D&D General How often do you use or encounter Dungeons and/or Dragons in your games?

[W'rkncacnter]

forts and...uh...hm. the creature's a tough one. beholders, maybe, just because they're fun and unique to dnd.

in my last campaign i think i actually used dragons more then dungeons. i tend to run large locations less as proper dungeon crawls and more as swat raids. the party was gearing up to face a (surprisingly young) dracolich before it fell apart, and the villains were looking for the bones of a dead adult green to turn into an undead dragon (though the party hadn't had the chance to start figuring that out yet).

 

[Jolly Ruby]

Dungeons? Very often. Not every session, but at least one every level. Usually 5 to 20 rooms, but sometimes more if the players are really in the mood for multilevel dungeons.

Dragons? Not that often. At least one per campaign, and usually more than one, but I like them to feel like mythical and rare and powerful. If they find one every odd session they lose part of their mistique.

 

[Stormonu]

Dungeons - all the time.
Dragons - no more than one per campaign, and generally one so fearsome PCs are unlikely to combat it.

 

[Reynard]

Dungeons - all the time.
Dragons - no more than one per campaign, and generally one so fearsome PCs are unlikely to combat it.

So if they won't combat it, what purpose does it serve?

 

[Tonguez]

Since taking on the philosophy that everything is a dungeon - well dungeons are everything Even exploring a Bazaar on a shopping trip can be a chance for exploration, overcoming challenges and reward

Dragons are a background element, rarely knowingly encountered (though who knows which NPCs might be dragons in disguise). 5e adding Regional Effects and Lair Action was a boon, I now have 2 settlements that are subject to draconic regional effects - the worlds largest city has a ancient celestial gold dragon sleeping under it whose aura eubtly monitors peace and fair trade in the city (the breeze in the city is scented with gold dust) and Coppertown is a mining boom town established inside a Painted Canyon (inspired by rl Antelope Canyon) which is also the lair of a copper dragon - the towns folk ensure their overlord is kept entertained.

 

[Aurel Guthrie]

My players fought a young green dragon and its forest troll slave in a cave when they were level 5.

They've also realized a bookish NPC was actually a young copper dragon trying to learn all it could about society without outside help, which is a sort of initiation test he's taking to join a secret order of people that gather knowledge they can use to protect their small realm from the safety of their island.

Illithidragons (mind flayer dragons) have been mentioned as well, and might become a bigger threat at tier 3, but there's a long ways to go before that.

Now for dungeons, they've explored two 10,000 year old dungeons from an empire called the Bemerians, with ancient wards that have managed to protect them from decay. One of them led to the underdark, but they chose not to descend. They also explored an abandoned mineshaft that led to a boss battle with a giant flesh monster that had become part of the mineshaft itself, that was a fun battlemap to work on.

That's four dungeons in 37 sessions though, they spend most of the time in cities and their outskirts.

I plan to have them find ~2000 year old ruins of the Sosarians, an empire that used clockwork automatons and steampunk tech, and ~1000 year old Elorian ruins, which had sci-fi tech that current society is trying to reverse engineer. Think allagan tech from final fantasy xiv

 

[plecostomus]

The game where I am a player: I think we've run 2.5 dungeons over 5 years of playing. The .5 is for a straight series of rooms with some traps in them. We fought 1 dragon in a friendly challenge, interacted with a trapped dragon we haven't been able to free yet, and found some dragon bones connected to a lich we know.

The game where I am DM: a blue dragon attacked the players' ship in the first session, and after they walked away from the wreckage they ended up on the doorstep of a dungeon. One of the PCs also had a vision of an astral dragon in the second session. I have more encounters with the blue dragon planned, a silver dragon serving as a quest client, a copper dragon who is ridden by a knight, and some younger dragons the players may get to ride themselves. Thanks Dragonlance.

If the game was based on what I like...welcome to the dustiest of adventures, Deserts & Mummies!

 

[Stormonu]

So if they won't combat it, what purpose does it serve?

There are other interactions than combat. In the last campaign, the party through parley convinced the dragon to move to a new lair, farther away from the local human settlement.

 

[Charlaquin]

Dungeons are quite literally the name of the game at my table. Generally speaking, dungeons are where adventures happen, the wilderness is an obstacle between the adventurers and the dungeon, and town is where you go to sell off the spoils of a successful adventure and take a respite before the next one. There are some exceptions - sometimes complications that occur in town can lead to a brief urban adventure interlude, and sometimes a journey is long and harrowing enough to constitute a short adventure of its own. But most of the time the play loop goes leave the safety of town -> venture through the wilderness -> explore a dungeon, ruin, or other analogous adventure site -> trek through the wilderness back to the safety of town -> repeat.

Dragons are cool. I use them sometimes. They make good boss monsters. But, they’re far from ubiquitous.

 

[DrJawaPhD]

Dungeons: approx 1 per level, so fairly common
Dragons: approx 1-3 per campaign, so semi-rare but almost always present at some point

I'm good with the Dungeons and Dragons name, it certainly isn't even close to 100% descriptive of the gameplay but it gets the general gist across better than most/all other game names out there.