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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 2256141" data-attributes="member: 4937">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.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.  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 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?</blockquote>

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