The Other D&D

[James Maliszewski]

Seeing all the enthusiasm for the "mega-dungeon" concept has got me to thinking: why is it that we seem to think of dungeons and specifically the mega-dungeon as somehow the essence of OD&D? Yes, of course, the name of the game is Dungeons & Dragons and, yes, it's true, that Gygax and Arneson and many of the rest all centered their campaigns, at least initially, around a vast underground complex.

But Volume 3 of OD&D devotes almost as much space to wilderness adventures as it does to underworld ones. The map to Outdoor Survival is listed as a recommended component for play in Volume 1, which means it was deemed more important to the game than, say, miniatures figures, which don't even make it on to the list. And let's not forget that the first heavily supported OD&D setting was the Wilderlands, which made the "hexcrawl" style of campaigning every bit as viable as the dungeoncrawl.

So why all the emphasis on dungeons and none on the wilderness? I'll admit to some bias on my part, as most of my early campaigns all featured significant wilderness components. Indeed, outdoor hex maps were my "dungeons," the things I pored over for hours on end as a kid. Am I alone in this regard?

[calithena]

No.

Also, the development of the city adventure, again with JG leading the way, is a third format that I consider pretty much at the core, although it's not in the LBBs especially.

[James Maliszewski]

calithena said:

Also, the development of the city adventure, again with JG leading the way, is a third format that I consider pretty much at the core, although it's not in the LBBs especially.

Yes, you're right. City adventures are another area that really interested me in my younger days. I drew up lots of city maps now that I think about it and had great fun trying to give each city its own character, not just in terms of its inhabitants but also in terms of its layout. Cities and the wilderness were to me what the mega-dungeon was to many other people.

[jrients]

jamesm said:

So why all the emphasis on dungeons and none on the wilderness?

Laziness! I'm faster/better/stronger at both prepping and running dungeons.

[coffee]

Seems to me (and I really have nothing concrete to go on here, just the impression I've gotten over the years) that the dungeon was for beginning characters, until they worked their way up to name level or so.

Then the wilderness took over. You'd go out and find a place to build your stronghold, then you'd have to clear the land and build it. Wilderness also got in your way as you were going on quests, etc.

The thing Gygax and others consistently discusses about D&D (particularly in differentiation from other rpgs, such as Gary's own Lejendary Adventures) is the character level advancement paradigm. This was specifically geared to dungeon exploration, where each successive level was more difficult than the last. You don't get that with Wilderness (or, for the most part, with city adventures).

So, once you've got high level characters (and are probably bored with the dungeon), you go out into the big wide world. But until then, you hang out in the dungeon.

Anyway, that's the way it seems to me.

[James Maliszewski]

jrients said:

Laziness! I'm faster/better/stronger at both prepping and running dungeons.

I guess what I'm trying to come to grips with is why, when people think of D&D, especially what they'll call "old school D&D," they think of dungeons to the exclusion of the wilderness. I don't see a lot of pining for starting up a really good hexcrawl campaign. Granted, I didn't begin gaming till late 1979, with the Holmes Basic Set, so maybe I'm too late to really grok the mega-dungeon vibe, but, for me, D&D will always be about wandering in the wilderness on some quest or other, running into -- or running away from -- random encounters and stumbling across "mini-dungeons" that were sprinkled across the countryside in out of the way places.

Perhaps I was more strongly influenced by Judges Guild than I realized in my conception of D&D.

[korgoth]

coffee said:

The thing Gygax and others consistently discusses about D&D (particularly in differentiation from other rpgs, such as Gary's own Lejendary Adventures) is the character level advancement paradigm. This was specifically geared to dungeon exploration, where each successive level was more difficult than the last. You don't get that with Wilderness (or, for the most part, with city adventures).

I'm sure this has been addressed elsewhere, but isn't it possible to map the level progression of the dungeon onto the wilderness as well? I like the symmetry of "city - trasition (wilderness) - anticity (dungeon)", but you could treat the wilderness like another dungeon if you wanted... then the opposition is civilization vs. "outside".

