlance modules, the final Ravenloft modules and the two counterfeit Castle Greyhawks) -- with Banewarrens as a precursor, I shudder to think how bad, how overwritten, how 'balanced', how modern and politically correct Ptolus will be.

But Banewarrens is not linear, which makes it very much more interesting. Oh and by the way: Banewarrens is an ENnie winner too, so I guess, um, how did you put it:

..did win an Ennie and evidently it sold very well so the detractors arent that representative.

ZING!

 

[Numion]

As far as these old adventures are concerned, in my experience there are two kinds of players, and they break down roughly by when the players learned how to play D&D. The groggiest of the grognards know when to retreat. They know to be careful because the traps and monsters are not always 100% appropriate for the level of the characters in question. Sometimes, they remember, Lareth the Beautiful has a staff of striking, so if everyone's wounded it's best to retreat, regroup, and come back later.

The other style of player (and I realize I'm oversimplifying this considerably) is more likely to assume that the challenges are more or less perfectly balanced for their character, and that the dungeon essentially exists to be defeated, and to be defeated rather handily and easily. These guys are more likely to press forward even when everyone is approaching 0 hit points, because they want to "finish" in one go.

"Maure Castle" is not a great adventure for the latter type of player. It is very definitely in the classic style, and it is ideal when it is entered and exited several times during the course of play.

Again, this is not my beef with Castle Maure. While my players like a nice hack-n-slash, they know when to go resting (one-more-room syndrome was cured a stack of character sheets a go), they have decent tactics and like to optimize characters. But that is beside the point for me. You seem to like to insinuate that because they failed to gather information the died because they couldn't handle the old-school dungeon. Not the case.

My players fared well in defeating the enemies. The problem was that the enemies were boring, because unlike fans of Castle Maure insist, gathering the cool background information from them is not required to fare in the dungeon. Let me state it again: my players became bored with the adventure, they didn't get their asses handed to them because they were "videogamers" (which they are not).

 

[Quickbeam]

When I ran RttToEE, I was disappointed that my players never tried diplomacy or stealth. I hoped/expected that they'd work to turn the temples against each other, or pose as minions of the Elder Elemental Eye, and so on, but they never did. Reading your comment, it strikes me that the adventure I read, and the one the players saw, were two different things. The players never really figured out that the temple was divided. They weren't aware of the possibilities.

My sentiments EXACTLY! Both Castle Maure and RttToEE offer incredible opportunities for players to tie the backdrop material into character actions -- like stealth, diplomacy, and manipulation -- but things never seem to materialize that way. IMO, it's a function of an RPG conditioned response and/or herd mentality. The players know their characters are progressing through a meatgrinding dungeon crawl and behave accordingly. They resign themselves to the notion that combat in almost every encounter is inevitable and have their characters behave as though sneaking, hiding, intimidating, bluffing and negotiating are futile endeavors. It isn't just the modules themselves that are the "problem", but our reactions as players are also to blame.

 

[Quasqueton]

One very telling sign with regards to experienced old-style dungeon crawlers and players who cut their teeth post-dragonlance was their reaction to the Golem on level 1. My old-timers were perfectly happy to just avoid the thing altogether, while the 2e fellows ran right up to it for some toe-to-toe. Needless to say, the golem took an immediate player kill, and pursued the two remaining "valients" into the secret tunnel to the north, where it spewed firey breath across their now-cowardly backsides. Both dropped, and were only narrowly healed in time by the other guys, who got a good chuckle out of it. THat was a valuable lesson to them that the Big Bad Guy isnt always in the last room of the last level. In fact, they were terrified for quite a while by what they would run into next, reasoning that everything else would be tougher! Of course, it wasn't long before they ran into the Symbol of Death on the next level, but that's another story...

Note that when Kuntz ran this adventure for Gygax, EGG's PCs entered the area and engaged the golem. In fact, Mordenkainen was petrified, and Bigby had to teleport out to bring back friends. So, the quintessential "experienced old-style dungeon crawlers" of their day didn't do what you say such folk would do.

Plus, Steading of the Hill Giant Chief was designed for the PCs to explore the dungeon while the giants were all gathered in a party -- it was set up for the PCs to use stealth and timing to defeat the giants. But every tale I've ever heard about play in that adventure had the PCs attacking the giants at the party, as a whole. So don't tell me that "experienced old-style dungeon crawlers" use anything but hack-and-slash on a regular basis. "Old-style" dungeon crawling *is* hack-and-slash.

Quasqueton

 

[StupidSmurf]

Castle Maure is unfortunately named, IMHO.....Whenever my eyes do a sweep down the screen, I keep thinking that there should be a letter N between the A and the U!

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

I'm running Maure Castle right now. I can verify that a lot of the story doesn't seem to come out in game play. Then again, my players all made up super combat characters. I asked if anyone had knowledge almost anything, the answer is no...I believe knowledge(religion) is the only knowledge skill in the party and I think it has 5 ranks.

Other than that, they seem to be running from room to room killing enemies. My group has no problem with this style, they love it even. They are more annoyed that the dungeon has so many empty rooms and dead ends. All of the exploring is taking away from their killing time. Plus, they can't seem to find a reason to have a corridor with no secret door that ends in a dead end.

Otherwise, I like the adventure mainly because it has enough innovative challenges that my players don't know immediately how to beat the enemies or traps.

I can keep you updated if you want to know more.