Have we lost the dungeon?

[Celebrim]

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.......

Actually, it looks like you haven't finished reading the thread. I think we had largely moved past that, but thanks for trying to dig it back up.

 

[John Morrow]

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.

I'm not talking about Metamorphosis Alpha, per se, but about how people were already running their role-playing games in 1976 or so. As I said earlier, Bill Armintrout's article in The Space Gamer #42 makes his game sound like anything but a dungeon in space and he discusses playing sub-optimal characters that have to rely on others, romantic subplots, guest players running NPCs, players helping to create setting elements, etc. -- all very "mature" ideas. Perhaps a lot of the published material suggested "play dungeons only" but a lot of people, even back then, were doing much more than playing dungeons only.

As for the dungeon turning up in many genres, that brings us back to what a "dungeon" really is. Defined broadly enough to include Metamorphosis Alpha (in general) and Bill Armintrout's game (in particular) again raises the question of what the essence of a dungeon is. And by that measure, where shows like "The Starlost" or even "Space: 1999" and movies like "Logan's Run" really just "science fiction dungeons" on the screen?

 

[Desdichado]

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.......

Uh, which thread are you reading again?

Anyone who cannot see that wargaming/dungeoncrawling and the roleplaying hobby are intrinsically linked, and indeed complementary to eachother, is a dufus.

There's a lot of commonality between the two fanbases, and roleplaying grew out of wargaming/dungeoncrawling. But there's no reason for them to be "intrinsically linked" and many fans of wargames have no interest whatsoever in RPGs and vice versa. That's a specious claim, easily disproved by anyone who knows more gamers than simply their little group.

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

I didn't think it was directed at me at all, since none of the arguments you were rebutting were ones that I made.

Or that anyone in this thread has made, really, to be honest with you. Your post is a bit out of left field. Not that it hasn't been the only one; a bunch of folks have jumped on me for being the "latte set" pure roleplayer, but I've spent a considerable amount of effort clarifying what I meant, and I thought we were past the "jumping to incorrect conclusions and putting words in my mouth" phase of the thread.

 

[Desdichado]

No different. Only different in your mind.
[...]
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.

Yeah, but again, that brings up the contrast between dungeon as a campaign management tool, where it has little reference to the actual word dungeon, and dungeon as something in which the PCs adventure, which is what I'm saying I don't like. I don't have any problem at all with managing your non-dungeon adventures as a flowchart that doesn't look too inherently different than a dungeon map, but that's not my point either.

 

[Celebrim]

Yeah, but again, that brings up the contrast between dungeon as a campaign management tool, where it has little reference to the actual word dungeon, and dungeon as something in which the PCs adventure, which is what I'm saying I don't like. I don't have any problem at all with managing your non-dungeon adventures as a flowchart that doesn't look too inherently different than a dungeon map, but that's not my point either.

Well, I'm not yet sure what your point is. But my point (or at least one of them) is this; ultimately, what the PC's are adventuring in is the campaign management tool and ultimately the dungeon is nothing more than a map and a stack of words. No matter what you campaign style, if you try to communicate how to replicate your work (at least in part) - as you must if you are going to publish it - ultimately what you are going to write down is no different than a dungeon. It is isn't until the DM waves his hand over the stack of words and performs his magic that that stack of words and map turns into some shared imaginary space that the DM's and PC's can share in. When he does that, if he's pretty good at what he does, then the campaign can look and feel like just about anything, but if you remove the draperies, wall paper, and stage props and look at what is underneath it all it is always indistinguishable from a dungeon. And the dungeons themselves - removed of all the fluff that makes one a soiree at the Louvre in 18th century France, another a mining colony on Io where a murder has taken place, and another the ruins of a Necromancer's fortress - are distinguisable from one another only in the shapes of thier map.

What I'm trying to establish is what makes one dungeon well designed and another one not well designed, and since I don't think anything but flavor and DM skill separate the adventure from the dungeon, I'm really asking what it takes to have a well designed adventure.

 

[S'mon]

Obviously Celebrim is correct that all detailed adventures can be presented as flowcharts, what he calls 'dungeons'. To me a dungeon though is that place beyond the threshold of adventure, separate from the everyday life of the mundane world - so the halls of the ruined keep, the paths of the Forest of Doom, or the goblin caverns count, but a murder mystery set in the PCs' home village doesn't.

 

[PapersAndPaychecks]

I don't think that's quite what he's saying. You could describe an event-based scenario in terms of a flowchart also.

I think he's describing a "dungeon" as any adventure which is described in terms of maps, keyed locations, encounter tables and rosters rather than in terms of chapters and scenes.

 

[DragonLancer]

I like and dislike the classic D&D dungeon. They make great site based locations but on the other hand they can quickly and easily become old hat because, as othes have said, it can take a long time to go through them.

But "have we lost the dungeon?" I don't think so, its just the the game has changed to accomodate differing tastes among gamers. IMO the classic dungeon is one of those sacred cows that will never leave D&D. Its whole mythology is based around adventurers delving dungeons and caves, and that will never go away.

 

[JamesDJarvis]

""=John MorrowI'm not talking about Metamorphosis Alpha, per se, but about how people were already running their role-playing games in 1976 or so. As I said earlier, Bill Armintrout's article in The Space Gamer #42 makes his game sound like anything but a dungeon in space and he discusses playing sub-optimal characters that have to rely on others, romantic subplots, guest players running NPCs, players helping to create setting elements, etc. -- all very "mature" ideas. Perhaps a lot of the published material suggested "play dungeons only" but a lot of people, even back then, were doing much more than playing dungeons only.
""

Seeing as the implict goal in early RPGs was for characters to become leaders i don't find articles like the one you mention overly remarkable. Write ups of early games make it prety clear that a PCs relation to npcs was an important part of the game; accquirring allies and minions was of importance to those seeking success and power with the game.


The original Metamophosis Alpha as dungeon isn't a very broad stretch of the definition of dungeon actually. The dungeon in this question is an enigmatic confined environment of unkown typography filled with hideous dangers that a band of individuals willing to commit theft and violence are set loose within to explore and dominate on a quest for personal and/or group power.

Space:1999 isn't a dungeon and Logan's Run isn't either because they don't focus of the accuisition of power as motivators for the characters. Space 1999 is actually a homesteading western and Logan's Run is a retelling of the Oddessey.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

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.

That's interesting, but how is anyone supposed to get a back-issue of The Space Gamer from 1981 to check out this article? Is there some sort of online archive?