Any appetite for 'set piece' based adventures instead of smaller 'dungeons'?

[hsnsy56]

PF2e does well with challenging a party at full strength and the 1-3 big encounters a day paradigmn (vs. say 5e), but haven't seen too many published adventures go there. Strength of Thousands has some of this, but it's more in the vein of a bunch of one off flavor enounters over a longer period of time (semester) rather than the key story encounters. SoT still puts in at least one per adventure, sometimes two 8-10 room "dungeon" of some sort usually as the key plot movers. The four APs I have all do so.

Is this what people want? Is it because people would feel cheated without a lot of combat enounters mapped out? Or at least one multi room 'dungeon'?

Granted, this has never really been the style of most published adventures, even in 4e where this also would have been a really good fit.

In fact, the only published adventures I know that do this is En World's Zeitgeist AP. There is almost always a ton of exploration, social, travel, clue following, etc. that leads to no more than 1 or 2 big set piece combat encounters per in game day that often have better win conditions than "kill everyone". Fight through a large gallon to prevent a sabatour, protect a mystic that is recieving a vision through a haunt filled night on top of a ancient hill, confront somone at their residence and face that person and all their staff at once instead of room by room, etc. There are some exceptions where you get a multi room conflict or actually dungeon but not the norm. In general that is a lot more moving and story in between each encounter, and these big encounters are plot moving.

Personally I'd love to see more of this for P2e which is a system that could handle everyone at "full strength" for every fight better than most.

[SuperBidi]

I don't think it's what people want, it's just that a dungeon takes a limited amount of space and work. It's very easy to put in a book an 8 room dungeon that will fill both the characters XP bar and the timeframe of an AP. Removing dungeons would ask for more work and book space.

If you want to avoid 8-10 rooms dungeon and focus on 1-3 encounters day, I encourage you to play PFS. That's the format. And if you look at a PFS adventure, it takes roughly twenty pages for the equivalent in XP and play time of a tenth of an AP. So it's twice more expensive in page count and work (for the author and the GM).

[Squiggit]

I see a lot of "set piece" style encounter design in homebrew.

Dungeons are safer to format for marketing purposes though.

[Claxon]

I do prefer "set pieces" if I understand how you're defining it, compared to dungeons. As I always felt expansive dungeons with many enemies in them to be pretty unrealistic in a lot of cases. Outside of generally well known locations, like enemy forts, I wouldn't normally expect to run into a large building/liar with dozens of enemies to challenge the PCs. I would more generally expect smaller building with a limited number of enemies, and by virtue of trying to keep the expected challenge having to have multiple of those in a day. Usually with plot to string them together in a way that makes sense.

[WatersLethe]

Unless you fill up dungeons with traps and grindy, pointless combats you end up with a lot of wasted map space and preparation effort, and traps and repetitive small combats are not super high entertainment value per unit time. Unless exploration is the purpose of the dungeon, often it's just serving as friction before the party gets to the next plot relevant part, and there are lots of more interesting ways to add friction to advancement in the story.

In a dungeon you can't easily have a player's backstory NPC pop in during a social encounter, suddenly transition to a fight with strong narrative tension, then switch to a chase, that culminates in an ambush boss fight.

Dungeons aren't typically dynamic enough, and if they were they would be even harder to prepare and then parse. Narratives and story beats aren't measured in rooms explored, they're measured in scenes.

That's not to say dungeon exploration can't be fun, it just needs the party to want to engage in that style of play and put on hold the overarching story in order to get in the nitty gritty for a while.

[CorvusMask]

I think people kinda have habit of thinking that dungeons have to be one way or other, so that really changes how they will respond to this sort of questions.

Like Forts are usually thought of as dungeons, but I think lot of people don't think dungeons as locations you can use stealth in when stealth dungeons are perfectly valid design choice as well.

[SuperBidi]

CorvusMask wrote:

I think people kinda have habit of thinking that dungeons have to be one way or other, so that really changes how they will respond to this sort of questions.

