Dungeon Crawls

[LordEntrails]

Well, a Dungeon Crawl doesn't have to take place in a Mega Dungeon.

There are a hundred definitions of what a Dungeon Crawl is and another hundred defining a Mega Dungeon. And each of those definitions has as many connotations.

So, either of them can be great or horrible experiences. Like any scenario in an RPG, it depends on the GM and the players.

As to how do you get a party into a dungeon?
- Go get some treasure
- Go rescue the innocent captive
- Go get the legendary macguffin
- Go prevent the end of the world
- Thrown in a prison and find a secret passage
- Go kill the evil things that live there

As for railroading, a good dungeon (of any size) is not. Go read up on Jaquaying a Dungeon or Node Based Scenario Design.

[Tanarii]

On this, I refer y'all to B2: Keep on the Borderlands. Approached carefully, you can wind up with multiple small dungeon crawls that let the PCs take on a variety of foes.

A good dungeon crawl shouldn't be all combat, or even mostly combat.



Even a big dungeon should be like this.

I'd hesitate to hold up B2 as an example of a dungeon crawl done right, despite it being my go-to introductory dungeon for campaigns for many years, and having run through it myself, both in every edition of D&D to date except oD&D. Because it IS mostly combat. At least 90% of the adventure requires combat, unless your DM just lets you talk your way past all the different groups, which is very unlikely.

Not only that, it's combat against large heavily dug in groups that can, and if the DM is playing them right should, totally swamp any group of approrpiate level that tries to take them on. The only way to honestly beat the caves is to throw a bunch of Pcs at them until you weaken the monsters enough to finally have the latest batch of Pcs live. Or use the classic tactic of 3+ fighters/clerics ignobily die so 1 wizard can run away gaining all the XP for the adventure so far, until the wiZard gets high enough level to nuke enemies long enough to keep fighters/clerics alive.

Or just go in with 10+ Pcs and Henchmen. You'll still lose half though.

[Pex]

I like dungeon crawls, but not for the whole campaign. Dungeon crawls are board games in an RPG format. Combat, exploring, figuring out traps and puzzles are fun, but ultimately I want to play a character not a meeple. I want the game world to notice and care I was there.

[Tanarii]

I want the game world to notice and care I was there.

That's why I liked the BECMI approach, minutes the I (which I've never played). Or the 5e approach, since it lends itself to the same thing really.
Dungeon / local impact / Tier 1 -->
wilderness exploration / national impact / Tier 2 -->
Ruling / continental or world impact / Tier 3 -->
planar / tier 4

That allows you to start with Bob the Fighter 2, and eventually develop him through game play into Robert the Bruce, savior of all Scotland. Or whatever.

This just so happens to sync up nicely with my (incredibly biased) knee-jerk belief that backstory is stupid, and character motivations and developments in actual game play are everything.

[Corsair14]

As a one shotter or something to pass time if missing players, it is fun. Long term gets boring. This is coming from someone who loves reading mega dungeons.

[Eladrinblade]

Gonna chime in here.

I don't really care for megadungeons, but taking an icewind dale approach is fine with me. I think dungeoncrawls are the best part of D&D; the game isn't built too well for stuff outside of dungeons. You can do it, sure, but it shouldn't be the focus of a game. My problem is that most dungeons are lazily built. I've never played through one in a game that wasn't just a bunch of rooms and corridors, elder scrolls style, with a few more or less balanced encounters here and there, in one unorganized string.

However, I did have an idea for a game that drops the players in a dungeon, with no gear, at level 1, with amnesia, in a prison no less, in the sewers of a massive underdark dwarven city. The whole city had fallen some time ago and was basically several inter-connected dungeons with a few various "towns" of groups that inhabited it.

[ngilop]

...


My dungeon crawl experiences must be..wrong? or insert what ever term you want to use i guess.

