Have we lost the dungeon?

[John Morrow]

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.

Even today, writing adventures or modules that aren't controlled or limited in some way is very difficult. GMs don't buy modules and adventures so the players can wander outside of the scope of the module or adventure so the GM has to make it up as they go. And unless you control the scope of the adventure or module in some way, the odds are pretty good that your players will wander into "make it up as you go" territory.

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.

I quickly skipped over D&D to Traveller without ever really playing a proper D&D game. I also figured out what to do on my own without someone telling me what was right or wrong. I do think that helped, too. While Traveller certainly had some dungeon-like adventures, the game made it pretty clear that there were plenty of other adventuring possibilities. I think many of the non-TSR games and particularly the science fiction and non-fantasy games did.

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.

Well, I pretty much did homebrew adventures from the start, as did most of the people I knew at that time and met in college. In fact, I was doing homebrew systems pretty much from the start, too, as were people that I started role-playing with in college (and still role-play with in some cases).

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.

Part of my point is that I'm not sure whether you experience was any more typical or normal. I'm not just judging from my own experiences but also the experiences of other people in my hometown when I was in high shool (many of whom were role-playing before we met and who seem to have independently come up with some similar ideas, including using role-playing rules to run and create adventures for ourselves without any players), what I was reading in the role-playing magazines of that time, what other people I know have told me about their early experiences, and evidence from things like the jokes in KoDT (e.g., the jokes about GMs writing homebrew rules and such). I think there was plenty of experimentation and out of the box thinking go on, even very early on.

How typical was the experimentation? I've run into plenty more people who were willing to experiment than stuck to the rules and modules only. That doesn't make my anecdotal experience any more valid than yours but it does make me wonder if your experience was really any more typical. Yes, published modules were dungeon-oriented but even today, many published modules are far more staged, linear, and railroaded than many people would consider ideal (e.g., read reviews of some of the highly-regarded Call of Cthulhu modules). I think that's more a function of the nature of published adventures and modules than an indication of how many GMs run their homebrew adventures.

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.

Well, most of the people I know came from teh fantasy and science fiction fandom angle and not the tactical or competative angle. But even when they did (one person I still game with grew up on a military base and I've role-played with other people he gamed with in high school during that early period), they still never confined their games to dungeons or tactical battles. I can imagine people who came into role-playing from a boardgame or wargame tradition being more interested in the competative or tactical angle. I personally also played a lot of board games as a child, but I quickly considered role-playing to be less like a board game and more like playing with action figures. But again the question is one of how typical either experience is and I'm not sure anecdotal evidence will really answer that question.

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.

And I've looked at (and still own) many of the products available at the time, talked to hundreds of folks on the internet and in person from around the country and around the world and while I've run into plenty of horror stories (e.g., the adolescent boys who have character of the lone girl who wants to try to play get raped seems disturbingly common), I haven't talked to anyone who was either dungeon or module bound. Simply put, your anecdotal evidence isn't meshing with my anecdotal evidence. That doesn't mean mine is more accurate than yours. It simply means that I'm not convinced that yours is more reliable.

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.

If you look around (here, RPGnet, the Usenet, etc.) you'll find plenty of threads of people who are frustrated by the move away from dungeons and complainging about how they don't have fun anymore. Heck, this thread asks whether D&D has "lost the dungeon". If there wasn't a sense among some players that dungeoncrawls have been pushed aside, if not replaced, in the mainstream, then you wouldn't see discussions like that. And those threads seemed even more common before 3e, when D&D seemed to be in decline. Note that I'm not just talking about modules or D&D but other systems and the way GMs play them. A lot of newer games don't have much to offer the traditional dungeoncrawler.

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.

In common usage, they certainly have values associated with them.

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.

My point about the dungeoncrawlers feeling alienated comes, in part, from Usenet posts in the mid/late 90s when plenty of people were feeling alienated by D&D and other games. Perhaps D&D 3e has done a good job of correcting that problem.

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.

Read this article as an analogy:

http://www.musicradio77.com/died.html

In particular, consider the section where it talks about, "Was something lost?" (you can stop reading about half-way through when it starts talking about that paritulcar day) and consider that this hobby may be too small to remain commercially viable if it fragments the way music did. Is it the end of the world? Of course not. But I also suspect that it's not a good trend.

