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Hi everyone! I'm in the middle of writing and playing a cozy campaign with my group based on Stardew Valley. In developing this campaign and its subsystems I've encountered quite a few game design thoughts that I think would be fun to discuss. Here's one:
Dungeons Are Extremely Compatible with a Cozy Campaign
This is a big topic, so my apologies for rambling! For those that don't know, in Stardew Valley, a farming sim, there exist several caves/dungeons which you can fight your way through and explore to obtain resources that help you in the rest of the game. These dungeons are fun and can be genuinely challenging.
In my experience, true dungeons have been slowly going extinct in D&D and Pathfinder. I see all the time people online admitting that they hardly use dungeons anymore, or that dungeons are reserved for OSR play where torches, prying gems out of sockets, and traps still matter. In many modern groups, a dungeon is on narratively shaky ground from the outset, and proper dungeon exploration clashes with story-and-adventure-driven clocks.
The big issues with dungeons, from what I can tell, are:
1. Narrative. A dungeon filled with danger and treasure, waiting for the party to delve its depths. Unless there's some village/town/city/country/world ending threat requiring the party to delve, the player characters have to be suicidally greedy to throw themselves at it just for treasure or fame. Not everyone wants to play such a character. Having a story setup that requires you to explore such a dangerous place lends itself to ticking clocks, outside pressure, and a Main Story that makes taking your time feel strange. It's a tough fit.
2. Megadungeons. Let's say you're narratively incentivized to delve a dungeon (this incentive often encourages exclusive focus on the dungeon). It's pretty hard to come up with similar narrative structures that make you delve multiple dungeons, so you end up pushed to a mega-dungeon. Megadungeons have a lot of weight on their shoulders. They have to have all the experience and loot required for the full level range, and they tend to have big sections with vastly different ecologies and structure in order to keep things fresh while supporting the whole campaign, and even get loaded up with NPCs you'd rather not include just for the completeness of the TTRPG experience. They usually must have a continuous difficulty, without jumps in threat that require returning later. In short, they can end up a thematic disaster, or otherwise prevent you from having a tight, lean, fun dungeon.
3. Traps. We all know about the issues with traps. Too strong, they delete characters. Too weak, they don't matter. Keeping an eye out for traps feels mechanically orphaned from the rest of the game in PF2. In OSR, you're not supposed to be attached to your character, so instant death is allowed to be on the table, but in games where you are encouraged to keep your character around the price of traps is in-game time, which, as discussed previously, is often meaningless. Without traps, dungeons can feel too much like sequential rooms filled with monsters, and traversing a dungeon will have little mechanical distinction from waltzing through the woods. I do think traps are a useful tool if they could be implemented properly.
So, what happens when death is off the table, the party has lots of things they want to do in a day, and there is a robust "town/farm" experience that provides incentives for exploration?
Since the players know they won't permanently lose their characters, it's no longer about risking your life for treasure, it's risking some time and whatever penalty replaces death. You can have much more reasonable minded characters who would agree to delve. The narrative of exploration is much more palatable, and the decision isn't forced by some outside force or doomsday clock.
This, in turn, means exploring multiple dungeons is a lot easier to fit in the narrative, so each dungeon can be more distinct, doesn't have to be bloated with all the treasure and experience you need for a level range, and can even have discontinuous challenges that encourage the party to metroidvania around the campaign.
You can also bring "death" back as a trap consequence, though in this case it's a non-permanent penalty, it can still hold a lot more weight than PF2's "okay we heal up the damage and continue" penalty. However, as discussed previously, time as a resource in this type of campaign means stopping to treat wounds and conditions that traps might impose actually matters, since it might prevent you from completing a villager's request by the due date. Additionally, traps designed exclusively to waste time (no damage, no conditions) are suddenly a thing.
Going back to the OSR compatibility of this style of campaign, the players are responsible for earning their own money to either meet or exceed the wealth by level table, so they can bring back old school shenanigans like stealing the furniture, searching for every last secret compartment, disassembling and selling traps, etc. Since they're in the same region, they can also take over and convert dungeons (unless you opt for random/regenerating kinds). The players can come up with unusual solutions if they can make the time budget make sense, like tunneling, or flooding.
I've been excited to imagine being able to mix and match pre-written dungeons from other sources and using them as drop in content for these style of campaigns, and I've been enjoying flexing my long neglected dungeon building skills.
TL;DR:
Nonlethal, cozy games can use dungeons effectively as a welcome change of pace from more peaceful activities, without requiring PCs be willing to risk life and limb for a bit of treasure. Dungeon design is easier, and less constrained than in other types of campaigns, and the old tropes of dungeon exploration can be given new life.
