As someone with a roughly 50/50 split in their GMing/player career, I can say that I enjoy many types of adventuring sequences in fantasy RPGs.(I also tend towards more outright heroic, high powered, high fantasy in general.)
I like investigation, be it of murders or cosmic mysteries. I like intrigue and infiltration, including heists.
I like politics that are presented intuitively. I like establishing rapport with NPC friends.
I like a good, tactically engaging combat.
I like exploration, both urban and wilderness. I like uncovering grand secrets and relics from ancient ruins.
What I cannot abide, as far as adventure types are concerned, is D&D-style (specifically that) dungeon crawling.
I dislike how it requires much more of a convoluted premise and suspension of disbelief than virtually any other type of adventure sequence.
I dislike how it promotes an extremely paranoid and cautious style of gameplay that has to be met with mostly "You discover no traps or threats" here from the GM.
I dislike how the vast majority of "discoveries" made in a dungeon are for the purpose of "How we can not get killed" or "How we can best kill the inhabitants" rather than anything that leads to further investigation into the overall setting or storyline.
I dislike how it sometimes becomes a challenge of how to circumvent an entire setpiece with a "cleverly" used ability.
I dislike how monsters essentially have to act as if programmed into a "stealth" video game with wildly disbelief-stretching behavior and grouping.
I dislike how each individual "scene" in a dungeon has far less of a chance to be meaningful to the in-progress campaign story than scenes in other adventure sequences.
The above factors have their place in other types of sequences, like heists, but the way they fit together in D&D-style dungeon crawls in such a strange and unappealing way. So then: how would you build a better dungeon crawl that can actually address the issues above and provide an engaging experience?
tl;dr
>>46821782
tl;dr how do you make dungeon crawls more interesting than death-making xp-full lootboxes?
Ultimately a dungeon is probably going to be an affair where a group is going room to room dealing with whatever is in said room to progress.
You can implement the best design you can and have more than just random hack and slash combat and death traps everywhere, but.
Ultimately though it's still going to be an affair where a group is slowly exploring an area for whatever reason.
>>46821749
I'll try to explain some of my thoughts on dungeons.
Traps should be placed where it makes sense, e.g. outside the lairs of intelligent monsters (kobolds might set up a trap to keep out intruders). I've never been a fan of randomly placed traps - they foster that paranoia you mentioned.
Monster encounters in a dungeon shouldn't all be "balanced" nor should they all be fights to the death. Monsters might be cautious at first - trying to scare PCs away via intimidation. Or if they're cowardly monsters, maybe they retreat as soon as the PCs show hostile intent. Particularly powerful monsters might not be surmountable foes for the PCs at their current level, so they'd need to flee (maybe the dragon can't fit in some of the smaller dungeon corridors).
Discoveries should include things like NPCs to provide flavor and information (a sad ghost, a treasure hunter, a demon trapped inside a binding circle) and secrets that observant players may notice (false walls hiding treasure, an alternate path, a hidden room containing the journal of a character from the setting's history).
A good dungeon doesn't have "setpieces" or "scenes"; instead it presents a complex with multiple paths that the players can explore at their own pace. It shouldn't be a murder-hole, but a puzzle that reacts to the PCs' actions. If a player uses an ability cleverly, good on them for thinking outside the box. They should be rewarded.
Dungeon crawling shouldn't be for the purpose of "clearing" the dungeon. That's boring and tedious. Instead, the PCs should have a goal to accomplish in the dungeon. In pre-3.x DnD, it was to get phat loot. Fighting was secondary, even something to be avoided in favor of sweet dosh (this is because XP was primarily based off of loot recovered instead of monsters slain). In other systems, phat loot still works, but story reasons are likely more satisfying - find a kid that got lost in the caves, grab a macguffin before the bad guy does, that sort of thing.
>>46821749
Dungeon Meshi
>>46825630
If you have a good DM who like food, maybe.
>>46821824
This is not quite my line of inquiry.
>>46822107
While this is true, it should be noted that D&D-style dungeon crawling operates on an extremely specific set of internal logic and expectations quite different from anything else.