Suppose that the city is the home base. The further you get from the base (either down into the earth or out into the wilds) the more dangerous and profitable it becomes. In the case of the wilderness it would be more like circular zones than vertical levels. Just a thought.

[James Maliszewski]

korgoth said:

Suppose that the city is the home base. The further you get from the base (either down into the earth or out into the wilds) the more dangerous and profitable it becomes. In the case of the wilderness it would be more like circular zones than vertical levels. Just a thought.

That's exactly how I used to handle it. My old campaign maps were based on a rough "ring" approach, with the areas closest to the starting city being filled primarily with lower-level creatures like goblins and kobolds, while more powerful beasts were much farther away. This made sense to me as a kid, because I couldn't imagine why a city would allow powerful monsters to exist so close to it (and vice versa).

As I got more sophisticated, I modified my approach somewhat, using a series of overlapping rings, each with a city or settlement at its center, so there was also "sideways" movement in terms of challenge, somewhat analogous to sub-levels in a dungeon that straddle the difficulty of the levels above and below them.

[jrients]

jamesm said:

I don't see a lot of pining for starting up a really good hexcrawl campaign.

Over at theRPGsite.com we actually devote a good deal of time to hexcrawling. Heck, I just ordered the d20 version of the Wilderlands due to its constant praises over there.

[James Maliszewski]

jrients said:

Over at theRPGsite.com we actually devote a good deal of time to hexcrawling. Heck, I just ordered the d20 version of the Wilderlands due to its constant praises over there.

Alas, the RPGSite's general atmosphere and comportment doesn't really suit my temperament, but I'm glad to hear that there are others out there who enjoy this approach.

The D20 version of the Wilderlands is quite good, far better than I'd expected given its origin. For the most part, the stats are minimal and the information contained in the books is, if anything, more inspirational to me than the originals, in part I think because there's a bit -- but not a lot -- more meat on the bones than the old JG versions. Some might find it less agreeable, particularly if they like their settings more "skeletal" but I find the D20 version very congenial for my style of play.

[calithena]

jamesm said:

The D20 version of the Wilderlands is quite good, far better than I'd expected given its origin.

As a former member of the NG Wilderlands Design Team, I'm a little curious what you mean by this. I won't take it personally.

(My total contribution to the Wilderlands boxed set was about 80 fixed encounters for Barbarian Altanis IIRC, but I also helped communicate some of the 'feel' of the setting to some of the younger folks who were doing more actual work.)

[Falconer]

To me, the ideal model is B2+B1, or S4+WG4. In either case you have Town (Keep or Gnome Vale), Wilderness, and Multiple Dungeons. By far the major failing of T1-4 is the lack of a playable, open wilderness map. This lack was keenly felt by my players and me after coming from B2. In B2, the players had many options at the beginning of any session. In T1-4, the session always began with the linear trip from town to dungeon, and that’s it. Maybe the occasional random encounter vaguely on the road in-between.

The thing that makes dungeons easier than wildernesses, obviously, is the walls. Generally, the players can only travel down the tunnels that the Judge has dug and explore the rooms the Judge has stocked. In the wilderness, all compass directions are theoretically open at any time. S4+WG4 had a good work-around for that by being in the mountains, which means you have to take the available paths or go nowhere. An endless, dense Broceliande-like forest would be another possibility.

Nevertheless, I never had trouble with the B2 map, as the players knew the bounds of the map and sportingly stayed on it. Regards.

[James Maliszewski]

calithena said:

As a former member of the NG Wilderlands Design Team, I'm a little curious what you mean by this. I won't take it personally.

I meant two things.

The more significant of the two was that it was a D20 product. I know a lot of people, both here and elsewhere, consider D20 the antithesis of "old school."

The other thing I meant was its being published by Necromancer, a company that, IMO, is very hit or miss when it comes to what constitutes "old school." Much of the time, they seem to fixate on the notes but lose the tune.

