I've always been the DM for the groups I've played in, ever since I started about ten years ago. But I almost always find myself (and, by extension, my players) getting really bored during dungeon crawl/hack and slash adventures. I tend to prefer investigation/horror/etc. adventures where the combat is present but driven mostly by character interaction and plot rather than exploration.
Maybe it's the idea of sticking to a map or all of those extraneous combat encounters, or moving from one dungeon level just to get to another and repeat the same thing but the style of play seems more like a chore than a game. Or maybe it's switching gears between traps/combat/exploration to the occasional bits of role-playing in the dungeon that trips me up. I've tried trimming encounters and things like that, but it's still not as great a time as I would like. I picked up Expedition to Castle Greyhawk and I want to run it at some point, so what recommendations do you experienced Dungeon Crawl DMs have to keep things interesting?
Well I'm sure lots of ideas will come your way and I'll submit some myself but I'm not sure how much they will help.
Many players and DMs love a good dungeon crawl but if you and your group routinely dislike them then I'm not sure they can be made exciting. Essentially if you really like dungeon crawls there are so-so ones and then there are great ones.
However the great ones are still dungeon crawls and if you hate everything about dungeon crawls I can't see how to make it seem cool.
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I don't stick 100% to the map, or the stats; I try to go in with a general idea of how the fight would be and make it interesting and visceral.
I'll skip stuff that bores me.
I'll chuck a whole dungeon if I'm bored with it; and labor through if everybody's having fun.
I would do things up-in-the-air more than not, and always feel free to improvise, or bring something that is supposed to be innocuous to the forefront if the players seem interested in it.
Every fight, something awesome is going to happen somehow's. I'll zoom in on that and make it the slam dunk on the hilite reel.
Hmm...
So you have a dungeon crawl in front of you and you want to run it.
First question I have is why? I better elaborate here. Something about this is tickling your fancy and making you excited to run this. Can you put your finger one what that is? If you can articulate it to yourself then your half way to being able to present this look and feel to your players. If it makes you say 'cool' then the next goal is to get it so that it makes your players say 'cool'.
Can you give us some idea about what you feel are the differences that make an outside adventure better then a dungeon adventure in your past experience? Maybe that will help pin down some of the rough areas.
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And foreshadowing's good, to gauge interest.
If you foreshadow something and everybody's "meh," you can chuck it entirely.
If however, everybody's tweaking and all frightened, and or hanging on your every word, you gotta go with it, even if you have to go into the other room for a minute and reread the monster block to get it's powers right.
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Yeah, really.
I guess hack-n-slash gamers just get something different out of the whole gaming experience: different strokes for different folks. This is one of my weak areas as DM, combat -- it's boring at anything above 4th level and just plain dumb above 9th. I can't imagine a campaign where it's just one combat after another. But some gamers, you know, that's why they play; to them, that's what's fun.
One of my great gaming buds doesn't like planing or considering info at all. Anytime it's good for the group to consider what they know/think they know about the BBEG or just stop and plan out a strategy with some contingencies, she gets bored at best, disruptive at worst. But for me, when I get to run a PC, that's the only thing I really enjoy -- I'd rather spend 4 1/2 hours putting 2&2 together about the BBEG, and then next session spend 4 1/2 hours planning a strategy. Then merely show up for the game with the actual fight.
-W. E. Ray
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Yeah, really.
I guess hack-n-slash gamers just get something different out of the whole gaming experience: different strokes for different folks. This is one of my weak areas as DM, combat -- it's boring at anything above 4th level and just plain dumb above 9th. I can't imagine a campaign where it's just one combat after another. But some gamers, you know, that's why they play; to them, that's what's fun.
One of my great gaming buds doesn't like planing or considering info at all. Anytime it's good for the group to consider what they know/think they know about the BBEG or just stop and plan out a strategy with some contingencies, she gets bored at best, disruptive at worst. But for me, when I get to run a PC, that's the only thing I really enjoy -- I'd rather spend 4 1/2 hours putting 2&2 together about the BBEG, and then next session spend 4 1/2 hours planning a strategy. Then merely show up for the game with the actual fight.
-W. E. Ray
"All important decisions in life should be made in the space of seven breaths." haga kure
Splitting up posts here as I'm trying to address a different aspect in each post.
I can give some idea of what works for me - but my players love dungeons so I'm not sure they'd work for you.
* One of the biggest benefits of a dungeon is that its easy to explain how the horrible multi-headed monster lives there. Well maybe its not easy to explain but it does not need nearly so much explaining. In the Dungeon you should meet monsters that your unlikely to meet outside of the dungeon. Ogres are OK but Chimera's are better. Chimera's are weird and have cool special abilities. Arcane Oozes are another example of a cool monster that should bring your players up short.
* The monsters should be mysterious and have abilities your players are not expecting. Battling the unknown and overcoming unanticipated difficulties with unorthodox tactics are some of the funnest aspects of monster battles. If your players haven't a clue what the heck it is their doing battle with thats often a good thing.
* The environment should present challenges and be unorthodox. Dungeons are a good excuse navigate some unusual features or do battle in same strange rather odd locations. Keep the scenery interesting and keep the fights unusual. Battling among the giant mushrooms is more interesting then fighting in another 30' by 30' empty room - if the mushrooms explode into gas clouds in the middle of fights thats better still.
* Exploration should be as engaging as possible. The weakest aspect of most dungeons is that the mapper does all the work while the rest of the players fall asleep. Exploring with good scenery can be interesting to all involved but you've got to keep the pace up. Mazes of empty rooms that don't present interesting choices are a bad idea - you'll loose the players. Don't give them time to take a nap keep them constantly making choices.
