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

[bloodtide]

My thesis is that 5E, PF2E, and other games are, in total,too crunchy to provide a good dungeon crawling experience. That was pretty clear from the OP forward.

But how?

A typical 5E Dungeon is like:

DM: Dungeon room five is a square dusty room with some rubble fallen from the ceiling. One wooden door in the far wall.

Player: I roll a check...got a 33....anything cool or interesting in the room?

DM: Nope!

So how is that too crunchy?

The dungeon in 5E is very much: encounter something and roll past it. Was there a 5E Dungeonscape book I missed?

 

[Vaalingrade]

My thesis is that 5E, PF2E, and other games are, in total,too crunchy to provide a good dungeon crawling experience. That was pretty clear from the OP forward.

And the counters was that there's a way, way, waaay crunchier system that does basically dungeon crawls most of the time.

And IMO, way more fun than what would be considered classic dungeon crawls.

Moreover, considering all the beancountering; torches (And light in general), weight, gold for xp, random tables all the time, etc -- can classic dungeon crawling play be considered rules light at all?

 

[Reynard]

But how?

A typical 5E Dungeon is like:

DM: Dungeon room five is a square dusty room with some rubble fallen from the ceiling. One wooden door in the far wall.

Player: I roll a check...got a 33....anything cool or interesting in the room?

DM: Nope!

So how is that too crunchy?

The dungeon in 5E is very much: encounter something and roll past it. Was there a 5E Dungeonscape book I missed?

I am sure I have explained this previously in the thread, but here goes:

Crunchy systems with lots of moving parts ruin the dungeon crawl experience by making some aspects a grind and sompletely skipping other aspects with mechanical win buttons. A great example is your "I roll a 33" above. "Clearing a room" with a single check might be mechanically efficient, but is antithetical to the dungeon crawling experience. But, on the other hand, when combat starts the game grinds to a halt and has to completely switch modes. On top of that, if the game has too rigid "challenge ratings" it makes dungeon crawling a grind because you can't easily drop down 3 levels. Or if, as in PF2E, you are constantly checking traits and tags against one another.

Look, I get people disagree. That's fine. I just don't understand why I have to keep repeating the basis for my opinion on the matter.

 

[bloodtide]

I am sure I have explained this previously in the thread, but here goes:

Crunchy systems with lots of moving parts ruin the dungeon crawl experience by making some aspects a grind and sompletely skipping other aspects with mechanical win buttons. A great example is your "I roll a 33" above. "Clearing a room" with a single check might be mechanically efficient, but is antithetical to the dungeon crawling experience. But, on the other hand, when combat starts the game grinds to a halt and has to completely switch modes. On top of that, if the game has too rigid "challenge ratings" it makes dungeon crawling a grind because you can't easily drop down 3 levels. Or if, as in PF2E, you are constantly checking traits and tags against one another.

Look, I get people disagree. That's fine.

But disagreeing and posting is the whole point of a forum?

I agree on combat. Rules light works great for combat in a dungeon crawl.

But it is also on how the DM runs the game. I'm an Old School DM that does Dungeoncrawls in 5E. How? Easy: I have a three second rule. when action starts each player has three seconds to state their characters action. If the player says anything else, their character stands confused for the whole round. This simple rule speeds up combat by roughly 1000%.

Still though....your not talking about lite rules...your talking about No Rules: Pure Freeform Acting Role Playing. All the Fun Fluff of classic dungeoncrawls uses No Rules.

 

[pemerton]

But how?

A typical 5E Dungeon is like:

DM: Dungeon room five is a square dusty room with some rubble fallen from the ceiling. One wooden door in the far wall.

Player: I roll a check...got a 33....anything cool or interesting in the room?

DM: Nope!

So how is that too crunchy?

The dungeon in 5E is very much: encounter something and roll past it. Was there a 5E Dungeonscape book I missed?

I've got no idea what "typical" 5e D&D play is like - but what you describe doesn't conform to the rules of 5e. For a start, the player hasn't declared an action!

 

[Gus L]

I think its a fine line between "The character could be run on autopilot" and "Everything is about description", but its a line worth finding.

Oh I agree - and I won't say that a game with complex rules for exploration can't do it. Only that it's not the way OD&D manages it (though it has a solid set of rules for exploration - likely better then any subsequent edition of D&D or any other system I've seen honestly - maybe Errant gets close.)

So yes of course there are areas where rules/skills/stat checks are useful, generally things that players can't negotiate or talk through - like climbing checks or lock picking. However, there's a point to using obstacles that don't require these sorts of things, at least not exclusively... Every cliff that uses climbing skills needs alternatives: walk around through something dangerous...magic...waste time building a ladder out of door parts, etc. This last option is precisely what I mean by "engaging the fiction" - and yes it's a fine line.

I mean I'll be pretty blunt: I know this is a lot of the real world situation for some people and desirable for others, but an RPG where you can get most of what I'd want done in session in four hours isn't likely an RPG I'd find worth playing.

I mean... We can all pretend that most people play the OFFICAL GYGAX WAY and run 15 year campaigns in 12 hours sessions 3 days a week ... but most of us would be lying? I'm not catering my design or theory to some tiny fraction of the RPG audience that has a part time job playing RPGs?

