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<blockquote data-quote="TiQuinn" data-source="post: 9615553" data-attributes="member: 4871">I think what we're coming down to is that dungeon or adventure design has to match the expectations of the system and the genre that it's trying to emulate.We're playing Mothership now, which is notionally considered part of the OSR. It's sci-fi horror, meant to emulate the kind of horror that you'd find in Alien. The PCs are overmatched by the monsters they're encountering, the environment is extremely hostile, and the &quot;dungeon&quot; itself can be an adversary in that the spaceship has entered a self-destruct countdown, or is derelict, falling apart, and actively dangerous, etc. The game is deadly, and it's expected that PCs will die either through bad luck of the roll or bad decisions, but that's also totally in keeping with the theme of the game, and character generation is incredibly quick - most of the adventures provide means for alternate characters to enter the game at any point so no player is ever out of the game for very long. My character died last night, and I had a new one ready before the fight that killed him was over. That's a wholly different game than 5e, or 13th Age or even Dungeon World (which is still pretty quick chargen) where the characters are competent heroes that aren't expected to die at any second. And yet, the actually design of dungeon levels between the two are not that different, or if they are it's deliberately themed to the game and to be expected by the players. The challenges may be different, but in most modern games, and I'm meaning modern whether it's an OSR/NSR system like Mothership or Shadowdark, or it's a 5e-based game, there's an expectation that the information that the PCs have will be enough to be able to know what lies ahead, i.e. there's not really any &quot;Gotchas&quot; as there may have been in the past.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="TiQuinn, post: 9615553, member: 4871"] I think what we're coming down to is that dungeon or adventure design has to match the expectations of the system and the genre that it's trying to emulate. We're playing Mothership now, which is notionally considered part of the OSR. It's sci-fi horror, meant to emulate the kind of horror that you'd find in Alien. The PCs are overmatched by the monsters they're encountering, the environment is extremely hostile, and the "dungeon" itself can be an adversary in that the spaceship has entered a self-destruct countdown, or is derelict, falling apart, and actively dangerous, etc. The game is deadly, and it's expected that PCs will die either through bad luck of the roll or bad decisions, but that's also totally in keeping with the theme of the game, and character generation is incredibly quick - most of the adventures provide means for alternate characters to enter the game at any point so no player is ever out of the game for very long. My character died last night, and I had a new one ready before the fight that killed him was over. That's a wholly different game than 5e, or 13th Age or even Dungeon World (which is still pretty quick chargen) where the characters are competent heroes that aren't expected to die at any second. And yet, the actually design of dungeon levels between the two are not that different, or if they are it's deliberately themed to the game and to be expected by the players. The challenges may be different, but in most modern games, and I'm meaning modern whether it's an OSR/NSR system like Mothership or Shadowdark, or it's a 5e-based game, there's an expectation that the information that the PCs have will be enough to be able to know what lies ahead, i.e. there's not really any "Gotchas" as there may have been in the past. [/QUOTE]

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