I have never played a single game that was just 'roll roll roll the dice, now kill the dragon queen, murder-y murder-y, murder-y look at all the lewts' that people seem to be associating dungeon crawls with.

Mine have all had elements of intrigue, mystery, downtime for randoms whatevs, oh and combat. OF course combat.

If i played a game where it was just one thing over and over and over again, whether that thing be combat, social interaction, or prune farming... Id be bored as heck. I need me some variety.


I guess, and I know this is bad to say, but for me, if you are doing dungeon crawls and its just some guys throwing dice and screaming 'PHAT LOOTZ, YO'.. its probably being done wrong.

[RazorChain]

When I started with BECMI and then moved to 2e the standard game was centered around dungeons.

We played myriad of dungeons from modules and dungeon magazine. There was a plot and it ended in a dungeon in whatever shape or form (castle, lair, caverns, mansion etc)

But we got tired of the playstyle. Paranoid twits examining every nook and cranny with our 11' pole, treating everything as a potential trap and every wall as a potential secret door. Planning on how to carry our devalued currency out of hard to reach places, destabilizing the economy and causing massive inflation. Rinse and repeat.

Eight years later our group had given up and now we only dungeon delve when its appropriate in the context of the plot, which is rarely. Now we just kick down the door to the villains hideout instead of carefully checking EVERYTHING for traps before we scope out the room through a keyhole.

Instead of fighting our way room to room through labyrinthine complex to a showdown with the villain (what them youngsters call a "boss battle"), we just kinda shorten the process to maybe one fight before the showdown. This way we dont have to spend our precious gaming time on playing a paranoid guessing game with the GM on where he placed traps or endless combat. That means we can focus our time on things we think is more fun

[elanfanboy]

Ever read incarceron? Run sometging like that (ps its a book for those who havent read it)

[Jay R]

Massive dungeons can be fun but the problem is noise. When you have many side corridors and tons of rooms with a lot of encounters on any given level then when you start casting and banging metal on metal you should end up with tons of people running towards the sound.

If you hear the sound of battle, and run towards it, you will face whichever side won that battle - alert, focused, buff spells already active, and with their weapons ready.

Me, I'd run away. Let's go find somebody who's asleep.

People who are in it to try out new crazy combos or are murder hobos love dungeon crawling. Put them in a non-combat scenario and watch them play league of legends and leave the game early when the party doesn't encounter a combat encounter.

Some people are just in d&d to cause mass destruction and nothing else.

I agree that the game you describe would be boring. But since it isn't particularly about dungeon crawls, and doesn't describe the fun dungeon crawls I've played, that fact is irrelevant.

DMs who just run combat encounters for murder hoboes are running boring games, regardless of whether the PCs have a roof over their heads.

[Frozen_Feet]

If you hear the sound of battle, and run towards it, you will face whichever side won that battle - alert, focused, buff spells already active, and with their weapons ready.

Or wounded, exhausted, their buff spells already expiring, their best attack spells already spent, and distracted due to looting corpses of the fallen.

It's a great opportunity to cease. Of course, everyone else also knows that. So it's not the victors I'd be worried about. It's the other opportunists. Which is not an issue if they're most likely your allies.

[Psikerlord]

I like for there to be some kind of megadungeon available to go explore in the sandbox, as one option among many.

I very much however dislike the "you're sealed in the dungeon, now you have to spend the next 20 sessions finding a way out..." scenario. Unless that is the upfront campaign buy in - eg: we're doing Escape from Undermountian or whatever. Then ok I know where it's all going and will make an appropriate PC.

[LibraryOgre]

I very much however dislike the "you're sealed in the dungeon, now you have to spend the next 20 sessions finding a way out..." scenario. Unless that is the upfront campaign buy in - eg: we're doing Escape from Undermountian or whatever. Then ok I know where it's all going and will make an appropriate PC.

Or a highly INAPPROPRIATE PC.

