D&D 5E What Don't You Like About Dungeons?

[Bill Zebub]

I've never struggled with this, but we all have different experiences with the game.

I'm curious what you mean by "never struggled with this". Meaning, like @iserith, you don't worry about it? Or you don't find it difficult to know when a player is using player knowledge? Or it doesn't happen at your table?

EDIT: Nevermind, you answered it in a subsequent post.

 

[Bill Zebub]

My players will even do knowledge checks to see if they know about fire/acid vs. trolls.

I am reminded of a kindergarten teacher I heard bragging that all her 5-year-olds were sitting quietly in their chairs doing their worksheets.

 

[Brotton Goodfellow]

Get you all some Barrowmaze!

I’m a big fan of dungeon crawls, particularly running them. The idea that there’s this strange place, filled with monsters and treasure of a bygone age, and the whole point of the game is to face those dangers in the name of getting rich and acquiring power is what really does it for me. I also enjoy the exploration side of the game, especially when there’s big risk but big reward involved.

I tend to eschew complex campaigns or campaigns that deal with world ending events. A dungeon, especially a megadungeon, lets me focus in on the sorta here and now of the fiction, which I find helps me create more tense and dramatic sessions.

 

[Lanefan]

If you do like dungeons (or at least like them as much as other adventure locations), what do you like about them? How do you approach them as a player?

As a player, I usually approach them by wading in and exploring until there's something to either beat up, loot, or both. Then that thing gets beaten up, looted, or both. Lather rinse repeat until we've done whatever bigger task we went there to do, then go home and divide the spoils. I like dungeons because while I-as-me can go out and explore some woods etc. anytime I want, I can't go exploring dungeons - they add to the fantasy element. And the whole exploring piece is important to me.

If you're a DM, what kind of resources do you use to help you design and run them effectively?

I'm not sure I design them "effectively", if by that you mean the least bit efficiently. It's usually either pretty labour-intensive (if I'm trying to doll it up so someone else could run it) or pretty slap-dash with lots of notes and maps on scraps of paper.

Running them is easy, though, in that the whole environment is (in theory!) laid out in reasonable detail ahead of time meaning I rarely if ever have to do any on-the-fly creation. All I have to do is narrate and referee.

Contrast this with an outdoor or city adventure, where it's kind of impossible to detail everything ahead of time and thus a lot of stuff gets made up on the fly...which would be fine except my at-table note-taking is atrocious and I'll sometimes forget things 5 minutes after I've said them (I blame beer). I can run these, but they're way more of a headache unless I want to railroad the party, which I'd prefer not to do.

(I'm making this a D&D 5e thread because that is the most recent and arguably popular version of the game. If you're going to talk about other editions or even other games, please say so explicitly so as to mitigate misunderstandings as to rules or the like.)

Everything I say above is, I think, edition-agnostic; though I'm coming from a very-much-pre-5e point of view.

 

[Lanefan]

This is a weird problem for the game. One of the classic adventures, Keep on the Borderlands, has a latrine area in the caves of chaos. It's strange, because apparently only 2 of the dozen groups of creatures use a latrine, but it creates a sense of realism that they'd have one. However, it does create a game problem, where the players might decide to "hole up" in there, picking off the enemy one at a time. I think these have been completely and deliberately removed from modern game design to prevent this type of strategy, plus the possibility of it offending some sensibilities (just like no one on TV or the movies ever has to go, unless its a plot point).

If true, the bolded is the worst kind of meta-design.

And if people's sensibilities are offended by the mere presence of a latrine, well... <<facepalm>> ...not much I can say there.

 

[Lanefan]

What I have seen is players moving their tokens all over the place and getting separated.

We run it that if you move (or don't move) your token, that's where your character is; and if it means people get separated then so be it. Then again, our parties often resemble non-herded cats anyway, so...

Same goes when using minis in real-life play.

 

[Lanefan]

What I don't like is after a certain point and size, a dungeon doesn't work the walk D&D sets them up as unless the inhabitants are of above average intelligence and have a lot of unused resources at their exposal. So you either end up with monsters who don't drain resources like they are supposed to OR engage the same tactics.

Basically once you dungeon has more than 2 floor, you have to go into WH40K Necromunda Hive City Gang Warfare mode in other to give the dungeon the variety of enemy resources, and tactics.

There's no gangs in the original Dark Tower (a pretty big dungeon crawl, for thems as haven't seen it) and yet there's no way you can say there's no variety in there!

 

[Lanefan]

I have been known for decades in my gaming circles for including fully usable toilet facilities (with different design and maybe a quest in itself for how to actually use it without public embarasment) in every single adventurable locale I create, be it a palace in The City of Brass or the Dungeon of the Ooze Overlord. If you gotta go you gotta go.

Nice.

The other thing I find many dungeon designers forget to include is something that was and-or still is a source of clear water for the occupants. Irrelevant if it's a tomb, of course, and the opposition are all undead; but any place with living occupants needs a water source.

 

[Minigiant]

There's no gangs in the original Dark Tower (a pretty big dungeon crawl, for thems as haven't seen it) and yet there's no way you can say there's no variety in there!

But how sensible were the inhabitants and architecture of the Dark Tower?

That's my point. Once a dungeon gets too a certain size it gets very gamey. Because there are few "sensible" reasons for large fun dungeons.

 

[iserith]

But how sensible were the inhabitants and architecture of the Dark Tower?

That's my point. Once a dungeon gets too a certain size it gets very gamey. Because there are few "sensible" reasons for large fun dungeons.

Yeah, I mean, we wouldn't want a dungeon to be fun.