* Its all about the secrets. Maybe the most interesting and enduring aspect about a dungeon is that you go into and you find interesting secrets. Finding and recognizing a good secret is interesting. Fill your dungeon up with secrets that your players can uncover and that will keep them glues to their chairs. I suggest coming up with lots of interesting hand outs.
* Vary the play style. Killing interesting monsters usually predominates but there should be cool traps, unique puzzles (but don't make the puzzle required for one to proceed - thats just frustrating - make it a bonus area instead), ancient mysteries and NPCs that don't necessarily resort to combat.
Well I'm about as anti-dungeony a DM as can be imagined, but maybe there's something to be said for that as well. I've put a few dungeons in my games--mostly as an homage to the setting--but I've always run them in a very cinematic style. Granted for me maps and minis kill ambiance. It's no longer about the greasy-earthy smell of long ago death, the sputter and crackle of torchlight spilling into impeneratable darkness a stonesthrow away from the group. It becomes about 5' squares and marching order and where to put the Tank. Yuck. That's the kiss of death. I'd say stow the maps and minis until the players absolutely need a brief snapshot of something confusing.
"Okay where's the giant spider relative to us? I thought I could duck out of sight behind a pillar." That's when you bring out the maps and big rubber spider and the minis. Then when everyone nods and you get the idea that your idea of things and theirs have meshed a bit, then just sweep the map off to one side and play again. Try to keep the game as much in people's heads as possible--then it will stay vivid the way novels are vivid.
Also I would say that dungeons are death if they feel like Galaxy Quest dungeons.
"Why are there chompers? It doesn't make sense for there to be a bunch of chompy-crushy thingies in the middle of a hallway. I'm not gonna' do it! This episode was poorly written!"
Make sure everything has a purpose. The players don't have to find out what the purpose is, but if YOU know what the purpose is then the furnishings and art and crumbling decore will feel right. It won't just feel like "the animated statue room" or "the spike pit room". I had a poor guy run what he thought was an awesome dungeon for us one time and it wasn't two rooms in that we lost any faith in the endeavor. You should have heard my wife:
"Why are there zombies locked inside a room? Did someone throw the zombies in and lock the door? Did they lock themselves in and then die and become zombies? And what's with the treasure chest full of silver peices in the middle of an empty room? What's that doing there? Did they think THAT was a safe place to put it? And if all the wooden furnature has rotted away, why haven't the wooden chests and doors?"
Ouch.
Yeah make sure your dungeons make sense as the kinds of structures real people would really build.
Then again your main concern seemed to be that dungeon levels all feel alike, full of contrived combat encounters with monsters around every corner. Yeah. I totally feel for you. There is a certain amount of sameness to any confined building all designed by the same architect--and you're not going to reasonably see more than a few different creatures settled into the same structure. That means a lot of gray stone hallways and if you meet one goblin, likely lots of goblins--one drow likely lots of drow. That can get a bit old.
With something as dungeon intensive as Castle Greyhawk I can only wish you the best of luck. There's like to be a LOT of dungeoning. I think the best you can do is (as Jeremy said) find the heart of what makes you love the adventure and then if you can tell that story with a mix of roleplaying types and keep the dungeon stuff light--hopefully it will do you well.
Make sure everything has a purpose. The players don't have to find out what the purpose is, but if YOU know what the purpose is then the furnishings and art and crumbling decore will feel right. It won't just feel like "the animated statue room" or "the spike pit room". I had a poor guy run what he thought was an awesome dungeon for us one time and it wasn't two rooms in that we lost any faith in the endeavor. You should have heard my wife:"Why are there zombies locked inside a room? Did someone throw the zombies in and lock the door? Did they lock themselves in and then die and become zombies? And what's with the treasure chest full of silver peices...
This is a good point and in theory it works against the unique locations and unusual monsters aspect but, with a good Dungeon design it should actually work to enhance the atmosphere. In a Dungeon the DM controls the environment. There should be a reason why the unusual aspects exist and they should interact with other parts of the dungeon is a viable ecosystem. Part of the fun is finding the answers. If there is a locked room full of Zombies there should be a reason they got there and the players should have some hope of figuring out this reason - thats a secret and its fun for the players when they have a lightbulb moment and go 'hey thats why there where zombies locked into that room!".
I guess what makes me interested in actually running a dungeon well comes down to a few things.
1. It's iconic: the game is called Dungeons and Dragons, eventually you'll want to send them into a "dungeon" environment.
2. Stress/suspense. By stress/suspense I mean it's an environment that is predominantly hostile to the characters, they never know what's going to be around the next corner and resources have to be carefully considered should a last ditch fight or flight situation come up.
3. Simplest possible scripted narrative structure. Characters move from one room to the next to advance the story with a degree of freedom and flexibility that isn't always possible in an NPC laden adventure. Does the big room with the altar of skulls look like trouble? Head down the hall away from it. Cobwebs make the party cleric nervous about spiders? Check out that side chamber we passed earlier, conveniently free of webs. Simple, direct challenges also seem like a draw. Not everything is completely laden with motivation and pathos: the floor ahead has caved in from age and water damage but we need what's on the other side, how will we get across?
4. Action/Craziness. Gratuitous fights are a double edged sword: done well, they can be exciting and entertaining breaks from plot and a much needed source of extra xp/treasure. Done badly, they drag down the session. Dungeon settings seem to do "bonus" fight scenes better than other settings, with the possible exception of wilderness areas. A mugging in a city can be interrupted by the watch; not so in the oubliette of a ruined castle. There are also some areas that can't be pulled off well anywhere else: zero gravity rooms, puzzle traps, water traps, things like that work best in a dungeon.