"We're doing Escape from Undermountain."
"Ok, I'm playing... Milbo Maggins."
"Why is a homebody gentlehobbit stuck in Undermountain?"
"That's your job to figure out, screen-monkey. I'm going to bemoan the loss of my handkerchief."

[Eradis]

I'm just wondering how people feel about Dungeon Crawl campaigns. By that, I mean the kind where the whole campaign is about navigating through a massive dungeon.

In my opinion, one of the benefits of Dungeon Crawl campaigns is that player characters begin straight into the adventure. Though one of downsides to that is that it would kind of be like railroading. Also, aside from "you all wake up in a room with no memory of who you are, or how you got there", I can't think of many other reasons how the party got into the dungeon and why.

So, what do you think?

I wouldn't mind a Dungeon Crawl with a pinch of RP elements. Pure dungeon-crawling becomes heavy to play as you keep doing pretty much the same things. Of course you test your skills in many different circumstances, which is nice, but adding just a touch of role play element would make it feel more like the players are achieving something. To keep it like, a concept such as "How to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon" or "Tower of [I don't remember the tower's name]", would be good example on how it could be made. In those settings, you are mostly an adventurers trying to reach the top of the tower, or bottom of the dungeon or whatever place you want to crawl to achieve something big. Either it be preventing the waking demon to destroy the world or unlock a new region for the community to expand (like in Sword Art Online (even though they were fighting for their freedom, it did unlock new regions that offered the adventurers new gear options)).

[Glorthindel]

Massive dungeons can be fun but the problem is noise. When you have many side corridors and tons of rooms with a lot of encounters on any given level then when you start casting and banging metal on metal you should end up with tons of people running towards the sound. Temple of Elemental Evil and the huge Undermountain in Waterdeep are two fairly bad ones at this. They always seem poorly designed due to that problem. I much prefer a huge cave system with long distances between areas and a reason for all the things living there to work together.

I played through the Temple of Elemental Evil (well, the Hackmaster variation, Temple of Existential Evil) with a DM that believed strongly in "realistic reactions to noisy characters banging around" and frequently took part in pitched mixed-direction battles (it helped that we were all lugging around 2-3 henchmen alongside our main characters).

I can't remember which floor it was (but it had a Purple Worm on it!), but on one lower floor we ended up taking on the entire floors worth of monsters in a single pitched battle. Fortunately I was playing a Mage and had been hoarding a few one-shot magic items (I was rapid-firing beads of force at one point), and really had to dig deep in the bag of tricks, but it was a phenomenal encounter.

[Ezeze]

unlike what people above suggest, you can put nearly any sort of roleplaying event in a megadungeon. A megadungeon isn't just a series of obstacles, it is an environment. But, the most important sort of roleplaying in such an environment is within the party. It's in dealing with the fact that in a megadungeon, you'll be spending days, possibly weeks, of time in confined spaces with freaks you opted to call your party members. Confined, dark, hostile places. Don't let your players forget this. I repeat: don't let your players forget this. The key to good roleplaying in a megadungeon setting is everyone remaining aware of the basic horror of the situation. Interactions with whatever lives in the pit are secondary.

Oh man, if someone actually ran a dungeon crawl this way (and the other PCs were on board and enthusiastic) I might actually enjoy it.

Which would be a first for me. I've been playing Dungeons and Dragons for better than a decade now and have yet to have fun on a dungeon crawl.

I've also yet to have fun running a pre-published module and for the same reason; roleplaying falls flat if no one and nothing you are interacting with responds at all in any meaningful way.

[Aliquid]

I'm just wondering how people feel about Dungeon Crawl campaigns. By that, I mean the kind where the whole campaign is about navigating through a massive dungeon.

In my opinion, one of the benefits of Dungeon Crawl campaigns is that player characters begin straight into the adventure. Though one of downsides to that is that it would kind of be like railroading. Also, aside from "you all wake up in a room with no memory of who you are, or how you got there", I can't think of many other reasons how the party got into the dungeon and why.