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.

If you want an evolutionary analogy, consider how well generalist species survive changes in the environment compared to how well specialists survive changes in the environment. Sure, specialists do an excellent job of maximizing things in a particular environment but they have a tendency to go extinct before they can adapt if the environment shifts radically while the generalists are more adaptable. Being specialized often means optimizing immediate needs at the expense of potential long-term needs.

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.

Not at all. And I suspect that plenty of people still leave the hobby forever because of bad first experiences, which is why I'm so fascinated by discussions about gaming styles and consider the ability to learn role-playing from the book rather than others so important. What I'm conscerned about is fragmentation of a tiny hobby into pieces too small to be economically viable.

In the big scheme of things, I really shouldn't care. My group has played plenty of homebrew systems and settings so we don't really need published systems, settings, or modules to play. But in the sense that I'd like to see others enjoy the same hobby, I don't think the hobby is big enough to afford to alienate anyone or fragment into little specialty slices.

 

[ThirdWizard]

While I don't disagree terribly with your analysis, I think it doesn't help matters to essentially say any type of roleplaying activity is little more than a dungeon, albeit a very linear one, or a very open one in the case of your episodic and extended "dungeons."

I think in the case of this thread with the idea of "Have we lost the dungeon" it is an important distinction to make. Infiltrating a keep might have different window dressing than an underground complex, but it has the same Encounters, Traps, and Treasure that a "dungeon" has. It has a different ambiance than the traditional dungeon, but in the end, it is mechanically the same. So, what we have in this case would be moving the dungeon to a different environment, which in the context of this thread leds to an answer that we haven't lost the dungeon, we've just moved it and made it possibly more interesting.

 

[John Morrow]

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.

Metamorphosis Alpha was published in 1976, two years after D&D. And it was shortly after it was published that Bill Armintrout ran the college game that he wrote about in 1981 in The Space Gamer. That's about two years after the original D&D was released. My point is that I think those other styles of role-playing appeared at the very beginning of the hobby because no two DMs ran exactly the same sort of D&D game. In many ways, the relatively sparse D&D rules demanded that early DMs fill in the blanks and they did in a variety of ways, including some very "modern" ones. In fact, it continues to stun me when people praise a game because it gave them "permission" to tinker with the rules, ignore the rules, etc. I think plenty of people can figure that out on their own and did.

And while the development of specialty niches and different approaches may be the signs of a maturing hobby, they can also lead a hobby down the road from having broad appeal to having very narrow appeal and thus a much smaller though more fanatical fan base. Yes, you can now buy scale model today with more accuracy detail than every before but is that helping to expand the appeal of the hobby or does it simply squeeze more money out of a shrinking niche of fanatics?

 

[Celebrim]

Celebrim, while I think that's a pretty interesting take on things, it seems a bit too reductionist. According to that logic, any plan whatsoever is little more than a "dungeon."

While I don't disagree terribly with your analysis, I think it doesn't help matters to essentially say any type of roleplaying activity is little more than a dungeon, albeit a very linear one, or a very open one in the case of your episodic and extended "dungeons."

I don't think I was primarily setting out to classify all types of roleplaying activity. I was trying to classify all types of dungeon design methodologies according to the sort of plan that the designer lays out. I think that it is the case that the games 'map' is in fact a type of plan of play, and that the type of map that one is using very heavily influences the sort of play you are expecting. Ultimately, if every plan of plan can be represented as a map (and since its a map of a shared imaginary space only and not a map of a real thing), then I do think that every adventure is a sort of dungeon.

To me, a dungeon is a dungeon; it's a complex, usually underground, wherein PCs find treasure, traps and monsters.

But that's not been true in general since the early '80's at the latest, or to the extent that it is true then it only demonstrates what I mean about every game design being a sort of dungeon. Yes, a dungeon is a complex. But a series of episodes is just another sort of complex, bound perhaps not by (imagined) stone walls, but nevertheless bound and having a geography to it.

Despite the fact that methodology around playing non-dungeoncrawling campaigns doesn't differ (in many ways) from dungeoncrawling is moot, because its not the methodology of campaign management that I dislike, it is the specifics of dungeon interaction.