Like Forts are usually thought of as dungeons, but I think lot of people don't think dungeons as locations you can use stealth in when stealth dungeons are perfectly valid design choice as well.

I'd not design an infiltration like a dungeon. For a successful infiltration, you need holes the players can exploit. Dungeons are in general filled with monsters with no way to avoid some encounters. And if "not making noise" is an important criteria then a single fight is a failure (if the characters can openly fight without attracting attention you lose the entire infiltration vibe).

For me, an infiltration should be handled like some extended skill contest. The characters progress while trying to attract the least amount of attention, failure to do so increase the final fight difficulty or just compromise the mission.

[Castilliano]

I prefer reactive dungeons where the whole complex acts as a gigantic set piece, though yes, that takes finesse to balance and break into reasonable chunks while feeling like one linked event.

James Jacobs made a point that Paizo APs show a snapshot, and that reactions are up to GMs, which makes sense since different tables & party builds have different preferences. Going beyond a few reactive events would take a lot of page space due the multitude of directions and issues.

I'm reminded of a very high-level Dungeon Magazine adventure where the final boss had few if any henchman on hand, so some readers complained that such a mastermind should have lots of allies to help fight the PCs. The response was that he did; the dungeon was those allies, but I guess even though they obviously worked for him, the battles didn't feel connected enough? Dunno.

And then there are APs, like in book 6 of Rise of the Runelords (decades old spoilers) there's a whole floor of lots of bad guys, with two main ones that most of the encounters should support, and the second one has enough healing resources to bring anybody who retreats to her to full health. When I ran it, it was very much like two major set pieces (and a third for the boss), with several side encounters too. Yet while it's set up to run that way, it's not overtly stated in the main rooms themselves, though some rooms do mention responding to alarms. Requiring a full response would be asking for a lot of GM coordination as well as ignore the various other approaches besides outright invasion. But yeah, if the PCs had invaded and each room was run separately, it'd would've been lackluster.
I miss the waves of enemies featured in many Paizo or Paizo-adjacent products, though the whole 10 min. rest/refocus playstyle kind throws those off, especially if the PCs feel pressured (even if not).

[CorvusMask]

Rise of the runelord final dungeon is meant to be run as chaotic single encounter where all enemies respond to presence of PCs immediately in gloriously chaotic melee. Its very explicitly noted that its meant to be run that way.

SuperBidi wrote:

CorvusMask wrote:

I think people kinda have habit of thinking that dungeons have to be one way or other, so that really changes how they will respond to this sort of questions.

Like Forts are usually thought of as dungeons, but I think lot of people don't think dungeons as locations you can use stealth in when stealth dungeons are perfectly valid design choice as well.

I'd not design an infiltration like a dungeon. For a successful infiltration, you need holes the players can exploit. Dungeons are in general filled with monsters with no way to avoid some encounters. And if "not making noise" is an important criteria then a single fight is a failure (if the characters can openly fight without attracting attention you lose the entire infiltration vibe).

For me, an infiltration should be handled like some extended skill contest. The characters progress while trying to attract the least amount of attention, failure to do so increase the final fight difficulty or just compromise the mission.

I don't disagree that is how you can (and probably should) run infiltration as skill challenges, but it also shows what I meant: People believe that dungeons HAS to be one thing.

[hsnsy56]

SuperBidi wrote:

I don't think it's what people want, it's just that a dungeon takes a limited amount of space and work. It's very easy to put in a book an 8 room dungeon that will fill both the characters XP bar and the timeframe of an AP. Removing dungeons would ask for more work and book space.

If you want to avoid 8-10 rooms dungeon and focus on 1-3 encounters day, I encourage you to play PFS. That's the format. And if you look at a PFS adventure, it takes roughly twenty pages for the equivalent in XP and play time of a tenth of an AP. So it's twice more expensive in page count and work (for the author and the GM).

