For the Love of Dungeons

[Camelot]

D&D 4e: Too Much Bonuses for a Dungeon

A thought struck me recently. In many fantasy roguelikes (the archetypical dungeon games), your character can pick up cursed items, poisonous potions, and unhelpful magic scrolls. This is a trait that I think would be really fun in a D&D dungeon delve (at least from a DM's point of view!), but 4e doesn't offer any official or at least obvious ways of dealing with bad items. How could you do this without throwing off the balance?

 

[Beginning of the End]

In OD&D, only a third (a roll of 1 or 2 on a d6) of the rooms contain monsters. Of the monsterless rooms, 1 in 6 of those contain treasure, which should be hidden or otherwise hard to get at (in a trapped chest, for example).

So what is the purpose of all these rooms that contain nothing? Are the PCs expected to search them all, in hopes they may contain hidden treasure? Do they look interesting with furnishings and statuary and so forth or are they featureless?

First, I think you're making a mistake in assuming that the only interesting things in a dungeon are monsters or treasure.

Second, it's a matter of pacing. If every single door you open has something exciting about it, then there's no uncertainty. It's as if every single door on Let's Make a Deal had a new car behind it. The "boring" rooms provide context for the interesting rooms. (And don't really chew up that much time.)

Third, even empty room can be strategically valuable to the PCs in their explorations. Does it provide a short-cut allowing them to bypass that tribe of ettins? Can it be secured to give them a place to rest and recuperate? Et cetera.

Finally, resolving empty rooms doesn't really take that much time. Even if the PCs decide to search it high-and-low, if the resolution of an empty room is taking more than 5 minutes then something is wrong.

And even if we (a) conservatively estimate that your typical combat takes 6 times longer to resolve than an empty room; and (b) absolutely nothing interesting happens outside of combat -- then you would still need 54 empty rooms for every 1 room containing monsters or treasure to give you "20 minutes of fun in 4 hours". In other words, non-empty rooms would need to make up only 1.85% of the dungeon. Which is considerably lower than the 44% suggested by the OD&D guidelines.

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.

And the problem with the approach is that it is authorial: The DM is taking control of the PCs away from the players.

Now, a friend of mine is experimenting with designing the ruins of an abandoned city using the structure of a hexcrawl. He's also talked about using a similar technique for large underground complexes with lots of empty rooms and very few points of interest.

IOW, if you've actually got a complex where only 1% of the rooms are interesting, then the format of the traditional dungeon crawl may not be the best way to handle it.

But I'd still want to adopt a format where the PCs are in control of their expedition, not the DM.

 

[Hussar]

Finally, resolving empty rooms doesn't really take that much time. Even if the PCs decide to search it high-and-low, if the resolution of an empty room is taking more than 5 minutes then something is wrong.

I totally and 100% agree with this. This certainly jives with my playstyle.

But, how is this not pretty much the same as simply glossing over the room? If the players are going to spend 5 minutes on an empty room, why not simply skip it? Does it add anything? If you have six empty rooms in a row, add in actual travel time between rooms, and you have the better part of an hour of gameplay doing pretty much nothing.

And, let's not forget the old "player skill" concept. Players should not be allowed to "skip over" empty rooms. They have to expressly detail each and every element that they check out. Suddenly, empty rooms don't take 5 minutes of game play, they take 20.

I'll admit, I'm far more in the 5 minute camp, but, for a mega-dungeon, perhaps glossing over a few rooms isn't a bad idea.

 

[Psychotic Jim]

Empty space is what you make of it. Having some empty space give the PCs to use the dungeon in their favor :
-set up a camp
-plot an ambush
-temporarily store heavier loot
-sit and have an IC conversation with other PCs (perhaps to discuss battle tactics discretely or just have a few moments of IC character banter as a break from the exploration/combat)
-Arrange meetings with npcs/monsters they meet in the dungeon on a more neutral playing field
-set traps (various symbol spells, etc)
-herd baddies
-hide enemy carcasses (or prisoners)
-for particularly hated foes, there is also the And I Must Scream option. Dump him in there, and then do something to make sure he stays there- fill it with cement, herd in a bunch of slimes, or cause a cave in upon the bastard.

Sometimes, the emptiness of an empty space can in itself be significant. In one of my more recent games, for example, in a fairly dank cave, the party found that there was no moss or other fungus. This signified to them that something had eaten the moss. Later they linked this to a fairly famished otuygh. Similarly, I gave them warning of a xorn living in the dungeon with only an old stone statue of a cyclops. Its only unusual characteristic (beyond being a giant stone statue, of course)? That it had bite and claw marks all over it- clues to there being a "petrivore" about.

 

[Beginning of the End]

But, how is this not pretty much the same as simply glossing over the room? If the players are going to spend 5 minutes on an empty room, why not simply skip it? Does it add anything? If you have six empty rooms in a row, add in actual travel time between rooms, and you have the better part of an hour of gameplay doing pretty much nothing.

That's certainly a possibility. Although it does circle us back around to "empty rooms aren't necessarily boring rooms". And the law of averages will pan out: If you end up with 6 empty rooms in a row, then that means there's 5 back-to-back action packed rooms waiting for you out there.