Happily, that's not the case here. I think the D20 Wilderlands set is pure, unadulterated genius and probably one of the best things to have come out as a result of 3e.

[calithena]

NG is an interesting company. The stuff that Bill and Clark and some other contributors (WEB Kenower comes to mind) actually write themselves is acceptably old-school and often really good. (I think you can make a case that Vault of Larin Karr was the best 3e module produced, for instance, and Crane's Tower is an excellent one-shot.) Not all their stuff is in this mold, though. They were one of the better 3e companies in the early days of the edition and I was glad to hang my hat there for a while, though ultimately I wasn't able to work with them in the way I'd wanted to (this has a lot more to do with me than it does with them).

The people who worked on the wilderlands design team (including Bill, Clark, Melan, Estar/Rob Conley, myself, and a bunch of others you'd recognize from Dragonsfoot and elsewhere) were all either devoted old-schoolers who had been there or competent youngsters who were able to get the vibe for themselves. I think it's a great product and I'm proud of the small part I played in helping bring it to press.

Though I do prefer the old one sentence JG encounter descriptions, myself.

[James Maliszewski]

calithena said:

Not all their stuff is in this mold, though.

Absolutely. That's only part of the issue for me and I'll admit that I'm perhaps being unduly critical here. My big issue is that NG's definition of "old school" is so thoroughly subjective as to be devoid of any meaning at all. They fixate more on purely "esthetic" issues -- which I think is important -- but lose sight of some of the substance IMO. And their WotC boosterism, then and now, grates on me.

But I don't want this thread to turn into me ragging on Necromancer, especially after they did Judges Guild proud by bringing out some very fine products that I'm glad to own. They'll always have my gratitude for that.

[dekelia]

The "Hex crawl" idea is something that never really occurred to me when I first started playing (AD&D mid 80's), but is something I agree is very much part of OD&D. I just recently finally got to read through Underworld & Wilderness Adventures and I just LOVE the wilderness exploration stuff.

One thing I really like about OD&D is how much of a GAME it is. So often I get wrapped up in trying to make everything realistic that I lose that. I love that when you come across a castle, you randomly decide which of EXACTLY THREE possibilities live there and what they have with them. I love that every Lord wants to joust you and every Patriarch will tithe you 10% of your holdings and send you on a quest. Add to that the procedures from the JGs Ready Ref Sheets for monster lairs and you could explore an empty map, making up adventures for years. I actually much prefer that to world that actually "makes sense".

This is an adventure type that I haven't really ever used, but would very much like to (DM or play).

[philotomy]

I think one reason the dungeon is so popular is because it provides a limited environment (in a good way). The scale and pacing of the dungeon works well in play. Players have an easy time envisioning the environment and the possibilities. Consider a party moving through a dungeon: when they come across a large carved section of wall, they understand there's a good possibility it's significant in some way. A dungeon makes it easy for both the referee and the players to "get into the groove" of the game.

You can certainly have satisfying play in the wilderness, but its open-ended nature and scale gives a different feel to the play -- one that is harder to make work, in my opinion.

(Tangentially, I want to add kudos to the Wilderlands, in either the JG or NG versions.)

[korgoth]

philotomy said:

I think one reason the dungeon is so popular is because it provides a limited environment (in a good way). The scale and pacing of the dungeon works well in play. Players have an easy time envisioning the environment and the possibilities. Consider a party moving through a dungeon: when they come across a large carved section of wall, they understand there's a good possibility it's significant in some way. A dungeon makes it easy for both the referee and the players to "get into the groove" of the game.

You can certainly have satisfying play in the wilderness, but its open-ended nature and scale gives a different feel to the play -- one that is harder to make work, in my opinion.

(Tangentially, I want to add kudos to the Wilderlands, in either the JG or NG versions.)

Hey, what are you doing posting? You're supposed to be updating your B4 campaign log!

[Deleted]

jamesm said:

Am I alone in this regard?

