D&D 5E Do You Delve?

[doctorbadwolf]

That sounds pretty amazing, actually. Sandboxesque but with a cohesive overlay to frame the campaign.

For sure! I hope it’s as cool as the potential. The plan is to overlay that with a story of coming of age and being given responsibility no one should ask of someone so young, issues of faith and community, alliance building, resource gathering, and tactical management, as they discover the problem, are given a vision, leave home and see the wider world, realize they need help, make allies, etc.

I feel like this thread needs a:

DO YOU EVEN DELVE BRUH?!

LOL Every time someone brings up that meme I think of the “Hey bros, is it gay to have emotions/like things/wear bright colors/cry, ever/etc” meme. “Bros, is it gay to go into dark basements with your bros and fight monsters!?” Seems like a good addition, to me!

 

[TwoSix]

I feel like this thread needs a:

DO YOU EVEN DELVE BRUH?!

 

[Fanaelialae]

Not all of my sessions involve delving, but if it's been a while since the last one I look for opportunities to make one available.

I've played campaigns that were primarily focused on delving, and those where we practically never did. However, the ones that I've enjoyed the most mixed it up, which is what I try to do.

 

[jmartkdr2]

I'd say the games I'm involved with are about 50% delving (using the broad definition of 'dungeon'.) Sometimes we go to a location full of encounters and deal with them as a group, sometimes we don't, depending on the nature of the quest in front of us.

 

[BookTenTiger]

Oh wow, I'm surprised by the answers so far!

I love love love making and running dungeons. I tend to design location-based adventures, and each location will have one or more dungeons.

I think dungeons are a really fun way to tell a story. All the characters have abilities that are useful in dungeons. Choices are more clear (do we go through this door or that door?), and each room is like a little story with a beginning, middle, and end.

Sometimes the dungeon will be integral to the plot of the adventure. Sometimes I'll plan out a dungeon that just has rumors of cool treasure in it.

As a player I like being in a dungeon because I know it's a location where my character can have a lot of mechanical impact. It's a very democratic setting: the barbarian and the wizard can both do a lot in a well-designed dungeon.

So yep! I have a very narrative focused D&D game, and we delve a lot!

 

[Mannahnin]

Yes, generally speaking. My game that I started since the pandemic more so than the one I was running before.

My pre-pandemic game was mostly split between city adventure and wilderness, with the occasional short dungeon-like environment cropping up here and there. But my proficiency with virtual tabletops isn't really sufficient to execute that as well. I can't as easily sketch a random room, set of intersections or alleys, I can't grab miniatures off my shelves so easily to run that kind of open world off the cuff no matter which way the players go.

My way of teaching myself how to use Roll20 involved a "mini-megadungeon", and the campaign has been centered on delving, with a little bit of in-town roleplay and the occasional overland trek. I find that the VTT works well for this.

 

[Imaculata]

All the time! Our most recent delve was a prison, and now a large cathedral.

 

[kenada]

When I saw “delve”, my first thought was: like the 4e delve format? Definitely not. In the more general sense, sure. We’re not always going into dungeons, but when we do (whether underground, outside, or otherwise), I use a turn-based exploration procedure. Regardless of edition I’m running, it’s tends to be pretty similar to the one from B/X.

I like the way breaking things down into turns helps track time and provides an opportunity cost. If you’re going to spend your time digging through rubble looking for treasure, then you can’t also simultaneously be on the look out for wandering monsters and also identifying the language on the mural that the monk is cleaning up. I once had my PCs decide to set a door on fire, and while they watched it burn, monsters wandered up. This wasn’t anything I decided. It was just the output of continuing to run the exploration procedure.

There are rooms in my dungeons, and PCs navigate through them, but sometimes the action happens outside of rooms. A few sessions ago (not 5e but close enough), the PCs were exploring a barrow full of ghouls. They heard something coming, so pulled back to set up an ambush. The patrol took their bait, and followed down a side passage where they could fight the patrol away from the other ghouls. The lead ghoul triggered a trap one of the PCs had set, and the warrior and that PC were able to alpha strike what turned out to be the ghoul boss before she could do anything.

Because the PCs had explored previously, they were able to use their knowledge of the dungeon to their advantage. They knew there was a safe spot as well as one that was away from the other ghouls. That’s not to say we couldn’t have improvised something, but it wouldn’t have been the same. I also like making maps, and having a concrete dungeon lets me indulge in that.

 

[el-remmen]

Delving is a big part (30 to 50%) of any module I run (yes, I still call them modules). I tend to prep situations not scenes - or if I prep a scene I prep it as if the PCs were not going to be there and let the PCs action interrupt or change it (unless of course it is a scene meant to have someone seek out and confront the PCs). Exploring a place, going room to room, dealing with patrols and wandering monsters, finding places to hide, looking at maps to figure out the possibility of a secret door are all parts of my games, but they are definitely not all of it. And usually these delves will lead to a large set-piece location designed for tactical combat and fun combat play.

So for example, I am running my own version of Against the Cult of the Reptile God. The whole first part of the adventure is open-ended and free-form based on investigating cult activity in the village. There are chances for ambush, capture, chases, etc. . . Within the village, the temple is a mini-delve (with a possible major ambush scene at the start of it) with a dungeon level below. There is also a multi-day swamp trek with chances to get lost and running into monsters, which is open ended. And finally, the cult's expansive swamp lair (a two level dungeon) that has a multi-level flooded cavern as the presumptive climax against the big bad, which can lead to a tactical fight at various places while avoiding the hazards of the cavern. But getting there requires either stealthy approach, subterfuge, or a straight up raid (or some combo) with the possibility of secret passages linking otherwise distant parts of the lair to be discovered.

 

[Stormonu]

Lots of dungeon delving, I prefer it to all the shenanigans players get into in open settings, and most of all, I hate using cities - like Waterdeep, not Hommlet-sized.