What specifics would those be? Is there any sort of encounter that can occur in a dungeon which can't occur in another methodology of play? Is there any sort of encounter of another methodology of play that can't occur in a dungeon? It's been years and years since every dungeon was a variation on Castle Greyhawk. We left that long behind. Now, it's possible that the original poster in the thread wanted to know where the Castle Greyhawk's have gone, but I think he well understood that a dungeon can be a haunted house, a ship, a pyramid, a castle, a tomb, a complex in the clouds, a treetop village, a bridge, a mine, a city block, a sewer, a ice cave, a cemetary, and any number of other things. I don't think that it is a very legitimate question to ask 'Where has Castle Greyhawk gone?' because we do have things like Undermountain and The World's Largest Dungeon out there. I do think though that it is a very good question to ask why the art of dungeon design seems to be in general wane despite the occassional revivals in modules like Sunless Citadel and RttToEE. Given the popularity of good dungeons, why is it that the majority of well designed inventive (well mapped if you like) dungeons seem to date to D&D's earlier period and why aren't more words spent on thinking about how to design dungeons well?

I think in the case of this thread with the idea of "Have we lost the dungeon" it is an important distinction to make. Infiltrating a keep might have different window dressing than an underground complex, but it has the same Encounters, Traps, and Treasure that a "dungeon" has. It has a different ambiance than the traditional dungeon, but in the end, it is mechanically the same. So, what we have in this case would be moving the dungeon to a different environment, which in the context of this thread leds to an answer that we haven't lost the dungeon, we've just moved it and made it possibly more interesting.

I agree that it is an important distinction to make, and I generally think that you understood me. But, we depart ways on the last clause. Yes, we've moved the dungeon and we've maybe even got better at seeing how different environments can be used as dungeons, but we haven't got better at designing dungeons and on the whole I think we've gotten worse. Take the latest issue of Dungeon magazine as an example. Every adventure in the latest issue arguably has a dungeon heart but none of them are real classics of dungeon design. The epic level one is suitably wierd in its lack of rational geometry but we had that dating back to Q1, and its ultimately just not a very compelling dungeon that made me want to steal any ideas out of it. The rest go beyond merely average in design, to being really primitive dungeon designs that lack meat of any real substance.

So what are we doing wrong, and how would we go about fixing it?

 

[azmodean]

Concerning the original question posed by the thread, I think the dungeon as a fixture of DnD play has not been lost. In many cases a DM will chose not to use them, and perhaps they are not as ubiquitous as they once were, but they are definitely still around. I for one don't make many dungeons, but I would love to start a second campaign based around published modules that I don't have to put quite so much work into.

IMC I've presented the players with four dungeon-type scenarios thus far, one of which was planned as a lair of formians, two of which were totally random dungeons (but with a backstory which explains why it is random, the dungeon is actually a chaotic magic artifact which restructures and restocks itself with outsiders in order to impede progress... and to hide something...) and the fourth scenario is the dungeon that the party is designing/building in order to secure their belongings Oh, I almost forgot the other one, which was a small labyrinth in which one of the characters fought a duel.
That having been said, the majority of the scenarios I present to the players are more freeform. The most recent of which is the group participating in a siege of an enemy city.

 

[John Morrow]

To me, a dungeon is a dungeon; it's a complex, usually underground, wherein PCs find treasure, traps and monsters. Despite the fact that methodology around playing non-dungeoncrawling campaigns doesn't differ (in many ways) from dungeoncrawling is moot, because its not the methodology of campaign management that I dislike, it is the specifics of dungeon interaction.

FYI, the current part of my D&D 3.5 campaign is heavily inspired by the classic "A" series of modules. Half of both A1 and A2 take place in above-ground buildings (a temple and a stockade). A3 includes a substantially freeform city segment and A4 also includes a fairly freeform non-dungeon component as well as plenty of opportunity for role-playing. Yes, the original competition versions followed a formula (discussed in the introduction to the published collection of these modules) but the expanded published form was fairly organic in several places. In addition, there are quite a few places where the PCs are invited to talk to or deal with encounters rather than simply slay them, including some fairly substantial number of encounters in A2. That leaves me wondering what specifics of dungeon interaction you have in mind. Can you be more specific (or point me to where you've been more specific)?

Or, when they're really on top of the game, they act independently to cut off the actions of the NPCs. Not that that happens very often...