Not at all. Although I've never owned Outdoor Survival, or any JG supplements (still don't), wilderness adventures have been a big part of the game experience for me as well. Off the top of my head, about 60% (dungeoneering), & 40% (wilderness). After all, most of the time, you have to actually travel to the dungeon (at least a little ways). I like to incorporate little clues & foreshadowing, even when the PC's are dead-set about reaching that dungeon. A barely legible map carried by a dead brigand, a word slashed into a tree, a crazy old hermit muttering a few phrases; these all might not be important to the PC's now, but will certainly lead into something later. Wilderness & city adventures are great; I just don't use them as much.

[philotomy]

korgoth said:

Hey, what are you doing posting? You're supposed to be updating your B4 campaign log!

Oh, man, you nailed me, there. That is so far behind it isn't even funny.

I have to offer the excuse that I've had some "real life issues" that have dominated my time/attention, lately. Same old story, I suppose, but there it is...

[Melan]

Interestingly (heh, this might be a new word, but then I'm a bit drunk), the majority of my gaming is city-based, on the formula of "PCs arrive in town, PCs stir up crap, PCs get in deep trouble and leave for greener pastures as things start collapsing" with some dungeoneering and less hexcrawling (it is somehow very hard to communicate the idea to my players... the opportunities are there, they get interested, but they don't bite on them unless prodded... and I don't prod much).

So I guess I am the guy who got inspired by the whole City State of the Invincble Overlord school of OD&D.

That, and the technology vs. magic angle, but that influence comes mainly from other directions.

[makofan]

My normal group LOVES city games, and can spend an entire session without leaving town. As a DM, I want to do wilderness exploration, but the interest is sub-minimal. Dungeons are our compromise

[coffee]

S. John Ross, creator of both Risus and Encounter Critical, used to end his posts on the Risus mailing list with "There's no wrong way to play Risus." He later changed it to simply "There's no wrong way to play."

This thread shows amply that the sentiment is especially true of OD&D.

[sham]

I've always wanted to design a grand hex crawl type campaign, littered with adventure sites. The primary purpose, in my version, would be to locate new dungeons, though.

Nevertheless, it would basically be a mega dungeon, with levels seperated by hex crawling rather than stairs/shafts/elevators.

The concept is the same, essentially, but there would be a totally different flow to the campaign.

I've never done this because, in order to do it the way I have always envisioned it, would take way too much prep time.

In the end, yes, just doing a mega dungeon is easier!

I still love the idea of a hex crawl in search of more dungeon entrances...a Mega Hex campaign, if you will. I'm reminded of D1-D3 type hex crawl in the depths...not outdoors at all in that case, but that type of freedom with adventure sites and scattered dungeons. Sounds like years of prep work...unless you can really wing it, railroad it, or just begin with six long encounters surrounding the starting point, and create more as neeed!

~Sham

[ffilz]

The problem I have with any outside the dungeon play in D&D is making the whole level thing work. Sure, you can make your wilderness leveled by rings and such, and some cities can be low level and others high level. But the problem comes in when a player decides to become king or something. Then the level chart and logic start to clash. And then the GM starts sneaking heroes and super heroes into the town guards to keep the PCs in line. And soon, the whole players choosing their level of risk goes out the window.

Frank

[James Maliszewski]

ffilz said:

The problem I have with any outside the dungeon play in D&D is making the whole level thing work.

I'm curious then: what do you make of the inclusion of wilderness adventure rules in Volume 3? I agree wholeheartedly that OD&D, as written, works very well with the dungeon/underworld adventures, but I think it's very telling that the wilderness option is included in the original books. It's not a supplement it does but the very same book that shows us how to make dungeons.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that wilderness adventures are "core" to OD&D rather than a later addition to it (like, say, thieves). Are you saying you don't see it as central to the game and, if so, what do you make of its inclusion in the 3LB?