Yeah, that's what I would guess as well. It's somewhat a function of work to create is higher, still clinging to XP guidlines (although SoT has more non combat XP handed out), and perhaps some consumers would feel cheated if there was only 10 big combat encounters in 100 pages of material.

I certainly wouldn't feel cheated if those 10 encounters were designed well-- important to the plot, cool locations on large maps, terrain features, custom monsters, and frequent dual "win conditions" (meaning defeating in combat AND wanting to accomplish something else which may or may not go your way). Also if the "in between" exploration, social, investigaiton, etc. was done well that is huge value.

I would want XP to be adjusted so that real play time was not too slow, but that is easy to do with milestone XP.

Can you get PFS adventures without doing organized play? Are they self contained or do they link to form a campaign? Quality good?

[willfromamerica]

Yeah, I’m a strong advocate for fewer “filler” combats, especially ones that involve fighting enemies the party has already encountered a ton of. Large set piece encounters lead to much more impactful and story-motivated fights, but as others have pointed out, dungeons are simply easier to fit in the limited page space of an AP volume.

Dungeons are very easy to write, but harder on the GM’s part to make interesting. When I first started GMing, I loved dungeons because they required the least prep to be able to run - I could prep one room at a time and not have to worry about all the moving parts of the plot. As I got better, I started to loathe dungeons because after running a few of them, all of them started to feel the same. But now that I’ve gotten even more experience, I think they have their place for sure. Like all things, they just need to be used in moderation.

[SuperBidi]

CorvusMask wrote:

People believe that dungeons HAS to be one thing.

In my opinion, a dungeon IS a thing, with its internal rules that ask for a lot of suspension of disbelief:

Each room contains an encounter that is exactly of the appropriate level. Dungeon denizens don't move from room to room (or at least not too much). Dungeon denizens don't put any form of alarm or guard to raise a general alert if the dungeon get infiltrated. Each denizen is living in one single room, each of them being specifically tailored to their lifestyle. Everything is inside the dungeon, so if the enemies are having strong alchemy and a specific ritual to bring the world down you'll find the lab in the first floor and the temple in the second one (and not the lab and the temple in 2 separate locations like normal people tend to do). The goal of the dungeon (from the player point of view) is always in the very last room. The dungeon boss is stuck to the last room of the dungeon and never has to get out to deal with outsiders. Denizens don't sleep, they are always all awake with their weapons at the ready when you open the door. There are only fighters in the dungeon, they don't have children or elder people, if someone in the dungeon is not evil it's a prisoner (you never have people working for the dungeon denizens and who are not members of the dungeon organization). The dungeon can't meet the denizens' needs, especially for food, still noone ever needs to hunt. The denizens are always all inside the dungeon, once all the denizens are dead the dungeon will stay empty. You can have dungeon denizens that are technically dangerous to the main owners and still they won't exterminate the parasites. Etc, etc, etc...

[Sanityfaerie]

SuperBidi wrote:

In my opinion, a dungeon IS a thing, with its internal rules that ask for a lot of suspension of disbelief:

It does not have to be this way... but it's true that it often is.

Also, putting together an internally consistent dungeon that does not require major suspension of disbelief is rather more work on the part of the GM.

[CorvusMask]

Heck I don't think that description even applies to all of 1e aps I've run. Or how I've run certain dungeons that you could interpret that way :D

(like that kind of description is closest to early D&D dungeons or megadungeons than even most paizo dungeons)

[WatersLethe]

This discussion makes me realize that if you don't have a detailed/grid-based map for the entirety of the dungeon and instead narrate travel through portions of it, you've already gone a long way to making it a non-classical dungeon. Like, it's way easier to add something like the chase scene in Khazad-dum to a dungeon with that approach.

[CorvusMask]

Which is also valid way to run a dungeon tbh.

I think that is another way people make mistake of thinking about dungeons, equating dungeons with dungeon crawling gameplay.

Like, fortress sieges aren't technically dungeon crawling despite them also being classic form of dungeons :'D

Setpiece dungeons are also great, when going through dungeon feels like big dynamic scene where things are alive.

