D&D General Hot Take: Dungeon Exploration Requires Light Rules To Be Fun

[mamba]

Reynard's misremembering which rules are optional, but the character sheets for AD&D had multiple rows for different weapons, so you'd precalculate and write down the appropriate numbers for each weapon your character carried. Including all the varying values against different ACs using the weapon vs. armor type modifiers.

that speeds up the lookup, it does not eliminate it. Eliminating it still makes for a lighter game

 

[mamba]

Whatever anyone thinks of AD&D1/2, the dungeon mattered, as in it demanded your attention, whereas by 5th edition it's just a glorified apartment complex for monsters to fight.

are there decent dungeon crawl rules for 5e or other modern-ish games somewhere?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

This is nonsense.

If the rules are optional, the core game is what you weigh.

But the rules were not designed to be optional. That's the whole point here. People just CHOSE to ignore them, or never even realized they were there. But they were.

Even apart from that, though: Again, you want to claim that attack matrices, the five saving throws (Paralyze/Poison/Death, Rod/Staff/Wand, Petrify/Polymorph, Breath Weapon, Spell), and indeed the very concept of "saving throws" in the first place as opposed to just having attacks (they're even named "Attacks" in AD&D1e!), etc. are "rules light"? Or how about THAC0?

Pull the other one. AD&D, and its successors, have NEVER been "rules-light." Ever. Period. Anyone claiming otherwise is either playing sillybuggers with definitions, or genuinely out of touch with what a "rules-light" game is for one reason or another.

Because, as I and others have said, "rules-light" has paragraph-sized as its low end and "12 printed pages" as a pretty typical size. Even the simplest versions of Basic, which I have bent definitions to allow as possibly maybe kinda-sorta vaguely "rules-light," are four times larger than that--and that's for a very barebones offering in D&D terms.

AD&D is not, and never has been, "rules-light."

 

[borringman]

are there decent dungeon crawl rules for 5e or other modern-ish games somewhere?

Oh gosh, never played it myself but some time ago I did read a favorable review of an extremely crunchy indie dungeon crawler. I realize the word "crunchy" makes some people flinch but as I've been saying, like Oregon Trail or survival horror, the detail is the point. You're supposed to feel the pressure of dwindling resources in an oppressive environment where running out of one thing -- food, water, light, etc. -- can be lethal, or at least Very Bad.

So short answer is "probably", but I'm sorry to say I don't know the name of it.

 

[mamba]

are there decent dungeon crawl rules for 5e or other modern-ish games somewhere?

answering my own question… I guess Shadowdark would qualify or do people think that is not crawly enough

 

[Reynard]

answering my own question… I guess Shadowdark would qualify or do people think that is not crawly enough

Sahdowdark is a great implementation of 5E bent toward the express purpose of recreating the feel of old school dungeon crawling. It not only bends its rules that way, but its GM advice and all of its non-rules tools to that end. it is really a masterclass in taking 5E and making it about a specific style of play.

That said, without the complete reconstruction of the core game, I don't think Shadowdark's dungeon crawling tools would translate to bog standard 5E.

A5E's Dungeon book does an interesting job of using that 5E implementation's "journey" rules for dungeons, but I don't think it recreates the crawl feel.

 

[Remathilis]

So let us be specific what exactly makes it unfun?

Tracking provisions?
Tracking ammo?
Tracking the light resource?
Time management?
Continuous random encounters?
Zoom-in investigation/perception skills?
Same-y descriptors?
Slow depletion of resources (hit points, spell slots...etc) from exploration and traps as opposed to actual combat which burns things much faster?
Other....

So here me out on this.

Humans aren't inherently good at logistics. The more things you need to track, the less good players are at tracking them. And as RPGs evolved, the weight of logistics has moved from gear management to ability management.

Take a handful of D&D characters and plop them in a dungeon/hex crawl. Think of all the stuff they must track.

HP/health
Magic/spell slots
Class/race features, including uses per day
Feats and other build features
Limited magic uses (charges)
One shot items (potions and scrolls)
Food and water
Ammo
Encumbrance
Gold and treasure
Rests and recharge systems
Light sources
Pet or mount gear and supplies (including feed)

That's a lot of things per day, and even if you cut a character down to it's bare minimum (a human champion fighter) that's still a lot of numbers to monitor. I'm not surprised that tracking ammo and food is something that sounds fun in theory but gets short-changed in the mix because combat and exploring is more fun than counting arrows.

 

[Mannahnin]

Oh gosh, never played it myself but some time ago I did read a favorable review of an extremely crunchy indie dungeon crawler. I realize the word "crunchy" makes some people flinch but as I've been saying, like Oregon Trail or survival horror, the detail is the point. You're supposed to feel the pressure of dwindling resources in an oppressive environment where running out of one thing -- food, water, light, etc. -- can be lethal, or at least Very Bad.

So short answer is "probably", but I'm sorry to say I don't know the name of it.

Torchbearer?

I just picked up His Majesty the Worm, which is a lighter indie game focused on megadungeon play, but rather than making the dungeon crawling procedures high-pressure it tries to make the crawl procedure (and the larger play pattern of Crawl, Challenge, Camp, City) fun.

 

[Mannahnin]

that speeds up the lookup, it does not eliminate it. Eliminating it still makes for a lighter game

No disagreement whatsoever.

I was just pointing out that during play you don't normally have to do book lookups. The numbers are on your sheet.

 

[mamba]

That said, without the complete reconstruction of the core game, I don't think Shadowdark's dungeon crawling tools would translate to bog standard 5E.

I hoped they would transfer over more easily, e.g. remove or nerf Tiny Hut, Goodberry, etc. and move over the resource management of SD, something like that