The reason other styles of game work for me and my group is because I think everything has a pay off or plot point attached to it and there's always someone to ask for "directions". Therefore, there aren't as many points where the game gets drag ass, falling into the "we'd better check every room and make sure we have what we need to get further along/make sure nothing sneaks up on us" just because the environment isn't as completely hostile. With that systematic "clear everything" mentality it's easy to get bogged down as a DM or player and end up bored. There's also the question of atmosphere: the first few rooms in a dungeon may be well described as dank, dirty, etc. but once room fifteen or twenty is hit, it becomes a bit more difficult working with the place as the star character.
Contributor
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I may be answering a different question than you're asking, but the reason my players and I enjoy a good mix of dungeon crawl is that we are all strategy gamers as well as roleplayers. Anf my brother (the other DM) and I are the most startegy and tactics focused of the bunch. We get our strategy and roleplay fix in one dose. It's like Irish coffee!
The reason it's advantageous that the 2 DMs are the most strategy focused is that we make every fight into an interesting tactical challenge. Even a pointless fight gains meaning when you need to use your brain to survive it.
To a certain degree, I'm begging the question here (in the logical fallacy sense of the expression). We like dungeon crawls because we like to play out fights. But the truth is, my group could easilly be bored by a dungeoncrawl that made no sense, ahd no story etc., but just as importantly, if the fights were lame. And a good fight isn't just one that is statistically hard... the set up and tactics of the monsters are important too. We don't have fun killing monsters. We have fun overcoming a clever challenge.
And to be frank, it's one of those things that is to a large degree a question of the DMs ability and interest in running this kind of thing. If you aren't interested in or good at the strategic/tactical element of the game, you aren't going to run fun fights. A good adventure can overcome some of that by giving you a good set up, but a bad DM can ruin any fight.
I'm going to add something else here, that's a bit of a seperate point. Most of my group are mid-thirties folks with limited free time. Dungeon crawls are handy for us because if we defeat some foes and clear out a section of the dungeon, we've done something. Roleplaying is fun, but it can lead up some blind alleys, where I walk away from a session thinking that nothing happened. Twelve years ago, a long session of RP where nothing was really achieved was totally fine by me, but at this point in our lives, our group mostly feels like something needs to happen in that 3-4 hours we get once per week. And we feel lucky to get that much time to play. Of course 12 years ago, the tactical game in D&D stank, and I simply got my strategy fix playing board games in addition to the 10-15 hours a week of RPing I was doing.
The reason other styles of game work for me and my group is because I think everything has a pay off or plot point attached to it and there's always someone to ask for "directions". Therefore, there aren't as many points where the game gets drag ass, falling into the "we'd better check every room and make sure we have what we need to get further along/make sure nothing sneaks up on us" just because the environment isn't as completely hostile. With that systematic "clear everything" mentality it's easy to get bogged down as a DM or player and end up bored. There's also the question of atmosphere: the first few rooms in a dungeon may be well described as dank, dirty, etc. but once room fifteen or twenty is hit, it becomes a bit more difficult working with the place as the star character.
Well I think you've summed up many of the good points of a dungeon. Hence I think your main goal ought to be trying to minimize the parts that you consider weak.
You mention that urban adventures have the benefit of providing more plot points per encounter. I don't think a dungeon can compete in this category at least in terms of overarching plot points. Still it is possible to try and make many rooms meaningful in the sense that they come with some features that further the plot line of the dungeon by providing clues etc.
I think for your gaming group adding 'plot points' should help with the dungeons execution. I've not read ruins of Castle Greyhawk but I understand that its pretty objective focused for a dungeon crawl. Would adding hints like players handouts on in the form of letters etc. help keep your players more focused? Could 'dungeon dressing' that hints at other rooms nearby not be featured more prominently?
I guess I'm suggesting that you work to add 'plot points' to the adventure wherever they are lacking. Its doubtful these can be as meaningful to the adventure as the major plot points but they can give the players some clues and help keep them interested.
So you use two examples above. In one there is a spider web thats making the players nervous. Well if they found the corpse of a drained creature in a room nearby (maybe scavenged by another monster) this provides the players with something for them to mull over. It makes it more likely that there are spiders in web room. A dead giant spider corpse nearby makes it possible that the web room is no longer in use etc.
If the room full of skulls is making the party nervous they could potentially get a clue to the rooms purpose somewhere else.
Keeping the atmosphere up is an issue. Hopefully the dungeon itself helps in that regards. Really there probably should not be 20 rooms all with the same atmosphere. Thats just boring. There should be change ups moderately often and the dungeon design should serve to explain those change ups. If your working with published material however you don't have much control over this. Hopefully the kinds of encounters help with this. The inhabitants live in these rooms. If you think the atmosphere might need some touch ups try having it so that the monsters add a bit of a personal touch to their homes. Hopefully this will elevate the endless stream of 'this is another dank and dusty room'. Whats happened in these rooms in the past? Is it interesting? Can you provide you players with hints to its nature? Does it hint at other areas of the dungeon?
I agree that the concept of 'clear everything' can be an issue. Some ways of dealing with this are to make the rooms being so cleared more interesting. Nothing worse then the fourth fight with some boring gnolls. Thats not very interesting gaming. If there are gnolls in the dungeon they should react as a group to intruders so that this becomes one or two dynamic encounters as opposed to gnolls that stand around in guard rooms waiting to be killed four at a time. If there are intelligent humanoid enemies in the dungeon they should be proactive. I think their a little over used in this environment in any case since the Dungeon provides a chance to use creatures that one simply won't encounter in other settings and one should take as much advantage of that as possible.
