Have we lost the dungeon?

[Numion]

I'm a proud dungeoneer myself. Both as a DM of dungeon adventures and a player.

We started that way, of course, then in the early-middle 90's 'evolved' in to something more RP oriented. Gaming started to wane in our group, but with 3E we got sucked back in. We found a playing style that suited us perfectly - and it was 80% dungeoneering. 3E made us more excited about gaming than ever before.

Now we've moved even further into dungeon style of play, mostly due to time constraints. We play mostly Dungeon (the magazine) adventures, because we all are quite busy .. no time to prepare.

I try to RP my characters as though they understood the peculiar premise of their lives - they venture into dangerous places just for the sake of it. They've seen companions die many times, but always more willing candidates show up, ready for the grinder. I would think such a setting very unplausible, but my character doesn't. I got no problem with that. That's D&D.

 

[Henry]

Are they really that viable (or at least as viable as settings)? I keep hearing people claim that selling adventures isn't profitable, which was part of what the whole OGL deal was supposed to be about, wasn't it? Are there good reasons to believe that selling adventures could be good business, especially if more companies were doing it? How big is the market and how quickly would it saturate?

There are people who HAVE made a living selling "Dungeons" - Goodman Games and Necromancer being the two iconic examples, but they have more than a stock "Dungeon crawl" - they use some of the things that made things like Tomb of Horrors, Barrier Peaks, and Caverns of Tsojcanth great: player props, simple and clear maps, unique twists to the plots, and genericity sufficient to insert said adventure into most homebrew campaigns.

 

[S'mon]

I'm currently running Lost City of Barakus, a big low level Necromancer Games dungeon, and enjoying it a lot - pity the spine is cracked, like pretty well every non-WotC non-TSR hardback I own.

Prepping for my high level (18th) game this evening, I've created a bunch of (hopefully) cool possible events, detailed NPCs, that kind of thing, ie a lot of stuff, but I haven't detailed any expected _resolutions_ to those events, that'll be up to the PCs, and some may not occur at all if the PCs take a different path. I have 3 main unrelated "mini scenarios" and I have kept the timing vague so that potentially they can run in any order - 2 kick off the beginnings of massive wars as an ancient evil awakens and invaders from another plane smash into the campaign world, 1 is a tourney & possible assassination at the Overking's Court that could be even more devastating - I'm really excited!

Edit: The latter does not involve any dungeons, though, in any of the 3 planned scenarios. My impression is that most 3e 18th-level dungeons suck badly.

 

[philreed]

There are people who HAVE made a living selling "Dungeons" - Goodman Games and Necromancer being the two iconic examples, but they have more than a stock "Dungeon crawl" - they use some of the things that made things like Tomb of Horrors, Barrier Peaks, and Caverns of Tsojcanth great: player props, simple and clear maps, unique twists to the plots, and genericity sufficient to insert said adventure into most homebrew campaigns.

They're definitely the two companies I would attempt to emulate if I ever tried to get seriously into adventure publishing. They both know how to write adventures that DMs can get real use out of at the table.

 

[TerraDave]

There are people who HAVE made a living selling "Dungeons" - Goodman Games and Necromancer being the two iconic examples, but they have more than a stock "Dungeon crawl" - they use some of the things that made things like Tomb of Horrors, Barrier Peaks, and Caverns of Tsojcanth great: player props, simple and clear maps, unique twists to the plots, and genericity sufficient to insert said adventure into most homebrew campaigns.

To mention a third company: Fiery Dragon's Nemoren's Vault does all this in spades. Great little module worthy of a 3.5 revision and expansion. And a great company.

 

[TerraDave]

And Monte (and Mike Mearls) puts there free pdf where there mouth is (or something like that):

http://www.drivethrurpg.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=2340

 

[Monte At Home]

Are they really that viable (or at least as viable as settings)? I keep hearing people claim that selling adventures isn't profitable, which was part of what the whole OGL deal was supposed to be about, wasn't it? Are there good reasons to believe that selling adventures could be good business, especially if more companies were doing it? How big is the market and how quickly would it saturate?

Well, that was indeed the point of the piece that the quote was originally taken from. In the old days, TSR focused on modules and sold a boatload of them. Then they put less focus on them, and they stopped selling, and ever since "adventures don't sell."

My point, ultimately, is that while we turned some paradigms on their heads with 3E, we should have tried to take this one on as well. (And don't get me wrong, I think Sunless Citadel wasn't bad, but it could have been even better had Bruce been given more time, and if there had been even more playtesting than there was--the old 1E modules that everyone remembers were playtested to death because they started out as convention tournaments.)

If we'd given it more thought, we would have realized that it's not that "adventures don't sell" it's that for 18 or more years, customers have been taught that (most) adventures aren't worth buying. The difference is, the latter is an attitude that could, in theory, be turned around.

I like some Goodman Games adventures, and most Necromancer modules. I think we've put out a couple of pretty good adventures and so has Fiery Dragon. And a few others. And of course Dungeon Magazine rocks. But in truth, I think it takes the market leader to turn around a perception like this.

Would it be worth the time to do so? Maybe. (Good) adventures are important in the grand scheme of the game. They encourage actual play in a way that a sourcebook does not. They don't allow for system creep or for broken or ill-conceived rules to slip into the game. They help show new DMs how the game can be played. They inspire through example.

In fact, even if I'm wrong, and adventures can never be made to sell well again, the values I just mentioned, from the point of view of the long-term health of the game, still make them worth doing in some fashion.

 

[Prince of Happiness]

They're definitely the two companies I would attempt to emulate if I ever tried to get seriously into adventure publishing. They both know how to write adventures that DMs can get real use out of at the table.

And in a sense they encapsulate two different styles of adventure writing. In general, Goodman Games adventures exemplify a bare-bones "just the dungeon, ma'am" approach that people stereotype 1E adventures, while Necromancer has a more scenario oriented approach (with lots of dungeon goodness), that seems to typify a more mid-80s, and at times, 2E approach to modules.

Both claim to have 1st Edition style, but one more obviously than the other cleaves much more closely. In that sense, this also illustrates that 3.x has a market for modules and has/had room for both styles.

Though it has just occurred to me...hasn't Necromancer Games stopped putting out modules?

 

[Psion]

To mention a third company: Fiery Dragon's Nemoren's Vault does all this in spades. Great little module worthy of a 3.5 revision and expansion. And a great company.

/me sheds a tear over my lost love -- FDP adventures.

Why have you forsaken me, FDP! Why!

 

[Celebrim]

If we'd given it more thought, we would have realized that it's not that "adventures don't sell" it's that for 18 or more years, customers have been taught that (most) adventures aren't worth buying. The difference is, the latter is an attitude that could, in theory, be turned around.

Amen. The last module I bought was for 2nd edition. I don't even remember the name of it or why I decided to buy it (I think it was set in Cormyr though). All I remember is when I opened it up and read it I found it vapid, ill-concieved, utterly unbalanced (+4 weapons for low level characters!), primitive, shallow, substanceless and silly. I can't say enough bad things about whatever that produce was. I believe I just threw the thing away. I never bought a WotC module again, though I remember noticing how high the quality of RttToH and Axe of the Dwarvish Lords were, by then it was too late; I'd moved on to GURPS.

Now, I wish I'd bought them, but at the time I was thinking I'd never play D&D again.