[SuperBidi]

Sanityfaerie wrote:

SuperBidi wrote:

In my opinion, a dungeon IS a thing, with its internal rules that ask for a lot of suspension of disbelief:

It does not have to be this way... but it's true that it often is.

Also, putting together an internally consistent dungeon that does not require major suspension of disbelief is rather more work on the part of the GM.

In my opinion, the word "dungeon" refers to a specific gameplay experience, not to something that could realistically exist.

[CorvusMask]

You'd be surprised at number of "how to create living dungeon with believable ecology" articles then :D

But yeah, dungeon is one of those terms that people really understand differently. Like to some, an apartment house can be a dungeon.

[The-Magic-Sword]

Honestly, I'd rather have strongly location based adventuring places (dungeons generally) than set piece encounters or proper adventures, with only suggested plot hooks, and strong lore to discover, but not so much actual plot sequence. The game really loves spaces that players can carve their own way through based off their skillsets, rather than canned storylines.

Plus, actual set piece encounters can easily be incorporated into those.

[Ascalaphus]

I think there's fun to be had in having some fights happen in dramatic locations ("the throne room").

To take the far opposite: imagine we had a big dungeon and "realistically" tracked the movement per round of everyone as they became aware of the party and started responding. We'd probably have a big showdown in some random maintenance corridor.

Which is okay sometimes, but I think we also want our throne room showdowns. Players are usually not totally hardcase about trying to force enemies to walk off the map you've just put on the table and fight elsewhere. Conversely, as GMs we should come up with some halfway plausible excuse why the NPCs want to actually stay in that room. Maybe they're doing a ritual there or it's a command center. So the PCs are coming to them for a reason.

But if you focus on the main dramatic locations, that does mean you can actually relax a bit about the corridors and rooms around it. Do we really need an exacting room plan with everything planned out? Or could we suffice with a general sketch of "yeah there's a big maze there, with a couple of nasties in it"?

We already do that most of the time; we already leave out stuff on our maps. How many dungeons have toilets? Most don't. So we're already abstracting out stuff that isn't likely to be important to be on the map when there's a need for a map. Like a fight.

So instead of doing the whole dungeon as a fully connected single grid map, embrace the freedom of a looser sketch. All you need are a few small grids for the rooms where some encounter happens. The rest can be much more abstract.

[Malk_Content]

If I'm designing a dungeon I do like to use a map, but (I think it was Plaguestone I first saw this) I like to use some.sort of symbology that says "this bit is off grid and a bigger space than the map represents."

For example I've run a derelict bloodbourneesque city dungeon. It was designed like a dungeon with different set encounters, but with large spaces for narrative movement between. With a few maps set aside for use between set encounters (players failed to hide well enough from the things stalking the street while trying to take a breather for example.)

Now maybe you look at that and go "that's not a dungeon!" but in making it I went through all the things I would do when making a dungeon.

[Ascalaphus]

If you look at the map of a typical subway system, it's not 100% faithful to the underlying geography. It abstracts the exact angles and distances between locations and leaves a lot of stuff off. But it gives you a broad overview of places to go in the city.

Then, each subway station would also have it's own map telling you how to actually get from platform to platform (hopefully..)

You could do dungeons likewise. You map out in actual grids the interesting places for set piece encounters, you have a high level diagram showing which places connect to each other. And you have a couple more maps for encounters that happen in transit, like an ambush in a corridor.

I think that kinda approach actually matches well with the PF2 concept of treating exploration activities a bit more abstractly than going Stride, Seek, Stride, Seek, Stride, Seek at a 10ft per round speed.

[Cellion]

I've noticed a trend toward set pieces instead of dungeons, especially in organized play scenarios where you have a limited number of encounters to play with and need to get the most out of them.

