For the Love of Dungeons

[Diamond Cross]

Something I've been wondering about - what is the purpose of empty rooms?

You can rest and recover in empty rooms as long as you take precautions against wandering monsters such as barricading the door and posting a watch.

In response to the OP, I love random dungeon generators.

You can have an endless stream of dungeons using those.

 

[Chainsaw]

In the OD&D example of play, the party don't enter the, presumably, empty room. They listen at the door and hear nothing, so they go on to the next door, hear monsters, and kill them.

I can't speak to everyone's OD&D games by any stretch, but in our S&W variant, we enter and search just about every room, regardless of whether we hear noise. Some rooms have weird fountains, others statues, crumbling libraries, broken laboratories, weird carvings, adventurers' remains or pieces of puzzles to access to new areas, where greater treasure might lie. We've incurred the wrath of wandering monsters many times as a result of our searching for secret doors, movable arms, false bottoms, traps, etc. Amazingly, no one really complains. It's a game of exploration and sometimes you run into monsters as a result. Remember, we get experience for more than just killing stuff.

What you're describing above sounds pretty boring - I can see why someone wouldn't want to play that. Why not just flip a coin? Heads you have a fight in a generic 20x20 room, tails you flip again.

 

[Doug McCrae]

The way I would handle empty rooms would be not to describe them in detail. Instead I'd say something like, "You search dozens of crumbling, dusty rooms but find nothing."

For example if I had an ancient ruined city, miles across, it would only contain a few things of interest, for example a tribe of degenerate no-longer-humans, a shoggoth, a ghost, maybe a treasure hoard and the macguffin. The degenerates are a fighting encounter, the shoggoth the PCs probably have to run from and the ghost is a talking encounter. The macguffin is guarded by a trap or traps. I don't have a map of the place, just a rough idea of where things are. Searching empty buildings would be handled as above. The adventure wouldn't take more than a session.

In other words it would be more like how RE Howard, Tolkien or Clark Ashton Smith would describe a ruined city. Individual rooms aren't important, and can be summarised. Conan is usually just there for a single huge treasure, and he has to deal with one supernatural monster, some human-type foes and a trap. He doesn't go room-by-room grubbing for trinkets.

I appreciate that this approach is not D&D in the eyes of many. I don't always do it that way, for a small lair I'd go room-by-room.

 

[Raven Crowking]

The way I would handle empty rooms would be not to describe them in detail. Instead I'd say something like, "You search dozens of crumbling, dusty rooms but find nothing."

I agree that this is the fastest way to get the players to what the DM determines as important. In other words it would be more like how RE Howard, Tolkien or Clark Ashton Smith would describe a ruined city -- from an authorial point of view.

This has its place, but it isn't the only way to go.


RC

 

[Chainsaw]

I agree that this is the fastest way to get the players to what the DM determines as important. In other words it would be more like how RE Howard, Tolkien or Clark Ashton Smith would describe a ruined city -- from an authorial point of view.

This has its place, but it isn't the only way to go.


RC

Yes.. this seems to be more of a playstyle preference. Our DM is more of a judge/referee for whatever we determine is important. In one game, we spent a huge hunk of time setting up an "empty" room with traps, then arranged ourselves, made a bunch of noise and attempted to ambush whatever came along. Doug seems to be describing something more akin to the storytelling DM, which may not really be ideal for a dungeon environment.

 

[ancientvaults]

My players usually stumble around and investigate as much as possible. And, as Diamond Cross said, they rest and recuperate in the empty rooms.

Although Slithering Trackers are quite silent, in those darkened, quiet rooms...

 

[Ariosto]

So what is the purpose of all these rooms that contain nothing?

"Nothing" is very rarely literal, of course! No monsters or traps is the key.

Rooms through which one need not fight one's way permit maneuvering. A solid line, by contrast, reduces the affair to something more like the trenches of the First World War.

The latter may be just what one wants if the concept of the game is of one "combat encounter" after another -- but that is not the old dungeon game.

It seems to me that a lot of time is going to be spent describing rooms that contain nothing of importance.

How much time does it take to say, "This little cavern looks like the trolls' midden, piled with bones and rusty armor. There are passages to the north and southeast."? It takes me less than a minute. If players want to spend more time getting more details about something, then it is -- by their own valuation -- of so much more importance.

It's a "free market" of time-valuation, not a DM-driven "planned economy".

