Groups who want old school dungeon crawls. Good or Bad?

[Henry]

What is rule #1?

Y'know, when I was writing the post i KNEW I shoulda put that in there...

...Rule #1 is "The DM has the final say in rules decisions." The corollary to that rule is "There's always room for discussion."

If a player has a discrepancy with a DM's ruling, he has a right to say so, and give his point of view, but after that, it's the DM's call as to what goes. The DM also should be fair in all decisions, and should allow players to "Ret-Con" any decisions that they previously made on a flawed ruling that has now changed. This gives a final authority to the game, cuts down on arguments and rules-lawyering, and makes things flow mroe smoothly. Having one final arbiter is smoother than having 5 or 6. If a player does not like it, then he has every opportunity to rule differently when it's his turn to DM.

There are a few more, and one day when I have them all codified, I'll post them. But those two are essential to have a smooth game and ensure that all playershave fun (DM included, he's a player, too)

Sincerely,

Henry

 

[Chaldfont]

We have trouble getting our group together more than once or twice a month, and we tend to like the dungeon crawling. But we enjoy the plotmaking and roleplaying as well.

We solve this by doing some roleplaying over Yahoo Groups . As DM, I post prologues, epilogues and cutscenes. The players send in stories about what their PCs do between sessions.

Pretty much all of us have access to email at work so this works out well. When we get together we can unroll the battle mat, order the pizza, and, as one of my players puts it, "make steel love to the bad guys".

 

[Guacamole]

Oops!!!!!

Greyghawk ruins is what I meant! Although at one time, Castle Greyhawk used to make me LMAO.

I'd also add the desert of desolation series which has some cool dungeons in it which can be dropped into many settings easily.

 

[Wild Karrde]

Sounds like you might need to mix or speed things up a bit. I know the group I'm in like the 'ol dungeon crawl as well as the thinking man's game. And yes it's hard to find a good balance.

Alot of it also depends on the moods of the players which you can't account for. Sometimes I'd rather just be involved in some good hack an slash when I'm in the middle of a month long town scenario sorting through which noble did what to whom.

Throw in a sewer crawl or a mini dungeon, let them blow some steam, then drag'em back into the real story.

 

[Orco42]

Half of my party loves roll playing, the other half loves role playing. Which is a pain cause there are 8 of them.

Flexor-

If you want some players I can donate some. Your choice of which type.

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

Half of my party loves roll playing, the other half loves role playing. Which is a pain cause there are 8 of them.

Flexor-

If you want some players I can donate some. Your choice of which type.

I think another problem with my group is the players consume a fair bit of Budweiser before the night is usually over. So I'll trade you three booze hounds for three of whatever you got!

 

[rounser]

Wow! If they don't like RttToEE I can't imagine many dungeons that they would like! And who doesn't like dividing up treasure... oh well... See if you can get your hands on "Castle Greyhawk" which features hundreds of rooms and encounters and is strictly dungeon crawl...

(EDIT: I'm sorry, my mind was on holiday when I wrote this. I thought you were referring to ToEE, not RttToEE. Doh!)

Er....not really. ToEE doesn't deserve half of the hype that has built up around it.

The best things about ToEE are:
a) The cover. What an awesome cover. I don't know why they don't go for a gothic look in more D&D stuff...
b) Hommlett, the Moathouse and Nulb. The Moathouse is more of a fun romp than the temple itself, and Hommlett is a fine, detailed town.
c) It's name. You can almost hear thunder in the distance when you think of that name...

The temple itself is a massive "cabinet contents" style dungeon which gets very repetitive and dull quite quickly. Greyhawk Ruins suffers from similar problems of quantity over quality - it has some entertaining areas, but they are drowned out by mediocrity. Undermountain would have been nice if they had bothered to finish the product.

 

[Darkness]

a) The cover. What an awesome cover. I don't know why they don't go for a gothic look in more D&D stuff...

Because White Wolf already got that part of the market covered?

 

[rounser]

Because White Wolf already got that part of the market covered?

I was also a bit dopey to forget Ravenloft's art style as an excellent example of "D&D gothic artwork" en masse, too...

 

[novyet]

Sounds like they just want to speed things up a bit, although the concept of the temple not being enough dungeon crawl does astound me a bit. If for naught else, perhaps undermountain is more their style, since it was never really fleshed out completely, it should be a snap to convert to 3rd.