Have we lost the dungeon?

[Mallus]

If anything, devoting countless hours to detailing fictional worlds, characters, and adventures in a 'realistic' or 'sophicticated' manner is generally a sign of less maturity than someone hacking his way through a randomly-generated dungeon, because the person doing the latter has much more free-time available to devote to other, truly mature and sophisticated, activities than the person wasting his time and efforts on the former.

You do realize that the words mature and sophisticated were being used in a different context, to describe the hobby itself, not the individual hobbyists?

Oh wait, maybe you don't.

 

[T. Foster]

EDIT: Sigh. Before you make some wise-ass irate reply, please read my other clarifying and detailing posts in this thread. We've already wasted enough bandwidth with posters that jumped in without bothering to find out what I was trying to say, but who couldn't wait to rip me a new one.

Since this is apparently directed towards me, I'll note that I did read the entire thread (your posts and everybody else's) before posting my reply, and was in fact directing myself at your "clarifying and detailing" posts on p. 3 and not at this post. But since you seem to be asking for it, I'll got into a bit more detail:

Your main thesis point seems to be that games were focused on dungeon-crawling in the early days of the hobby because people didn't know any better ("That's just the way the games were played, because that's how the started, and many folks hadn't quite yet figured out how to successfully do anything else with them yet") and that the subsequent move away from dungeon-crawls towards oher activites and types of play (presumably including worldbuilding, 'roleplaying,' storytelling, etc.) in the 80s and 90s represents an "inevitable" evolution (maturation, sophistication, broadening) of the hobby. But I reject that thesis entirely. People were playing primarily dungeoncrawls in the 70s not because they didn't know any better (as Mallus has pointed out, dungeon-crawling is hardly the most organically familiar way to play "let's pretend") but because it's an extremely fun, simple, and rewarding paradigm for competitive play. The move away from it therefore represents not natural evolution/"progress" but rather the deliberate efforts of a group of enthusiasts to force the game away from that paradigm into a different direction they thought it ought to be going (which is to say towards a more non-competitive solo/masturbatory set of activities -- worldbuilding, character-detailing, storytelling -- away from the competitive interpersonal "player vs. DM" dynamic of 'old-school' dungeon-exploration).

You've freely admitted that the old-school playing mentality bores you to tears, and that you're surprised RPG fans were ever interested in dungeons in the first place. This suggests to me not (as you probably believe) that you saw something everybody else was missing back then, but rather that they saw something you were missing -- the appeal of the competition-based "dungeon" paradigm. You consider the move away from it evolution, but I consider it more mutation or bastardization, an abandonment of the game's original principles championed largely by people unwilling or unable to handle the competitive nature of the original paradigm of play. That these people tend to frame this offshoot/retreat/bastardization in terms of "evolution" and increased "maturity" and "sophictication" is where the naivety and/or delusion I mentioned previously comes in, because it's really none of those things.

 

[Desdichado]

There's nothing in your post that contradicts me, however, except that you are disdainful of any method of play other than dungeoncrawling, apparently, and your baseless assumption that even though the hobby started out as dungeoncrawling and remained that way for several years, you think that wasn't a "natural" way to play.

At least I have the sense to admit that my tastes are merely my tastes, and that I notice an evolution and broadening in the hobby itself, rather than say that any play style other than my preferred is a mutation or bastardization, and imply that any other method of playing is inferior or wrong.

 

[John Morrow]

Well, of course that's what I mean! What I also mean is that when the hobby was in it's relative infancy, that was the only way to play.

I think that if you read articles from that period or written about how people played during that period, you'd see that there was plenty of variety and non-dungeon play going on even in the earliest days. For example, I highly recommend Bill Armintrout's article ("Metamorphosis Alpha Notebook") about his college Metamorphosis Alpha game in The Space Gamer #42 which contains recommendations not only about play balance and building logical settings but also about using story-like sensibilities, having fun with sub-optimal characters, using people to guest star as NPCs, and letting the players participate in the world-building. The advice is so good that I think it's still an excellent advice column despite being written in 1981 about a game run years earlier.