Have you experienced issues with getting dungeons to fit in your modern campaigns?
Do you even like dungeons?
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I think an important aspect of "Dungeons" isn't that it's a physical underground structure. A "dungeon" can be pretty much any set series of encounters that need to be done together, and any attempts at leaving and returning will yield a place that isn't the same as when it was left. The
dungeon residents could have all packed up and left, they McGuffin may have been moved, etc.
For me, basically any planned series of encounters qualifies as a dungeon.
That said, once characters hit sufficiently high level death wasn't a real risk. Cast a raise dead and you we're back in business. Oddly, PF2 has made it much harder to come back from death.
In a "Cozy" style game I would expect death to be a sidetrack, not the end to a character. As long as at least one party survives, there is some sort of side quest that can be done to get people back into the game. Perhaps it means going to the powerful cleric in town and signing a contract to raise your friends, but now you have to complete a mission for them. You alone are technically on the hook, but your friends would surely help you right?
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Agreed on basically all accounts with Claxon. That said, even in a cozier game, I would still need some sort of stakes if death isn't on the line. Even if it's something like, the town will be visited soon by a representative from the city's guilds, and the blacksmith wants to make a good impression. There's a rare material he can use to make something that wows the guild rep in a nearby dungeon, but he needs it in the next couple days. If you fail to do that, then there's social consequence.
To answer the questions you posed, though: I love dungeons deeply, both as a player and a GM, and they're probably my preferred way of presenting combat challenges. My current campaign (which has had 15 sessions so far) has had three dungeons. One was shorter, and was largely skipped by my players due to good social checks, only having to deal with the boss fight. One was more traditional, having 5 combat encounters plus some skill-based ones. The final one was a massive, abandoned, demon-infested city. This one was the least tightly structured, with each part of the city having notable locations, and the majority of the combats were random encounters between locations (that could be avoided with certain checks).
I think the most important thing about integrating them into modern, narrative-focused games is giving them a good reason to want to go in there. As you said, only people who are suicidally greedy would go into a dungeon for money or fame. To continue with the examples I'd laid out above:
The first dungeon was a thieves guild. The party had been hired by another faction to steal a particular item from their vault. The faction was one they were desperate to be on good terms with, so they agreed. They could have fought their way through, but instead they leveraged their diplomatic skills to convince the guild's second in command to let them overthrow the leader in exchange for the item. If they didn't succeed, they wouldn't get influence with the faction they worked for.
The second dungeon was the lair of a minor villain who had personally slighted one of the PCs and was doing work that would endanger other people. Motivation here was simple: Bad guy hiding in lair, have to go deal with him. The reasons were largely personal, as they would get no fame from doing this. If they didn't succeed, then the villain would continue to do their work.
The third dungeon was a demon-infested city, as mentioned, and the goal was to find the lost sister of one of the PCs who had gone in there looking for something. Once they found her, they managed to convince her to abandon her search and leave with them, leaving that dungeon technically incomplete. If they didn't succeed, then that PC would have more than likely lost her sister.
This was a lot of words and examples to say: Whether your game is cozy or not, dungeons need reason to go into them, and there should be consequences other than death if you fail.
This was a lot of words and examples to say: Whether your game is cozy or not, dungeons need reason to go into them, and there should be consequences other than death if you fail.
This is probably the most important thing.
Dungeons need to have consequence for failure, or else they cease being meaningful. Those consequence don't have to be death (or rather it can be short death with other more meaningful consequences).
In Stardew Valley, you have a bunch of reasons to go into the mines, from advancement, to quality of life, to finding gifts for NPCs. In a cozy game, it's easy to find reasons to go into a dungeon, since the rewards don't have to be balanced against your life. I've mentioned "metroidvania-ing", which involves going back and forth obtaining useful tools in one area to make progress in another. I think this can be a powerful element for encouraging delving beyond loot, and creating a satisfying mechanical feedback loop.
As for death penalty, you can really make it as punishing or inconsequential as you like. In my game, it triggers a significant monetary penalty and the loss of a chunk of time. Since managing your farm output on a schedule is pretty important, unplanned setbacks in time can have severe ripple effects. You could also go in a more "realistic" direction by stopping everything else to perform a ritual, and going fully into the consequences of crossing back and forth to the Boneyard. This decision will definitely have a big impact on how cozy it feels, however.
Haven't had any deaths yet, so we'll see what happens!
Dungeons need to have consequence for failure, or else they cease being meaningful. Those consequence don't have to be death (or rather it can be short death with other more meaningful consequences).