Here just removing monsters and encounters us not actually being all that helpful. Your replacing one boring feature with another boring feature. Empty rooms are boring and still need to be mapped. Many of them mean that the players fall asleep.
If its to be an epic dungeon crawl I'd think you should except that as a reality and keep all the areas and encounters interesting instead of trying to cut them and rush the PCs along 'to the good bits' or the next major plot point. I just don't see a viable alternative to a philosophy of trying to make all areas interesting. Cutting parts makes the empty areas boring. Cutting out whole sections of the dungeon reduces player choice and makes the script to tight - the dungeon should offer choices and choosing not to go down the scary passage should usually be possible. Hence if they are going to be down here for three sessions then accept that and make all three sessions as interesting as possible instead of desperately emptying out the dungeon in an attempt to make the adventure go faster - since it gets more boring at the same time as it goes faster. Better engaged players for three hours and still in the dungeon then bored players for one of those hours but the dungeon is done. Your players came to be entertained for all three of those hours after all.
I may be answering a different question than you're asking, but the reason my players and I enjoy a good mix of dungeon crawl is that we are all strategy gamers as well as roleplayers. Anf my brother (the other DM) and I are the most startegy and tactics focused of the bunch. We get our strategy and roleplay fix in one dose. It's like Irish coffee!
I think you make a good point on why some gamers love dungeons and in turn some are not so impressed. The Dungeon often has something of the feel of a tactical wargame or strategy game. If you like this stuff you'll probably like dungeons - especially in 3.5. If wargames and strategy games in general bore you to tears I don't think there is any advice anyone can give you to make a dungeon crawl suddenly seem cool. Fundamentally a dungeon is something of a 'strategy game'. One with great atmosphere, a truly cool plot, interesting encounters both from a combat and non-combat perspective is a great dungeon - but its still a dungeon.
I think you make a good point on why some gamers love dungeons and in turn some are not so impressed. The Dungeon often has something of the feel of a tactical wargame or strategy game. If you like this stuff you'll probably like dungeons - especially in 3.5. If wargames and strategy games in general bore you to tears I don't think there is any advice anyone can give you to make a dungeon crawl suddenly seem cool. Fundamentally a dungeon is something of a 'strategy game'. One with great atmosphere, a truly cool plot, interesting encounters both from a combat and non-combat perspective is a great dungeon - but its still a dungeon.
True, true...so since I and many people I play with are more interested in storytelling than strategy games, dungeon crawls don't feature heavily and those dungeons we have tend to be quite small and short...it is usually better to have four small dungeons than one huge dungeon (Whispering Cairn, since it was divided up so well, was a good dungeon crawl).
I may be answering a different question than you're asking, but the reason my players and I enjoy a good mix of dungeon crawl is that we are all strategy gamers as well as roleplayers. Anf my brother (the other DM) and I are the most startegy and tactics focused of the bunch. We get our strategy and roleplay fix in one dose. It's like Irish coffee!I think you make a good point on why some gamers love dungeons and in turn some are not so impressed. The Dungeon often has something of the feel of a tactical wargame or strategy game. If you like this stuff you'll probably like dungeons - especially in 3.5. If wargames and strategy games in general bore you to tears I don't think there is any advice anyone can give you to make a dungeon crawl suddenly seem cool. Fundamentally a dungeon is something of a 'strategy game'. One with great atmosphere, a truly cool plot, interesting encounters both from a combat and non-combat perspective is a great dungeon - but its still a dungeon.
Tactics, Strategy, everyone at the table gets involved. Thats a good thing right? I find in my group that when we get to roleplaying aspects of the adventures, half (or more) of my group stops being involved. Yes, story and plot are important, but more so in the way they lead the group to the next big bad evil guy to take down.
I praise my group when they work together as a team to bring down a monster. To me, part of "roleplaying" means that today I am playing the "role" of the cleric, or the "role" of the wizard so that I know my place in combat.
Great advice, guys. Thanks a lot!
Whispering Cairn stuff below; I'm putting it in a spoiler tab just to be safe.
Most adventures are to big with too many encounters I always cut things down because after ten rooms of 3-5 bugbears it gets old. I learned this back in 1e with the TOEE.
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Yeah. I mean if the party started tweaking on wasting bugbears for some reason, I'd go with it.
If boredom reared it's ugly head,...the chieftan and his two guards left to join up with the minotaur, and the other bugbears are in a power struggle epic melee in the throneroom. End of "the bugbear rooms."
I guess my problem with dungeons isn't that I have to use my brain too much it's that I have to practically turn it off. So much of dungeons doesn't make sense to me at all. Take the gnolls for example. Say in a typical complex there's, what, 30 gnolls? A group of PC's show up and attack the first three. Others hearing the fighting begin shouting to the others. Within a few short rounds ALL 30 gnolls are going to be rushing the room to dispense with the 4 pesky adventurers. Dead characters.
Its enough of a stretch to just assume most dungeons aren't all empty rooms. I've gone caving. I've poked around old abandoned buildings too. Yeah they're creepy--but there's no ecology. Maybe you run into a cat or a racoon or something. Maybe a single mountain lion--one, might have esconced itself in some hole somewhere. But I've never seen one. I can't imagine it'd be that different in a fantasy world. Maybe there's a manticore, but you'd have to search the whole place for it--and only if it didn't know you were there. Most dungeons would be drafty, damp, lonely and boring. There wouldn't be fifteen archetectual styles. There would probably be one. They wouldn't be sprawling mazes with switches and levers and traps. They'd be the basement level of some castle--with fifteen bedrooms and a big banquet hall and a kitchen.
