How dungeons have changed in Dungeons and Dragons

[MerricB]

So, T1-4, in total, has 476 detailed encounters.

Note, I'm talking about areas in one dungeon (megadungeon) rather than spread out amongst different dungeons. There's no doubt that 1e modules have more encounters (due largely to the stat block size of 3e, but also the other detailing in 3e).

I think Gary's modules tend to include more encounters, in general. The elemental nodes drop off significantly in the number of encounters detailed, which seem to be another marker for where Frank took over the production of the manuscript from Gary's original materials.

The nodes come across as "We've lost inspiration. Err... would this do?"

AD&D really didn't provide much in the way of published wilderness adventures (S4 and WG4 being the grand exemplars, along with EX1, EX2, and WG6, and portions of L1 [and the X-series]). Of those, only S4/WG4 and L1 are normal (non-demiplanar) wilderness....

Are there any true WotC wilderness adventures in 3.x?

Pure wilderness with no dungeon? Not that I'm aware of. Mind you, we don't have many WotC adventures yet! Red Hand of Doom has important wilderness sections, but most of the real action comes in towns and dungeons.

The Standing Stone is mainly slanted towards wilderness adventuring, and is probably the closest.

Whispers of the Vampire's Blade is just cool. Despite its problem with railroading, the set-pieces have great variety: Chase with horse-drawn coaches; Masquerade ball; Battle aboard flying airships; Battle aboard lightning-rail (ok, train); Exploration of giant ziggurat.

Cheers!

 

[tx7321]

MerricB: "Ah, you admit it! Sorry about that, tx - I've just seen way too many threads denigrating 3e as "video-gamey" that I react badly to similar comparisons."

No worries.

I still say there's only 1 MerricB, and that for everyone else large battle after large battle in 3E/3.5 is a major drag. Grodog had this right. 3E modules may offer all those other options to address the strengths of their base rules. Things have come to be more 1 on 1 or a few on a few (each side having great variety in skills, feats etc.).

 

[Hussar]

Well, there's one fairly simple reason why we see less encounters in 3e modules than in earlier editions - combat is considerably more lethal in 3e. I know that's going to raise hackles, and I honestly don't mean to. Someone above mentioned bumping a party of 8 PC's with 20 orcs. That would be a very, very deadly encounter for a party below about 4th level. In 1e, that was a fairly standard encounter for 1st level characters and they could be very reasonably expected to win.

At higher levels, the disparity becomes even greater. From a design viewpoint, you can bombard your players with many more encounters simply because the PC's are so much more powerful in relation to the creatures they face. If you start doing that in 3e, you are going to wipe out parties PDQ. The days when you could fill a dungeon with a small army and expect the PC's to wade their way through them are pretty much gone. Yes, there are exceptions, but, by and large, you couldn't recreate the throneroom scene from the Giants modules simply because giants are so much bigger than they used to be.

 

[MerricB]

I still say there's only 1 MerricB, and that for everyone else large battle after large battle in 3E/3.5 is a major drag. Grodog had this right. 3E modules may offer all those other options to address the strengths of their base rules. Things have come to be more 1 on 1 or a few on a few (each side having great variety in skills, feats etc.).

In my 3e play, I've just hit "the wall" where battles are taking longer... about 16th level, and mostly due to the inability of players to add quickly. It's painful to watch. I'm also not fond of running battles with a bunch of high-level spellcasting NPCs. (I know what the common low-level spells; it irritates me when I have to look up obscure high-level spells).

That is a level I never played to in 1e, so I can't compare. (Meliander, my 1e Magic-User, reached 13th level in play).

My comment about the change in wilderness adventures comes from the loss of the hex-map. There's a subtle effect of this on adventures: it makes adventures much more a "here to there" affair, rather than keeping the location of the PCs essential. I personally find it much more difficult to run exploration games without a hexgrid.