I think prewritten set piece encounters have their place, but I'd prefer fewer rather than more. In my experience, adventures written with set pieces offer painfully linear, restrictive experiences, as set pieces are harder to rework if the party takes a different approach than the adventure expects. For example, a set piece where you and the bad guys are sledding down a mountain on magical icebergs while you fight each other is a super cool encounter, but the PC group that casts fly or melts the icebergs beforehand or decides they're going to take a slower route down the mountain are all going to make it hard to reuse/adapt the set piece. More often than not, I've seen GMs put their cards on the table and say "Hey, I know you want to do X, but there's a sweet set piece if you do Y." and player agency gets set aside for the fun and flashy movie scene.

IMO, a set piece should naturally evolve out of the players deciding to do crazy stuff, not come out of a contrived alignment of assumed events in the written AP. This necessitates more adaptation and on-the-fly creativity from both GM and players, but the joy of player driven set pieces is just way higher. To facilitate this, scene and dungeon design that incorporates a lot of interesting "toys" for players to interact can naturally lead to events that feel like set pieces without being written as one.

---
With regard to dungeons, I think the comments upthread are looking at paizo's recent designs and taking a narrow view. I'd like to point to Iron Gods, book 5. This book features one massive, four story palace that is designed a lot like an old school dungeon. Some rooms have fixed occupants, potential encounters, while others are intentionally empty, to be flexibly filled with palace denizens depending on the circumstances. Many of the palace's residents initially allow the PCs to come through without issue, but turn hostile depending on PC actions. Other rooms contain monsters that will fight immediately, but which can be avoided, or even used as a roleplay opportunity with nearby NPCs. There are several important NPCs with specific goals and loyalties, which may end up fighting the PCs or other palace denizens.

It's a dungeon sandbox and it's so very interesting to play or GM, because there's enough moving parts that it naturally and organically turns into a big, exciting mess at some point through.

[hsnsy56]

Cellion wrote:

I've noticed a trend toward set pieces instead of dungeons, especially in organized play scenarios where you have a limited number of encounters to play with and need to get the most out of them.

I think prewritten set piece encounters have their place, but I'd prefer fewer rather than more. In my experience, adventures written with set pieces offer painfully linear, restrictive experiences, as set pieces are harder to rework if the party takes a different approach than the adventure expects. For example, a set piece where you and the bad guys are sledding down a mountain on magical icebergs while you fight each other is a super cool encounter, but the PC group that casts fly or melts the icebergs beforehand or decides they're going to take a slower route down the mountain are all going to make it hard to reuse/adapt the set piece. More often than not, I've seen GMs put their cards on the table and say "Hey, I know you want to do X, but there's a sweet set piece if you do Y." and player agency gets set aside for the fun and flashy movie scene.

IMO, a set piece should naturally evolve out of the players deciding to do crazy stuff, not come out of a contrived alignment of assumed events in the written AP. This necessitates more adaptation and on-the-fly creativity from both GM and players, but the joy of player driven set pieces is just way higher. To facilitate this, scene and dungeon design that incorporates a lot of interesting "toys" for players to interact can naturally lead to events that feel like set pieces without being written as one.

---
With regard to dungeons, I think the comments upthread are looking at paizo's recent designs and taking a narrow view. I'd like to point to Iron Gods, book 5. This book features one massive, four story palace that is designed a lot like an old school dungeon. Some rooms have fixed occupants, potential encounters, while others are intentionally empty, to be flexibly filled with palace denizens depending on the circumstances. Many of the palace's residents...

I think sandboxy dungeons have their place as well. But most of the AP dungeons I've seen lately are 8-10 room dungeons that are mostly filled with combat encounters meant to be handled 1 room at a time with only limited flexibility in meeting goals.

Set pieces do need to consider level appropriate resources and should avoid relying on too many decisions that have to go right to set up the circumstances. That said, APs by default are pretty linear. You have to buy into the concept and following the rails to some degree. I can see how a well done dungeon can perhaps leave more room for flexibility in execution of the goal. But the goal is likely still fixed within the AP. Because something like X needs to lead to Y etc.

