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How dungeons have changed in Dungeons and Dragons
- Thread starter tx7321
- Start date
I'm A Banana
Potassium-Rich
See, I may disagree that the open-endedness is a good thing. I mean, what did I *pay* for, if I've gotta figure out everything for myself? Heck, if all I needed was rooms and monsters, didn't 1e give me a method to randomly generate that? Why would I need to buy a module at all? What am I payin' these guys for?
Q" See, I may disagree that the open-endedness is a good thing. I mean, what did I *pay* for, if I've gotta figure out everything for myself? Heck, if all I needed was rooms and monsters, didn't 1e give me a method to randomly generate that? Why would I need to buy a module at all? What am I payin' these guys for? "
Fair enough. Thats a legit. arguement. Open-ended adventuring is not for everyone all the time (even though I'd argue it is a halmark of D&D and RPGs in general. I suppose that could be part of the difference between 1E and 3E, the value aspect, that players expect a developed story or plot with each module that involves certain elements. So, what I find to be too controlling on the part of the writers, other DMs might find useful. If others share your feelings it could reflect a difference in DMing styles between late 70s early 80s D&D to now.
Fair enough. Thats a legit. arguement. Open-ended adventuring is not for everyone all the time (even though I'd argue it is a halmark of D&D and RPGs in general. I suppose that could be part of the difference between 1E and 3E, the value aspect, that players expect a developed story or plot with each module that involves certain elements. So, what I find to be too controlling on the part of the writers, other DMs might find useful. If others share your feelings it could reflect a difference in DMing styles between late 70s early 80s D&D to now.
Last edited:
The Shaman
First Post
As is true of the Demonweb Pits.Crothian said:
I agree.Crothian said:
CruelSummerLord
First Post
A very interesting thread, and I'll sum up my responses to the various points mentioned in this thread:
Dungeons in general: Some posters have mentioned how dungeons run the risk of becoming stale and stagnant if they're just underground constructions of rooms and tunnels, but I think the typical dungeon crawl can be something much different.
Just look at some of the original Dragonlance modules. The various dungeons were actively incorporated into the storyline and history of the campaign setting, and the players went in for reasons other than staggering out under loads of treasure-they had to enter Skullcap to get information on how to find the Dwarfgate, needed to enter the Nightmare of Silvanesti to retrieve a Dragon Orb, enter Pax Tharkas to rescue the prisoners, enter the Glitterpalace or the High Clerist Tower to get valuable divine aid in their struggles-and in every case these dungeons were given backgrounds and reasons for existing, and woven into the storyline. Sometimes the PCs could get a wagonload of treasure, but what could they spend it on? There were other reasons for getting it.
The earliest modules were done to help out DMs who hated dealing with the drudge work. Speaking as someone who has absolutely no artistic talent, it would have been a relief to have the dungeons designed for me if I were a DM in the 1970s (I wasn't even born until 1982, so I'm only 24, yet I love the feel of 1E-go figure). Gygax pretty much assumed that DMs would rewrite and retool the available modules to their own campaign needs, saying so both at the beginning of the GDQ modules and even in the 1E DMG itself.
The original giant holds could serve any number of other purposes. Are your players in a long-running feud with the Zhentarim, who are forging alliances with different types of giants? Well, Nosnra, Snurre and Grugnur could easily be recast as allies of the Zhentarim, their fortresses fitting comfortably into your players' plans for battling these enemies of the Zhentarim.
Are your players, in seeking out the aid of a northern barbarian chief, made to rescue his captive son, wife or daughter from frost giants in exchange for help? The Glacial Rift can easily be re-used as a one-shot adventure where the players have to accomplish this task, an interlude in the task that allows the players to get back to the regular campaign at hand if they succeed-they could refuse, and in that case not have the aid of the barbarian, but they could find allies elsewhere...
