Shouldn't The Game Live In Weird Holes In The Ground
I will occasionally listen to podcasts about name-brand Dungeons & Dragons to see how the other side lives. I like keeping tabs on the more popular form of TTRPG play1 and I try not to judge too harshly.
In this instance the hosts were fielding a request for advice on how to run large dungeons in-person, two qualifiers that I'm sure colored the hosts' responses. But I was saddened to hear them refer to that kind of play as "tedious" and mention repetitive rectangular cobblestone rooms. I want to be very clear that I'm not trying to do a 'kids these days have forgotten the game's roots' routine. The game itself is different in almost every respect except for the shapes of the dice used and even that's up for debate. I've seen Dungeons & Dragons referred to as having the skeleton of a dungeon-crawler but I suspect that's only half-true these days. Unless this has changed in 5.5e there are no procedures for actually crawling dungeons nor the concept of the dungeon turn, so that dungeon-crawling skeleton isn't really there any more. As far as I can tell the current fashion is all for skill checks and vibes2.
So the system in question does not itself support, like, good dungeon crawls. But it felt like there was a dismissal of dungeons themselves in the hosts' responses that puzzled me. Dungeons are an excuse to put whatever weird shit you're inspired by into your game! Call of Cthulhu remains one of my favorite TTRPGs partly because the expectations around that game are that the Keeper can Get Weird With It3 and part of my love of OSR games4 comes from the realization that dungeons Getting Weird With It is an expected part of the experience.
And, yes, I've already said that name-brand Dungeons & Dragons doesn't do dungeon crawls well, so in a sense it's not a problem if people aren't using it to play dungeon crawls. But there are plenty of other things modern D&D isn't good at that people still try to use it for! If you can run a "good enough" modern D&D game then I'm sure you can run a "good enough" dungeon inside modern D&D, even a large dungeon!5 It's the idea that people playing D&D would dismiss the idea of running dungeons out-of-hand that bugs me.
Maybe it's a culture shock thing for me. Most of my time online is spent in dungeon-appreciating spaces and I'm sure that there's plenty of people who play good TTRPGs who just don't gel with dungeons. But I am very interested in the idea that there's a significant portion of people who are all-in on name-brand Dungeons & Dragons who don't like dungeons or at least think they're boring. What's going on with them, I wonder.
d8 THINGS TO PUT IN A DUNGEON
- A (dying) dragon.
- A machine that pumps (acid | blood) around the dungeon. Some of the pipes have started to leak.
- An idol that demands a blood sacrifice.
- A ghost who (knows | does not know) they're dead.
- A knight who challenges any explorers to a duel.
- A talking statue that confidently responds with incorrect information.
- A portal to the Nine Hells.
- Unexploded ordnance.
We do not have time to go into whether playing name-brand D&D counts as part of the wider TTRPG hobby right now.↩
I am not, strictly speaking, a hater of skills checks in D&D-em-ups but that's a post for another time, we have to stay focused here.↩
Is that still the case? My experience is a decade out of date now and maybe via the alchemy of shiny AP series the expectations of weird gribblies have been buffed out of it.↩
We also don't have time to get into the whole nomenclature debate around the "OSR" label.↩
The solution, of course, is that if you want a dungeon-heavy campaign then you need to use a dungeon-accommodating system.↩