For me the advantage of an AP that favores set pieces is that there is generally more plot movement per real time session of playing. I would like the ocassional larger dungeon, random enounter, etc. as well. The goal of going to many of these dungeons, regardless of how good they are, is often the same though -- get information, kill someone, retrieve the object, etc. You can have these goals met in 1-2 encounters instead and move on to another location and goal.

[Sanityfaerie]

Cellion wrote:

I think prewritten set piece encounters have their place, but I'd prefer fewer rather than more. In my experience, adventures written with set pieces offer painfully linear, restrictive experiences, as set pieces are harder to rework if the party takes a different approach than the adventure expects. For example, a set piece where you and the bad guys are sledding down a mountain on magical icebergs while you fight each other is a super cool encounter, but the PC group that casts fly or melts the icebergs beforehand or decides they're going to take a slower route down the mountain are all going to make it hard to reuse/adapt the set piece. More often than not, I've seen GMs put their cards on the table and say "Hey, I know you want to do X, but there's a sweet set piece if you do Y." and player agency gets set aside for the fun and flashy movie scene.

I've found at least one good technique for preserving player agency while also letting you have your set-pieces, at least if you're writing a bunch of your own stuff. Have all of the big meaningful agency questions happen at the end of the session. "You're at the top of the mountain, you want to get to the bottom of the mountain, and there are enemies ready to stop you. What's your plan for getting down?" They come up with a rough plan, and then you have the time between then and the next session to work out the cool setpiece stuff.

Now, this doesn't help the folks who are out there writing things like APs, but if you're putting setpiece battles together for yourself (or even adjusting them significantly) then it can let you give back some player control while still giving you time to work.

[Squiggit]

I don't think player agency is really at issue here. Yeah, you can design a narrow, railroady set piece, but there are lots and lots of dungeons that are highly linear and limit player options too.

How much agency you want to give the players has more to do with how you construct the environment than what kind of environment you construct.

[Sanityfaerie]

Squiggit wrote:

I don't think player agency is really at issue here. Yeah, you can design a narrow, railroady set piece, but there are lots and lots of dungeons that are highly linear and limit player options too.

How much agency you want to give the players has more to do with how you construct the environment than what kind of environment you construct.

The set-piece issue is not that the set-piece itself is railroady... it's that they take a significant amount of time to put together, and the more dramatic ones can require that certain previous events go in very specific ways... which means that once the GM has put in the effort to design the thing, there's a strong incentive to do what it takes to get the players to actually use what they've set up... and getting there can get kind of railroady.

Dungeons can, I suppose, be the same way, in that if you set up a dungeon, then you're motivated to ensure that the players actually go into the thing, but they're often a lot less finicky, and you can usually lure the players in by making them think that there's something they want inside (accurately or otherwise). If your set-piece involves something like chasing the foe on griffon-back as they attempt to fly off with the princess, though, then there are a lot more things that have to go just so.

[hsnsy56]

Sanityfaerie wrote:

The set-piece issue is not that the set-piece itself is railroady... it's that they take a significant amount of time to put together, and the more dramatic ones can require that certain previous events go in very specific ways... which means that once the GM has put in the effort to design the thing, there's a strong incentive to do what it takes to get the players to actually use what they've set up... and getting there can get kind of railroady.

Dungeons can, I suppose, be the same way, in that if you set up a dungeon, then you're motivated to ensure that the players actually go into the thing, but they're often a lot less finicky, and you can usually lure the players in by making them think that there's something they want inside (accurately or otherwise). If your set-piece involves something like chasing the foe on griffon-back as they attempt to fly off with the princess, though, then there are a lot more things that have to go just so.

These are fair points, but my orginal OP was in context of APs where I feel like you are going to get these "set points" regardless and you've bought into the railroad. Homebrew where PCs are free to set whatever goals they want are a whole different thing.