Do you just want a night of hack and slash, with no greater evil involved than a marauding hill giant chief? Chuck out the references to the drow, and the magical chain, make Nosnra himself the major villain, and cut loose! There are no grander plots, no alliances, just a mob of giants causing havoc-and a party of bold adventurers that have to stop them dead.
2E modules like John Terra's "Four From Cormyr" had both background and dungeon action, but Terra also included a wide variety of loose ends that DMs could exploit to bring up further adventures, and his adventures also contributed to Faerunian history, with the exploits of the Starburst Swords and the ill-fated Kingdom of Orva. They were four separate, but interlocked, plotlines that DMs could incorporate when the time seemed right, but there was no need to do them each one after another. Some of them were more plot-driven than others; in some cases, the plot was not so integral that the DM couldn't change the location or characters involved with a minimum of fuss.
Some of the new modules I've seen, most notably the Kingdoms of Kalamar ones, are I think an interesting mix of dungeon crawling combined with role-playing, with the dungeon incorporated as part of a greater plotline, and one that leaves player discretion in some cases-again, taking the cue from Dragonlance to have going into the dungeon for greater reasons than simply getting treasure.
I suppose the nutshell is that over the years, steps have been taken to weave dungeon crawling in with the plot, and give players more reason to do it than simply gathering up masses of gold and silver. Dragonlance was one of the first to do this, and they've taken it a step further.
At the risk of being accused of self-serving, many of my own "Newly Discovered Dungeons of the Flanaess" articles from Canonfire have tried to come up with more original reasons for the PCs to enter these dungeons, and to let DMs incorporate them into their own campaigns:
http://www.canonfire.com/cfhtml/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=347
http://www.canonfire.com/cfhtml/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=350
http://www.canonfire.com/cfhtml/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=735
Some of them respond, for example, to specific metagame needs: Sometimes PCs can die in ways that make resurrection impossible-being destroyed by magnesium spirits, devoured by changelings (or some other obscure 1E monster), turned into horrible undead wraiths and shadows, devoured by a demilich to fuel its life energy, etc. Well, as long as the player is remembered, the players can travel to the Valley of Memory to find a way to restore him. It's also meant to be a dungeon you have to _role-play_ through, instead of just hacking and slashing.
Science fiction plotlines sometimes have characters shrinking down to go inside a person's body to save them. But what about going into the insides of a demon to destroy a demi-god's divnity? If Iuz is your campaign's major villain, the Balor's Stomach is the dungeon for you.
In the Sunken City, characters who persevere may be rewarded with the revival of the old Flan kingdoms, which can lead to all sorts of political or personal complications-role playing, anyone?
I tried to come up with more rationales for players to actually go into these dungeons of their own free will-if you as DM make the knowledge available to them, the players can follow up on it. If they're not interested, then that 's that; but if they are interested, then you can write it up for them, and there's no railroading involved.
I also noticed a fair bit of criticism of the Dragonlance modules-while I can understand it, I think that DL is a special case. If they're being played properly, your players are taking up the roles of characters who already have their own personalities and backgrounds, and who have a vested interest in finding the True Gods. Now, when two plains barbarians show up with exactly this evidence, they have motive for following up on it. One thing leads to another-if the players are expected to go to Silvanesti to stop the Nightmare, they have reasons for doing so because at that point they think the Dragon Orbs can destroy the dragons, and they have a chance to gain one, just as the other party has reason to go to Icewall. The players have a reason for going to Sanction to rescue the dragon eggs-getting the good dragons involved in the war.
I think that the unique situation of the first Dragonlance modules comes from the fact that there are pre-written characters who already have their own stories. I doubt many DMs or players would have had as much of a problem if these characters were ones they had created themselves, and had developed for themselves the interest in the True Gods, in the fate of the elven nations, or the interest in the fate of the dwarves or the Knights of Solamnia. Rather, I bet the players would have been eager to follow up on leads that fed into their characters' backgrounds and personalities. However, since the whole thing was a commercial series of modules, it can't help but feel like a railroad in some cases.