Which can be its own kind of fun if you run dramatic, but real feeling dungeons--expecting what you'd really get. We once crawled into a mine that a tribe of orcs were using as a staging ground. Once they found out about us, they swarmed out like 28 Days Later and kiwwed us deader than a christmas ham.
That's a dungeon!
I guess my problem with dungeons isn't that I have to use my brain too much it's that I have to practically turn it off. So much of dungeons doesn't make sense to me at all. Take the gnolls for example. Say in a typical complex there's, what, 30 gnolls? A group of PC's show up and attack the first three. Others hearing the fighting begin shouting to the others. Within a few short rounds ALL 30 gnolls are going to be rushing the room to dispense with the 4 pesky adventurers. Dead characters.
Its enough of a stretch to just assume most dungeons aren't all empty rooms. I've gone caving. I've poked around old abandoned buildings too. Yeah they're creepy--but there's no ecology. Maybe you run into a cat or a racoon or something. Maybe a single mountain lion--one, might have esconced itself in some hole somewhere. But I've never seen one. I can't imagine it'd be that different in a fantasy world. Maybe there's a manticore, but you'd have to search the whole place for it--and only if it didn't know you were there. Most dungeons would be drafty, damp, lonely and boring. There wouldn't be fifteen archetectual styles. There would probably be one. They wouldn't be sprawling mazes with switches and levers and traps. They'd be the basement level of some castle--with fifteen bedrooms and a big banquet hall and a kitchen.
Which can be its own kind of fun if you run dramatic, but real feeling dungeons--expecting what you'd really get. We once crawled into a mine that a tribe of orcs were using as a staging ground. Once they found out about us, they swarmed out like 28 Days Later and kiwwed us deader than a christmas ham.
That's a dungeon!
Well this can apply to pretty much all styles of game play. Most murder mysteries are not pot boilers. The victim is obvious, the culprit is pretty clear from the outset and catching the crook is a straightforward matter of following up on the obvious clues and performing solid but not that exciting police work. Blind luck and the fact that criminals often make dumb mistakes often comes into play.
But if your going to do a fantasy murder mystery the goal is not to bore your players to tears in the name or 'realism'.
Maybe most dungeons are boring - but the ones your players are going to explore never should be. If this happens to be the exception to the rule, well so be it. Same applies for adventures about murder mysteries or one where the players are hired to escort a caravan. The fact that the Caravans trips are usually numbing and tedious does not mean that the DM should simulate this when their PCs are hired to guard one.
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One of the things I do to make a dungeon crawl not boring is to have more than 1 group of bad guys. It cool to have the PC's fight the zombies then find out there is a group of medusae fighting the zombies too. Just because A and B are both fighting C doesn't make them friends. Also I've thrown in another group of (n)PC's that entered through a different direction also after the same BBEG or treasure.
well, the most scarey thing that my pc feel they can face is another adventure group
also, new mobs keep it fresh, add lots of intrigue; lost maps of even older dungeon crawls; scraps of journals written in languages the players have to figure out; books of spells and rituals; lost treasures buried for centuries that contain the essence of creatures locked away and forgotten who seek to empower a pc to wreak their vengence on the world; hints to hidden fonts that contain the Words of Creation or Destruction; ancient beings longing for blood; lost holy places that are peaceful and secure; gates to other realms, planes; demiplanes or dieties; sheesh throw in a geeked out prophesy to tie all this stuff together and you get a dungeon crawl game that never grows old.
so many ideas; so little time
I think variety is the key to making a dungeon interesting. On dungeon could be a small fortress (about 20 rooms) with 30 gnolls in it, and the object would be to free a prisoner. The player know that if the alarm is raised, all 30 will rush them (as mentioned above).
Another could be an abandoned house (about 5 to 15 rooms) with a single creature in one of the rooms. It could be anything from three mephits in the attic to a single giant assassin vine in the basement. The object could be to just spend the night there as a storm passes (the players are unaware of the creature at first).
And one could be a crypt or a tomb (about 1 to 5 rooms) with deadly traps to be avoided in each one. The object could be to retreive an object or an artifact. It could have no creatures at all.
The thing is, a dungeon doesn't have to be an underground complexe with 300 rooms. It can be anything.
A good way I found to keep things interesting was the old 'Star Wars RPG' method of having at least one of every elements in every adventure... (it went something like this)
At least two fight scenes,
At least one part puzzle-solving,
At least one chase scene,
At least one role-play/interaction scene,
And at least one space scene.
Mix and serve.
For us, a dungeon is like the cherry on the sunday. Specially if the PCs had to figure out a puzzle (or come up with a good plan) in order to accomplish it.
Ultradan
It continually amazes me that there are many players who do NOT like Dungeon Crawls. Those type of adventures were what the game was based on at its inception. Has d&d fallen so far as to become the domain of wanna-be thespians? Are you guys really more concerned about having a "conversation" with the bartender at the inn than with disembowling the local monster and claiming his treasure hoard? Is "how your character feels or develops" more enjoyable than rolling a Natural 20 and crushing the bad guy you've been chasing for the past 6 weeks? Give me a break guys.
It continually amazes me that there are many players who do NOT like Dungeon Crawls. Those type of adventures were what the game was based on at its inception. Has d&d fallen so far as to become the domain of wanna-be thespians? Are you guys really more concerned about having a "conversation" with the bartender at the inn than with disembowling the local monster and claiming his treasure hoard? Is "how your character feels or develops" more enjoyable than rolling a Natural 20 and crushing the bad guy you've been chasing for the past 6 weeks? Give me a break guys.
