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

[iserith]

could also be failure of the source material to communicate adequately. Or failure of the source material to present that info in-game adequately. I suppose it depends a good deal on where you sit. DM, player, writer, artist.

Possibly, but I think the source material we have for D&D 5e contains a lot of different examples of dungeons, what they were built for originally, and what they are used for now. From even just there, the mind races thinking of all sorts of other fantastical possiblities - a manifestation of a dying god's fever dream, a part of the world so corrupted the realm itself has made of it something of an abscess, a crashed spaceship buried under rock (heck yeah!), a power plant from a lost civilization in the form of a pyramid. Sky's the limit!

 

[rmcoen]

Where I find these sorts of concerns curious is that in a game based on make-believe, we can just make up how the dungeon got there and what it was once used for (or anything else about it), so isn't this sort of admitting to a failure of imagination?

Not at all - rather, I need to exercise my imagination to justify in my own head and understanding. Because I guarantee my players will ask backstory questions about it (especially if I didn't work it out!). My players are almost all "engineers" by background and personality, they want to know how things work.

And in turn, my campaigns are presented as "living" worlds, where things happen whether they are present to see them or not. They came back from a three-week trip (to that tower with the rift, in this case) to find the town they had left from had been captured by goblins in the meantime. Cue multiple sessions of guerrilla warfare culminating in a grand battle to recapture the town! But while they were busy doing that, political maneuvering farther into the kingdom embroiled two of the PCs' fathers in an international conflict (hence their interest in rescuing this noble, to get involved in that issue). The PCs' efforts earlier in the campaign led to some large troop movements, some losses, and thus when they came back to their home base, they heard about a massive military recruiting effort by the local Baron. Is he gathering troops to restock after losses, or to get involved in the growing political turmoil?

Then my players take things further, and wonder if that tower they cleared out to the north can be used by the Baron as a military post? (Yes, the PCs worked out how to shut down the power source for the automated defenses.) What about that village of undead they cleared, the one with fresh water... is it safe enough for a logistics staging base? (No, the PCs worked out how the goblin army uses it - indeed, used it to take that other town recently.)

They put together rumors from three places, and their understanding of the economy of the local Barony, to figure out the missing "traveler" was actually a key noble in the area, and that going to rescue him would be good. And the guide the noble hired was the "right guy for the job" because of his burnberry harvesting area in the swamps... and the guide the party hired, his rival, was clearly the second-best guy.

So yeah, in this game about make-believe and pretend, I need to understand in my own head why this "dungeon" (in any form) is there for the PCs to explore. And why it hasn't been cleared out already - or how it changed/recovered from being cleared out. And where the bathrooms are....

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

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

So my priors is that I now mainly play Pathfinder 2e, but played 5e up until 2019, and before that played 4e.

For me, Dungeons are really nice because they're intuitively constrained adventuring locations-- you aren't in an area like a forest or a field where the terrain is wide open, the dungeon is instead a network of rooms and corridors so they can be designed with intentionality, and players can explore them naturally via clear decision points "this corridor, that corridor, follow the path as it curves north, take the secret passage" but when you design them they can have flexibility so that players don't have to follow a single route, you can write in extras, secrets for them to find. That's another thing I'm big on, in the fantasy genre Dungeons are heavily associated with secret knowledge and treasure, so in tandem with what I said before about clear decision points and flexibility they present an excellent stage for that fantasy to play out by giving the space resolution, which is possible because the actual space the player has to worry about it is limited. Ironically for how I led this off, I'm a bit radical on the definition, a forest can be a dungeon if it's built around paths-- you just need to figure out what happens when the players try to go cross country, but say, if you have a mechanic that defines where they can end up, the playable space is similarly constrained to offer the same benefits as a more conventional dungeon. In that sense it should also be understood that any space with that degree of resolution, especially those packed with 'content' to engage with, can be a dungeon-- the prince's birthday party at the palace can be a dungeon, featuring NPCs hanging out in different areas, rooms you can sneak into or loot you can steal.

As a player, they're fun but I haven't been able to play with anyone else who really embraced their potential.

As a DM, I try to think of a strong concept, and then embrace the implications of the concept to help me generate ideas, Pathfinder 2e is nice because it gives me clear ideas of how much treasure to give, and there can be plenty of magic items. Honestly, I wish I had more resources that were discussing cool structures, puzzles, and ideas for actually laying out and doing interesting things in dungeons, I can come up with some but its where a lot of my mental heavy lifting comes in because the current zeitgeist is sort of against dungeons-- so the advice actually seems to minimize dungeons-- its more about getting in and out, a nice clean plot resolving with a boss battle, some tips to make things seem more realistic, but not enough about the meat and potatoes about interesting dungeon structures and how encounters, traps, and secrets should fit into them.

 

[Blue]

So you've decided to play this game called Dungeons & Dragons. But, perhaps after some experience with the game, you've decided you don't like dungeons. I feel like I see this a lot in various online discussions and I find it unusual to take a stance against the very thing the game was seemingly designed around and still continue playing it.

The game has changed since Basic D&D back in the 1980s. A game originally focused on dungeons now has a much wider focus. The brand is well known, keeping the word Dungeon in it makes sense from a marketing perspective. But the game is about more now then when that name was picked.

While the game can feature adventure locations and situations that aren't or don't involve dungeons, what is it specifically about dungeons that you don't like? When you hear that it's time for a "dungeon crawl," what sort of negative things does that conjure in your mind? If you're a DM, why do you avoid running dungeons in your own games?

