Bard
Level 3 Conjurer
The dice never lie.
Posts: 87
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Post by Bard on Jul 11, 2008 9:41:58 GMT -6
For me, the dungeon is interesting, because It was a very very long time when I last have been in a dungeon... Even if I don't count my non gaming years. I started around 1990 with some 1st.-2nd. ed. hybrid in a d&d club, and in the first year I mostly remember dungeons. There wasn't a definitive campaign, people changed DMs every game day. You went to a table, asked the DM what level, and if you had a character around that level, you showed your character sheet to the DM, and if it was ok for him, then you were underground in minutes... Many party fights and eventually ridiculous power inflation ensued, but in the first year it was the most fun experience. Then we started to buy the 2nd edition campaign boxed sets, and started our own campaigns and we forgot the dungeons. Cities, wilderness, lots of outer planes, but the old dungeons no more. So that's why I am interested in dungeons nowadays. There is more besides this nostalgia, which is that I came to realize, that the dungeon is while not the core d&d but this is the type of game, which got lost through the years. The new games don't focus on this. It's not just me, who forgot dungeons, the game writers forgot this too. And dungeons somehow make d&d special. The dungeon isn't simple role playing, it has a special feel to it, some trick, it really is the underworld, as the wilderness, and the cities, and even the lairs are not. In a fantasy world the dungeon is one step further out of this world, than the other campaign places. The rabbit hole, or whatever... Edit: You can run city and wilderness and such adventures in any roleplaying system. But you can do dungeons only in d&d. You can try runnung a dungeon in a cyberpunk2020 game for example, but then it becomes d&d. And of course a good campaign should include hex maps, and cities, and small lairs, and adventure modules, and at least one megadungeon... For balance's sake. At least this is what I'm planning now (after about eight years of non gaming).
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Post by badger2305 on Jul 11, 2008 11:01:36 GMT -6
And of course a good campaign should include hex maps, and cities, and small lairs, and adventure modules, and at least one megadungeon... For balance's sake. At least this is what I'm planning now (after about eight years of non gaming). Exactly. Precisely. That's what I am planning, as well. Well put.
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Post by dwayanu on Jul 11, 2008 12:26:31 GMT -6
I've found that in a dungeon one can get a fair bit of mileage from relatively static situations such as, "Here's the lair of a couple of ogres." It's nice to have a dynamic dungeon, but it can be okay for the monsters just to sit around waiting for adventurers to come along.
On the other hand, a wilderness or city seems to me to require ongoing events for sustained interest. That might not be the case if a random walk always yields peril and plunder, but such a setup is probably too unrealistic and dungeon-like unless the PCs are a bunch of dangerous lunatics. (I mean much more than usual.) Put simply, most habitues of such a milieu are not dangerous, at least not in the way dungeon denizens are. Just as in a dungeon, random encounters alone do not give players much scope for the planning that is key to D&D (or for that matter pretty much any satisfying game).
One can plot out in advance the courses events shall take if the players do not intervene. That's quite a different matter from putting the players themselves "on rails!"
Events give focus to the milieu, giving certain places and inhabitants special importance. These "landmarks" help players navigate toward things that interest them rather than drifting blindly.
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Post by badger2305 on Jul 11, 2008 16:51:57 GMT -6
I've found that in a dungeon one can get a fair bit of mileage from relatively static situations such as, "Here's the lair of a couple of ogres." It's nice to have a dynamic dungeon, but it can be okay for the monsters just to sit around waiting for adventurers to come along. On the other hand, a wilderness or city seems to me to require ongoing events for sustained interest. That might not be the case if a random walk always yields peril and plunder, but such a setup is probably too unrealistic and dungeon-like unless the PCs are a bunch of dangerous lunatics. (I mean much more than usual.) Put simply, most habitues of such a milieu are not dangerous, at least not in the way dungeon denizens are. Just as in a dungeon, random encounters alone do not give players much scope for the planning that is key to D&D (or for that matter pretty much any satisfying game). One can plot out in advance the courses events shall take if the players do not intervene. That's quite a different matter from putting the players themselves "on rails!" Events give focus to the milieu, giving certain places and inhabitants special importance. These "landmarks" help players navigate toward things that interest them rather than drifting blindly. Very good points! That is exactly the sort of background that I've been referring to in another thread. IIRC, the modules produced be The Companions operated on this basis: - The Curse on Hareth
- Plague of Terror
- Brotherhood of the Bolt
- Street of Gems
Basically, events would unfold unless the player-characters intervened, which made refereeing them rather interesting and different from the more "static" modules often found from TSR.
