What Makes a Great Dungeon Crawl?

[cailano]

See, I love dungeon crawls, especially the good ones. When a GM nails the sense of exploration, danger, and mystery and adds some great encounters, too? *Chef's kiss.*

But I know not everyone shares my enthusiasm for them.

So, my question for you is: do you like dungeons and what makes a great one? If you're not a fan, what could help you enjoy one? If you are a fan, what's the best one you've crawled or run? Why?

[Actana]

To me, I think (as I haven't had the opportunity to actually try it), it's a narrative and discovery thereof. Not just talking to creatures to get plot thrown your way, but to find implicit pieces of a narrative that come together the further you delve into a dungeon. What happened here, how did things come to pass, and what does it tell us about the dungeon itself? The narrative of a dungeon crawl should tell you both about what kind of place the dungeon is, and it should also tell you about what you should expect as well. And then tie that narrative to the reasons you're in that dungeon to begin with.

As a quick example, if your goal is to retrieve the Golden Idol of Doom from a dungeon, then a narrative of this kind could be a previous adventuring party making it into the dungeon, and you find the remains of their failures and successes. Corpses from members left behind, the campsite they used in a safe haven, how they finally fought and died against a greater threat then they realized, each piece building on the previous ones and also building up what's happening next. Maybe it's a "video gamey" trope, but any setup that can feature notes made by previous inhabitants is fascinating to me, as they're more indirect and implicit storytelling than just having an NPC spout whatever lore they have at you.

 

Having an organic feeling dungeon is also important to me. It shouldn't just be a series of encounters of various sorts, but something you explore and make meaningful decisions in while exploring. The places in the dungeon should feel like they have a purpose in the world, even if that purpose has long since been discarded by its current inhabitants. The dungeon itself should tell a story this way as well, and everything in it should contribute one way or another, even if that story is never directly told to the players.

 

Otherwise, sure, the same goes for any other adventure: interesting encounters and ways to approach things.

[cailano]

Absolutely! Every dungeon should have a story to tell. Love it.

[Actana]

I think what really changes the dynamic is to examine how a "dungeon", whatever form it takes, tells its story differently to a non-dungeon. What does a "dungeon experience" involve and what it means to the delivery of a narrative. In an archetypical dungeon, it feels like there's a lot more showing and less telling. Not universal of course, inhabitants of a dungeon can talk and such, but I find it's much less default than in, say, a city.

[leons1701]

In a "dungeon" it is usually the assumption that most if not all of the inhabitants are hostile. I would say that, along with constrained space, is one of the defining characteristics of a dungeon.

[cailano]

Hostile is a good assumption but I've run a couple of great dungeons where alliances could be made.

[Malkavian Grin]

6 hours ago, leons1701 said:

In a "dungeon" it is usually the assumption that most if not all of the inhabitants are hostile. I would say that, along with constrained space, is one of the defining characteristics of a dungeon.

Sure, but that's why I like the OSR games so much; many of them feature a Morale system you can use to see if a dungeon inhabitant is friendly or not.

In my Mörk Borg game, I rolled for an encounter and got some cave boars. But I decided it wouldn't be quite as fun if they just outright attacked (and the party is a bit weak), so I rolled for Morale. Turns out they are friendly-ish, going so far as to nuzzle the leg of a PC. Now, if they attack or becoming threatening... well, they are boars with tusks...

[Vladim]

I don't do dungeon crawls too much because I find the setting needlessly limiting; why focus just on dungeons when there's so many other options like urban crawls, hexcrawls and so on? They're nice from time to time though, but variety is nicer.

Still, it's nice if it all makes sense somehow. So questions like, why is the dungeon there, and what does it do, those are important. As is some kind of internal logic or ecology for the denizens. Few things ruin verisimilitude faster than a dungeon filled with random monsters that are just standing there,waiting for the heroes to murder them and take their stuff.

The book Delve (an Ironsworn supplement) has a nice, simple system for generating mapless, narrative-based dungeon crawls on the fly. It's probably easily applicable, as an idea, across different systems.

[leons1701]

Yeah, obviously there are going to be exceptions, "assume" and "most" are doing quite a bit of work there. It's mostly in contrast to intrigue or city crawl scenarios that might be just as constrained as any dungeon in area, but involve a much greater percentage of folks you can talk to instead of fight.