Yeah. Actually the game has fallen that far--at least in my case. I cut my teeth (bad pun) on Vampire: The Masquerade, but was endlessly frustrated with how this game that's supposed to be full of dark fantasy and drama had so few actual supernatural or fantasy elements. It was all just Buicks and crumbling apartments. I ran into the old second edition Monster Manual, and flipping through it I was amazed by all the cool antagonists--not because of how awesomezor their damage ratings were, but because of how deep and interesting a lot of them were as cultures. I threw myself into D&D because of a love of great storytelling--not so I could play Diablo II without a monitor. Yuck. That kind of gameplay seems just kind of childish and lame to me. Rolling a natural 20 and crushing the badguy could be as fun or as depressingly anticlimatic as the description of it and the story it tells. On the other hand, there's little that's more fun in the D&D setting than an interesting salty bartender who's really been there. I love the action part of D&D. I love the exploration angle. But I am really into the "psychodrama" as the DMGII puts it. It's the characters and their stories that I love.
Prepublished adventures--meh.
Corny haunted house dungeons where every room is a little clue--meh.
Creatures that exist only as a lump of attack stats with a chewy XP center--meh.
Give me a solid fleshed out setting any day. I'll skip the cheeseball detective stories for Dateline NBC criminal investigation. I'll skip Rambo for Blackhawk Down. I'll skip the dungeony hackfest for rich drama filled roleplay with characters and places I really can believe in, invest myself in, and care about.
When running TOEE I had several npc parties also exploring the ruins and kept a timetable of activity and goings on of the different dungeon levels. SO different things would be encountered depending upon what time of day you arrived there. After much of the 1st level got sacked, Kelno the Perfect of the Air Temple Canon Belsornig of the Water Temple teamed up and took over control of the Earth temple area they stationed guards at both stairwells and had support of several trolls from Oohlgrist Troll chief. When the party returned they were ambushed and had to retreat from the Temple back to Nulb and regroup.
Give me a solid fleshed out setting any day. I'll skip the cheeseball detective stories for Dateline NBC criminal investigation. I'll skip Rambo for Blackhawk Down. I'll skip the dungeony hackfest for rich drama filled roleplay with characters and places I really can believe in, invest myself in, and care about.
Note: Emphasis is mine
Eeeee gads! I thought Blackhawk Down was terrible. I could barely finish watching the movie and the only reason I did was because I had about 6 friends in my room at the time watching the movie. The only good/entertaining thing in that movie was Orlando Bloom falling out of the helicopter. I guess I expected more than just a fancy re-enactment of the events since I had gotten just about all of the facts of what happened from the news and a couple of guys who were there and were part of the rescue teams (one of them was a gunner on a humvee that took part in the rescue attempt).
What can I say...to each his own I guess. I just prefer grounded drama and earthy realism. The more honest and genuine something (even fantasy) feels the more I can get into it. The more fakey something feels (even videogames) the more it bothers me.
Dungeons don't typically work for me because they feel so contrived and unbelievable. It's not worth much for me to walk into a deep underground chamber and fight a chimera that's just there for no reason. It doesn't matter how "tactical" the game is (though I'd argue 3.5 isn't even a good tactical model of combat) if I have to shut my brain off to buy into the encounter. Same with Rambo. Yeah him coming out of the mud to stab the russian guy was cool--and I can sort of appreciate that--but there's so much ridiculous gosh-awful stuff in that movie as to make it a laughing stock. I like my gaming a bit more straightfaced and played closer to the vest.
True, true...so since I and many people I play with are more interested in storytelling than strategy games, dungeon crawls don't feature heavily and those dungeons we have tend to be quite small and short...it is usually better to have four small dungeons than one huge dungeon (Whispering Cairn, since it was divided up so well, was a good dungeon crawl).
The interesting thing here is I think Whispering Cairn managed to give everything to everyone. If you normally love dungeons you probably loved this one. If you normally don't like Dungeons because there is to much fighting and not enough role playing and story development this was probably something of an exception.
That said I think this model can only be taken so far. If every dungeon feels like this then we all eventually get bored due to the lack of verity.
I don't know a lot about the Whispering Caern. I hear alot about it around here and get the feeling it's one of those fundamental bits of D&D lore that's sorta' beyond my ken. So what is it? I keep hearing it's fairly groundbreaking as far as modules go.
I don't know a lot about the Whispering Caern. I hear alot about it around here and get the feeling it's one of those fundamental bits of D&D lore that's sorta' beyond my ken. So what is it? I keep hearing it's fairly groundbreaking as far as modules go.
Dungeon Volume 124 has the Whispering Cairn in it. I can't speak for anyone else, but this combined with the handy Diamond Lake backdrop was one of the best adventures I've ever run for my group.
I've always been impressed with the tremendous quality of the Dungeon storytelling under the Paizo folks. It's really a shame I didn't know the contents better at the time so I could have asked for more of what I wanted--but the Critical Threats and Backdrops were awesome. I'm sorry I didn't get in on them earlier. I would to have loved to have seen tons more of them. I've had to collect them as I find them.
Whispering Caern, from having read up on it, certainly looks interesting. I've always had a soft spot for the Age of Worms storyline. It's a shame it had to resolve itself so quickly in the setting. I could set whole campaigns with the Age of Worms as the backdrop. I have always loved Kyuss and the idea of actually seeing him make a grab for power in the world is just an exciting, exciting idea. To tell you the truth, I don't think there's been a single Adventure Path storyline that I haven't been pumped about. Savage Tide always sounded amazing! I just hate modules. Gah...