Even then, Dragonlance is not a completely rigid track-the recent 25th Anniversary re-issuing of the Dragonlance modules by Steve Miller and Stan! offer a useful story frame and guide for DMs. If you use that to create potential variables and add in interludes where the players can muck about in their own way, it feels like less of a railroad. If the players have to choose between helping the Knights and go to Icewall, or help Ahlana and go to Silvanesti, and follow up on one or the other of the leads later, or openly decide to divide their forces, there isn't as much railroading.
As a sidenote, I vastly prefer the "module" version of Dragonlance, mostly because it doesn't cut out so many interesting scenes (King of the Deep, journey to Sanction, the Glitterpalace, the possibility of using Huma's Lance to seal the gate at Neraka, which is how Sturm OUGHT to have died, the journey to Skullcap, etc.) and doesn't turn certain characters into ballast that play a minimal role in the story (coughGoldmooncoughRiverwindcoughTikacoughFlint) suffer from deus ex machina (coughKitiara showing up at the last minute to bail the Heroes out when they get busted by securitycough), or have completely unnecessary, arbitrary and ignominous deaths (coughFlint's pointless death)...
...but that's another rant.
Dungeons in general: Some posters have mentioned how dungeons run the risk of becoming stale and stagnant if they're just underground constructions of rooms and tunnels, but I think the typical dungeon crawl can be something much different.
Just look at some of the original Dragonlance modules. The various dungeons were actively incorporated into the storyline and history of the campaign setting, and the players went in for reasons other than staggering out under loads of treasure-they had to enter Skullcap to get information on how to find the Dwarfgate, needed to enter the Nightmare of Silvanesti to retrieve a Dragon Orb, enter Pax Tharkas to rescue the prisoners, enter the Glitterpalace or the High Clerist Tower to get valuable divine aid in their struggles-and in every case these dungeons were given backgrounds and reasons for existing, and woven into the storyline. Sometimes the PCs could get a wagonload of treasure, but what could they spend it on? There were other reasons for getting it.
The earliest modules were done to help out DMs who hated dealing with the drudge work. Speaking as someone who has absolutely no artistic talent, it would have been a relief to have the dungeons designed for me if I were a DM in the 1970s (I wasn't even born until 1982, so I'm only 24, yet I love the feel of 1E-go figure). Gygax pretty much assumed that DMs would rewrite and retool the available modules to their own campaign needs, saying so both at the beginning of the GDQ modules and even in the 1E DMG itself.
The original giant holds could serve any number of other purposes. Are your players in a long-running feud with the Zhentarim, who are forging alliances with different types of giants? Well, Nosnra, Snurre and Grugnur could easily be recast as allies of the Zhentarim, their fortresses fitting comfortably into your players' plans for battling these enemies of the Zhentarim.
Are your players, in seeking out the aid of a northern barbarian chief, made to rescue his captive son, wife or daughter from frost giants in exchange for help? The Glacial Rift can easily be re-used as a one-shot adventure where the players have to accomplish this task, an interlude in the task that allows the players to get back to the regular campaign at hand if they succeed-they could refuse, and in that case not have the aid of the barbarian, but they could find allies elsewhere...
Do you just want a night of hack and slash, with no greater evil involved than a marauding hill giant chief? Chuck out the references to the drow, and the magical chain, make Nosnra himself the major villain, and cut loose! There are no grander plots, no alliances, just a mob of giants causing havoc-and a party of bold adventurers that have to stop them dead.
2E modules like John Terra's "Four From Cormyr" had both background and dungeon action, but Terra also included a wide variety of loose ends that DMs could exploit to bring up further adventures, and his adventures also contributed to Faerunian history, with the exploits of the Starburst Swords and the ill-fated Kingdom of Orva. They were four separate, but interlocked, plotlines that DMs could incorporate when the time seemed right, but there was no need to do them each one after another. Some of them were more plot-driven than others; in some cases, the plot was not so integral that the DM couldn't change the location or characters involved with a minimum of fuss.