I really think death is the least interesting consequence for failing most dungeons. It just stops a long running narrative dead. Game designers of games that want to have long running narratives (like Pathfinder) tend to realize that and put in ways to undo it, which means it's really a financial penalty once you can access those.
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I just want to add to the opinion that "dungeon-style" gaming doesn't require an actual dungeon.
A "dungeon" is less a physical structure than an adventure paradigm with the following characteristics:
1) Limited choices to "advance" to the next encounter. Instead of an "open map," the party is constrained to a set number of "tunnels" and "doors;" the location could be in a building, a heavily overgrown forest along game trails, or even narrow streets and back alleys in a town/city as well as underground.
2) The players (usually) set the pace. Although there are some "dungeons" that have a hard time limit for the party to "solve," this is the exception in many campaigns. For the most part, the party can freely make multiple runs at exploring the location and/or leave to rest and recover.
3) The "dungeon" location is mostly self-contained. There may be some narrative connections to the nearest community ("home base"), but usually what happens in the "dungeon" has limited or no impact on the party's interactions within the community outside the dungeon.
Also note, the mega-dungeon is not the only type of dungeon. The most common form of dungeons in recent adventures is a narratively-linked series of small dungeons that the party explores in sequence rather than a single location.
I just want to add to the opinion that "dungeon-style" gaming doesn't require an actual dungeon.
A "dungeon" is less a physical structure than an adventure paradigm with the following characteristics:
1) Limited choices to "advance" to the next encounter. Instead of an "open map," the party is constrained to a set number of "tunnels" and "doors;" the location could be in a building, a heavily overgrown forest along game trails, or even narrow streets and back alleys in a town/city as well as underground.
2) The players (usually) set the pace. Although there are some "dungeons" that have a hard time limit for the party to "solve," this is the exception in many campaigns. For the most part, the party can freely make multiple runs at exploring the location and/or leave to rest and recover.
3) The "dungeon" location is mostly self-contained. There may be some narrative connections to the nearest community ("home base"), but usually what happens in the "dungeon" has limited or no impact on the party's interactions within the community outside the dungeon.Also note, the mega-dungeon is not the only type of dungeon. The most common form of dungeons in recent adventures is a narratively-linked series of small dungeons that the party explores in sequence rather than a single location.
I mostly agree with everything you said, except that I think players don't have to set the pace (which you also acknowledge). It's common in written adventures that this is the case, but I prefer not to run dungeons this way and instead have the denizens react in a logical way to the intrusion. For me, it often means you only have one chance to go through the dungeon. No extended retreats or overnight resting within (though I build encounters with that in mind). However this is more a personal preference and what I find believable.
Also there's still room for Skyrim style dungeons filled with Dragur style enemies who have no goals beyond protecting the ancient tomb and you can freely leave and return and things are unlikely to change in the intervening time. Though I personally am not a fan of this.
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So, what happens when death is off the table, the party has lots of things they want to do in a day, and there is a robust "town/farm" experience that provides incentives for exploration?
Death was off the table in half the service projects in Kindled Magic, 1st module in the Strength of Thousands adventure path. The PCs are students at the Magaambya Academy, which has a culture of public service. Some no-danger projects were buying rare chickens (with the Magaabmya's money), delivering mail, testing magical tattoos, combatting construct armor in a refereed tournament, and making their personal Magaambyan masks. Gathering mushrooms for use in a ritual was supposed to be harmless, but they ran into a hostile creature.
Likewise, a supposedly-harmless project to reference books in a neglected library turned into a battle against giant insects that had infested the library. On the other hand, when the PCs saw the damage to many book in that library, the two PCs volunteered for a library restoration project to repair the books. I went through with that no-danger cozy project about book binding and copying.
For summer semester I also created a sailboat race for the PCs to join in, Building Mkosa from War of Immortals, comment #13.
The 2nd module, Spoken on the Song Wind, had them facing criminals in the city around the Magaambya Academy, because they were experienced students and could handle the danger. However, I added some no-danger projects. For the runesmith playtest, I invented a slum called the North Docks. I mentioned that the area was low rent because it was built in the flood plan of the Vanji River and flooded every winter. That winter the Vanji River flooded and the PCs were asked to rescue people trapped on roofs in the North Docks. The rescue boats had too deep a draft to sail up streets under 2 feet of water, so characters with magic or high strength, such as the PCs, were the best means for fetching people to the boats waiting nearby. The champion was Enlargened and waded through the flood to carry people, the bards jumped from rooftop to rooftop to calm and organize the people, the wizard conjured Sliding Blocks to move over the water conveying people, etc. The people to rescue were not at risk, just cold, hungry, and uncomfortable.