And, let's not forget the old "player skill" concept. Players should not be allowed to "skip over" empty rooms. They have to expressly detail each and every element that they check out. Suddenly, empty rooms don't take 5 minutes of game play, they take 20.

But those types of detailed searches take time in-world as well, which brings us back to the wandering monster rules.

In OD&D searching a 10' section of wall for secret passages requires a full turn. So if you've got a 20' x 20' room that you're searching in any kind of intimate detail, then you're conservatively spending 4 turns in there. So to intimately search 6 "empty" rooms means 24 turns, with a 1 in 6 chance per turn of a wandering monster.

And just like that you've turned those "empty" rooms into multiple combat encounters.

It's an interesting experience to run a true old school dungeon complex (like the Caverns of Thracia, for example) using the strict time-keeping and wandering monster rules of OD&D (simple as they are). My gut always told me that such a pace was too fast for wandering monsters, but the effect was remarkably effective. It immediately created the sensation that the dungeon complex was active and alive, and it forced the PCs to focus their attention if they wanted to accomplish anything meaningful.

And this was within the context of the bloated monster XP awards of the original LBBs (100 XP per HD, don't divide it). Reduce those values to as much as 1/100th their former size (as happened with Supplement I), and it becomes even more important for the PCs to focus their attention in order to push farther into the unexplored portions of the dungeon where meaningful treasure might be obtained. Constantly skirmishing with wandering monsters in the dungeon's entrance just isn't going to cut it.

 

[Doug McCrae]

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.

My problem with the playstyle you describe is that it seems to involve a lot of interacting with inanimate objects at a very low level of abstraction. I just find that kind of thing dull. "Try moving the statue's arm! Maybe it opens a secret door." "Let's form a human pyramid and tap the ceiling to see if it's hollow. Shorties on top!" That's snoozers to me, I'm not feeling the tension you describe.

I enjoy roleplaying (in the sense of talking in character), exploring the GM's world (though at a higher level of abstraction than dungeon dressing), combat, action, investigation, mysteries (not the mystery of whether the chest has a false bottom though) and encountering strange new things.

 

[Chainsaw]

My problem with the playstyle you describe is that it seems to involve a lot of interacting with inanimate objects at a very low level of abstraction. I just find that kind of thing dull. "Try moving the statue's arm! Maybe it opens a secret door.", "Let's form a human pyramid and tap the ceiling to see if it's hollow. Shorties on top!" That's snoozers to me, I'm not feeling the tension you describe.

I enjoy roleplaying (in the sense of talking in character), exploring the GM's world (though at a higher level of abstraction than dungeon dressing), combat, action, investigation, mysteries (not the mystery of whether the chest has a false bottom though) and encountering strange new things.

So we're not going to accomplish much by arguing - we're looking for different things. Fortunately we can play different games. Have fun with your authorial storyteller game, we'll have fun trying to interact with inanimate objects.

 

[Doug McCrae]

I don't think it's a storyteller thing, it's just a question of choosing levels of abstraction. Even a room-by-room GM wouldn't describe each individual flagstone - "This one has a diagonal crack, the next is chipped at the corner, the third has a stain" - because he knows the flagstones aren't interesting.

I1 Dwellers of the Forbidden City takes an approach partway between the city I described above and a traditional dungeon. It's significantly more monster infested than mine, but still mostly empty. The whole city is depicted on the large scale map but most of it isn't detailed. In other words, most of the buildings are deemed uninteresting. Scattered throughout the city are monster lairs of varying sizes, some are just a single encounter, some are small dungeons with up to a dozen detailed sections. Often this is the lair of a humanoid tribe such as bugbears or bullywugs.

We wouldn't say that Dwellers of the Forbidden City takes an authorial storytelling approach. But neither is it as detailed as a traditional mega-dungeon. It focuses on what's interesting and ignores what isn't.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Another viewpoint might be that it leaves room for the DM to expand and personalize.

 

[Ariosto]

Individual rooms aren't important, and can be summarised.

That depends, does it not, on what the players choose?

I appreciate that this approach is not D&D in the eyes of many.

I have not seen those "any", actually, except the ones who would object to the absurdity if you really insist on keeping descriptions from matching up with activity. If people choose carefully to investigate things, or to hurry past them, then what they see should be appropriately described in keeping with that choice of action.

But, how is this not pretty much the same as simply glossing over the room? If the players are going to spend 5 minutes on an empty room, why not simply skip it?

That is answered in how the five minutes was spent, which was up to the players. If they wanted simply to skip it, then they did in fact simply skip it.

Players should not be allowed to "skip over" empty rooms. They have to expressly detail each and every element that they check out. Suddenly, empty rooms don't take 5 minutes of game play, they take 20.

Wow. You take 'railroading' to a whole new level, if you insist that players arbitrarily have to check out 20 minutes' worth of things.

It's not the DM's job to do that. It's not the DM's job, either, to tell the players "Oh, there's nothing to find here, and here, and here ..." and then suddenly to insist on having players go to extra trouble because "for sure, there's something to find here." This has been in my experience perfectly plain to FRPers everywhere.