Twenty minutes of fun packed into four hours.

That's like the assessment of the guy who took his gal dancing just for the sex afterward. The lady's view? That might be quite different!

If you consider exploration not fun, then there are plenty of other games for you to play.

The ideal is not hours of constant high tension, but rather a flow of rising and falling tension.

It's hard to pin down a "typical" session, but here's something to give you a rough idea.

The expedition could pass quickly through areas of little interest, especially when covering already well-known ground. One reason for multiple ways up and down is to reduce the need for that, though.

Including time spent that way, and in discussion, etc., we might end up spending about 10 minutes per especially interesting but 'empty' newly discovered room. In other words, we are not necessarily spending 10 minutes poking around that one room! It's a rate or pace. Half a dozen of those would account for an hour total.

Likewise including activities "framing" it (lead-up and aftermath), we might spend 10 to 15 minutes per minor encounter with monsters (wandering or otherwise), or with a trap or puzzle. Four to six of those would make for another hour.

Figure, say, half an hour for a major encounter. Since an actual fight in old D&D is not likely to take that long unless it's a very big deal involving high-level characters, "major" is more often distinguished by the non-fighting activities involved. A couple of those would take an hour.

So, all those mixed together could add up to three hours. Add another hour for socializing before, after, and along the way, and you would have a session of four hours.

Adding up the above, we have 10 to 14 discretely noted situations -- an average of 3 per hour over 4 hours, or 4 per hour of "knuckling down" to the game (vs. socializing).

YMMV big time -- mine sure does! The group I'm in now definitely spends more than 25% of the time in socializing. A fight that could take just ten minutes to complete in really "serious business" fashion might get stretched to half an hour from start to finish because of all the chatting along the way.

 

[Ariosto]

Scenarios such as Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan and Ghost Tower of Inverness depend on a very brisk pace even when confronted in every room with temptations to proceed more deliberately.

Alacrity comes in large part simply from players' understanding that it is up to them to manage their time.

When they have been trained to expect that whatever happens to come into view is presented by the DM with the intent that they should give it a lot of attention, that "meta-gaming" habit can be hard to break.

 

[Odhanan]

The only reason I would ever consider playing or running any version of D&D again would be for a megadungeon campaign, where everyone understands going in that exploring a sprawling underworld is the focus of the game.

There will be a town for the adventurers to use as a base, and some length of wilderness to navigate between the dungeon and the town, but the goal of the game is to crawl the depths in search of glory and riches.

This is the sole attraction of D&D for me.

That's really what D&D is meant to be, for me as well.

An open wilderness/"sandbox" environment, a mega-dungeon (or three) for the players to explore, with them understanding right off the bat that the goal is to explore whatever they want, however they want, and off they go, forward, to adventure!

The whole thing then evolves organically. The characters make friends and enemies, hire people, forge allegiances and defeat the dungeon's denizens, manage their explorations strategically, develop ties to the surrounding area, villages and the like, grow in fame, whether good or bad, and come to be part of the campaign world in time, when they, or their children, or friends, or hirelings, reach name level and start to settle down, build their castle, and so on, so forth.

 

[Chainsaw]

The only reason I would ever consider playing or running any version of D&D again would be for a megadungeon campaign, where everyone understands going in that exploring a sprawling underworld is the focus of the game.

There will be a town for the adventurers to use as a base, and some length of wilderness to navigate between the dungeon and the town, but the goal of the game is to crawl the depths in search of glory and riches.

This is the sole attraction of D&D for me.

My group's doing this right now with Castle Greyhawk and having a great time. We're using S&W:WB variant rules for OD&D. We've got a cleric, a fighting-man, a dwarf, a magic-user and a few hirelings (two torchbearers and a porter).

Needless to say, you really need to make sure your players understand what they're playing. There are sessions that go by where we might only have a single fight (vs some rats or something). There's still plenty of tension though because every room's like a fresh puzzle as we quiz the DM, searching for traps, secret doors, treasure or clues to some legendary hoard (recall that treasure counts as XP, so killing stuff isn't necessarily the focus).

I've played with some guys that would *hate* this approach - they're more attracted to miniatures combat and get bored quizzing the DM about the environment or describing how they're avoiding or surpassing hazards. They'd prefer to just roll their "check" and move to the next battle scene. Fortuantely, there are games enough for everyone these days.