As I said, the problem is I don't usually find it makes all that much sense to have those sort of competing but hostile groups in the same structure, and when it is, I'd expect the border areas to be very heavily locked down.

I mean we all design our adventures in different ways - if you want to run sieges that's your style. It is a style distinction though, not a mechanical one. Personally I think trying to find what makes sense (beyond some basic coherence) to be especially useful for playing RPGs? there's no best practices here though.

I guess the argument I'm making is "exploration" in the scale of a lot of traditional dungeons either should have very limited number of opponents, not very smart ones, or ones that operate by constraints that have nothing to do with anything mundane. Or they're still one big fight looking for a place to happen in a way that isn't really that distinct from the mega-corp situation.

SHOULD is a rough word to hang onto an RPG scenario... I get it you don't like scenarios with faction intrigue. I don't like cyberpunk - but I won't claim that makes my games more real, less "stylized" or more "logical" then someone else's cyber fantasy.

Edit: To make it clear, I'm not telling people what they should or shouldn't enjoy, but it appears to me from reading this that what people are calling a "dungeon crawl" here is often dependent on what seems to me on the least logical and most stylized corner of what I saw called that back in the day. Which is fine if its what they want, but its turned "dungeon crawl" into a very heavily term-of-art thing.

I use "Dungeon Crawl" as a term of art for a specific style of play - hence the caps and explanations I've put in every post I've made in this thread. I also think talking about dungeon crawls and lumping everything else in (aesthetics, vague nods, and all location based play etc.) is a boring way to start fights. Surprisingly as a play style though it doesn't have a huge amount to do with "back in the day". There are old techniques that work and I like to give credit rather then claim I invented them, but it's a functional way to run a certain style of game that doesn't work well with every rule set.

 

[Gus L]

I think there's a hidden assumption on the part of some people about dungeon crawls: scale. At least for some of these people, this is what a small-ish dungeon crawl is supposed to look like [... a map with many rooms and passages - perhaps 30 plus keys]

For many yes. There are however ways (slot encumbrance, good turnkeeping or overloaded encounter dice) that allow for Dungeons with fewer keys, but they need some design changes as well. A Jewelbox dungeon can work, but I think the lower limit is somewhere around 10 - 20 keyed locations. It's a tricky and evolving design situation I think.

Now siege dungeons (that is locations with an organized foe - be they corporate cybercops, aliens or hobtrolls) are a different sort of scenario that can be distinct from standard exploration Dungeons ... as can a trap/puzzle based Maze or a social/RP based Masquerade. They can also be included in a larger dungeon. You could for example design a giant alien ruin that had within it an AI court where social conflict/intrigue and roleplaying was necessary and a corporate scavenger base that was a Siege. These could both exist as part of a larger exploration based Dungeon, and the two factions (AI's and Scavengers) would have outposts and random exploration parties within. One could hang clocks and responses on interaction with any of this, but the spaces would always be distinct.

 

[CreamCloud0]

So Reynard, do you think that 5e has "heavier" rules when it comes to dungeoneering play procedure? What are they?

i haven't played B/X, but would it be accurate to say that while 5e has more rules in general, a far larger chunk of B/X's rules are dedicated to the systems involved in dungeoncrawl play, and that those rules are also explored in finer detail?

 

[pemerton]

i haven't played B/X, but would it be accurate to say that while 5e has more rules in general, a far larger chunk of B/X's rules are dedicated to the systems involved in dungeoncrawl play, and that those rules are also explored in finer detail?

Well, I know B/X better than 5e, but what you say is my impression.

B/X has rules for timekeeping, for a random encounter cycle and a rest cycle based around that, a relationship between movement rates and typical dungeon distances that means that exploration activates the time-based cycles. And rules for opening doors, listening at doors, finding and triggering traps, etc, all of which underlie the exploration focus.

Light (and hence vision) is also more tightly rationed, as torches or lantern oil have to be purchased, and the Light spell is not a freebie.

I would say that these are the basic mechanical components of the process of play that underpin B/X exploration.

 

[Thomas Shey]

SHOULD is a rough word to hang onto an RPG scenario... I get it you don't like scenarios with faction intrigue. I don't like cyberpunk - but I won't claim that makes my games more real, less "stylized" or more "logical" then someone else's cyber fantasy.

I don't have a problem with faction intrigue at all. I just don't think having factions in relatively tight spaces (enough that the sounds of battle should likely carry) and yet don't care about battle and don't have their border areas secured makes any sense. The distance involved for that should be miles, not a couple hundred feet.

I use "Dungeon Crawl" as a term of art for a specific style of play - hence the caps and explanations I've put in every post I've made in this thread. I also think talking about dungeon crawls and lumping everything else in (aesthetics, vague nods, and all location based play etc.) is a boring way to start fights. Surprisingly as a play style though it doesn't have a huge amount to do with "back in the day". There are old techniques that work and I like to give credit rather then claim I invented them, but it's a functional way to run a certain style of game that doesn't work well with every rule set.

I've acknowledged now that the primary topic of this thread now that its been clarified is not one I'm going to have any useful input on.