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Post by dwayanu on Jul 12, 2008 1:36:03 GMT -6
The Griffin Mountain campaign book for RuneQuest had a profound effect on me. Among all the "tools in the kit," the NPC descriptions leaped out as most inspiring.
It really came home to me that life is going on all around the PCs, and that the sense of this independent activity was part of what made (for instance) Howard's tales of Conan so compelling.
There are political intrigues, illicit romances, assassinations, burglaries, banditry, military campaigns, migrations, caravans, voyages, fairs, holy days, magical researches, restless spirits ... all sorts of "alarums and excursions," indications of which may one way or another cross the paths of adventurers.
To set some well-developed NPCs in motion proved for me the easiest way to bring a setting to life. Knowing their character, I can determine their responses to others -- including PCs.
As players make friends and foes, it becomes ever less necessary to contrive "hooks" for adventure. Relationships and histories peculiar to the characters and developed in play provide plenty of grist for the mill in a very natural fashion.
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Post by driver on Jul 12, 2008 5:19:42 GMT -6
The Griffin Mountain campaign book for RuneQuest had a profound effect on me. Same here. And although I don't like the Jaquays-revamped Griffin Island revamp for RuneQuest because it's divorced from Glorantha, I think it'd make a fantastic basis for a D&D campaign for that same reason.
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scogle
Level 3 Conjurer
Posts: 69
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Post by scogle on Jul 25, 2008 19:33:05 GMT -6
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. That's the way I do it too. This seems to be the unspoken system embodied in OD&D. Here's how I envision the "generic OD&D world": There's a massive dungeon/Underdark; nobody really knows how big it is, and it will often have multiple entrances in-and-out. There might be one entrance through the old castle ruins on the side of town, one at the old boarded-up well (like in makofan's game), even entrances popping up around the world through the power of teleportation. There is also a Wilderness. The Wilderness consists of those parts of the world which are uninhabited or sparsely settled. There are small, relatively primitive kingdoms, barbarians, and many monsters and creatures. The PCs may hire a large force and explore here (usually with treasure gained in the Dungeon), or perhaps they explore it on their own when they're high-level. Finally there is Civilization. These are the advanced cities and kingdoms, home to thief's guilds and political intrigue. Civilization may play little part in the campaign, or may be a central factor from the beginning.
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Post by Malchor on Jan 10, 2019 7:08:00 GMT -6
Back in the early to mid-80s as a DM, it was mostly a city that was the main hub, a network of towns and a lot of wilderness in between with ruins and lost crypts scattered all over. With small fiefdoms to deal with as well. A quest could involve getting something from an underground keep, and ancient tomb or dealing with a lord or wizard that is causing trouble for the higher ups.
My players had to travel the land to get to the old places they heard about or to the keep they were sent to. We did not focus too much on travel beyond a few random encounter rolls, but when they got to a destination there were usually a few days of camping out to scout the situation and get the lay of things before rushing in. That meant the “dungeon” usually started before they went through the front door and extended into the outdoors.
Edit: I should add, the idea of a mega dungeon just never occurred to me. There were larger underground crawls, but most dungeon maps fit on a letter size sheet with a level or two. Keeps, castles and ruins went ove multiple sheets and outdoor maps were usually tabloid or bigger.
On leveling and balance. The worlds I built were not balanced, nor were encounters. Powerful things both NPCs and monsters roamed the world, they were mixed in with everything else. The higher the level of the NPC or monsters the rarer it was and the further you had to travel got to the high level stuff. There were also more monsters and unexplored ruins in the less civilized areas.