I would prefer that more of these "set points" in APs were not 8-10 encounter dungeons and rather 1-3 enounter somethings between plot movement. Requiring very specific methods is risky, but location based set pieces are a bit easier. I just find it tiring that almost every time you go to a big plot movement location you end up with this 8-10 encounter 'dungeon'.

"Set piece" is maybe overstating it but if you have 1-3 enounters in a location instead of 8-10 you can put a lot more effort into making those enounters interesting with terrain, goals other than kill everything, unique monsters, etc. And if it turns out not to be interesting, well you've got your plot coupon with less real time and get to go to another cool location and goal. If you are signing up for an AP where you go to dungeon A then dungeon B you can just as easily arrange the hooks to 1-3 enounter location A and then B. The moving set pieces can be a bit of the exception rather than the rule to location based set pieces. But even those can be "arranged" especially in an AP format where you are expected to ride the rails to some extent.

[Squiggit]

Sanityfaerie wrote:

Squiggit wrote:

I don't think player agency is really at issue here. Yeah, you can design a narrow, railroady set piece, but there are lots and lots of dungeons that are highly linear and limit player options too.

How much agency you want to give the players has more to do with how you construct the environment than what kind of environment you construct.

The set-piece issue is not that the set-piece itself is railroady... it's that they take a significant amount of time to put together, and the more dramatic ones can require that certain previous events go in very specific ways... which means that once the GM has put in the effort to design the thing, there's a strong incentive to do what it takes to get the players to actually use what they've set up... and getting there can get kind of railroady.

Dungeons can, I suppose, be the same way, in that if you set up a dungeon, then you're motivated to ensure that the players actually go into the thing, but they're often a lot less finicky, and you can usually lure the players in by making them think that there's something they want inside (accurately or otherwise). If your set-piece involves something like chasing the foe on griffon-back as they attempt to fly off with the princess, though, then there are a lot more things that have to go just so.

I mean, again, isn't that a design choice? Yes, you can build a set piece that requires specific events to happen in a specific way, and you can build a dungeon with only one path through it too. But you can also build open ended set pieces with more moving parts or dungeons with nonlinear options and room for players to influence events.

But neither are a requirement of design, but rather a specific choice by the designer.

[willfromamerica]

hsnsy56 wrote:

Sanityfaerie wrote:

The set-piece issue is not that the set-piece itself is railroady... it's that they take a significant amount of time to put together, and the more dramatic ones can require that certain previous events go in very specific ways... which means that once the GM has put in the effort to design the thing, there's a strong incentive to do what it takes to get the players to actually use what they've set up... and getting there can get kind of railroady.

Dungeons can, I suppose, be the same way, in that if you set up a dungeon, then you're motivated to ensure that the players actually go into the thing, but they're often a lot less finicky, and you can usually lure the players in by making them think that there's something they want inside (accurately or otherwise). If your set-piece involves something like chasing the foe on griffon-back as they attempt to fly off with the princess, though, then there are a lot more things that have to go just so.

These are fair points, but my orginal OP was in context of APs where I feel like you are going to get these "set points" regardless and you've bought into the railroad. Homebrew where PCs are free to set whatever goals they want are a whole different thing.

I would prefer that more of these "set points" in APs were not 8-10 encounter dungeons and rather 1-3 enounter somethings between plot movement. Requiring very specific methods is risky, but location based set pieces are a bit easier. I just find it tiring that almost every time you go to a big plot movement location you end up with this 8-10 encounter 'dungeon'.

"Set piece" is maybe overstating it but if you have 1-3 enounters in a location instead of 8-10 you can put a lot more effort into making those enounters interesting with terrain, goals other than kill everything, unique monsters, etc. And if it turns out not to be interesting, well you've got your plot coupon with less real time and get to go to another cool location and goal. If you are signing up...

I think you’ve really hit on my biggest issue with massive dungeons being used as a crutch. Oftentimes, they’re used because there isn’t enough going on with the story to naturally fill a chapter’s worth of adventuring in a way that continuously advances the plot, so instead we just drag things out with a series of filler encounters.