I'd love to see a modern version of D&D refocused on dungeon exploration, and with a new revision/spiffying up/half edition/whatever of 5E in One D&D, I wonder what rule tweaks could they do to the 5E chassis to make it work well as a dungeon crawler (as
@overgeeked called it)?
The biggest issues with 5E as a good dungeon crawl game are that the exploration pillar is essentially ignored, especially in regards to resource management and environmental elements (like lighting). I think shoring up some DCs for common exploration tasks as well as upping the use of tables can help. More importantly though would be the curtailing of a lot of spells and class abilities that obviate dungeon exploration challenges. Light should not be a cantrip, for eample.
Thoughts?
I think if you try and move D&D towards being Torchbearer (making Light a levelled spell, etc.), what you're going to achieve is the exact opposite of "moving D&D back to the dungeon".
If that stuff was interesting to most players, Torchbearer (and similar RPGs, it's hardly the only one), would be indie mega-hits.
They aren't. None of the "We've made dungeons like they were in pre-3E versions of D&D!!!" RPGs are these days. There was a sort of burst of popularity of them with younger Gen Xers and the like in the early-mid 2000s, but that's gone, and it ain't coming back.
You can't make dungeons more popular by trying to turn back the clock, is what I'm saying.
As
@Vaalingrade points out, if you want people back in dungeons, you need dungeons to be fun, not punishment palaces. Most players playing D&D today aren't people who either used to, or interested in, carefully tracking resource usage, or fiddling around with light sources or the like. The average D&D player in 2022 is under 30. Many under 25. Very few over 40. The last time D&D was about carefully tracking resource usage and fiddling around with light sources was basically early 2E. You might stretch it to the end of 2E. That's still 22 years ago. A lot of D&D players weren't even born them.
And it's very much an acquired taste, too. I kind of like that sort of thing, for example, but do most of my players in my main group? Not really, and they've been playing since 2E. One of them is like me, and into it, and he owns a lovely copy of Torchbearer. We tried explaining this game to the other players to get them hyped about it. My wife was like "Ok that's interesting" (because she likes a good resource/logistics challenge), and everyone else was like "Uhhh no thanks?". And these are people in their 40s. You think kids in their 20s want that? Again, if so, why don't those games sell?
So let's move away from what won't work, turning back the clock, to what might work - going forwards.
1) Make dungeons interesting and places you might actually want to spend time in.
This means moving away from the old-school "every room has a random different thing it", towards dungeons with various factions in them, dungeons which can change dynamically (I mean in terms of what's happening, rather than physically, but that could be cool too). Rooms and places which you might want to visit more than once. Not just loot n' forget. Places that are distinctive and memorable, not endless blank corridors and 10x20 rooms with matted straw and a couple of orcs in.
2) Make dungeon challenges interesting.
I might like spreadsheeting our rations and torches, but it's very clear most people do not. So that is not the sort of challenge people want. I hate to say it, but I think we need to think more "Crystal Maze" or "Survivor" on this. Challenges which have interesting solutions, often time pressure, and which are fun to resolve.
And not every DM is going to be good at coming up with that stuff, you need a bigass section in the DMG on that. Maybe a sourcebook later.
3) Traps which are LESS about mechanics.
Not more! Less.
Traps which are just a big bundle of mechanics are boring as hell. Especially if they just have a straight defeat DC. Instead we should have more traps with have simple mechanics, but can't be just defeated by rolling dice, but where you need to either:
A) Think about it and come up with a cute solution.
or
B) Do something heroic like flipping between scything blades to reach the off-switch on the other side of them.
What about Rogues? They're one class in 12. Even with an even split of classes the majority of groups don't even have one. They can disarm the boring traps on chests or whatever.
This doesn't mean traps that are hideously difficult to defeat, either. Just ones that are interesting to defeat and which players enjoy having defeated.
4) Dungeons which actually tell stories.
I know people love Soulslikes, but I think we need to go beyond vaguely implied stories here, at least for most groups, into more focused and involved dungeons which have kind of a beginning, middle and end. Where things are learned as you go along. Where you don't get to the last boss and think "Who the hell is this guy and how did he even get here?!?!?!".
Tracking arrows and torches is not conducive to heroic, high fantasy, where even the necessity of light--one of the the most important things in our real world--is obviated by magic and darkvision. So when people talk about "modern design," it reads to me as more a preference for telling different kind of stories.
Absolutely right.
This is what I see why my main group. Me, one other player (who also DMs another group), and my wife kind of like telling stories about logistics and keeping the last torch burning and trying to drag the loot out of the dungeon. The other three (sometimes four)? Nope. They like their PCs being part of interesting stories and doing cool stuff. That can be very grime-y, grubby, low-end stuff, but not like, resource-tracking stuff. They want to solve problems with panache, not practicality, and I totally get that.
And you're right too that even if you do come with more elegant and rules-light systems for that stuff (which I don't think 5E/1D&D could handle), that's still not going to make the concept/style/vibe fundamentally appealling.
(And yes I'm pretty terrified re: tracking like 6 different prof/day abilities, for god's sake WotC, that won't make it to 7E!)
