Smaller or bigger dungeons?

[Zulgyan]

One great big central campaign-dungeon, with numerous smaller lair-dungeons and adventure-dungeons scattered hither and yon across the wilderness.

Yeah!

 

[grodog]

When you're playing or running D&D, do you prefer smaller or bigger dungeons?

Both! I voted for bigger though, since I like my dungeons to have sufficient meat on them that I have to wander off of the edges of my sheet of graph paper while mapping.

I've noticed amongst my players a preference to have smaller, themed dungeons rather than the one big megadungeon of original D&D.

All-in-all, I like several larger dungeons, one to three huge dungeons, and a multitude of smaller ones. You just can't have too many

 

[Drowbane]

Small themed dungeons. Mega-dungeons can be fun to play in, but I'm sure as hell not running one.

And alot of the megadungeons get boring before too long... I hated RttToEE... and afterwards none of my DMs (of the time) would attempt R.A.

 

[DragonLancer]

I prefer smaller dungeons that make more sense. I do enjoy the occasional dungeon delve as both player and DM but if they go on for too long I begin to get bored with the same old routine.

 

[Gold Roger]

My general preference lies with small dungeons, that are solved room-by-room. I also like to have a few big dungeons around, which are played more dynamically and are never solved in one run.

For example, if I where to include the original Temple of Elemental Evil in a campaign (something I'll do sooner or later), it would be a campaign backdrop, the HQ of the BBEG organisation, that the PC's can find out about, infiltrate or make hit and run attacks to, but can't hope to clean out or assault through the front door.

To me, the worst dungeons are middle things, that are build for room-by-room exploration but just a tad to big, so they become a strain to run and play. For example Jzadirune from SCAP had my players groaning (didn't help they explored every room before finding the exit).

 

[Gundark]

If I wanted to run a hack-n-slash, kill monsters and take loot dungeon crawl game, I'd probably go with Descent.

And even Descent takes a long time to play, at least our games take a long time.

I voted for the small dungeon, both as a player and DM. However what counts as a small dungeon? Where is the cut-off?

Spycraft 1.0 had and interesting mechanic where "dungeon" crawls where more abstract. Players could shoose to go in stealthy and sneak to the parts that they wanted to go to. Thus it if it made sense for the BBEG to have a large fortress, dungeon, spacestation or whatever the inflitration/assault part didn't take several sessions to accomplish. The players could manuever themselves to key points.

While this mechanic might not work under the D&D game without some tweaking. When I first suggested this concept on these forums it was met with some scorn, however I think it could be done.

Part of what killed our Age of Worms game was that I felt that I was just setting up fight after fight for no real reason. These "just because fights" seemed to really slow things down. It would have been nice to skip them. However the default killing stuff for xp system demanded we keep them.

 

[howandwhy99]

And alot of the megadungeons get boring before too long... I hated RttToEE... and afterwards none of my DMs (of the time) would attempt R.A.

RttToEE could be fun, but it needs a complete overhaul. As it stand, it's 200+ room donut.

diaglo "howandwhy99's referee" Ooi

You're not pulling out WLD or FFE's Dungeon World are you?

(and one for Loki who I know loves the smilies)

 

[JDJblatherings]

Bigger dungeons. They can host multiple adventures or even entire campaigns.

There is a precedence for them as well. Vast multilevel deep labyrinthine underground complexes do and did exist. http://www.allenvarney.com/av_turkey.html
http://www.hitit.co.uk/tosee/cappy/ucities.html
http://www.xpeditionsmagazine.com/magazine/articles/turkey/turkey.html
http://turkey.rdricketts.com/uncity.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_city