Have we lost the dungeon?

[John Morrow]

I don't really use them. A dungeon has to be a living breathing thing for me. I never understood why someone would build a hung 150 room place just to fill it with monsters and traps. If I have a trap, its ther for a reason, same with rooms and what not.

The monsters are generally supposed to be "second owners". That is, they moved in and filled a void left by the person who built the 150 room palace died, was killed, or left, perhaps centuries ago. As for the traps, they make a lot more sense if you simply make sure that the occupants always have an easy way to avoid the trap but it will be likely to snag an intruder who doesn't know it is there.

One of the best examples is a pit trap under a floor that collapses if more than 80 pounds of weight is put on it used by goblins and other small creatures who won't, if they are smart, ever exceed the trigger limit. Another option is to put traps down dead-end corridors or create honey-pot rooms -- places that will lure intruders in but no resident would ever go to or mess with. False doors that trigger traps are also an option. Magical traps might be evaded with an amulet that all of the residents wear (or wore).

In once case, I hid a Symbol of Pain behind a curtain near the door to a dungeon. Once the Paladin did a Detect Evil (the spell is of type Evil), they felt obliged to look behind the curtain with disasterous results. Again, that's something that's easy to set up and won't bother the residents, who know better than to look behind the curtain.

Harder to justify are elaborate puzzle traps that can be reasoned around (which are really designed to test the players). Possibilities there include dungeons designed as tests and puzzles solved by knowledge or skill that the particular owner or group who resided there would know and could bypass easily. For example, an alchemical worshop dungeon might have locks and traps based on elemental keys related to substances that to an alchemist might be as simple as a chemist knowing that the chemical machine with a display blinking "SNaCK" wants Sulfer + Sodium + Carbon + Potassium and not some food.

 

[DarrenGMiller]

have we left the dungeon forever?

Quasqueton

As a few other brave souls have already broken ranks and said, "Not in my campaign." I am currently running a classic style 3.5 campaign. With dungeons. And eventually dragons. Admittedly, I make them (the dungeons) more of a living environment, with their own power structure and ecology and raison d'etre.

DM

 

[Aeric]

I just recently finished a two-year-long campaign that consisted almost exclusively of dungeons (RttToEE). I told the DM of the new campaign, "If I ever see the inside of a dungeon again, it'd better be because I just got arrested."

 

[Greylock]

In the Maissen campaign in my sig we have largely eschewed dungeons. It was a player and a character choice though. Once we realised our potential/liabilities as a mostly mounted wilderness oriented party we learned to avoid dungeons. There have been precisely 2 underground encounters in a game now around its twentieth session or so.

But the DM came prepared for either style of play. His world has dungeons galore, we just don't ask for or look for them. And his "world" easily accommodates us.

Personally though, I prefer my games above ground. I think CRPGs have ruined dungeon crawls for me. And I've lost a talent for playing them. The second game I'm in found the party in a dungeon the very first session, and we got our butts handed to us.

 

[IronWolf]

In my current campaign there are dungeons. I try to keep a story arc that is about more than just dungeons (with some underpinnings that probably have not been completely realized yet), but there are several sessions that are in a "dungeon" of sorts. I usually try to break it up with some city time, but the past few sessions have been spent reclaiming a Dwarven Stronghold and attempting to pioneer a route to the Underdark at the request of a dwarf attempting to forge a trade route in the Underdark.

 

[The Sigil]

a goblin hiding behind a tree is not an encounter

An orc and a pie, on the other hand...

 

[EricNoah]

As both a player and a DM, I like variety: some dungeons, some city adventures, some wilderness adventures, some interludes, some roleplaying, some info gathering, etc. So when picking (or designing) a campaign setting, I want to have something that caters to all of those options.

And I don't think of it as "dungeon design" -- I think of it as "adventure design."

 

[The Shaman]

An orc and a pie, on the other hand...

That would have to be a pretty big pie if an orc can hide behind it!

 

[D-rock]

I actualy use a good number of dungeons, but I have to admit coming up with reasons to make them logical usually takes more time than drawing it out and putting creatures in it. There is just something that bothers me about dungeons that don't make sense.

 

[Methos]

Dungeons and Dragons are all right!!

In my current campaign which is set to begin within the next couple of weeks, I will have "dungeons", although I prefer to think of them as "site based" adventures as another poster referred to them as too. Having said that, I must admit that I likely will not have a dungeon that is of the "mindless hack and slash" variety that other posters have referred to. I personally don't have anything against that type of adventure, in fact they can be a lot of fun as long as that is what the DM and players find fun!!! To me that is always the key. If everyone is having fun with a given genre of gaming, who cares??? But, alas, I expect that most of the dungeons in the campaign will exist for a reason.

In addition, my campaign will have a lot of different types of adventures (assuming I don't flub the metaplot ). There will be plenty of role playing opportunities in the campaign for the players to interact with NPC's and powerful monsters (although they may not even realize that they are monsters at the time, heh!), but to be perfectly honest we all in my group enjoy hurling around spells, and hacking stuff to pieces periodically! Maybe it appeals to our baser instincts.

As for dragons, they have a place in my campaign too!

Cheers

Methos