[cailano]

Does anyone else think that dungeons are a lost art? I remember seeing the Barrowmaze Complete trailer for the first time, and I about leaped for joy. THAT'S the dungeon experience I remember from my early days in the hobby. Those suckers were dangerous. I like to imagine that the adventuring group in the inn is being run by a bunch of players who have only known railroaded adventure paths in gentler systems. I love the look on their faces at the end. "Wait... we can die in there?"

Fear. Dungeons should be tense. The PCs should feel like death is around every corner. The desire to win treasure should war with the simple desire to escape with their lives.

I think that would be my rule number one of making a good dungeon. The fear needs to be real.

Dungeon ecology, telling a story, and hinting at the locale's history are all aspects of a great adventure. But if the fear isn't real, it will be a boring slog.

[Vladim]

On the downside, I feel like games where PC death (implied or actual) is ubiquitous (yes, I am looking at you, OSR concepts like funnels etc.) promote an attitude that teaches players not to care too much about their characters. They just become highly expendable statblocks, and there's no fear in the game at all, because no-one cares any more-the dungeon just becomes a problem to solve to 'win'.

Which is fine-that style of games can be quite fun as well.

I've found that the more a group invests in the characters (e.g., through in-game story) -> the more they will care about them -> the more they'll be impacted by the danger of potentially losing them.

[cailano]

6 hours ago, Vladim said:

On the downside, I feel like games where PC death (implied or actual) is ubiquitous (yes, I am looking at you, OSR concepts like funnels etc.) promote an attitude that teaches players not to care too much about their characters. They just become highly expendable statblocks, and there's no fear in the game at all, because no-one cares any more-the dungeon just becomes a problem to solve to 'win'.

Which is fine-that style of games can be quite fun as well.

I've found that the more a group invests in the characters (e.g., through in-game story) -> the more they will care about them -> the more they'll be impacted by the danger of potentially losing them.

OSR players still get attached to their characters though, I assure you. Since you brought up funnels, the whole idea of those is to create an attachment to the character that survives the funnel. And it works!

I'm currently running a DCC campaign where all the characters were created via a funnel and the players are role-playing them very well. I don't think they treat their characters as stat blocks at all.

I don't want to invalidate your experiences but they don't gel with what I've seen in play. I'm not sure where the difference is coming from.

 

[Actana]

Different kind of attachment. You might be thinking of an attachment to things you've managed to accomplish along the way. A lot of other games encourage attachment to the potential that is in the game's future.

Anyway, I don't think a fear of death is crucial to dungeon crawls. It is to many systems that do dungeon crawls as their primary adventure, but it's not inherent to the concept of a dungeon crawl.

[Vladim]

18 hours ago, cailano said:

OSR players still get attached to their characters though, I assure you. Since you brought up funnels, the whole idea of those is to create an attachment to the character that survives the funnel. And it works!

I'm currently running a DCC campaign where all the characters were created via a funnel and the players are role-playing them very well. I don't think they treat their characters as stat blocks at all.

I don't want to invalidate your experiences but they don't gel with what I've seen in play. I'm not sure where the difference is coming from.

It's probably a preference and mentality thing. I haven't really done a funnel for myself (as a player), so I cannot say with certainty that it wouldn't work for me. But my guess is that I would probably start with statblocks rather than well fleshed out characters. I am not sure if I would get attached to the surviving PC; I guess I'd have to try it and see.

My guess/expectation is that PC death would be more meaningful if there's at least a few adventures under the PC's belt, but I could be wrong. But if it works for you, that's great! Horses for courses and all that. Playstyle diversity is good :)

[cailano]

8 hours ago, Vladim said:

It's probably a preference and mentality thing. I haven't really done a funnel for myself (as a player), so I cannot say with certainty that it wouldn't work for me. But my guess is that I would probably start with statblocks rather than well fleshed out characters. I am not sure if I would get attached to the surviving PC; I guess I'd have to try it and see.

My guess/expectation is that PC death would be more meaningful if there's at least a few adventures under the PC's belt, but I could be wrong. But if it works for you, that's great! Horses for courses and all that. Playstyle diversity is good :)

No, it sounds like you have the idea of a funnel. When you start the funnel, the characters are stat blocks with maybe a line of text for color. But as the game goes on, players naturally start to role-play them. When some of them inevitably die, that doesn't cause much emotional impact on the players, but by the end of the funnel, you have a character you've gone through some things with. Funnels are basically just a method of character creation via play.

I think funnels work especially well in PbP, actually. The medium lends itself to deeper role-playing, and the funnel feels more epic than it would in one or two play sessions of an over-the-table game.