So, what do you think?

If you are looking for an old-school hack and slash campaign of "kill monsters, collect loot, level up, kill bigger monsters", then you don't need a reason to go into the dungeon. If the players want and need a reason, then they aren't the type of players that would enjoy this type of campaign in the first place. As someonenoone11 said:

People who are in it to try out new crazy combos or are murder hobos love dungeon crawling. Put them in a non-combat scenario and watch them play league of legends and leave the game early when the party doesn't encounter a combat encounter.

Some people are just in d&d to cause mass destruction and nothing else.

Now on the other hand if you want to make an interesting adventure for people who want to role-play rather than just roll-play... then it would be a bit more challenging to make a Dungeon Crawl campaign. As a player I would have trouble immersing myself into the story unless the massive dungeon actually made sense. i.e. how do things stay alive down there? How does the ecosystem work? What creature is on the bottom of the food chain, and what does it eat? What resources exist within the dungeon, and how do other resources get brought in?

If it is just hack and slash, you suspend your disbelief and ignore such things.

[Jonagel]

For all the naysayers: you don't have enough imagination! ;)

I highly recommend this journal to give you an idea of what a Mega Dungeon could be...one of the best I have read! It goes for weeks/months and develops quite the story/characters. Some might say this goes beyond a Mega Dungeon.

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showt...ghlight=cattle

[Tanarii]

Role playing is making decisions for your fictional character in the fictional environment.

Dungeon crawling involves lots of decisions. Three are plenty of roleplaying opportunities.

[Aliquid]

Role playing is making decisions for your fictional character in the fictional environment.

Dungeon crawling involves lots of decisions. Three are plenty of roleplaying opportunities.

If your definition of role playing is "everything that takes place in a RPG is role playing" then yes... clearly there will be plenty of opportunities, by definition. And technically you would be correct.

There are different styles of play, and defining those "styles" is difficult, as nobody will agree on what they are. There is the old "role-play vs roll-play", which admittedly is a crude breakdown that isn't technically correct, but it makes a point. There is the GNS theory which is more nuanced, but implies things are mutually exclusive when they really aren't. There are terms like power-gamer, munchkin, min-maxer, thespian etc. which all have a derogatory feel to them... the list goes on. The biggest problem though is that many gamers seem to have the attitude that their "style" is the only "correct" way of playing a RPG.

Creating an entertaining "Massive Dungeon Crawl" game will be a different task depending on which "style" of play you and the players are going for.

[War_lord]

Role playing is making decisions for your fictional character in the fictional environment.

Dungeon crawling involves lots of decisions. Three are plenty of roleplaying opportunities.

Contrary to your special definitions. "Is the chest or the door the mimic" is not a roleplaying decision.

[Tinkerer]

One thing that I've definitely picked up on over the years is that the type of dungeon which strains credulity the most tends to be the "average dungeon" where you have a variety of forces crammed into a smallish space. I've pretty much abandoned them entirely in favour of either quick small dungeons where there is a small force or maybe one or two threats inside or expansive mega-dungeons which take at least two sessions to go through and have enough space that there can be a variety of creatures inside without them stepping on each other's toes.

[Anonymouswizard]

Role playing is making decisions for your fictional character in the fictional environment.

Dungeon crawling involves lots of decisions. Three are plenty of roleplaying opportunities.

Yes and no.

Dungeon crawling can involve a lot of roleplaying, working out the reasons why our character chooses the decisions they do, building up the increasing madness as the dungeon takes it's toll, and so on. But I've basically never seen it. It's why I abandoned dungeons in my games, it gives players a wider variety of situations to roleplay in.

Contrary to your special definitions. "Is the chest or the door the mimic" is not a roleplaying decision.

True, it's the thirty minutes of existential dread over how many monsters there are that disguise themselves as the room. Then the next session we discovered the walls were moving.