Compare them to heists, for instance.
Heists encourage planning (to the point of casing the joint well in advance before returning later and making an attempt at breaching it in earnest) and trickery. The heist itself should be executed in a fast-paced manner. The characters ideally know precisely where they are going. Combat should be avoided, or otherwise handled extremely swiftly and discreetly.
D&D-style dungeon crawls promote a large amount of paranoia and a vague medley of other practices. Progressing through such a dungeon is a slow-paced affair. The party might not know precisely what they are aiming for with the dungeon, and even if they do, they will spend quite some time meandering around to find it. Combat is the order of the day, and enemies must either act like they belong in a "stealth" video game, or immediately raise an alarm and swarm all over the party (which makes engaging in any noisy combat a loss condition for the party).
>>46822767
Your advice on traps is sound. That said, even entrance traps challenge my suspension of disbelief; it almost always seems preferable to install a bypassable, sturdy barrier instead.
I am more of a "combat as sport" fan than a "combat as war" fan, so you and I will never agree on how encounters should be built. However, I always believe that players should be given plenty of in-character tools to accurately gauge an enemy's threat level (some systems even build this into the default options), such that they can make properly informed decisions. A party cannot be faulted for acting on reasonable assumptions that are then turned around, such as a lowly octet of skeleton guards actually being masterful lich gishes.
>>46822767
I prefer for major discoveries to have weight outside of the current location as well. In D&D-style dungeons, discoveries tend to be purely "local" and grounded in "How we can not get killed" or "How we can best kill the inhabitants," which I dislike.
By this:
>I dislike how it sometimes becomes a challenge of how to circumvent an entire setpiece with a "cleverly" used ability.
What I mean is that in a scenario like a heist, players are expected to figure out a way to bypass a major obstacle before them.
In a D&D-style dungeon crawl, it takes on a more "meta" atmosphere, where the GM has a given setup for a series of rooms (or the entire dungeon) in mind. The players try to take glee in bypassing it all with a Passwall, an ability that makes them incorporeal/ethereal, or something similar, as if to rebelliously go "Ha, we got past it without entertaining your stupid idea!"
A story-based reason to trawl through a dungeon is all well and dandy, but when the players do not have a solid location for their quarry, it tends to result in the dungeon having to be cleared out anyway. Also:
>this is because XP was primarily based off of loot recovered instead of monsters slain
This is, for the most part, untrue in 2e.
>>46821749
Dungeon Meshi is a pretty good manga about a Dungeon Crawl. It's still pretty tropey in alot of ways, but they do go through some effort to explain why the dungeon is there and works the way it does, as well as making the plot more than a kill-fest.
The dungeon in Dungeon Meshi there is less of a "dungeon" and more a city that's been sunken into the ground by power magic. The monsters within the dungeon are more like part of an ecosystem than a strategically organized RTS game.
Magi is also another series that does dungeons well, at least in the context of it's setting. The dungeons in Magi ARE pretty much DnD-style death-fortresses meant to kill the characters... but within the context of the Magi universe itself, Dungeons serve as a "testing ground" of sorts. The whole reason dungeons exist at all is so otherworldly beings can "test" those they think are suitable to become leaders of the world. Ironically the purpose of these dungeons isn't actually to kill everyone who enters (although a good deal of them do this), but to see how the people who enter react under stress and life-threatening situations and to weed out those who's values don't match the values of the Djin who created the dungeon. Those who conquer a dungeon get a magic item (really a tool from the "old world") that's supposed to help them as a leader later on (although not all characters go into a dungeon wanting to be a leader of some kind. For example, later on there's a particular dungeon with a tool that has healing properties, and if someone important to you is possibly dying, that looks pretty appealing whether you wana be a king or not.)
>>46821749
A while back, I tried to make a ~750 room dungeon for crawling in. It was literally a campaign crawl.
