How much "dungeon crawl" do you like in a campaign?

[fafhrd]

The entire concepts of these massive underground dungeouns with ancient evils and marvelous treasures and traps at every turn just never made sense to me so I voted 0%.

I think we're seeing the market getting behind the times in this regard. When I was a kid playing 2nd Edition, my friends and I gleefully ducked into every yawning cavern that was presented to us, no need for plot hooks in those days. But gamers have actually gotten more sophisticated in excatly how much ham well take in our fantasy sandwich. Yet the market is still putting out largely dungeon oriented adventures. Sure the dungeon offers some real advantages logistically: more predictable forks, no need for the massive simulations required to model societies and ecology, more of a reason for the PCs to be doing all the heavy lifting.

Making non-dungeon adventure material is geometrically more difficult but you'd think the demand would be sufficient incentive. Are modules such poor sellers that few go through the extra effort to make modules that give customers what they want? Come to think of it, is that why modules sell poorly? Because people want more than Rapan Athuk level 23?

 

[the Jester]

I voted 30% for dungeon crawls.

If you mean site-based adventures I'd say I'm higher- prolly more like 60-70%.

 

[Asmo]

I voted 100% Dungeon crawls.
It´s called Dungeons & Dragons after all.
Man, now I really wants to play WLD!

Asmo

 

[Psion]

I said 30%

I'm a quest/mystery/espionage/intrigue junkie.

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

10%

Every great once in a while, I like a really wierd "dungeon," like a sentient factory, a burning manor house, or a bramble maze that moves to close up seemingly every exit. In a year-long level 1-30 campaign, I'd maybe have one or two such dungeon adventures and a slightly longer one leading up to the campaign's final boss.

But the vast majority of the time, I prefer wilderness adventures with a strong military flavor, with some city-based espionage thrown in.

Actual subterranean "traditional D&D dungeons"? That would be a big 0%.

 

[Desdichado]

Not much at all. I am way more of a political court/urban intrigue type myself. I don't mind the rare rare trapse into a dungeon if there is a darn good reason, but it better NOT be the World's Largest Dungeon!

Yep, that's about me. I picked 20%, but that's using a pretty liberal interpretation of the word dungeon; I considered the Baron's manor house to be a "dungeon" for instance.

 

[Arkham]

I did not see an appropriate choice...
I like both 100% dungeon crawl, and 0% dungeon crawl, but clearly labeled and seperate...
i.e. On Fridays we're doing Undermountain. All dungeon, all the time. But on Saturdays we have our Intrigue and political game, and never the two shall meet.
Few games are more ripe for disappointed players when the players are anticipating one and end up with the other.

 

[Desdichado]

The reason I think I like dungeon crawls, despite my self-proclaimed status as a "sophisticated RPer" -- is that the goal -- or at least a goal -- is usually very clear in dungeons. In less restrictive venues -- wilderness, city, intrigue -- the goal can be extremely hard to spot and extremely hard to hang on to once it's been spotted.

Many people say, "Well, the best games are those in which players choose and follow their own goals." To a limited extent, I agree with that ... as a DM, I'm willing to grant my players a small amount of individual attention for personal subplots and the like.

But I cannot stand those games in which everyone does their own thing for huge chunks of time, while everybody else sits around bored. Note that I'm not complaining about unfair distribution of the DM's attention ... I don't care if I get my allocated hour-fifteen of a five-hour session. I'm there to play a group activity, not an individual activity with a rotating audience.

Anyway, that problem rarely occurs in dungeon crawls, which is why I like them.

That's a pretty insightful post there; and something that I've thought about a fair amount in my political urban intrigue (so far) game. How do you go about getting disparate character concepts on the same page in terms of goals, how do you keep the goal in front of the players, how do you make sure that the session doesn't bog down, and they can feel actual, continual progress towards their goals?

I think it's worked relatively well to date in my campaign, but it's probably a topic best covered in a new thread, and there are certainly times when if I let my eye off the ball as a GM, I can feel that sense of unified purpose start to slip away and it starts to bog down into the "what should we do next?" kind of thing.

 

[Henry]

Most people seem to be clustering around the 40-60% range - where I'd expect it.

I'm more of a 60% "crawl" man myself, probably because I still take some of the old school maxims to heart. In the end, I'm there for fun, and huge amounts of intrigue don't make as much fun for me. If I could arrange my group to play an old-fashioned "all-night dungeon run" during a holiday, with an old TSR module, I'd do it, because it's fun and direct. You have options, but not so many as to bog you down.

OTOH, If there's nothing but "open the door and clean out the next room", I get bored after a few hours of it, with no goal in sight. I'm more into "tomb of horrors" and "White Plume Mountain" than I am "tomb of Tsojcanth" or "Keep on the borderlands."

Fights (big combats) are a different matter. Regardless of setting, I try to have at least one if not two of those a session. After wading through a week of working retail, or tech support, or school, or truck driving deadlines, my players want a good session of ripping up the countryside, kicking butt and taking names.

 

[francisca]

I got a fever, and the cure is: MORE DUNGEON CRAWL!!!

Seriously though, 40-60%, depending on the current environment the party is in.