As a DM, I do include "Five Room Dungeons", which need not be actual dungeons and almost never are in my campaign. I've found my players have no patience for a multiple session (we play 2 hours on a weeknight) dungeon crawl if done with any regularity. For one-shots it's a different thing, where the self-contained nature fo a dungeon can work well. But I think over the three year (so far) length of my current 5e campaign I've had four "dungeons" total, and only one of them was more than six locations. Giant acid ant hive, "haunted" crashed Spelljammer Nautiloid, and the Imperial Catecombs. Okay, only three. There was a Red Dragon Lair, but it was mostly skill checks to find their way through to a portal to the Feywild before the dragon got back, so it what was played was one portal-puzzle room.

 

[Malmuria]

A dungeon that I liked: Winter's Daughter by Necrotic Gnome

Why I liked it:

• strong theme (star crossed lovers, faerie connections)
• holistic and interconnected environment (about 15 total rooms or spaces)
• combat possible but not necessary
• traps and social interactions that require skill but also match whimsical theme
• no singular "ending" or story outcome

Play report:

The 1st level characters came to this tomb looking for a ring to bring back to the town's wizard. So, graverobbing. They couldn't get through the front door but they found a side entrance on the top of the burial mound. Through some careful prodding via a dropped oil flask, they were able to discover the movement-detecting worms before they entered; they took care of said worms with some more oil and some fire.

once inside, a series of events

• discovered the sacred and valuable relics of a monk, along with a book telling of the story of a famous knight that fought against the faerie
• a neutral character tried to pick up a sacred candlestick, which then animated and started attacking said character until the friar/cleric character broke it up.
• the wizard was frozen solid by a mirror and had to be melted by the aforementioned candlestick
• murals were discovered of a knight and his two hounds (the clue to a puzzle in a different room)
• an encounter with dancing skeletons that party attacked (even though they didn't need to). One of the effects of the skeleton attacks was to make the characters float
• an encounter with the ghost of the knight. They found the ring they were looking for but the knight wants them to deliver it to a princess in the faeire. They could have just left with the ring but they are nice people.
• wander into the faeire
• made to eat magic mushrooms by a goblin, with wild effects
• deliver ring, unite lovers, secretly invite the enmity of a faerie prince

 

[gorice]

Random encounters are definitely covered in the DMG. Time is somewhat lacking in rules depth, but only to the extent that they leave it to the DM to decide what is important to them there. (I run exploration in 10 minute turns, for example.) For spells, it's as easy as removing the ones that obviate the sort of challenges you'd rather the players deal with in some other way.

I very rarely run D&D 5e "as is" for any adventure, including dungeons, since I like to make adjustments to support the theme or setting. So I have the same expectation when running dungeons. If I want it to be more old school survival horror, for example, I'm going to turn on Variant Encumbrance, tie eating rations to rests, take away spells that create light, and so on. A system that purports to be anything to everybody will always require some modification to get it where it needs to be for a specific game in my view.

I think what you're saying is actually supporting my point. What you're describing is a bunch of game design you've done to make dungeons work.

 

[iserith]

I think what you're saying is actually supporting my point. What you're describing is a bunch of game design you've done to make dungeons work.

I would say the game design is done and for this it's now adjusting dials or turning options on or off.

 

[gorice]

I would say the game design is done and for this it's now adjusting dials or turning options on or off.

I think you're giving yourself too little credit, and the game text too much. It's a common sentiment, though.

 

[Lanefan]

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.

I'm just getting done writing a "funhouse" dungeon - it's the last of a connected string of five adventures where each one quite intentionally gets a bit less sane and-or sensible than the previous - and even there I try to at least throw a veneer of sense on top of it...




...well, except for the bits that are in there just for the sheer merry hell of it.

 

[Lanefan]

Nevin, I'm totally with you here. This is the key thought that drives all my designs/maps/"dungeons". If it's a true dungeon - why was this underground prison built, and why here? (secret research base around the dragon skeleton, with a fort to protect the researchers) If it's a tower in the middle of nowhere, why was it built way out here? (because this is where the planar rift was discovered) If it's a converted mine, what were the miners mining? And why was it converted to [insert thing here]? And so on.

Thing to consider IMO and IME is not just why it was built in the first place but a) what it's been used for since and b) how those intervening occupants might have changed and-or expanded the place.

An example might be a site that is now a big underground dungeon-like complex with limited if any footprint on the surface.

1000 years ago some noble (or high-level 1e Fighter!) bulit a stronghold or castle here, complete with a small underground prison complex and a bigger underground tomb for the family (a la Winterfell).

800 years ago that castle got sacked; shortly after this a large colony of Orcs moved in. Orcs are pretty good diggers, and expanded the undergound bits considerably to allow families to live in different rooms, all the while letting the surface castle degrade and eventually fall into ruin.

500 years ago the Orcs got wiped out by disease.

450 years ago some locals started stripping stones from the surface ruins to use in other building elsewhere. Meanwhile a Necromancer caught wind of the place, quietly moved into the underground bits, and was thrilled to find lots of dead Orcs in there plus some older bones from the original tomb. The Necromancer hired a friendly MU to cast some well-placed Disintegrate spells in order to join the old Orc warrens with the older tombs, then hired some Dwarves to shore it all up and dig out a lower level for use as a spell testing range.

410 years ago the Necromancer died, but that didn't stop him: he's a lich now. Also, by now there's pretty well nothing left of the surface ruins other than a few foundations that refuse to grow over; down through one of these leads a set of half-choked stairs, once the entrance to the family tombs.

And so today you've got a dungeon complex whose construction and layout, when mapped, on first glance don't make sense.