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

[payn]

I think there is a clear contrast to be drawn, here, with 5e. I have two kids who have played 5e with their friends. All are older than I and my co-players were when we started with Moldvay. Yet they have struggled to get a functional, playable game going. And I don't think that's because we were geniuses back in 1982. It's because I don't see that 5e provides the same clarity of structure to play. It doesn't have the same clear process for structuring the relationship between the "moves" the players make - ie what do they say about what their PCs are doing? - and the "moves" that the GM makes in response - ie what does the GM say about what the PCs experience and encounter? This all seems to be left in quite an amorphous state.

Interesting. I never was able to get into Moldvay editions and up. I had nobody to teach me and the rules were not particularly clear anyhow. Heroquest the board game actually taught me more about RPGs than my D&D box set and manuals. I didnt really get into TTRPG until I was an adult just out of college.

My younger cousins and now nephews and nieces are up and running 5E becasue of all the youtube instructional stuff. Doing things I couldnt have imagined at that age.

 

[Aldarc]

Going back to an earlier point about "Why B/X was adopted as the lingua franca of OSR, I also add that it likely also served as a greater point of contrast for the OSR crowd when it comes to "what's wrong with modern D&D?" At the time that OSR was getting started, the two big systems out there were 3e D&D (and later PF1) and 4e D&D. IMHO, B/X would serve as a better counterpoint offering to either of these games than either 1e or 2e D&D would. This is not to mention "Red Box Nostalgia."

Probably; OSE has more pages in part due to adding white space and using "control panel" layouts aiming for maximum clarity as a reference work. Moldvay Basic also includes tutorial information, examples of play, etc. I do think you're probably right that a better editor could trim Moldvay Basic down and organize it better without really losing anything, though.

Saying that it isn't for the same reason seems a bit argumentative, though. You could probably put a modern Moldvay Basic together in, say 32 pages, making it clean and concise as easily understood.

FWIW, OSE Basic is pretty short. It's a little over 50 pages.

However, OSE's B/X Essentials is deceptively long. B/X Essentials is composed of four booklets: (1) B/X Essentials Core Rules, 34 pages; (2) B/X Essentials Classes and Equipment, 44 pages; B/X Essentials Cleric and Magic User Spells, 34 pages; (4) B/X Essentials Adventures and Treasures, 47 pages.

You may be able to shave pages from that count due to reprinted material (e.g., OGL, credits, etc.) and layout, but you are still looking at roughly 140 pages for OSE's B/X Essentials.

B/X Advanced, which converts 1e D&D to B/X, is naturally longer still.

I would also add that 5e D&D is an intentionally verbose game. People complained that 4e D&D was like reading a technical game book, and so 5e D&D was written in a way for people who like to read D&D books for the sake of it. It's not written in a concise manner. There is a lot of filler writing and inefficient layout. Rules are buried and hidden in walls of text and horribly indexed. How "light" would the rules of 5e look if Gavin Norman was doing the layout and editing?

Sure, but a fair point was raised earlier that while B/X may be lighter than 5E, 5E is lighter where dungeon-crawling rules in particular are concerned, because it basically has none. The counter was raised that by having actual structured rules and procedures for this style of play, ie: by being rules heavier for this use-case, B/X provides a better dungeon crawl experience.

If I understand your counterargument correctly, you'd say that while that's true, the fact that the COMBAT rules are simpler and quicker means that B/X and Shadowdark are supporting the dungeon crawl better by putting more focus on exploration, and less rules weight/depth into other stuff like combat. Yes?

Interestingly, what some people in this thread have mentioned is that what makes dungeon-crawling a "slog" for them isn't the combat; instead, it's the dungeon play procedures and book-keeping.

Personally, I don't particularly care if combat is more complicated or slower. I want it to enhance the intended play experience. I hope that combat is fun. Combat isn't what really makes or breaks a dungeon exploration game for me. It's the dungeon exploration rules that do as that's presumably why I am interested in playing a particular dungeon-crawling game.

Character levels: 1- 3.

