Define Dungeon Crawl

[KB9JMQ]

To me it has to be underground or at least in a building.
It must need to be mapped by the characters. There has to be traps, empty rooms and at least one monster which doesnt make sense

 

[JamesDJarvis]

A dungeon crawl takes place in an enclosed environment, there are monsters and the threat of traps. There is no real explicit goal beyond killing monsters and finding treasure, sure sometimes it is a quest for the great mcguffin or a mission to slay the foozle but the real adventure is moving arround in the environment finding treasures and killing monsters. Even if it is quest to slay foozle a dungeon crawl environment is seldom well organized for the locals; the occupants of room 12 don't have much to do with the occupants of room 13 for example.

Players don't need to be making a map for it to be a dungeon crawl. Mapping is only a really good idea if an area is going to be returned to again and again or folks don't want to spend a lot of time getting lost. If a dm doesn't want folks to have to bother with mapping all that much pop in a few easy to find central locations in a dungeon, if the players get lost they should be able to find the way out if they make it to such a location.

 

[jmucchiello]

Interesting thread as it is the title of a "simplified (yet mostly incompatible) d20" system that I'm spending my spare writing time, er, writing. (IOW, not a lot of time gone into it at all.)

JamesDJ: Mind if I borrow "quest for the great mcguffin" for my sample module title? It's perfect.

 

[Stormborn]

A dungeon crawl takes place in an enclosed environment, there are monsters and the threat of traps. There is no real explicit goal beyond killing monsters and finding treasure, sure sometimes it is a quest for the great mcguffin or a mission to slay the foozle but the real adventure is moving arround in the environment finding treasures and killing monsters. Even if it is quest to slay foozle a dungeon crawl environment is seldom well organized for the locals; the occupants of room 12 don't have much to do with the occupants of room 13 for example.

Great answer! But does the room 12 and room 13 example mean that a Dungeon Crawl can't be logical? IOW, does it have to be a static enviroment or can it be a dynamic ecology? Are those two mutually exclusive?

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

I think it was the element of chaos that it added to the game. Traveling down a darkened corridor, literally not knowing what was up ahead, because it didn't exist until the next roll of the dice!

Now I'm going to ask...why were they so much fun?

[Being that I have the 1e DMG, and can see the enjoyment of the diverse obstacles and environments it can present.
Of course, one can handwave hallways that are supposed to intersect but don't as planar hiccups or something similar.]

 

[Pielorinho]

Last dungeon-crawl I ran involved rescuing a couple locals from a dragon in an earby pyramid, meanwhile fighting off the undead residents of the lower stories, reconstructing the events that led to the death of the original inhabitants, eventually confronting the dragon with the fact that it was the coalesced nightmare of a dead wizard, and venturing into the dream-realm version of the pyramid to confront that wizard and lay his spirit (and the dragon) to rest.

What made it a dungeon-crawl from my eyes:
-Lots of combat, about two or three times as much as I usually have in a game.
-Choices sharply limited, for the most part: go this way or that.
-Areas divided into levels, with the later levels more difficult than the earlier levels (in this case, the levels were very short, and got shorter as they ascended the pyramid).
-A trap or two.
-A variety of enemies.

Daniel