Some of the new modules I've seen, most notably the Kingdoms of Kalamar ones, are I think an interesting mix of dungeon crawling combined with role-playing, with the dungeon incorporated as part of a greater plotline, and one that leaves player discretion in some cases-again, taking the cue from Dragonlance to have going into the dungeon for greater reasons than simply getting treasure.
I suppose the nutshell is that over the years, steps have been taken to weave dungeon crawling in with the plot, and give players more reason to do it than simply gathering up masses of gold and silver. Dragonlance was one of the first to do this, and they've taken it a step further.
At the risk of being accused of self-serving, many of my own "Newly Discovered Dungeons of the Flanaess" articles from Canonfire have tried to come up with more original reasons for the PCs to enter these dungeons, and to let DMs incorporate them into their own campaigns:
http://www.canonfire.com/cfhtml/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=347
http://www.canonfire.com/cfhtml/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=350
http://www.canonfire.com/cfhtml/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=735
Some of them respond, for example, to specific metagame needs: Sometimes PCs can die in ways that make resurrection impossible-being destroyed by magnesium spirits, devoured by changelings (or some other obscure 1E monster), turned into horrible undead wraiths and shadows, devoured by a demilich to fuel its life energy, etc. Well, as long as the player is remembered, the players can travel to the Valley of Memory to find a way to restore him. It's also meant to be a dungeon you have to _role-play_ through, instead of just hacking and slashing.
Science fiction plotlines sometimes have characters shrinking down to go inside a person's body to save them. But what about going into the insides of a demon to destroy a demi-god's divnity? If Iuz is your campaign's major villain, the Balor's Stomach is the dungeon for you.
In the Sunken City, characters who persevere may be rewarded with the revival of the old Flan kingdoms, which can lead to all sorts of political or personal complications-role playing, anyone?
I tried to come up with more rationales for players to actually go into these dungeons of their own free will-if you as DM make the knowledge available to them, the players can follow up on it. If they're not interested, then that 's that; but if they are interested, then you can write it up for them, and there's no railroading involved.
I also noticed a fair bit of criticism of the Dragonlance modules-while I can understand it, I think that DL is a special case. If they're being played properly, your players are taking up the roles of characters who already have their own personalities and backgrounds, and who have a vested interest in finding the True Gods. Now, when two plains barbarians show up with exactly this evidence, they have motive for following up on it. One thing leads to another-if the players are expected to go to Silvanesti to stop the Nightmare, they have reasons for doing so because at that point they think the Dragon Orbs can destroy the dragons, and they have a chance to gain one, just as the other party has reason to go to Icewall. The players have a reason for going to Sanction to rescue the dragon eggs-getting the good dragons involved in the war.
I think that the unique situation of the first Dragonlance modules comes from the fact that there are pre-written characters who already have their own stories. I doubt many DMs or players would have had as much of a problem if these characters were ones they had created themselves, and had developed for themselves the interest in the True Gods, in the fate of the elven nations, or the interest in the fate of the dwarves or the Knights of Solamnia. Rather, I bet the players would have been eager to follow up on leads that fed into their characters' backgrounds and personalities. However, since the whole thing was a commercial series of modules, it can't help but feel like a railroad in some cases.
Even then, Dragonlance is not a completely rigid track-the recent 25th Anniversary re-issuing of the Dragonlance modules by Steve Miller and Stan! offer a useful story frame and guide for DMs. If you use that to create potential variables and add in interludes where the players can muck about in their own way, it feels like less of a railroad. If the players have to choose between helping the Knights and go to Icewall, or help Ahlana and go to Silvanesti, and follow up on one or the other of the leads later, or openly decide to divide their forces, there isn't as much railroading.