Of course, you have to add the Expert rules to advance further, which doubles the rule size. Then you get Companion, Master and Immortal rules. By the time you get to the Rules Cyclopedia (which covers most of BECM rules and a little of I) you have a nearly 300 page tome, including additional classes, weapon mastery, skills, dominion rules, wilderness exploration and 36 levels of play.

It's not 5e dense, but that's not exactly light unless you only play the first three levels on repeat.

Your post elaborates better on my earlier point that I made in my post:

Generally what happens when those dungeon-crawl games start expanding their scope outside of the dungeon, however, is that the rules also get heavier and crunchier, often bolting on additional sub-systems. However, the dungeoneering rules stay the same.

 

[Mannahnin]

Interestingly, what some people in this thread have mentioned is that what makes dungeon-crawling a "slog" for them isn't the combat; instead, it's the dungeon play procedures and book-keeping.

The newest game I'm reading through right now is His Majesty the Worm, a megadungeon-focused game for which one of the central premises is making the "boring" parts fun. It's a neat game.

 

[Aldarc]

Giving this topic a bit more thought:

I think the primary reason that dungeon exploration can feel like an unfun slog has nothing to do with how light or heavy the rules are. It has almost everything to do with whether or not the game (in the abstract sense) cares about dungeon exploration and finds it fun. Do the rules of this game care about exploring dungeons: yes or no?

For example, I would suggest that 5e, on the whole, doesn't care much about dungeon exploration. The game feels and plays as if it doesn't want to be in the dungeon in the first place. It doesn't really care about the dungeon as a survival game. It ignores or glosses over a lot of the dungeon procedures of old. It doesn't really care too much about resource management and tracking equipment, encumbrance, and time. The game swims in gold like Scrooge McDuck, so it doesn't care about Gold for XP. Nonetheless, a bunch of dungeoneering elements are there mostly for the sake of appeasing the legacy and continuity of the game.

The game has dungeons, but they are an aesthetic. In 5e the dungeon does not exist to test your character or your player skill. In 5e the dungeon exists as a set piece backdrop for showcasing your character's abilities and/or showcasing the GM's/Adventure's cool story. On the GM side of things, 5e cares about cool adventures, stories, and worlds. On the player side of things, 5e cares about cool characters and abilities.

It feels like slog because the players would rather be somewhere else and doing something else other than dungeon exploration. You could make a super light Basic version of 5e and players would still view the dungeon exploration game with disdain because that is not what they are there for and the rules don't care about it either.

While I do think that a lot of OSR weirdly fetishizes rules being "light" as opposed to being "good" or "fun," the OSR community ultimately cares about dungeon exploration and tends to find it fun. It's a style of play that loves being in the dungeon. It wants to be there. It wants dungeon exploration to matter.

I don't think that dungeon exploration requires light rules to be fun. Instead, I think that the game system only has to care about dungeon exploration. It's as simple as that.

 

[payn]

Giving this topic a bit more thought:

I think the primary reason that dungeon exploration can feel like an unfun slog has nothing to do with how light or heavy the rules are. It has almost everything to do with whether or not the game (in the abstract sense) cares about dungeon exploration and finds it fun. Do the rules of this game care about exploring dungeons: yes or no?

For example, I would suggest that 5e, on the whole, doesn't care much about dungeon exploration. The game feels and plays as if it doesn't want to be in the dungeon in the first place. It doesn't really care about the dungeon as a survival game. It ignores or glosses over a lot of the dungeon procedures of old. It doesn't really care too much about resource management and tracking equipment, encumbrance, and time. The game swims in gold like Scrooge McDuck, so it doesn't care about Gold for XP. Nonetheless, a bunch of dungeoneering elements are there mostly for the sake of appeasing the legacy and continuity of the game.

The game has dungeons, but they are an aesthetic. In 5e the dungeon does not exist to test your character or your player skill. In 5e the dungeon exists as a set piece backdrop for showcasing your character's abilities and/or showcasing the GM's/Adventure's cool story. On the GM side of things, 5e cares about cool adventures, stories, and worlds. On the player side of things, 5e cares about cool characters and abilities.

