Have we lost the dungeon?

[KB9JMQ]

With my group if I didn't have a dungeon crawl pretty often I would be looking for a new group and these are all seasoned long time players.

 

[Hussar]

After several months playing in a city, I've finally diverted my players into a dungeon crawl. Lot's of undead chewy goodness (with some of the new Sandstorm critters tossed in) and I don't have to worry about all that ecology stuff. Lost mine in the middle of the desert with a small mining community around it. Thank you very much The Forge for your Iron Valley PDF and WOTC for it's honking big dungeon from the Map of the Week. Gonna be spelunking for a while.

Are dungeons dead? I sure hope not. Heck, even Dungeon cranks out a crawl pretty often. They wouldn't be doing that if no one wanted to play them.

 

[Renshai]

C'mon, it was inevitable. How the hobby ever accepted them in the first place is beyond me. It was a foregone conclusion that the hobby would mature and move ahead.

And by mature, I don't mean to imply childish -- rather, primitive.

Could you possibly be more condescending to people that happen to enjoy a different gaming style than you? To call their gaming style, primitive... sheesh.

Enjoying dungeoncrawls is neither childish, or primitive. It might be different from what you enjoy, but that doesn't mean you need to attach negative connotations to those people that DO enjoy it.

I think that your "foregone conclusion" has been proven wrong. D&D 3rd Edition DID embrace the dungeon again and alot of people are very happy that it did.

 

[Desdichado]

Yes, thats it allright! The dungeon is a concept of immature or youthful gaming... definitely childish or a reflection of the market being young.

/snicker

/rude


Speak for yourself.

Ahem. Don't put words in my mouth. And read my other posts on this thread for clarification.

 

[Desdichado]

Could you possibly be more condescending to people that happen to enjoy a different gaming style than you? To call their gaming style, primitive... sheesh.

Enjoying dungeoncrawls is neither childish, or primitive. It might be different from what you enjoy, but that doesn't mean you need to attach negative connotations to those people that DO enjoy it.

I think that your "foregone conclusion" has been proven wrong. D&D 3rd Edition DID embrace the dungeon again and alot of people are very happy that it did.

Yes, I most certainly could, since that comment was not condescending in the least. Sheesh! Grow a skin!

 

[Odhanan]

The market has largely grown up since those days.

"grown up" as in "more mature" ? If that is the case, I really don't see what's "more mature" today with teenagers playing undeads and concentrating on the expression of their ubris (i.e. Vampire) compared to teenagers playing with minis knights and wizards fighting off the hordes of the dungeon.

I haven't forgotten the dungeons and still use them with my present gaming group.

 

[twofalls]

You need look no further than the "World Largest Dungeon in actual Play" thread to answer your question. With over 36,000 views and nearly a thousand posts I'd say the dungeon is alive and well.

Great product by the way.

 

[Grazzt]

As a player, yes I have lost the dungeon. My characters keep looking for them. They go up to random NPCs in a town and ask,"Hey buddy. Where's the nearest abandoned castle built by a crazy wizard several centuries ago which is now overrun with strange and terrifying monsters but still full of treasures beyond the ken of mere mortals?". The NPCs give my character weird looks and walk away, then the DM throws a book at me and tells me to get back to writing my 15 page character backstory due by the end of the session.

Of course, I make up for that by putting lots of extra dungeons in my campaigns. The PCs in my campaign can barely walk around without tripping over or falling into a dungeon entrance.

Despite the fact that my players seem to really enjoy the dungeon-ful campaigns I run, they never seem to create the same type of campaign when they GM the games. IMO it's a culture thing. There's so much anti-dungeon prejudice out there that people who would otherwise hearken back to the good old days of 10x10 rooms choose not to because they're afraid the "real roleplayers" will mock them as unevolved, rollplaying boobs.

Terms like "mindless hack-n-slash" just prove my point.

The only "mindless" thing about the play in my campaign are the undead who will kill your character and eat his brains if you're not paying attention, playing smart and treating combat as a last resort option.

Nicely put.

My players dont trip over the dungeons, but if they ask around long enough, they'll find an NPC who can point them in the direction of "the nearest abandoned castle built by a crazy wizard several centuries ago which is now overrun with strange and terrifying monsters but still full of treasures beyond the ken of mere mortals"

 

[Plane Sailing]

A quick moderately reminder - play nice, don't put words into other peoples mouths and don't disrespect other people for their opinions. We can say what we like pro or con about dungeons without making implications (veiled or otherwise) about the people who have certain preferences, can't we?

Cheers,

 

[DonTadow]

Could you possibly be more condescending to people that happen to enjoy a different gaming style than you? To call their gaming style, primitive... sheesh.

Enjoying dungeoncrawls is neither childish, or primitive. It might be different from what you enjoy, but that doesn't mean you need to attach negative connotations to those people that DO enjoy it.

I think that your "foregone conclusion" has been proven wrong. D&D 3rd Edition DID embrace the dungeon again and alot of people are very happy that it did.

I think all that was meant was that hte game evolved from its first incarnations as just a game for dungeon crawls. It is not to imply that hte player or people who like this incarnation still are imature or primitive, but that the game is so much more than this one aspect it began with. I think in today's society, RPG doesnt mean what it did 30 years ago because of this evolution, thus dungeon crawl campaigns are moved into the hack and slash campaign style (which, 30 years ago they were the defination of role playing games), which for today's average role player is limiting. Someone likens it to playing in a football game but only using 20 yards of the field to play on. It is quite ok to like this, but there is so much more to the game now days.