[War_lord]

True, it's the thirty minutes of existential dread over how many monsters there are that disguise themselves as the room. Then the next session we discovered the walls were moving.

And that session of jokingly panicking over old school dungeon tropes did have the accidental side effect of really getting across to me how playing those tropes straight drags the game down to a crawl.

[Anonymouswizard]

And that session of jokingly panicking over old school dungeon tropes did have the accidental side effect of really getting across to me how playing those tropes straight drags the game down to a crawl.

Yeah, made me have more respect for the ten foot pole though, even if two of us still fell into the pit trap.

[kyoryu]

Contrary to your special definitions. "Is the chest or the door the mimic" is not a roleplaying decision.

No, but I'd argue that "You're pretty sure that either the chest or the door is a mimic, but you're unsure which one it is. What do you do?" is.

Do you attack? Retreat? Try to probe? Send a hireling? Just say "screw it" and open one of them up? These are all character-dependent decisions.

[FreddyNoNose]

I like for there to be some kind of megadungeon available to go explore in the sandbox, as one option among many.

I very much however dislike the "you're sealed in the dungeon, now you have to spend the next 20 sessions finding a way out..." scenario. Unless that is the upfront campaign buy in - eg: we're doing Escape from Undermountian or whatever. Then ok I know where it's all going and will make an appropriate PC.

Can I assume you like the version of Let's Make a Deal, where you know what is behind the curtains before you make a choice............................

[Tanarii]

If your definition of role playing is "everything that takes place in a RPG is role playing" then yes... clearly there will be plenty of opportunities, by definition. And technically you would be correct.

Not everything. Just the things that require making decisions for the question "what do you do", and what you do making a difference in the situation.

There are different styles of play, and defining those "styles" is difficult, as nobody will agree on what they are. There is the old "role-play vs roll-play", which admittedly is a crude breakdown that isn't technically correct, but it makes a point. There is the GNS theory which is more nuanced, but implies things are mutually exclusive when they really aren't. There are terms like power-gamer, munchkin, min-maxer, thespian etc. which all have a derogatory feel to them... the list goes on. The biggest problem though is that many gamers seem to have the attitude that their "style" is the only "correct" way of playing a RPG.

Creating an entertaining "Massive Dungeon Crawl" game will be a different task depending on which "style" of play you and the players are going for.

Absolutely. Point was that "roll play vs role play" is a BS, because it is attempting to define a subset of roleplaying as wrong, and another subset as "true" roleplaying.

Contrary to your special definitions. "Is the chest or the door the mimic" is not a roleplaying decision.

No, but I'd argue that "You're pretty sure that either the chest or the door is a mimic, but you're unsure which one it is. What do you do?" is.

Do you attack? Retreat? Try to probe? Send a hireling? Just say "screw it" and open one of them up? These are all character-dependent decisions.

Yup. Roleplaying isn't just developing your character, although that's fun and I enjoy it. It isn't just funny voices and talk-time, although both of those can be fun, and I enjoy them. It's often to my own surprise in the case of other players doing funny voices, but they do also have their own special benefit of making you think of the player in front of you as something different from who they actually are.

But what's at the core of all Roleplaying is making decisions for what your character does, and having meaningful things happen as a result, both good and bad. And dungeon crawls give lots of opportunity for that. Often a quite intense amount of them.

[Tinkerer]

Can I assume you like the version of Let's Make a Deal, where you know what is behind the curtains before you make a choice............................

Kinda a poor example there. I can't think of anyone who wouldn't want to know what's behind the curtain first in that particular scenario unless you are obscenely rich. It would be boring for spectators to watch but in terms of which situation I'd rather be in it's quite an easy choice.

[Aliquid]

Not everything. Just the things that require making decisions for the question "what do you do", and what you do making a difference in the situation.

But by that definition, I'm role-playing when I play Monopoly. You are playing the role of a landlord and make decisions on what sort of business transactions you should make. Or even more-so, the game Clue.