For the Love of Dungeons

[Reynard]

While this thread is celebrating the depths and complexities of what a D&D campaign can be, I'd like to celebrate that tried and true form of D&D entertainment: killing things and taking their stuff.

or, more to the point, Dungeon Delving For Fun and Profit.

Adventures and Campaigns with plots/themes/whathaveyou are all well and good, as are PCs with ambitions and desires and goals. But sometimes, an entire camapign built around the selatively simple goal of seeking treasure in a monster infested, trap laden, terrible wonder filled labrynth is the best kind of fun.

Players versus their deadly environment. GM versus Player ingenuity. Rewards commesurate with boldness. Constant lurking doom.

 

[Reynard]

Often, this kind of gaming is referred to as "old school" or even "primitive" or "simplistic". And the truth is all three of those descriptions are accurate to some degree, but don't have to imply a negative connotation.

Dungeon delving is certainly old school. While i am a "middle schooler" who started with the Red Box, I discovered AD&D early and was enamored and inspired by Gygax's vision of the game, so i consider myself "old schoo" from a certain perspective. And while I ma sure there were plenty of narrativists and simulationists and what not even from the earliest days, the game started as just that -- a game of treasure hunting dungeon delvers seeking fortune and glory.

It's also a "primitive" way to play the game. or, more to the point, more "primitive" versions of the game support the playstyle better. Modern game design tends toward over-design, trying to cover every possible avenue, trying to serve as a generic Fantasy RolePlaying Game. When this happens, one of two things occurs -- either everything gets diluted so it does nothing well, or the rules get so vast and bloated that navigating them and parsing out just what serves the Dungeon Delve playstyle is nigh impossible. This isn't to say that a modern version of the game can't be used, but the existence of both Old School simulcra and new school retro-games like C&C and HMb shows that a focused design will serve a particular style of play better than a broad design.

Finally, there's the "simplistic" quality of dungeon delving. it's not that the play itself is simplistic, or that the dungeons are not complex and require a degree of skill to navigate. Rather, the simplistic theme of hunting fortune and glory within a deadly environment is a powerful tool for "finding the fun" as the kids say these days. Without a "plot" or a "boss fight" or any of that, the dungeon becomes the antagonist (with a little help from the DM) and each session is a chapter in an every evolving and expanding "story", without interference by would-be-novelist DMs or game designers. The tales to be told will be ones of valour and greed, terrible hilarity and stunning wonder.

Anyway -- there's nothing wrong with an "Adventure Path" or "Character Story" or "Campaign Theme". But by the ame token, there's nothing wrong with a good old fashioned dungeon delving campaign either, where levels 1 to whatever take you deeper into the depth, closer to glory and riches, and mere survival proves that you are a hero.

 

[Wik]

To me, there will always be a fond space in my heart for the military graphing paper my dad would bring home from work (think field planning manuals, with carbon sheet to make impromptu copies). I will always love my hand-written notes on the accompanying sheet of lined paper (" room 8. Three orcs are here. AC 6, THACO 20, HD 1, hp 3,5,7, Atk Longswords (1d8). XP 15 each. There is 43 silver pieces in a pouch on their leader. There are no furnishings in the room, but there is a fire pit in the centre.").

I would love to do an old-school style dungeon delve, of PCs versus environment. One of these days, I'm going to get my group together and do a BECMI game, with every player running three PCs, many of which will die ingloriously for minor mistakes or simple poor luck.

 

[Reynard]

This thread makes me sad.

 

[MortalPlague]

Players versus their deadly environment. GM versus Player ingenuity. Rewards commesurate with boldness. Constant lurking doom.

I would love to run or play in a game like this. Sadly, I know that at least many of my players would grow tired of a dungeon crawl game after more than a handful of sessions. Although if I pit their group against a rival adventuring group or two, and weave a loose plot through it all...

Hmm.

 

[pemerton]

I've been predominantly a GM rather than a player for over 20 years. I've always GMed pretty combat-heavy campaigns - although there has been the occasional session in which no combat occurs - but since my first year or so as a GM have never GMed a "kill things and take their stuff campaign." I've always located the combat within contexts that (however weakly) give it a semblance of non-mercenary legitimacy.

I think I've been influenced in this way by my heavy reading of super-hero comic books - combat heavy but not about killing things for their stuff - for the first half of those 20+ years GMing.

 

[Wycen]

This thread makes me sad.

Why?

I love dungeons too. I love killing stuff* and taking their treasure.

* = meaning monsters and bad guys. Interparty conflict is only inevitable when you game with jerks or that one guy who always plays neutral evil no matter what the game system and claims rogues are the greatest. You have to watch your back when you game with that guy.

 

[Camelot]

Yeah, I'd like to play or DM this campaign to. Problem is, I play 4e. And while I would love a solid game of tactical battle and dungeon delving, my players get bored very quickly when we have combat, so this kind of campaign wouldn't work for my group.

The thing I think I would like most about a dungeon delve are the random puzzles, though. I just read the Kobold Quarterly encounter that's on EN World's news page, and that's the kind of thing I'd want in a dungeon delve, whether playing or DMing. Except with the insta-frog. I don't like insta-death or anything too close.

 

[Imaginary Number]

When I start a new campaign, I throw out lots of potential hooks for the players to follow. Those hooks usually involve a combination of political intrigue, rescue scenarios, find-the-Maguffin scenarios, etc. And most of the time the game ultimately revolves around those. At least one of the hooks, however, also always is a standard-issue Mysterious Multi-Level Dungeon Complex filled with traps and monsters. And in almost 30 years of DMing with different groups with different styles, I've found that everyone eventually bites on the MMLDC hook. It's a classic. Even in a sandbox game, if you build it, they will come.

 

[FireLance]

This thread makes me sad.

Why?

Because it's shorter than the halfling thread?

But yeah, sometimes you just want the simple fun of delving into a dungeon to beat up monsters, solve puzzles, circumvent traps, and take home treasure. I still want relatively balanced encounters, though.

EDIT: Spam post below reported ... and it no longer exists!