Its never too late to get in on a good thing. :-) Give it a try, i'll bet your players would love it, and the time it saves you to use a prewritten adventure is the only thing that keeps me in the DM chair. With out prewritten adventures I'd have to just sit back and be a player all the time. Thanks Paizo!
Its never too late to get in on a good thing. :-) Give it a try, i'll bet your players would love it, and the time it saves you to use a prewritten adventure is the only thing that keeps me in the DM chair. With out prewritten adventures I'd have to just sit back and be a player all the time. Thanks Paizo!
It's not the time thing so much. I tend to run a pretty fast and loose game. No standard rule encounters, lite stats for monsters and foes. No treasure tables or per battle XP. I tend to go more for drama and story. To tell the truth the first time I ever ran a prepublished module was for this last D&D game day, and trying to get all the NPC stats down, trying to adjust every character so he had the amount of gear he was "supposed" to, trying to tie every encounter so it lead naturally into every other encounter. It took me tons more time than it would have to have run a game without a module.
That's not the big reason I don't like modules though. The big reason is the theme park feel they tend to give the game. You do all this stuff, your characters become these big deal characters who have changed the history of the setting--but for what? Everything they've done has been done by a thousand other people. Kyuss, the worm god, becomes a theme park ride. Everyone and their dog gets to go through and beat him up--all mostly in exactly the same way everyone else has. Not so fun for us. We'd rather have our own stories, where when we tell someone our tale the response is less "oh yeah, been there, done that...but our group negotiated with Megnimar and got the Stones of Antiquity before going to the Grimskull Cavern" and more "whoa! dude that sounds awesome! I wish I could play in a game like that!" It's like the whole idea of instances in World of Warcraft. It's no big deal to beat up some big dragon or fire elemental, because it all just resets itself. Everyone has beat up these guys, or will someday, so why is your character special for having done it? Meh. Not my thing.
The other big beef I have with modules is related to the first. I like my stories to be the stories of my characters. I don't typically write my games and then put the characters through them. I get the characters from everyone, talk about who they are and what they want, and then sift through their personal agendas and histories for plot threads which I use to make the stories. That way they are doing what they want. That way their characters really matter. It's not like they're just the cleric to fill the "healer" hole in the party. They are a real breathing person doing what they want and creating the story as much as they're playing in it. You just can't do that with a module--not without making more work for yourself than you'd get just coming up with your own story. And for me, coming up with my own story always feels more satisfying anyway!
We often spice things up with a metaplot that makes thge dungeon more interesting. examples:
The bottom of the dungeon has the rare flower needed to save the fallen prince from a ciurse of endless nightmares, but only if we get it to him before the next full moon. Now, we must take the dungeon as fast as possible, which means skipping everything we can and taking the rest really fast. Suddenly, we're doing IC discussions of risk/reward for each room.
make dungeons smart. Take on a room of gnolls without a good stealth plan, and every other gnoll in the place cmoes down on your head. But there is one gnoll we need to question, so we can not just kill them all
A 1st level baronet is coming with us because his father wants him to learn to fight and adventure. We are 5th level, and so is the dungeon. The trick isn't winning, it's keeping the little snot alive.
Its never too late to get in on a good thing. :-) Give it a try, i'll bet your players would love it, and the time it saves you to use a prewritten adventure is the only thing that keeps me in the DM chair. With out prewritten adventures I'd have to just sit back and be a player all the time. Thanks Paizo!It's not the time thing so much. I tend to run a pretty fast and loose game. No standard rule encounters, lite stats for monsters and foes. No treasure tables or per battle XP. I tend to go more for drama and story. To tell the truth the first time I ever ran a prepublished module was for this last D&D game day, and trying to get all the NPC stats down, trying to adjust every character so he had the amount of gear he was "supposed" to, trying to tie every encounter so it lead naturally into every other encounter. It took me tons more time than it would have to have run a game without a module.
That's not the big reason I don't like modules though. The big reason is the theme park feel they tend to give the game. You do all this stuff, your characters become these big deal characters who have changed the history of the setting--but for what? Everything they've done has been done by a thousand other people. Kyuss, the worm god, becomes a theme park ride. Everyone and their dog gets to go through and beat him up--all mostly in exactly the same way everyone else has. Not so fun for us. We'd rather have our own stories, where when we tell someone our tale the response is less "oh yeah, been there, done that...but our group negotiated with Megnimar and got the Stones of Antiquity before going to the Grimskull Cavern" and more "whoa! dude that sounds awesome! I wish I could play in a game like that!" It's like the whole idea of instances in World of Warcraft. It's no big deal to beat up some big dragon or fire elemental, because it all just resets itself. Everyone has beat up these guys, or will someday, so why is your character special for having done it? Meh. Not my thing.
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That's an interesting take on the subject. Personally, I did find that my Age of Worms campaign fell apart when I ran it because I didn't put enough focus on the player characters and their backgrounds (and because they just weren't as great at character building as the adventures assumed they would be). In my current campaign, I'm still using mostly pre-written adventures but my players have said that it's been the best one I've ever run for them. Ultimately, the deciding factor has been forethought. I started with a general idea of which prepublished adventures I wanted to run and what they involved. Then, I talked to my players about their characters and started to think how I could tailor the adventures to their backgrounds and their motivations, often interjecting between adventures with personal exploits for each character away from the group so they feel that they have lives outside of the group.
