Dungeon Nomenclature and Taxonomy

[Hussar]

/snip
But what is a dungeon. In another thread, Doug talked about degrees of abstraction. If you pull back a degree or two, a city becomes a dungeon: streets and buildings are analogous to hallways and chambers and individuals, groups and political forces become monsters, traps and tricks. Could you pull out another degree and create a "dungeon nation", a land so embroiled in conflict that roads become hallways and villages become rooms?

I don't want to get too far away from the core discussion here, though, which is: how do we classify dungeons based on their function in play? Can we? Are there any hard lines or are we likely to find most dungeons fall in the spaces between whatever categories we decide upon. And if so, is there a point in categorizing them at all?

On the first - could a nation be considered a "dungeon", I'd say certainly. A dungeon, at least from one perspective, is simply an adventure flow chart. You could apply that same flow chart at almost any scale, from a small four room dungeon to an entire world. I would go so far as to say that some definitions of "sand boxing" would create a world which looks very much like an adventure flowchart or dungeon. Go to point A, encounter X, from A you can go to B, C or D and have different encounters. The greater your ability to travel (going from horses to flight to teleport) simply changes the connections between fixed points on the flowchart.

As far as categorization goes, it's like any categorization in that you will never cover every single eventuality. It's like genre, all you can do is hit the generalities and realize that there is a fair degree of overlap between different types.

World's Largest Dungeon, for example, could easily be a Mega-Dungeon. There are more than a few areas where you can add to the maps if you like, and, considering how freaking huge this place actually is, I think it qualifies as pretty much endless. You can easily have several parties taking different paths and never seeing the same area twice.

OTOH, it could also be played as a Campaign Exploratory, or even and Adventure Path Dungeon, to use Lanefan's excellent definitions. It all depends on how the DM sets it up and wants to use it.

I don't think you can definitively pigeon-hole many products, simply because the DM has so much input into how it's being used.

 

[Reynard]

A Destination Dungeon has something at the bottom. B4: The Lost City when played into the lower levels is this kind of dungeon. Ultimately, the lost city and the vast goblin-infested caves are all a places on the way to the temple of Zargon the Returner.

"Must spread some experience around..."

Destination Dungeon! I like it, and I haven't heard/read it before in my travels around the dungeon blogosphere.

 

[Lanefan]

Not all of us use that newfangled definition.

And all, or at least many, of the adventures that take place in one dm's world might have connecting themes.

Ayup.

Also note that said thematic connections might not be apparent to the players at any point during the game.

In other words, what the players see as a series of not-necessarily-related modules might be a full-on adventure path in the eyes of the DM. Whether this ever gets revealed or not is an open question for each DM/group to answer independently.

Nowadays campaign refers to something a bit tighter. There is usually persistence of PCs, objective or plot in addition to persistence of setting. If all the PCs change, it's arguably a new campaign.

Depends, perhaps, how and why all the PCs change. If there's a TPK and the same players generate new PCs to go look for the old ones, I'd say that's the same campaign. If the one campaign peters out and is essentially re-started with new PCs, maybe new players, new rules, whatever, then I'd say it's (usually) a new campaign even if it happens to re-use the old one's setting.

And to answer Reynard's point: yes, I think "setting", "campaign", etc. also need defining at least to some extent, that your discussion of how to define the various types of "dungeon" has some basis. A campaign is, after all, made up of a number of dungeons (note that by definition that number can be as low as one); and a setting is usually a place in which one or more campaigns take place. Just different degrees of scale, really.

Also, it occurred to me that an entire setting could in some cases be defined as a dungeon: Ravenloft is the obvious example.

Lan-"I wandered off the adventure path, and now I've lost my way"-efan

 

[pawsplay]

"Must spread some experience around..."

Destination Dungeon! I like it, and I haven't heard/read it before in my travels around the dungeon blogosphere.

I don't remember where I ran into it.

 

[Beginning of the End]

On the first - could a nation be considered a "dungeon", I'd say certainly. A dungeon, at least from one perspective, is simply an adventure flow chart. You could apply that same flow chart at almost any scale, from a small four room dungeon to an entire world.

While a dungeon can certainly be thought of as an "adventure flow-chart", trying to apply the design principles of the dungeon to other types of adventure flow-charts is, as a general rule, going to cause problems.

As far as categorization goes, it's like any categorization in that you will never cover every single eventuality. It's like genre, all you can do is hit the generalities and realize that there is a fair degree of overlap between different types.

I'd agree, and also add that trying to finely categorize dungeon types (a) doesn't really serve much use at the table and (b) will virtually never be useful in common conversation.

IOW, I think gross distinctions between megadungeons and lairs is useful and 90% intuitive. Trying to parse fine distinctions of eight different types of megadungeons, on the other hand, is probably less useful because no one outside of your current discussion is ever going to understand what you mean.

So I'd say that pawsplay's definitions are the most useful ones posted in this thread to date.