(Just to be clear, I'm not trying to be argumentative here. I'm genuinely curious, because I've always seen wilderness adventures as the flip side of the dungeon coin and I'm trying to understand the perspective of those who think differently)

[ffilz]

I think the original rules are a jumble. Heck, I'm pretty sure Gary even admitted such, that they had been released before he was satisfied with them. Certainly the jumble of combat systems is indicative of the rules not quite being sure what they're about.

It does appear that the original games did involve some stuff outside the dungeon, and certainly the levels derrived from the chainmail heroes, super heroes, wizards, etc. But I don't think that when the rules were written up, Gygax and Arneson had quite come to grips with the implications of the game.

And sure, I think there was a strong desire to have the game be more than just dungeon crawls. But when I look back at my campaigns, I see how poorly town and wilderness play ran, and why the level system is part of that poor running. So it's with 20-20 hindsight that I see the wilderness and town adventuring as incompatible with the levels and treasure model the game seems grounded in, which works with dungeoning since there needn't be logic and the contstraints of the dungeon make it easy for the GM to place things such that the players can know what "level" they are on and choose their risk accordingly.

The wilderness gaming I have done with level systems (D&D or systems derrived from it, or even things like RuneQuest which aren't class/level based, but still have a huge power differential between a starting PC and an experienced one), has wound up with me giving the PCs challenges commensurate with their level. Even though 3 months ago in the session, the bandits along this road were 2nd level, now they're 8th level, because that's what's necessary to challenge the PCs.

I have thought about leveled wilderness, either the rings idea, or "the sylvan woods are 1st level, the black forest is 8th level." And that helps some. But then once we start having a wilderness and towns, we start wanting logic. And then the whole treasure and level model starts to look absurd.

Frank

[geoffrey]

James, you are not alone. We started playing in late 1980 with the Holmes rulebook.

In my first year playing D&D, we never had any dungeon maps (and seldom thereafter). We didn't even adventure in B1 or B2. All our adventures were in forests, swamps, mountains, arctic tundra, or in some other sort of wilderness. Occasionally we might make a quick foray into a small subterranean lair, but no one ever had any actual maps of a dungeon. We somehow had the idea that going into a dungeon was tantamount to suicide.

The first map I remember was a continent drawn by one of the guys in the group, and I'm pretty sure that wasn't drawn until we'd gamed for many months. In any case, it wasn't used much. It was just marveled at. It inspired me to draw my first D&D map: also a continental map. My map was broken up into various regions in which different types of monsters lived: Giant Land, Dragon Island, Land of Oozes, etc. The ONLY human placed on the map was the evil sorcerer's castle in the middle of the map, surrounded by a land of volcanoes and flowing lava. You could say the demographics were VERY peculiar: the only humans on the continent were the PCs, the evil sorcerer, and the occasional bandit, berserker, evil magic-user, etc.

To this day wilderness adventuring is my favorite, followed by dungeons and with city adventures almost nonexistent.

[badger2305]

I recall having a discussion with a friend in high school; a cup of coffee had splashed onto a sheet of white cardboard he had been intending for his next big campaign map. He was a little upset about this, despite his father's assurance that it was an accident - but then he got an idea.

He waited for the coffee splashes to dry, and then very carefully outlined the ones he thought looked good, and used that for coastline for his new continent. The rest of it he merged into mountains, etc. Worked pretty well, as I recall.

[Deleted]

badger2305 said:

I recall having a discussion with a friend in high school; a cup of coffee had splashed onto a sheet of white cardboard he had been intending for his next big campaign map. He was a little upset about this, despite his father's assurance that it was an accident - but then he got an idea.

He waited for the coffee splashes to dry, and then very carefully outlined the ones he thought looked good, and used that for coastline for his new continent. The rest of it he merged into mountains, etc. Worked pretty well, as I recall.

Ha Ha! I used a somewhat similar method when I drew my first continent.

I was outside in our carport after it had rained, & I looked at a puddle of water that was sitting there. So I decided to spend a little time carefully sketching the puddle onto paper, then transfering it to oversized hex paper.

I still have that continent; in fact, it's the continent for my de facto campaign setting I've used for 17 years!!!