It feels like slog because the players would rather be somewhere else and doing something else other than dungeon exploration. You could make a super light Basic version of 5e and players would still view the dungeon exploration game with disdain because that is not what they are there for and the rules don't care about it either.

While I do think that a lot of OSR weirdly fetishizes rules being "light" as opposed to being "good" or "fun," the OSR community ultimately cares about dungeon exploration and tends to find it fun. It's a style of play that loves being in the dungeon. It wants to be there. It wants dungeon exploration to matter.

I don't think that dungeon exploration requires light rules to be fun. Instead, I think that the game system only has to care about dungeon exploration. It's as simple as that.

 

[Thomas Shey]

While I do think that a lot of OSR weirdly fetishizes rules being "light" as opposed to being "good" or "fun," the OSR community ultimately cares about dungeon exploration and tends to find it fun. It's a style of play that loves being in the dungeon. It wants to be there. It wants dungeon exploration to matter.

I don't think that dungeon exploration requires light rules to be fun. Instead, I think that the game system only has to care about dungeon exploration. It's as simple as that.

As an aside, but I know once Reynard and a couple of others posted what they're specifically referring to as "dungeon crawls" I've been a bit dismissive, but part of the reason for that (besides what I consider the excessive stylization) is that, back in the day when I hit those sort of games, to me they weren't much fun.

And part of the reason for that, I think, was a lot of the bookkeeping and micromanagement seemed pointless. And I don't mean that in the sense of "paying attention to things I don't care about"; I'm perfectly willing to do bookkeeping and pay attention to detail in things where it shows to matter (I ran Champions for literally decades after all, and I'm at least theoretically on-board post-apocalypse games where managing limited resources is part of the gig.

But I found when playing in "dungeon crawl" games that the effort to yield was really stupidly low. What I mean by that is that you spent an awful lot of time searching for traps, secret doors and treasure for the amount of time you spent finding it. So there was a lot of effort to little emotional payout. Same thing could apply to tracking supplies and carrying capacity; it required a lot of bookkeeping for only rarely mattering (more likely in getting stuff out of the dungeon than what you had in it).

If the yield-to-effort there had been higher, perhaps I'd have a more positive reaction to it.

 

[Mannahnin]

As an aside, but I know once Reynard and a couple of others posted what they're specifically referring to as "dungeon crawls" I've been a bit dismissive, but part of the reason for that (besides what I consider the excessive stylization) is that, back in the day when I hit those sort of games, to me they weren't much fun.

And part of the reason for that, I think, was a lot of the bookkeeping and micromanagement seemed pointless. And I don't mean that in the sense of "paying attention to things I don't care about"; I'm perfectly willing to do bookkeeping and pay attention to detail in things where it shows to matter (I ran Champions for literally decades after all, and I'm at least theoretically on-board post-apocalypse games where managing limited resources is part of the gig.

But I found when playing in "dungeon crawl" games that the effort to yield was really stupidly low. What I mean by that is that you spent an awful lot of time searching for traps, secret doors and treasure for the amount of time you spent finding it. So there was a lot of effort to little emotional payout. Same thing could apply to tracking supplies and carrying capacity; it required a lot of bookkeeping for only rarely mattering (more likely in getting stuff out of the dungeon than what you had in it).

If the yield-to-effort there had been higher, perhaps I'd have a more positive reaction to it.

Right. I think this is something where the old books did an inadequate job of explaining how to make this fun rather than tedious.

Some folks evidently figured it out on their own, and in the last 15-odd years in the OSR various bloggers have dug into it, but back in the day if your DM was a clueless kid who hadn't learned how to do it right, traps could become a slog of tapping with 10 foot poles.