As a sidenote, I vastly prefer the "module" version of Dragonlance, mostly because it doesn't cut out so many interesting scenes (King of the Deep, journey to Sanction, the Glitterpalace, the possibility of using Huma's Lance to seal the gate at Neraka, which is how Sturm OUGHT to have died, the journey to Skullcap, etc.) and doesn't turn certain characters into ballast that play a minimal role in the story (coughGoldmooncoughRiverwindcoughTikacoughFlint) suffer from deus ex machina (coughKitiara showing up at the last minute to bail the Heroes out when they get busted by securitycough), or have completely unnecessary, arbitrary and ignominous deaths (coughFlint's pointless death)...
...but that's another rant.
BroccoliRage
First Post
tx7321 said:Grodog makes a good point: "ontinuous combat would bore me to tears, especially within the scope of 3.x combats (which, since I'm not MerricB, take me a LOT longer to run than AD&D combats). "
Thats true, unless your MerricB (and lets face it, there's only one MerricB
LOL!
This may lend some credence to my "3e is not D&D" argument. OF course, feel free to disagree, most folks who play 3e do.
I gotta tell ya, 3e modules actually can be played if one ignores all the d20 babble, uses the 1e MM for all applicable monsters, and generates stats for non-applicable monsters beforehand. I do it frequently, and have a blast. But then, I like converting all sorts of modules. And the amount/size of dungeons may be fewer/smaller, but they also tend to be very action packed. I think that there is often too much treasure, but that's easily remedied.
I recently led a group through Thunderhead Games' Sands of Pain (MYG7001), and we had a blast. I just replaced a few creatures, generated some stats, and threw it in there while my players were adventuring through the Arabic area of my setting. The dungeon was FANTASTIC. So I haven't noted much of difference in the way the actual play of the moduels were written. What I have noticed is much more backstory to wade through, instead of a "plug n play" appraoch. I think this is because alot of folks like to feel like they are involved in something that "exists" (a book may lend a feel towards settings seeming more concrete to most folks), as opposed to folks completely constructing thier own settings. Another factor may be conventions, where published settings are usually all that is used.
This is only a theory, of course.
thedungeondelver
Adventurer
BroccoliRage said:LOL!
This may lend some credence to my "3e is not D&D" argument. OF course, feel free to disagree, most folks who play 3e do.
I gotta tell ya, 3e modules actually can be played if one ignores all the d20 babble, uses the 1e MM for all applicable monsters, and generates stats for non-applicable monsters beforehand. I do it frequently, and have a blast. But then, I like converting all sorts of modules. And the amount/size of dungeons may be fewer/smaller, but they also tend to be very action packed. I think that there is often too much treasure, but that's easily remedied.
I recently led a group through Thunderhead Games' Sands of Pain (MYG7001), and we had a blast. I just replaced a few creatures, generated some stats, and threw it in there while my players were adventuring through the Arabic area of my setting. The dungeon was FANTASTIC. So I haven't noted much of difference in the way the actual play of the moduels were written. What I have noticed is much more backstory to wade through, instead of a "plug n play" appraoch. I think this is because alot of folks like to feel like they are involved in something that "exists" (a book may lend a feel towards settings seeming more concrete to most folks), as opposed to folks completely constructing thier own settings. Another factor may be conventions, where published settings are usually all that is used.
This is only a theory, of course.
Good to know. I'll give it a shot. One things thats frustrating is I can't seem to find my stack of 3E modules, just my core books. Others here have been asking for examples of modules I find too controlling or guided (but it looks as if I gave them all away to another player when I stopped playing 3E). Unfort. I don't remeber the names (as I didn't even play them), but the ones I'm thinking of had very little dungeon (if any at all) and boxes with huge descriptions of eno
ers. I'll have to check out Sands of Pain (I'm assuming its a large keyed underground dungeon with corresponding rooms)?Similar Threads