That said a TPK was also never a thought at that time. PCs died, but Raise Dead happened. My players knew a death meant it was time to bug out.
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Post by harlandski on Jan 10, 2019 10:15:12 GMT -6
Just to put my two pennyworth in. I've been following with interest the teasers from the "Secrets of Blackmoor" videos and it's turned my understanding of OD&D on its head. I'd also assumed the (mega-)dungeon was the main deal, and that wilderness adventures were an add-on. But the footage I've seen gives the opposite impression - that the main thing was the world, it's politics, it's military struggles (like Braunstein), and that dungeon adventures were an amusing distraction from the main plot.
Just to really stick my neck out I wonder if it was Gygax who pushed the dungeon idea to the fore during the distillation (and naming) of D&D.
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Post by Zenopus on Jan 10, 2019 16:34:06 GMT -6
What I've heard is that Gygax and Kuntz were introduced to Blackmoor and the Dungeon boardgame on the same night by Arneson and Megarry. Dungeon has a six level dungeon, and Megarry was trying to capture the play & excitement of their dungeon games in a form that didn't require a DM. So the exploration of the layered dungeon was already a prominent part of the game of the Blackmoor crew before Gygax was exposed to it. He certainly ran with it himself though.
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Post by doublejig2 on Jan 10, 2019 22:45:11 GMT -6
There are political intrigues, illicit romances, assassinations, burglaries, banditry, military campaigns, migrations, caravans, voyages, fairs, holy days, magical researches, restless spirits ... all sorts of "alarums and excursions," indications of which may one way or another cross the paths of adventurers. To set some well-developed NPCs in motion proved for me the easiest way to bring a setting to life. Knowing their character, I can determine their responses to others -- including PCs. As players make friends and foes, it becomes ever less necessary to contrive "hooks" for adventure. Relationships and histories peculiar to the characters and developed in play provide plenty of grist for the mill in a very natural fashion. This is well said even a decade afterward.
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Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
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Post by Deleted on Jan 12, 2019 13:32:29 GMT -6
I think a lot of the statements about the perceived "dungeon"-centric character of early RPGs have been made by people who came after, and who had no access to the original sources - and to the voices of the people who actually were there. I am saying this with respect; before Jon Peterson, research on P&P RPG history was usually simply not done on a professional level. - As far as I know, that is. A lot of well-meaning hobbyists, yes, but nobody who could be considered an authority. - Because whenever being allowed to comment on the topic by themselves, and not within a context that strongly suggested a focus on rules and systemics, nearly all members of the St Paul group (and of other groups, like the Midkemia players, Judges Guild, etc) have gone on record saying that, to them, joint storytelling, in the sense of shared worldbuilding and fleshing out their characters' respective backgrounds, was as important as the dungeon-related action. Especially with the Braunstein/Blackmoor campaign of 1970-73, out-of-dungeon "wilderness" gaming, with all the layers that you can imagine, was simply part of the experience. All reports of actual play, all statements by anyone involved, explain this in detail. Most people who seriously try to argue against this are mostly just hung up on semantics, of the sort that maybe would have defended Bill Clinton's famous interpretation of the word "is". So, in short, yes, what harlandski asked is correct, in my view: Gygax was the one interested in the dungeon concept; now, mind you that this was actually a brilliant idea, because the "Blackmoor" experience was not conventionally replicable. The "dungeon" experience, however, was. It was the unique selling point of D&D, as opposed to other, similar games. In this context, it's also worth looking at Arneson's own publications after leaving TSR: Both the FFC, as well as "Adventures in Fantasy" are, essentially, setting books. (With the setting of AiF being an implied one, mostly.) Setting books, as in, the dungeon is still an important in-game option, but it's not the only one, and arguably not even the most important one.