You couldn't buy adventures that were structured differently than dungeoncrawls. Even modern and science fiction predicated games were usually dungeoncrawls.

As someone who owned and played a lot of Traveller and read lots of role-playing magazines in the late 1970s and early 1980s, I don't think that's as universally true as you are making it sound. Sure, there were dungeon-like adventures for Traveller like Annic Nova but they also had books like 76 Patrons that offered something very different from a dungeon crawl. And plenty of the magazines from that period offered plenty of alternative approaches.

That's just the way the games were played, because that's how the started, and many folks hadn't quite yet figured out how to successfully do anything else with them yet.

My earliest role-playing games consisted of using role-playing rules to play the same sort of imaginative games that my friends and I had played with action figures and toy cars but with record keeping and objective combat and task resolution rules. My earliest Traveller games had each player playing groups of characters and had no GM. I know exactly why I embraced role-playing systems that offered character generation rules (including random rolls), objective combat and task resolution systems, record keeping, and setting and equipment information over "just make it up". And in many ways, I find some of the new "systems" that consist largely of "just decide what happens next" a step backward into the sandbox. Does everyone else really forget how to play make believe games without rules when they hit puberty so that they really need someone to come along when they area dults and actually tell them that they can play make believe games without rules?

By now, that's not true at all. The hobby evolved to accomodate a different style of taste that was already inherent in many players. They naturally gravitated away from dungeoncrawls because they never liked dungeoncrawls that much in the first place, and these newer games/modules/style of play were like a breath of fresh air.

The problem with many of the newer games/modules/style of play is that they simply change the group that feels alienated. It's not a matter of evolution or improvement but simply a matter of favoring a different set of preferences. What makes arguments discussing "evolution' or "maturity" sound so offensive is that it suggests one style is better than another. It's like being told in college that people in my dorm used to play D&D as kids until they discovered beer. One could conclude that drinking to the point where one can't walk is an "evolution" or "more mature" on the basis that those people "grew out" of playing D&D or one could simply conclude that binge drinking is simply another recreational activity and no real evolution or increased maturity is involved in the switch.

Even in junior high in 1980 when I was playing dungeoncrawls, I was frustrated with them. That's one of the reasons I bailed on D&D as soon as White Wolf started putting games out, for instance, and only came back with 3rd edition, which --despite the "back to the dungeon" design philosophy-- was designed so I could more easily ignore the dungeon if I wanted to. Which I most certainly did.

3rd Edition was designed to offer something for every style so that players of all different styles could have fun with at least part of the game. Personally, I think that's the ideal approach. What concerns me about games like those original White Wolf games or the style-specific games advocated by various independent publishers is that they consciously embrace a single style at the expense of others. As a social hobby, I don't think specialized niche games that cater to one style but alienate others is the solution to keeping it healthy. I htink that we need more games that try to find the common ground between styles rather than the extreme but specialized forms of each style.

 

[DonTadow]

There's nothing in your post that contradicts me, however, except that you are disdainful of any method of play other than dungeoncrawling, apparently, and your baseless assumption that even though the hobby started out as dungeoncrawling and remained that way for several years, you think that wasn't a "natural" way to play.

At least I have the sense to admit that my tastes are merely my tastes, and that I notice an evolution and broadening in the hobby itself, rather than say that any play style other than my preferred is a mutation or bastardization, and imply that any other method of playing is inferior or wrong.

I think we are getting off of the main discussion and turning this into a mine is better than yours conversation, which it isn't, this is a theory discussion. We can simply look at the game material produced, the current players drawn to the game and the current style that most DMs play and tell that there was an eveloution that took place in rpg'n. I think what Joshua is saying is that ..wel just that that the game has evolved. It is not to say that dungeoncrawling is immature nor unsophisticated, however, it is to say that developing a world is more involving that developing one dungeon. At the core of dungeons and dragons is still the core ... dungeons. However, that core now has many many layers around it, which are the different aspects that lead to the core. To simply play the core, is no means immature, but it is not playing the current version of the game, which, by its definition is more involving. .
This desperity in the two styles can be likened to driving a classic car from the 1950s or 1960s. People still love it (i live in detroit with the dream cruise) but it is not the primary way people like to see cars these day (big nascar fan).

