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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The-Magic-Sword" data-source="post: 8983589" data-attributes="member: 6801252">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.</blockquote>

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