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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Fenris-77" data-source="post: 7928109" data-attributes="member: 6993955">The idea of a 'dungeon' is a real stumbling block when it comes to talking about D&D and other prep styles and play styles. Dungeons are traditionally the very model of prep-heavy it's-all-on-the-DM style prep work. The DM has to draw the map, populate the dungeon, balance encounters, and so on and so forth. I agree with [USER=29398]@Lanefan[/USER] that cooperative dungeon design would suck. My example from earlier was about cities or provinces where the players would be expected to have some significant prior knowledge. Dungeons though, they are the unknown, and they're fun because you never know what's coming. The other thing dungeons don't have is any kind of support structure. No familiar locations or NPCs in between encounters with the unknown. No character area knowledge or other information, unless directly provided by the DM as a clue. The players don't know anything about the dungeon. This makes it hard to see how players could 'help' drive the narrative and the party relies on the DM for pretty much everything. The players can help, and there are people that run stuff like dungeons off the cuff, but it's hard compared to other adventuring environments, or at least it takes getting used to. If you picture an urban environment like a dungeon, the idea of support starts to makes sense. The party still moves from encounter to encounter, each an new unknown. But the 'hallways' in between are all the familiar city where the players know people, locations, lore, politics, factions, secrets, and whatever. That gives the players a whole lot of handles to help drive the narrative in interesting ways and indeed add to it with character driven play.The more plot arcs, up to a point, in play also adds to the ability of PCs to drive the narrative. If you have some sort of major crisis narrative, as is common for D&D, plus some character driven shorter arcs, and some goal oriented decision making, the players have a lot of decisions they can make about exactly what to next. In most cases it will be to follow one of the arcs in play, either the major crisis arc, or something else they have a personal stake in. Players investment takes a lot of the sting out of sandbox-y play because the players want to do X and Y.</blockquote>

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