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<blockquote data-quote="Ariosto" data-source="post: 5233108" data-attributes="member: 80487"><p>Yes. People whose idea of D&D is somehow Very Serious, who hold strongly notions of "realism", might do well to avoid old-style underworlds. Indeed, they seem quite instinctively to recoil from the very idea!</p><p></p><p>The 5th edition of <em>Tunnels & Trolls</em> offers a very thoughtful and charming discourse on dungeon design (in Section 2.5 How To Be A GM). An excerpt:</p><p></p><p>To maintain freshness as levels become depopulated and players map them, the original D&D set suggests:</p><p>1. Make minor alterations -- blocking or adding passages or rooms.</p><p>2. Extend the boundaries of the map up to (or beyond, one infers) the edges of the paper.</p><p>3. "Replace monsters in new areas as well as those less-frequented old areas where monsters were located and removed sometime previously."</p><p>4. Reverse directions on the map, carefully relocating connections to other levels. (One could also rotate the map to some other orientation.)</p><p>5. "Add a passage which continues past the established boundary of the level, creating a split or sub-level which it leads to, complete with new treasure and monsters."</p><p></p><p>Supplement I packs a lot of inspiration into just three pages of "tricks and traps" and "monstrous tricks and combination monsters".</p><p></p><p></p><p>===============</p><p>| The Changing Context |</p><p>===============</p><p>Another factor that keeps the underworld from getting stale is its being just part of the campaign. Testing of the <em>Dungeon!</em> board game, IIRC, was said to have renewed interest in dungeon expeditions in the pioneering D&D campaigns (to the exclusion of wilderness adventures among a new crew of Blackmoor players, an example of how enthusiasms can fluctuate).</p><p></p><p>What seems a nearly universal problem these days is a shortage of players, and play time, relative to the resources that went into those early campaigns. Players' own schemes and intrigues and conflicts -- even unto wars, and rumours of wars, among Lords and Wizards and Patriarchs and their armies -- do not carry so much the burden of keeping interesting plots afoot.</p><p></p><p>It is, for instance, less likely that a dungeon shall be the object of expeditions by competing parties of players. Not only does that add the spice of competition -- who shall first get to the most prized treasures? -- but it adds a dimension of dynamism as <em>player characters</em> make their changes both to the physical edifice and to the ecology and society of the inhabitants.</p><p></p><p>Moreover, events within the dungeon tend to become more tellingly related to events in the surface world. (This is highlighted in the <em>Empire of the Petal Throne</em> game.)</p><p></p><p>In the absence of that "organic" development, it falls on the shoulders of the DM somehow to "simulate" the effects that lend vibrancy to a campaign.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Ariosto, post: 5233108, member: 80487"] Yes. People whose idea of D&D is somehow Very Serious, who hold strongly notions of "realism", might do well to avoid old-style underworlds. Indeed, they seem quite instinctively to recoil from the very idea! The 5th edition of [I]Tunnels & Trolls[/I] offers a very thoughtful and charming discourse on dungeon design (in Section 2.5 How To Be A GM). An excerpt: To maintain freshness as levels become depopulated and players map them, the original D&D set suggests: 1. Make minor alterations -- blocking or adding passages or rooms. 2. Extend the boundaries of the map up to (or beyond, one infers) the edges of the paper. 3. "Replace monsters in new areas as well as those less-frequented old areas where monsters were located and removed sometime previously." 4. Reverse directions on the map, carefully relocating connections to other levels. (One could also rotate the map to some other orientation.) 5. "Add a passage which continues past the established boundary of the level, creating a split or sub-level which it leads to, complete with new treasure and monsters." Supplement I packs a lot of inspiration into just three pages of "tricks and traps" and "monstrous tricks and combination monsters". =============== | The Changing Context | =============== Another factor that keeps the underworld from getting stale is its being just part of the campaign. Testing of the [I]Dungeon![/I] board game, IIRC, was said to have renewed interest in dungeon expeditions in the pioneering D&D campaigns (to the exclusion of wilderness adventures among a new crew of Blackmoor players, an example of how enthusiasms can fluctuate). What seems a nearly universal problem these days is a shortage of players, and play time, relative to the resources that went into those early campaigns. Players' own schemes and intrigues and conflicts -- even unto wars, and rumours of wars, among Lords and Wizards and Patriarchs and their armies -- do not carry so much the burden of keeping interesting plots afoot. It is, for instance, less likely that a dungeon shall be the object of expeditions by competing parties of players. Not only does that add the spice of competition -- who shall first get to the most prized treasures? -- but it adds a dimension of dynamism as [I]player characters[/I] make their changes both to the physical edifice and to the ecology and society of the inhabitants. Moreover, events within the dungeon tend to become more tellingly related to events in the surface world. (This is highlighted in the [I]Empire of the Petal Throne[/I] game.) In the absence of that "organic" development, it falls on the shoulders of the DM somehow to "simulate" the effects that lend vibrancy to a campaign. [/QUOTE]
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