D&D (2024) What could One D&D do to bring the game back to the dungeon?

[Shiroiken]

It's not about "saving a silver or two". If you carry a torch in your off-hand, you're not carrying a shield, using a 2h weapon, or casting a spell with somatic components. And if you need to do that, it means you have to drop the torch, which has a chance of going out in the process, and if doesn't, acts as an obstacle for tactical movement.
There's more to torches than just their monetary cost. Think about it.

Humorously, it's usually the mage or bard that ends up carrying it anyway, as they seldom use shields or two handed weapons. Hooded lanterns are far better than torches anyway, and you can use your 1st turn's object interaction to set it down at the start of combat if you think you'll need to hold a weapon. A 2H weapon fighter could do the same, particularly a polearm fighter since they don't need to draw their weapon (it'd be heavy to carry a greatsword in one hand all day, but nothing in the rules prevents it).

 

[Reynard]

@Reynard
As much as I don't like it, I think the push to go all digital will make the game more "dungeon" centric than every before.

How so?

 

[Retreater]

How so?

I can share my experience.
VTTs can handle resource expenditures better than many players can. It can time torches, deplete every arrow, etc. Fog of war and vision rules can be set for each character so each player can see only as much as their character.
Maps can be pre-loaded so a DM doesn't stop play to draw, with monsters & traps already placed.
Going back to some in-person play, there are elements of VTT I miss. I even prefer VTT for more complex systems (such as PF2, which I don't know I even have the skill to run in-person).

 

[John R Davis]

Given there is much less need for gold and magic items that removes some dungeoneering incentives.

This generation doesn't have the patience/wish for " technical dungeoneering" .

Dungeons in the 5e era need a lot more space in a publication than the olden days.

I still like a good sensible social dungeons with a mix of tricks, traps, peril and such.

 

[Desdichado]

Well, the big tent was supposed to be backed up with modularity that would allow all kinds of D&D to work. Like, OSR dungeon crawling, 3E strategy and system mastery, 4E tactical, etc... Though, that was abandoned and never brought up again once 5E sold like hotcakes. It's up to folks to figure it all out now if it doesnt work for them out the box.

That may have all been snake oil all along. It sounds to me like what 5e really intended to do was redesign 3e to be easier and simpler to run than 3e and its spin-off Pathfinder had become, because WotC recognized its enduring popularity in the 4e era. They also made some noise towards OSR guys, but I don't know how much (if any) effort was really made to make 5e appeal to the OSR, and the OSR seems to have thrived in the 5e era just fine, which suggests that 5e did very little other than make campaign promises to the OSR that it never really intended to keep.

 

[Desdichado]

Given there is much less need for gold and magic items that removes some dungeoneering incentives.

This generation doesn't have the patience/wish for " technical dungeoneering" .

Dungeons in the 5e era need a lot more space in a publication than the olden days.

I still like a good sensible social dungeons with a mix of tricks, traps, peril and such.

Its not necessarily generational. I'm 50 and I've been playing since 1979 or 1980, and I've always hated "technical dungeoneering."

 

[payn]

My

That may have all been snake oil all along. It sounds to me like what 5e really intended to do was redesign 3e to be easier and simpler to run than 3e and its spin-off Pathfinder had become, because WotC recognized its enduring popularity in the 4e era. They also made some noise towards OSR guys, but I don't know how much (if any) effort was really made to make 5e appeal to the OSR, and the OSR seems to have thrived in the 5e era just fine, which suggests that 5e did very little other than make campaign promises to the OSR that it never really intended to keep.

My thoughts too, though some folks are convinced a cabal of grogs called all the 5E shots.

 

[Reynard]

My

My thoughts too, though some folks are convinced a cabal of grogs called all the 5E shots.

It's because WotC is leveraging nostalgia -- not towards the grognards, but toward me and my cohort, GenXers who discovered D&D in the 80s and 90s. And that isn't a conspiracy, it's because the team is GenXers, or has been. I don't pay much attention to staff changes so maybe some millenials are moving into creative management positions?

 

[Reynard]

I can share my experience.
VTTs can handle resource expenditures better than many players can. It can time torches, deplete every arrow, etc. Fog of war and vision rules can be set for each character so each player can see only as much as their character.
Maps can be pre-loaded so a DM doesn't stop play to draw, with monsters & traps already placed.
Going back to some in-person play, there are elements of VTT I miss. I even prefer VTT for more complex systems (such as PF2, which I don't know I even have the skill to run in-person).

I do think VTTs can do a lot to improve the play experience overall, at least for crunchy systems. I keep meaning to try and do a proper crawl with FG using all the tools. I was running Rappan Athuk but did not leverage anything besides the map. One of these days I will completely light a map and figure out how to make it count time.

 

[Desdichado]

It's because WotC is leveraging nostalgia -- not towards the grognards, but toward me and my cohort, GenXers who discovered D&D in the 80s and 90s. And that isn't a conspiracy, it's because the team is GenXers, or has been. I don't pay much attention to staff changes so maybe some millenials are moving into creative management positions?

Probably a few, but I think it's still mostly Xers and Yers.

Complete tangent, although maybe not completely and totally so: why have "the powers that be" decided that generation Y needs to be forgotten and folded into either X or the Millennials? Their pop culture and generational experience is really pretty significantly different to either. I don't think that the gen x cohort who came in the early to mid 80s to D&D and had a B/X and 1e experience really had the same experience or the same expectations of the game as the gen Y cohort that came in during the 2e era. Sure, plenty of Gen Xers continued to play through the 2e era and maybe even liked an awful lot of what was happening, but the point is that they also had a completely different experience that the Gen Y cohort did not have.