 

[Steel_Wind]

Let me clarify something a little bit:

This may be an artifact of the "game-speak" at the time. In my group back in the 1980's, as well, we often called someone's campaign, their "dungeon".

Nowadays we emphasize "the campaign", but with the dungeon oriented focus, even the world up topside was "The Dungeon" to some of us younger gamers.

In the 70s, we never referred to the campaign as a dungeon. Nor a world. Nor even a campaign or a game.

We called it a "board".

"Who's board did that happen on?"
"Dave's board."

I haven't a CLUE where this originated from and I have always assumed it is a carry over from some slang used in wargaming.

Anyone else heard of "board" to refer to a campaign?

 

[Prince of Happiness]

I found the dungeon.

It's on this map with a "Q" on it.

 

[Desdichado]

I think that if you read articles from that period or written about how people played during that period, you'd see that there was plenty of variety and non-dungeon play going on even in the earliest days.

Perhaps, although my memory of it wasn't very strong. And I certainly don't remember any modules -- any products that really took non-dungeoncrawling adventures that really helped you to go through with the process. Maybe I just wandered around in the wrong games (I did mostly play TSR games, although I played all of them, in the 1980s) or something, but I distinctly remember seeing modules that were dungeoncrawls, with maybe a bit of outdoor travel to get to the dungeon. That's certainly all I played, but I refused to run those types of adventures. That may be why the homebrew tradition was so strongly ingrained in me from the very early days; I had to, or I wasn't having the types of games I wanted to run.

My earliest role-playing games consisted of using role-playing rules to play the same sort of imaginative games that my friends and I had played with action figures and toy cars but with record keeping and objective combat and task resolution rules.

My experience is that that was atypical, and quite fortunate for you, though. Most of us, when we were new, didn't immediately make the cognitive leap to playing beyond what was shown to us. Oh, sure, I had radical ideas, like players not even ever seeing their character sheets, and stuff like that, but I was never able to get my group of fellow junior high school students to go for anything that radical. To them, it was a game -- about the tactical battles, the levelling up, the treasure acquisition; in other words, the whole point of roleplaying games, even beyond D&D, was dungeoncrawling. I was most definitely the odd man out by coming at the game from a fantasy book fan angle, and wanting to replicate more that experience instead.

Perhaps I'm dead wrong, but my survey of the products available at the time, and talking to hundreds of folks on the Internet, gamedays, conventions and gamestores around the country is that my experience was typical for folks my age who were playing in the late 70s and early 80s.

The problem with many of the newer games/modules/style of play is that they simply change the group that feels alienated. It's not a matter of evolution or improvement but simply a matter of favoring a different set of preferences.

That statement only makes sense if newer style modules had completely replaced dungeoncrawls and made them obsolete. Since that is obviously not the case, I don't think you can make a convincing argument that dungeoncrawlers are alienated by the general hobby climate.

What makes arguments discussing "evolution' or "maturity" sound so offensive is that it suggests one style is better than another.

Maybe all my reading of paleontology has given me a different semantic spin to the words, then. "More evolved", "more mature", "more advanced," "primitive" and words like that don't have any value judgement inherent in them when discussing evolution, they simply contrast an earlier state to a more derived and evolved later one.

It's like being told in college that people in my dorm used to play D&D as kids until they discovered beer.

Beer? I thought it was girls we were supposed to discover?

3rd Edition was designed to offer something for every style so that players of all different styles could have fun with at least part of the game. Personally, I think that's the ideal approach.

I quite agree, and I think that's why d20 has regained a position of unassailable dominance relative to the mid/late 90s when it was unsure if D&D was going to remain the top dog forever, or continue to lose market share to other games.

