After many years of gaming, there is one aspect of traditional D&D which I can’t stand more than anything else—dungeons. It may seem odd, as half of the title of the game I play the most is dungeons, but I just can’t stand them.
I understand why dungeons are often the core of published adventures; they are easy to write. It can be difficult, if not impossible, to design an adventure for others to use without a dungeon. With a dungeon there is a limitation on possible player choices and solid rewards for accomplishing the dungeon. This is why video games utilize the concept as well. It is a very simple, easy to document, and easy to understand method of covering adventure material.
However I feel like dungeons, and published adventures in general, are not very much fun. I like using a published adventure for inspiration, but every time I use a published adventure the game becomes very stale and boring. Sure, 5 rooms of cutting down enemies might be fun, but any more than that and I think me and my fellow players stop trying to enjoy the story and just ignore everything to just finish the dungeon. Its where dungeon crawling becomes a chore.
I do think there is a way to apply the benefits of dungeons to published adventures which do not include dungeons at all. For an example of this, check of the 3.5 book Heroes of Battle. This book includes a good example of how to design an adventure like a dungeon without including a dungeon. Heroes of Battle uses the example of an overland adventure, where player choices affect the next phase of a battle in the midst of a war. The example provided is a D-Day style invasion, where the party arrives on a beach. After stopping the initial defenses, the heroes can continue down the breach to support another landing party, or move up the cliff-side to take out an enemy fortification, and so on. There is a very good diagram of how this can be defined using a flowchart. Even better, there is a time-based flowchart which defines what the enemy forces will do, and how it could react if the players interfere.
The point here is that I believe that published adventures can be much more interesting and immersive if dungeons became a thing of the past. For those who are designing their own adventures, using these ideas for adventure design can provide a robust pre-planned adventure, without the need for a boring dungeon crawl.
Recent Comments