>dungeon had unique areas to explore (Egyptian tomb themed area, arcane study themed area, sunken swamp area where a stream drained into)
>the dungeon had multiple different denizens
>each group (from goblins to fae to necromancers) had a reason for being there
>each unique area and group tied into a backstory as to what was going on in the past and present (great flower area had a poisonous growth leeching onto it, goblin area was a mine searching for shiny relics)
>It was obvious where one area ended, and why it ended. (one corner of the goblins' progress was halted by a 'shiny statue' imbued with death magic, goblins that had gotten past previous traps were too foolish to avoid touching it, the few that made it past the room died to traps/another progress halter for them involved a lost owlbear who had taken up residence near the back of their truffle farm, picking off the occasional goblin gatherer.)
>friendly npcs were dotted from tiny room to tiny room, each memorable and unique in their own way. (small elven outpost of nature protectors posted to stop demonic advance,
>traps and locked doors were plentiful without being overwhelming and were relevantly themed to the area. (classic blade swing traps, poisonous stranglethorns, explosive arcane sigils)
>relics tied into the zone they were in, provided backstory and functionality. (sacificial rite knife tied to an eldritch god claiming part of the dungeon, dusty necromantic tome used as a diary by a necromancer, a strange contraption consisting of a magical lockbox opened with an incantation which was studied by wizards)
>bosses were unique to areas and had good motives for being pissed at the PCs
It was easy, I asked each player what they envisioned their character to be, and placed weapons/artifacts in the dungeon as needed.
>>46831557
Why didn't they just leave?
>>46832154
Most were new players, the rest actually wanted to do the crawl.
>>46831557
That sounds amazing. I would love to do a campaign like that.
>>46833664
I wouldn't mind Dming one, but I don't do roll 20 and have little experience dming online besides voice.
>>46833802
Tabletop gaming online is tricky. You basically have to commit to learning an online program of some sort.
>>46821749
Just play a decent game that avoids D&D's flaws, and then don't do what you dislike.
Don't want players being hyperparanoid? Establish the norm that, if a player mentions that his character is being cautious, he gets a roll when entering an interesting room. If he fails the roll, that's it. No further bullshit, his character was already being alert and he simply didn't see anything.
Don't want Dungeons to revolve around killing and not getting killed? Design them that way. My dungeons are stuffed with little stories, nooks and interesting things that the players mostly never discover. That's okay, a building or complex is really fucking big, you don't need to find everything. If a character finds something and takes an interest in it, he may or may not be able to find something.
It's just a combination of a flawed system, a certain player-mentality and a certain DM-mentality. Change the system and then get everything on the same page about the new style of game. Dungeons aren't vidya dungeons anymore, but simply places. Places are big or small, dangerous or not, sometimes there are a lot of monsters, sometimes there aren't. Just create them that way and everything else will come with it.
>>46830180
If you don't like dungeons why use them? You are trying to get rid of everything that makes a dungeon a dungeon from my prespective. If you take out:
>traps
>wandering monsters
>ancient treasure begging to be looted
whats left? empty rooms?
>>46834909
Puzzles?
>>46835034
GS1 was fun, but GS2 just went completely fucking overboard.
>>46827548
the food stuff could honestly be secondary. Even aside from that, the thought that goes into the various monsters' biology and the ecology of the dungeon as a biome is already pretty sick
>>46835485
Care to elaborate without spoiling? I just finished GS1 and am starting 2 now.
>>46836048
The game is... exhausting. Everything way too drawn out, there's even more backtracking and everything is just too damn long. If you like it, more power to you, but I just stopped caring after I realized that I wasn't even at the half after god knows how many hours. Usually I have no problem with long games and like them, but GS2 was just way too long for me for what it was.
Bumping for interest
Bizzump
>>46837153
>>46838819
This isnt /b/ faggot
If you have nothing to post dont post
>>46834909
>If you don't like dungeons why use them?
Because others keep on romanticizing dungeon crawls and want to do them?
>>46840675
Sounds more like you just don't like them. That's ok, but I don't think any tinkering is going to MAKE you like them.
critique my dungeon m8. Yes, I already made a thread for this
>I've used far too many level editors as a kid to not intuitively want to map out "video game" style crawl layouts. It doesn't port over to multiparty games well but hasn't stopped me yet