In my experience, you get proactive PCs who act independly when you (A) make them powerful enough to be reasonably confident of success and (B) give them enough information about the setting and situation to draw complicated conclusions and make leaps in logic. A lot of GMs play with their cards very close to their vest and use limited information, confusion, and powerlessness as ways to control the PCs so they don't step out of the box and, surprise, they don't. Empower your players by letting them find out what's going on and making them powerful enough to do something about it and, in my experience, they will.

 

[Desdichado]

So many responses! One common theme seems to be what the definition of "the dungeon" that may or may not have been lost from the hobby is.

Here's my belief; despite Celebrim's quite insightful post about how campaign management can be done via "dungeon methodology", that is not what is meant by "the dungeon" when most folks talk about "the dungeon" in D&D. Rather, they're talking about a paradigm in which they go into some kind of structure; caves, underground complexes, castles in the sky, linked bubble-like demiplanes; it doesn't really matter what they are. They interact with a series of traps, they interact with "monsters" that are in "rooms" guarding "treasure." All of those are in quotes, because theoretically, they could be broadened; the monsters could be a rival party of PCs, the rooms could be all kinds of things, etc.

But it's a play style and GM style that, if it has fuzzy boundaries, at least is typically recognized when it's seen, I think. It has to do with goals; clearing out rooms, or pacifying areas of "the dungeon", it was to do with the types of challenges expected, and other things like that. It takes quite a bit of semantical acrobatics to force "The Duchess's Tea Party, with it's associated political backstabbing and manuevering" into a dungeon paradigm, just as it does "hunt for food in the wilderness so you don't starve to death" type of game, just to use two examples of game types that I think are particularly opposite the dungeoncrawling approach. A lot of urban games have only very limited dungeon-like experiences; sure, you can call the assassin's safehouse, which your PCs have to break into as part of a sting, or whatever, a little mini-dungeon, but I think that just confuses the issue.

Gaah! I don't know if that's clear or not. In any case, more than anything, dungeoncrawling is a paradigm of play, regardless of what the specifics of "the dungeon" are, and it's not a paradigm of play of which I'm particularly fond. In fact, I quite actively dislike it except in small doses.

 

[Celebrim]

It has to do with goals; clearing out rooms, or pacifying areas of "the dungeon", it was to do with the types of challenges expected, and other things like that. It takes quite a bit of semantical acrobatics to force "The Duchess's Tea Party, with it's associated political backstabbing and manuevering" into a dungeon paradigm, just as it does "hunt for food in the wilderness so you don't starve to death" type of game, just to use two examples of game types that I think are particularly opposite the dungeoncrawling approach.

No different. Only different in your mind.

Dungeon Map
-----------

../---\......./---\......./---\
/...1...\---/ 2 \---/...3...\
\......./.....\......./.....\...... /
\---/....4...\---/...5...\---/
/....\......../.....\......../.....\
/....6..\---/...7....\---/...8....\
\......./.....\......../.....\......./
\---/...9....\---/..10...\---/
./.....\....... /.....\......./.....\
/ 11...\---/..12....\---/..13..\
\......../....\........./....\......../
..\---/........\---/.........\---/

Encounter Key
-------------
1) This is a beach. The players start here. DC 15 search check to discover bones of unfortunate sailor and rusty knife.
2) Marshy area. Fort save DC 15 or contract swamp fever. Bamboo available. DC 15 craft check to manufacture simple spear, ect.
3) NE beach. Survival DC 5 to find, and climb DC 20 to harvest coconuts.
4) Jungle covered slope. 10% chance of encountering 1d6 tiny monstrous centipedes.
5) Jagged spur. DC 25 search check to discover abandoned cannibal shrine.
6) Rugged hills. Survival DC 15 to find small caves for shelter.
7) Central Mountain. DC 20 climb check required to traverse this area. Failure by more than 5 indicates 2d6 damage.
8) Jungle. There are healing herbs available here. DC 20 profession check to tell from poisonous ones.
9) Jungle covered slope. Survival DC 10 to find fresh water spring.
10) Jungle. Wild pigs are found here. DC 15 survival check to find. Will need means to hunt (snare, spear, etc.)
11) Cliffs. Dry wood can be found here - DC 15 survival check.
12) Lair of the Dragon: Hide DC 20 when passing this hex or encounter dragon.
13) SE beach. Survival DC 5 to find edible fruits. Only harvestable one time per week.