That's an interesting take on the subject. Personally, I did find that my Age of Worms campaign fell apart when I ran it because I didn't put enough focus on the player characters and their backgrounds (and because they just weren't as great at character building as the adventures assumed they would be). In my current campaign, I'm still using mostly pre-written adventures but my players have said that it's been the best one I've ever run for them. Ultimately, the deciding factor has been forethought. I started with a general idea of which prepublished adventures I wanted to run and what they involved. Then, I talked to my players about their characters and started to think how I could tailor the adventures to their backgrounds and their motivations, often interjecting between adventures with personal exploits for each character away from the group so they feel that they have lives outside of the group.
Man, I love to hear stories about people running character centered games. I've seen and been in too many games where who your character is just didn't matter--he was just a cog in the machine of the adventuring party. I really can say the best games I've ever been in have been about (or at least have felt like they've been about) the characters first and foremost. I hope it goes well for you. That's where the best stories are if you ask me.
Being a combat DM can be both annoying and immensely fun. One of the things you need to do is to mix up the battlefeilds: fighting frost giants while skiing down an ice slope (thanks, Fafhrd!) after blowing up their coldfire mines and fighting on disignitrating catwalks over vats of TPK that eventually burst out and make an elemental from the corpses of your slain enemys is much better than the same 19X28 feild with three squares of difficult terrain.
At high levels, making combat difficult is much more dependent on the surrounding cirscumstances than CR, because anything that poses a challange for the fighter can utterly slaughter the monk or rogue. Forcing the fighters to overcome some obsticles before they can rush up and full attack can make a mage or two (one for counterspelling) change the encounter from "I smash!" to "dude! this is hard!". Not that you should make every combat full of skill checks. I usually let the underlings die in a straight up fight, and have the boss rain death down from the top of a razor sharp frozen waterfall.
One of the downsides is that my group is ONLY intrested in combat, so ramming plotline into their skulls can be extremely frustrating.
I've always been impressed with the tremendous quality of the Dungeon storytelling under the Paizo folks. ... I've always had a soft spot for the Age of Worms storyline. It's a shame it had to resolve itself so quickly in the setting. I could set whole campaigns with the Age of Worms as the backdrop. I have always loved Kyuss and the idea of actually seeing him make a grab for power in the world is just an exciting, exciting idea. To tell you the truth, I don't think there's been a single Adventure Path storyline that I haven't been pumped about. Savage Tide always sounded amazing! I just hate modules. Gah...
I do believe Sir Grimcleaver that you are doing yourself a great disservice by disregarding the Adventure Paths as a series of modules. You can do what you yourself have expressed - mine them for all the material you can! It seems that you could very easily modify the SCAP, AoWAP and STAP to run concurrent campaigns. By 'standard' rules they would require successive series of characters as the protagonists. (I still to this day greatly prefer the 1e dual-classing mechanism, which would lend itself to this concept very, very well. Imagine the drama of having a single character succeed in progressing through all three adventure paths...)
I do believe Sir Grimcleaver that you are doing yourself a great disservice by disregarding the Adventure Paths as a series of modules. You can do what you yourself have expressed - mine them for all the material you can! It seems that you could very easily modify the SCAP, AoWAP and STAP to run concurrent campaigns. By 'standard' rules they would require successive series of characters as the protagonists. (I still to this day greatly prefer the 1e dual-classing mechanism, which would lend itself to this concept very, very well. Imagine the drama of having a single character succeed in progressing through all three adventure paths...)
Actually I think he might get some use out of the middle parts of STAP because it does a descent job of giving an interesting feel to The Isle of Dread and that can be thought of as a campaign setting but the other two adventure paths probably completely useless as they are Dungeon heavy. Age of Worms in particular pays a lot of homage to 1st edition dungeon crawling as part of the look and feel. They solve many of the issues with 1st edition dungeon crawling but their still dungeons I think he'd be just wasting his money except possibly on the issues specifically focused on the Isle of Dread because he can tear that up and turn it into his own island full of dinosaurs campaign...
Even here I'm jumping to the conclusion that 'island of dinosaurs' strikes him as cool but I'm not sure that it does.
Better to spend the money on The Song of Ice and Fire Campaign setting (not that I actually know its a good setting or anything but if its anything like the books its character driven and has a gritty feel).
Actually I think he might get some use out of the middle parts of STAP because it does a descent job of giving an interesting feel too The Isle of Dread but the other two adventure paths are Dungeon heavy. Age of Worms in particular pays a lot of homage to 1st edition dungeon crawling as part of the look and feel. I think he'd be wasting his money except possibly on the material focused on the Isle of Dread.
I do believe Sir Grimcleaver that you are doing yourself a great disservice by disregarding the Adventure Paths as a series of modules. You can do what you yourself have expressed - mine them for all the material you can! It seems that you could very easily modify the SCAP, AoWAP and STAP to run concurrent campaigns. By 'standard' rules they would require successive series of characters as the protagonists. (I still to this day greatly prefer the 1e dual-classing mechanism, which would lend itself to this concept very, very well. Imagine the drama of having a single character succeed in progressing through all three adventure paths...)
Good point - but I was more referring to the sheer mineable nature of the AP material. Whole sections of the STAP can be bodily lifted and set into places in Sir Grimcleaver's campaign - such as the Isle of Dread and affiliated locales (Scuttleport, etc). The backstory element of the Age of Worms can 'carry over' into the Savage Tide, for example, should the AoW player group fail to thwart Kyuss' agenda and usher in - to use Yasha's nomenclature - the Age of Worms. Instead of the Wormfall Festival, for example, they could be 'celebrating' the annual Gathering of Wormfood (annual tribute to Kyuss and Tharizdun)...