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Message: <blockquote data-quote="MerricB" data-source="post: 3240895" data-attributes="member: 3586">Do you want to ask about why the shift away from dungeon-crawls and to more variety in adventures, or insult people who play computer games?Because, if you just have a look at published adventure modules, you'll discover something very interesting: the shift occurred when TSR started publishing adventures that weren't designed for tournaments.Dungeons are great because its easy to constrain the actions of the PCs; they're easier to write and to run. They also fit the needs of a large part of the player base. A political thriller, great though it may be, has trouble in being presented as a D&D adventure.This isn't to say that they haven't tried. The primary non-dungeon adventure goes to X1: The Isle of Dread. A political thriller was attempted in B6: The Veiled Society. Wilderness adventuring makes up a large part of Dungeonland and the Land Beyond the Magic Mirror, as well as the Dragonlance series. T1: The Village of Hommlet devotes a large part of its text to the village, not the dungeon, and N1: Against the Cult of the Reptile God again has a large part of investigative adventuring in the town.Computer games? They weren't even in the frame when the shift began to occur.Ultimately, megadungeons have a problem. They have a limited appeal. If you are delving into Castle Greyhawk, why are you there? The answer was (and may still be): to kill monsters to gain XP and treasure. You "win" as long as your character keeps progressing upwards.There are players for whom that is enough. However, as the various analyses of D&D players tell us, there are more types of players than that! Storytellers, roleplayers, tactical gamers, problem solvers, and more! As the types of players increase in the game, so too must the experience broaden, as the DM needs to accomodate each type of player!Dungeons are still part of the game - and they will remain so - but not to the exclusion of all other forms of play.Cheers!</blockquote>

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