Allan may recall my "Oracle of Fate" d20-system adventure, with the wilderness section purposefully modelled on Forgotten Temple. When my group played it (was it really 5 years ago now?), there was much more of an "exploring the unknown" resonance, if only because I gave the PCs a blank map to work with...

Cheers!

 

[Melan]

If that description of pre-2e D&D was the case (and yes, I'm exaggerating for emphasis), then the game would never have survived to grow into AD&D from OD&D in the first place.

Heh heh, that's one of those great, overlooked points...

As for the question of the topic, while 3e did the "return to the dungeon" thing, there seems to have a break in the design philosophy - from "places to explore", dungeons became "scenery" for plot-based or semi-plot based adventuring. Same outwards appearance, different model. Of course, there are exceptions, mostly in d20Land.

 

[Nikosandros]

I've run many fights at very high level in AD&D... it's much easier than in in 3e, but although certainly quite faster it's still a bit slow.

Furthermore, the long attrition of HP can get boring... IMHO AD&D needs house ruling to remain viable at those levels.

 

[Psion]

I've run many fights at very high level in AD&D... it's much easier than in in 3e, but although certainly quite faster it's still a bit slow.

Furthermore, the long attrition of HP can get boring... IMHO AD&D needs house ruling to remain viable at those levels.

At 13th level, we were facing the best the game had to offer in 1e and 2e. I think that 1e/2e aren't really scaled to handle 1-20. 3e is. My 3e games consistently lasted into the teens, whereas usually in 1e/2e, the teens marked the end of the game.

 

[Nikosandros]

At 13th level, we were facing the best the game had to offer in 1e and 2e. I think that 1e/2e aren't really scaled to handle 1-20. 3e is. My 3e games consistently lasted into the teens, whereas usually in 1e/2e, the teens marked the end of the game.

Yes, I agree. Maybe 2e can go a bit higher because several monsters were souped up, but I don't have experience with 2e at those levels.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Well, there's one fairly simple reason why we see less encounters in 3e modules than in earlier editions - combat is considerably more lethal in 3e. I know that's going to raise hackles, and I honestly don't mean to. Someone above mentioned bumping a party of 8 PC's with 20 orcs. That would be a very, very deadly encounter for a party below about 4th level. In 1e, that was a fairly standard encounter for 1st level characters and they could be very reasonably expected to win.

Heh. I certainly agree that individual monsters can become more deadly, fast, in 3e if you discount the special abilities of monsters in previous editions (i.e., all those insta-kill and/or insta-incapacitate effects). When I ran B1 for my group, modified to the 3.X ruleset (EnWorld update), they took on a lot more than 20 orcs with an APL of 3rd, and about 8 characters. It wasn't easy, but neither was it as difficult as I had expected.

Of course, I have the good luck of having excellent players.

In some ways, the "more deadly single foe/fewer foes" of 3.X is closer to the workings of fantasy novels and/or mythology than wading through hordes of foes. Even Conan ran when there were too many picts to fight alone.


RC

 

[tx7321]

MerricB: "In my 3e play, I've just hit "the wall" where battles are taking longer... about 16th level"

I hit the wall as DM at 1st (the first time 3 PCs tried to sneak past 5 goblins and a fight broke out (this woulds litterly have taken about 3 minutes in 1E, in 3E we were still at it for a half hour, and I was mentally frazzled (each orc had to role against each sneak) then keep up with who went when in order...and it went down hill from there. It took a few sessions to realize this games rules were going to be a major problem for me (just speed wise). And as players we hit the wall at around 4th for keeping up with all the feats and skills bonuses to...at some point our DM started having only 1 or 2 monsters per encounter. The days of 30 orcs encountered followed by 20 goblins, followed by 20 bandits, were gone (and not because they were lethal (that honestly had nothing to do with it), but because no DM in our group wanted the hassle. Given that fact (that most DMs (around here anyway) have a problem running large battles time wise and concentration wise..compared to 1E) I think its a logical assumption that Module writers keep this in mind (whats the "average" DM going to enjoy running).