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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7325246" data-attributes="member: 42582">That's largely what I had in mind in my OP, with one caveat - I was focusing on the GM creating the setting in advance of play.I agree. The dungeon is a paradigm of setting.Gygax talks about this stuff in his DMG, yes. I can't remember what B2 says about it.Referring back to some of the points I tried to make in the OP, I think this starts to bump into the limits of effective dungeon play as Gygax himself describes and advocates for in the closing pages (prior to the appendices) of his PHB.For instance, the advice in those closing pages takes for granted that the PCs can enter the dungeon, engage in scouting, learn stuff about it (including the locations of "placed" or "permanent" dungeon denizens, their treaures, etc) and then leave and come back. So on the scouting foray, the spell load-out is lots of divination magic, the approach to encounters is to evade or parley, etc; whereas when the PCs come back to carry out the assault, the spell load-out is more offensive in nature, and the PCs are ready to beat up on the monster if it doesn't hand over its treasure!The more the GM runs the dungeon as a "living, breathing world" the less feasible the approach to play just described becomes, because - as a practical matter - it becomes impossible for the players to make rational plans, choose rational spell load outs, realise the fruits of their scouting, etc.Of course, the relatively static dungeon, whose ecology makes little sense and where dungeon denizens hang out waiting to be raided, is artifical at best and absurd at worst. These pressures of "verisimilitude" seem to have grown over time, and clearly inform Gygax's remarks on how dungeon denizens will respond to raiders; he also (as best I can judge) wants to make planning for, and responding to, denizens' responses itself an element of skilled play. But taken in its natural directions, this move towards verisimilitude creates puzzles/challenges that are, in practical terms, not reliably beatable through skill. Eg if the PCs raid the orcs, and beat up on the orc's ogre friend; and the GM decides that the ogre has a family who will mourn him/her and come to join the orcs to help beat up on these hubristic raiders; well, how can the players reasonably plan for that eventuality?This is why I think that, once we look at a game like Runequest, or most contemporary D&D games, where the scope of play (in terms of NPCs, geography, locations, etc) is more-or-less boundless, the setting can't be doing the same sort of work it was doing back then. It's not a puzzle/maze for the players to unravel and beat through skillled play. It's something else - to the extent that some consensus is emerging in this thread, it's a source of context/meaning for play; and also a source of tools/resources/"levers" for the players to deploy in their play of their PCs.Hopefully what I have said just above in response to Jester David provides some further clarity here.Early dungeons had NPCs, but their presentation, motivations etc were extremely narrow compared to even the crasser pulp literature. And, as [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] said, often their reactions were randomly determined (or there might be a note: "attacks anyone wearing the helmet taken from the altar in room 10", but otherwise reactions are random). Thus they are part of the "puzzle" to be dealt with. (I can't comment on ToEE, but what I've said seems true of Lareth the Beautiful in T1, and is true of the NPCs who populate the modules in early White Dwarf magazines, in X2 Castle Amber, in B2 Keep on the Borderland, and other early modules I'm familiar with.)But as soon as we suppose that the thief who lives in room 6 on the 2nd level can, if the GM thinks it makes sense, call upon his brethren in the Thieves' Guild, the situation becomes on that is so open-ended in its parameters that, as a practical matter, I don't see how players are supposed to map it out (literally and metaphorically) and then beat it in the way that Gygax talks about in his PHB.</blockquote>

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