I could do the Duchess's Tea party in almost exactly the same manner, but detailing NPC's in a way to make it convincing would require more time and a more complex map.

 

[Arkhandus]

So......it looks like this thread has become a lot of pointless hate-bashing between those who deign to consider themselves the only "true" roleplayers and those who actually enjoy dungeons.......

Anyone who cannot see that wargaming/dungeoncrawling and the roleplaying hobby are intrinsically linked, and indeed complementary to eachother, is a dufus. Sure they aren't necessary to one another, but roleplayers and wargamers do often have similar interests and similarly lively imaginations and enthusiasms. The roleplaying hobby lends itself to expanding and promoting the wargaming hobby, and vice versa. You cannot say that your way of having fun with a hobby is superior to someone else's way of having fun with the same hobby just because their way is somewhat different. One person's preference for wargaming or dungeoncrawling does not make them inferior or superior to someone else who has a preference for "true" roleplaying, each has a different reason for playing the game and each has a different kind of enjoyment they seek out of it, because some people are more or less stressed than others, and some already have much too much work to do outside their freetime.

Neither roleplay nor "rollplay" is superior, they are both merely tastes, different sides of the same coin, and bashing on one or the other only gets more people to hate you for being a stubborn jerk who can't let bygones be bygones. Roleplaying as a hobby developed from wargaming, because elements of both excite the imagination and bring enjoyment to hobbyists. Playing games like Warhammer or Battletech or MageKnight can stoke the imagination, and make one eager to delve deeper into the fantasy backgrounds of those games, becoming a roleplayer.

It does not make the wargames any more "primitive" or "childish", they can be quite complex and involved for those who want them to be so. Wargaming, and dungeoncrawling, are good for spending an hour or three or whatever and just enjoying yourself by playing the game, for that's all these hobbies are, games. Not everyone wants to put in hours upon hours working on a character, campaign, or whatever, because people have enough work to do in their lives, sometimes we just want to play a game and relax without having to spend hours ahead of time working on preparing it. That doesn't mean you can't do that with wargaming or dungeoncrawls, they can be just as involved and deeply developed as the gamer wants to make them in their preparation and play. But it is stupid arrogance indeed to declare someone inferior, primitive, or childish just because they don't want to put in hours of work before playing a game, for the sake of enjoying the moment while they can.

I hate munchkins and powergamers as much as any fellow roleplayer when I'm trying to DM/GM or play in an RPG game with other roleplayers, but only because munchkins and powergamers are trying to insert their wargaming into my roleplay when I'm presently of a roleplaying mindset, and thus they are disrupting my suspension of disbelief for the moment and distracting the group; but as often as not, I'd rather play Warhammer, MageKnight, Battletech, or a good dungeoncrawl adventure instead. I don't prefer one hobby over the other, but it can be disruptive to try mixing the two improperly, without forethought; I'd be happy to prepare a campaign/adventure/module/whatever that works fine with both playstyles together, but most DMs/GMs don't have both styles in mind when they start a campaign. Thus they look down on powergamers and munchkins, when really they should just be asking those folks to find a group better-suited to their playstyle, or instead set a separate gametime up for playing dungeoncrawls and wargames. Similarly, I'm sure a dungeoncrawler or wargamer wouldn't want some roleplayer messing up their wargame or dungeoncrawl when they're just trying to have an hour or two of fun.

Ack, out of time, my last few sentences probably come off as too abrasive or anti-dungeoncrawler or something, but no time now to fix that; gotta go. Just stop the hatin', though! {:^D

PS: not directed at J. Dyal in particular, so don't go assuming such, I don't mean offense

 

[JamesDJarvis]

Metamorphosis Alpha was published in 1976, two years after D&D. And it was shortly after it was published that Bill Armintrout ran the college game that he wrote about in 1981 in The Space Gamer. That's about two years after the original D&D was released. My point is that I think those other styles of role-playing appeared at the very beginning of the hobby because ....

Metamorphosis Alpha was pretty much a giant dungeon in space. That was one of the biggest gripes critics of the game had with it (i think they were grumps MA was/is great) becasue it had metal instead of stone corridors, wolfoids instead of orcs, death moss instead of green slime and so on. The Dungeon can turn up in a whole lot of genres.