Principles like "put traps in logical places as opposed to randomly in the middle of high-traffic halls", or "make traps able to be spotted and engaged with narratively instead of springing them on players out of nowhere if they don't resort to having a Thief try his terrible % chance every 10 feet" should have been spelled out VERY CLEARLY in places like the AD&D DMG, but unfortunately Gary instead assumed people already knew those things and so wasted his words on telling DMs how to crack down on Thieves and not let them have too easy a time!

 

[payn]

Right. I think this is something where the old books did an inadequate job of explaining how to make this fun rather than tedious.

Some folks evidently figured it out on their own, and in the last 15-odd years in the OSR various bloggers have dug into it, but back in the day if your DM was a clueless kid who hadn't learned how to do it right, traps could become a slog of tapping with 10 foot poles.

Principles like "put traps in logical places as opposed to randomly in the middle of high-traffic halls", or "make traps able to be spotted and engaged with narratively instead of springing them on players out of nowhere if they don't resort to having a Thief try his terrible % chance every 10 feet" should have been spelled out VERY CLEARLY in places like the AD&D DMG, but unfortunately Gary instead assumed people already knew those things and so wasted his words on telling DMs how to crack down on Thieves and not let them have too easy a time!

Yeap, skill play can be fun when its not a constant barrage of GM gotchas.

 

[borringman]

Principles like "put traps in logical places as opposed to randomly in the middle of high-traffic halls"

Well I mean it depends on the "dungeon", right? If you're passing through the gatehouse of a ruined fortress, "randomly in the middle of high-traffic halls" is exactly where you'd put your traps, because the original builders would've wanted to create killzones right where invaders would go. However, most of them would've already been set off by whomever did the ruining. (A spiked pit with its cover collapsed is still a spiked pit, though.) On the other hand, a royal grave might have traps concentrated near the entrance, since any point beyond that the grave's already been desecrated. A paranoid noble would have traps guarding their prized possessions, but with mechanisms to disable them. Can't count your gold if you can't get to it.

I like it when the "dungeon" tells its own story. Don't give me five minutes of exposition dump from an NPC that won't be relevant beyond ten. I like it when you can, say, make a History check to first discern where the traps might be, and then make that Perception check only where it makes the most sense. And then, to @payn's point, don't betray those expectations with a "gotcha". The price of that prank is immersion. What's the word, "diegetic"? Gygax never did that. His dungeons were basically obstacle courses. Fun in their own ways, but with very specific focus. There are other approaches, is what I'm saying.

 

[Mannahnin]

Well I mean it depends on the "dungeon", right? If you're passing through the gatehouse of a ruined fortress, "randomly in the middle of high-traffic halls" is exactly where you'd put your traps, because the original builders would've wanted to create killzones right where invaders would go. However, most of them would've already been set off by whomever did the ruining. (A spiked pit with its cover collapsed is still a spiked pit, though.) On the other hand, a royal grave might have traps concentrated near the entrance, since any point beyond that the grave's already been desecrated. A paranoid noble would have traps guarding their prized possessions, but with mechanisms to disable them. Can't count your gold if you can't get to it.

But in the gatehouse of a fortress ISN'T randomly in the middle of a high-traffic hall. It's at a defensive salient. And you're totally right that having some already set off makes sense and is, gameplay-wise, a good way to signal to the players to be on the lookout for pit traps.

I like it when the "dungeon" tells its own story. Don't give me five minutes of exposition dump from an NPC that won't be relevant beyond ten. I like it when you can, say, make a History check to first discern where the traps might be, and then make that Perception check only where it makes the most sense. And then, to @payn's point, don't betray those expectations with a "gotcha". The price of that prank is immersion. What's the word, "diegetic"? Gygax never did that. His dungeons were basically obstacle courses. Fun in its own way, I suppose, but a very specialized method. There are other approaches, is what I'm saying.

Gygax certainly was a proponent of placing traps logically in at least some of his designs.

The traps in B2 Keep on the Borderlands, as I recall, are generally in logical places for the defense of the monster lairs.

Tomb of Horrors has them all over the place, but it's an advertised-on-the-tin deathtrap tomb. Pit traps in the entry hall make sense there.

Are there any particular examples you're thinking of?