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Message: <blockquote data-quote="rounser" data-source="post: 421720" data-attributes="member: 1106">Exactly, though it's not really fair to criticise Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil on this basis, because it had to be based around the format of the original temple in order to deserve the title "Return", so it's understandable why it has that focus.That said, I'd like to see less megadungeons, and more campaign adventures composed of wilderness "adventuring environments" to explore and sub-adventures of all kinds (urban, dungeon, wilderness, planar) tied into an overall story arc.  This sort of thing was tried with the Dragonlance Classics modules, but went straight to railroad hell.  I think I know why, too - it was a world-spanning road trip around an undeviating story arc.  Restrict the scope to a locality of say 100 x 100 miles of wilderness, and open up the story arc resolution, and it could theoretically be trumped.  I ask: Surely the state of the art of adventure design has improved since then?On the other hand, the reason why mega-adventures take the easy way out and mostly take place in a big dungeon has been touched upon by Ryan Dancey on the DND-L list in the past (emphasis mine):I don't really buy the data argument.  For starters, every mega-adventure ever released by TSR, almost without exception (Dead Gods might have been by hearsay, never seen the product) has been a megadungeon, and as most gamers know, they tend to get dull, dull, dull after the initial enthusiasm begins to dwindle.  They (Undermountain, Night Below, Greyhawk Ruins, Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil etc. etc.) are not representative of the possibilities campaign adventures offer as a whole.  Dungeon crawling seems like a good idea in huge doses - in reality, most groups need a change of pace after a while.  (For example, almost every group I've heard of online and off who attempted Night Below found the first book with it's overland mini-adventures and spot dungeons a heck of a lot of fun, and saw the campaign dwindle by the second book, which is where the megadungeon began, and with it, the tedium.  I don't think this is a coincidence in the least.)I don't really buy the "too hard to design" argument either.  Restrict the scope of the campaign to an area (maybe an island or two) and designers won't have to resort to the forced railroading imposed by dungeon walls.  It will be interesting to see who picks up this particular gauntlet, if WotC isn't willing to.</blockquote>

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