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Post by aldarron on Jan 27, 2019 18:36:02 GMT -6
Just to really stick my neck out I wonder if it was Gygax who pushed the dungeon idea to the fore during the distillation (and naming) of D&D. So, pretty clearly dungeons were "at the fore" for D&D players from the get go, but arguably the "official" centralizing of dungeons at least in terms of the understanding of the game in the minds of the pool of new gamers, happened with the introduction of the Holmes and B/X sets. Holmes is really only about dungeon adventuring, and B/X reinforces the distinction by dividing the game in such a way that wilderness adventures only come later at higher levels.
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Deleted
Deleted Member
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Post by Deleted on Jan 27, 2019 20:06:51 GMT -6
Rob Kuntz has talked about this before.
Dave could only bring a limited amount of stuff to Lake Geneva, so he demonstrated the dungeon crawl stuff and it turned Gary on.
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Post by angantyr on Feb 19, 2019 18:10:30 GMT -6
OT - whatever happened to James Maliszewski and his Grognardia blog?
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Deleted
Deleted Member
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Post by Deleted on Feb 20, 2019 6:41:05 GMT -6
OT - whatever happened to James Maliszewski and his Grognardia blog? Kickstarter funded - Kickstarter abandoned - very public meltdown - questionable subsequent behavior. Best simply Google this. Perhaps not the best topic for a forum debate, as a lot of drama comes with this one. Myself, I didn't participate in all of this; personally, I think there should be some sort of accountability for where the money goes with failed crowdfunding projects. Not because I'd enjoy piling on failed business decisions, but because it would make it easier for creators to bounce back from a mistake. - As in, transparency creates trust. If people know that you're stuck in post-production, that's a completely different ballgame than if they doubt that you have even written the book you had been collecting advances for.
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Post by verhaden on Feb 20, 2019 9:16:53 GMT -6
Money, personal loss, writing fatigue, etc. are all a bad mix.
***
Going back to dungeons, @gronanofsimmerya, care to comment on how Professor Barker used the Underworld? From what I've gathered in EPT and on Chirine's Q&A threads -- while not excluding high level play, the allure of magic/technology/secrets, and dangerous encounters -- he seems to have started out at least using it as an adventure hook location for characters fresh off the boat. Gain prestige doing people favors in the Underworld, and get out of the Foreigner's Quarters and into the city where things really kick off.
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Post by angantyr on Feb 20, 2019 13:49:55 GMT -6
OT - whatever happened to James Maliszewski and his Grognardia blog? Kickstarter funded - Kickstarter abandoned - very public meltdown - questionable subsequent behavior. Best simply Google this. Perhaps not the best topic for a forum debate, as a lot of drama comes with this one. Myself, I didn't participate in all of this; personally, I think there should be some sort of accountability for where the money goes with failed crowdfunding projects. Not because I'd enjoy piling on failed business decisions, but because it would make it easier for creators to bounce back from a mistake. - As in, transparency creates trust. If people know that you're stuck in post-production, that's a completely different ballgame than if they doubt that you have even written the book you had been collecting advances for. Oh - now I vaguely remember. Yeah, no desire to debate, I just miss his blog is all. Lot of good thoughts presented there.
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Deleted
Deleted Member
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Post by Deleted on Feb 21, 2019 4:54:48 GMT -6
Yeah, I think we can all agree that the closure of the blog was definitely a loss for the community. I read it with interest, as well. - And (no offense to the great content creators we have here on OD&D'74) there has never quite been another blog that had the same reach and impact on the scene. Chris Kutalik, I think, has a similarly influential blog now as Maliszewski did back in the day, but I have to confess I have never read it. As verhaden has mentioned Chirine - check out his place on the web, if you like, as well: chirinebakal.proboards.comThe most interesting thing about Chirine in relation to the Arneson/D&D side of the story is that he actually worked with Arneson on RPGs after 1981, when Arneson had already mostly emancipated himself from both Blackmoor and from "The Fantasy Game". That perspective, that vision for the game is something that I find pretty interesting: We talk about Arneson as the inventor, and we have generally accepted that the Blackmoor games he ran after the year 2000 probably used pretty much the same ruleset as the games until 1981. But what about the time when Arneson evolved AWAY from D&D?
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