What concerns me about games like those original White Wolf games or the style-specific games advocated by various independent publishers is that they consciously embrace a single style at the expense of others. As a social hobby, I don't think specialized niche games that cater to one style but alienate others is the solution to keeping it healthy. I htink that we need more games that try to find the common ground between styles rather than the extreme but specialized forms of each style.

Not all games have to be everything to everyone. I don't know why that would concern you. If there are gamers out there who prefer that style of play, more power to them if they can get the product they want! If, on the other hand, the game advocates a style of play that is actually inimical to being played, or gaining fans, or what-have-you, then you can simply not buy it. The "more evolved" state of the hobby should be broken down into better defined niches, so as to better cater to the broadest possible consumer base. As opposed to the early 80s situation, when most games were simply minor twists on D&D. That's a "more primitive" condition, and one that was inevitable to end. Clearly not all gamers prefer the classic D&D dungeoncrawling experience. If the hobby had not matured and advanced into a more broad spectrum of games, that would be something to worry about, not the opposite. You seem to think that everyone would have continued to play what was offered; I think that we would have lost gamers forever. I know for a fact that I wouldn't be a gamer today if classic D&D style dungeoncrawling was the only type of gaming I could possibly get.

 

[helium3]

People were playing primarily dungeoncrawls in the 70s not because they didn't know any better (as Mallus has pointed out, dungeon-crawling is hardly the most organically familiar way to play "let's pretend") but because it's an extremely fun, simple, and rewarding paradigm for competitive play. The move away from it therefore represents not natural evolution/"progress" but rather the deliberate efforts of a group of enthusiasts to force the game away from that paradigm into a different direction they thought it ought to be going (which is to say towards a more non-competitive solo/masturbatory set of activities -- worldbuilding, character-detailing, storytelling -- away from the competitive interpersonal "player vs. DM" dynamic of 'old-school' dungeon-exploration).

Wait, so you're saying it was accepted for the DM to take a monsters vs. characters approach to the game and to actually try to defeat the players?

These days, my players give me a lot of grief for getting 'too competative' when running monsters. Apparently, I'm supposed to run the monsters as if they're going to win, knowing all the while that they'll actually get cut down in the third round of combat with minimal effort on the part of the players. Frankly, I find that boring and don't understand why it's my job as DM to provide free personal ego massages for everyone at the table.

My personal feeling on the whole matter (and putting the question of the worth of dungeons aside) is that the guidelines given by 3.5 D&D for calibrating the difficulty of an encounter are woefully inadequate when used for a group of players that really know the rules of the game. It's pretty obvious that the game is calibrated for a group of novice D&D players that probably don't know the rules that well.

 

[billd91]

I think that if you read articles from that period or written about how people played during that period, you'd see that there was plenty of variety and non-dungeon play going on even in the earliest days. For example, I highly recommend Bill Armintrout's article ("Metamorphosis Alpha Notebook") about his college Metamorphosis Alpha game in The Space Gamer #42 which contains recommendations not only about play balance and building logical settings but also about using story-like sensibilities, having fun with sub-optimal characters, using people to guest star as NPCs, and letting the players participate in the world-building. The advice is so good that I think it's still an excellent advice column despite being written in 1981 about a game run years earlier.

As someone who owned and played a lot of Traveller and read lots of role-playing magazines in the late 1970s and early 1980s, I don't think that's as universally true as you are making it sound. Sure, there were dungeon-like adventures for Traveller like Annic Nova but they also had books like 76 Patrons that offered something very different from a dungeon crawl. And plenty of the magazines from that period offered plenty of alternative approaches.

Note that by this point, the hobby is already about 1/6 to 1/5 its current age. It's already evolving by the end of the 70s and beginning of the 80s. And the hobby has continued to mature since then, adding a larger variety of styles to play and drawing more adherents to the styles that were beginning to appear 5 years into development. Development of specialty niches and differences in approaches are definitely signs of a maturing hobby.