I've been giving it some thought, sandbox doesn't work for me.
My question is, is it common for people to run dungeons and the occasional downtime?
I've been watching a lot of live play and the rp is nice, but i need - as a dungeon master/personal style of dungeon mastering - to roll dice as well. I like to be as engaged as my players.
Is this common? It's this is school? Or am I suffering because it only looks like dungeons aren't important because live play doesn't have as many dungeons with tons of combat so they lean on role play?
I find a lot of my sessions are made up of combat. Next is puzzles and my players planning out jobs and then it is role play. In a few weeks time, we would have been playing once a week for a year, so I think they've been enjoying themselves. In the end, it depends on your players. I would talk to them about it.
It is all about how you set up the story. You could make a whole island into a 'dudgeon'. If the players are stuck and there are only hostile creatures around then you can treat portions of the islands and rooms and just let the players decide which rooms they tackle when (to a certain extent as they will have to move through zones to get to others).
Players do like role play but if you can find another way to immerse them, then you might not need as much of it. An intense survival game where the players are trapped somewhere and have to spend every day fighting to escape won't have to much role play between you and the players but it can have it between the players.
Games that are made to be viewed by the public will have more role play because it is more interesting for the viewer. Combat is rolling dice and saying you hit something. I think this is why you don't see as much of it.
At the end of the day, you should also be having fun so do what you feel you will enjoy.
My question is, is it common for people to run dungeons and the occasional downtime?
Official campain "Waterdeep: Dungeon of the Mad Mage" is pretty much just that and it is very long campaing (lvl5-20). Im currently running that (started with Waterdeep: Dragon heist) as a core of campaing, but in my campaing there are lots of adventures outside of those dungeons aswell (currently players were portaled in another mission to high forest, around 500 miles from Waterdeep and they dont know how to get back :) )
Yes, definitely! I and most DMs I've played with run dungeons in the vast majority of sessions. Granted, they aren't all huge maps, and a "dungeon" might take the form of a wilderness journey or urban investigation, with fights peppered along the way. But they're dungeons at heart nonetheless. And my players are big fans of "episodic" gameplay, which goes from dungeon to dungeon instead of telling one massive story.
What you see in streams like Critical Role is more akin to improv theater than "real" D&D. It's entertainment. A good home game probably won't look like that (and honestly wouldn't be much fun if it did!)
Back before all of the various campaign “formats” (I suppose?) were invented, all there really was were dungeons for the most part. Campaign formatting across multiple dungeons like “sandboxing,” “railroading,” “west marches,” “points of light,” etc. kinda got invented as a narrative reason to link the dungeons together as a means of explaining why those characters were doing those things in those places. You can totally strip all of that away and just run a series of unconnected dungeons with downtime in between. If you look in the rules, it’s pretty much all designed for dungeon crawling and the rest is more than a little… let’s be nice and calm it “minimalistic.”
In those games. Session 1 often started with them standing literally directly outside of a dungeon about to go in. (That’s called a “hot start.”) iThey proceed through killing all the bad people and monsters and taking all their stuff for the purpose of more effectively killing future foes. Once done, you narrate a little downtime montage to cover the couple weeks/months until their PC’s have accomplished whatever downtime activities they wish. (Even if those activities consist solely of blowing all their money on gambling, wine and “companionship” in the pirate style.) Then, next session, you open by narrating the PCs sitting around in a taproom talking about how bored they have gotten and how they are getting itchy for some more action… “when suddenly…!” or perhaps “when they overhear….” or even maybe “when a stranger approaches and says ‘I couldn’t help but overhear your conversation, I’m old and frail and ill-suited to your line of work, but I happen to have this map… I’ll split it with you.” (Those are examples of a “cold start.”)
Just be sure to let your players know what kind of campaign you have planned before character creation so they don’t create their PCs expecting a more story-oriented campaign. Let them know it’s basically like the TTRPG version of running missions in a game like Destiny 2 as an example. Otherwise someone will inevitably plan this whole socially geared PC with an in depth backstory that will never come up ever. You could either tell them to skip backstories altogether, or else perhaps ego with my “Three Sentences” if they want to create a backstory.
One final FYI, if you look online you can find free or inexpensive downloads of old modules from the 1e/2e days. Those are so old that distributing/acquiring them for free is completely legal.Those were written back when they actually were “modular.” That was so a DM could either easily fit them together into a campaign That was also so a DM could just plunk them down in front of their players one after another with no regard whatsoever towards how they fit together at all. That will likely save you lots of time, money, and will definitely save you lots and lots and lots of work mapping out new dungeons. You will obviously have to update the challenges (monsters, NPCs, traps, etc.) to be 5e compatible, but that’s pretty easy a lot of the time. If the Monster is a Wight for example, use the Wight. If it’s a trap, use a 5e trap, and get rid of anything “save-or-die,” those are definitely not 5e compatible. If however it’s an NPC listed as “a Xth-level [PC Class],” then you gotta do a little more work to create a statblock for your own use. Creating NPCs as PCs was the norm in those days, but even those mods had abridged/condensed entries for them not unlike a 5e statblock. Trust me, running combat with actual character sheets for enemies is less than effective for a vast many reasons. The real thing to watch out for are the magic items (including consumables). It’s way too easy to accidentally give the party something way over/under powered simply because the item is now at an entirely different power level than back then.
A dungeon is the ultimate sandbox - unless you mean something like the small, single path dungeons that littered Morrowind . So if you don't like sandbox style play then "just having dungeons" isn't going to do it for you!
In a dungeon the players have free reign to direct their characters to turn right or left, listen at doors or even ignore some doors and never open them. They can check for traps every 5' or just stampede through like elephants.
A dungeon is the ultimate sandbox - unless you mean something like the small, single path dungeons that littered Morrowind . So if you don't like sandbox style play then "just having dungeons" isn't going to do it for you!
In a dungeon the players have free reign to direct their characters to turn right or left, listen at doors or even ignore some doors and never open them. They can check for traps every 5' or just stampede through like elephants.
I'm not sure it's the ultimate sandbox - put an adventurer in a room with a locked door and a riddle involving cups, and there's a finite amount of things that they can do. They can't go and climb the highest mountain to look for storm giants, or make a massive criminal underworld in the nearest town, or murder a whole village to gather enough blood to forge a sword, or... you get the gist. They can interact with the door, the cups, the riddle, and the walls, floor and ceiling. They're contained, with 2 options - push further or go back. Very much not a sandbox!
Sandbox is when you can basically say to the players "Right, what do you want to do?". It's hte essay writing part of the test, not the multiple choice part.
This used to be exclusively how the game was played back in the early days of the hobby and there's nothing wrong with it if that's the playstyle you like.
The reason you don't see streams doing it is because they're obligated to provide entertainment as well as a good dnd experience, and while an old fashioned dungeon crawl is fun to play, it can be hella boring just to watch, especially if you're the type of nerd that loves in-depth characterization and interpersonal drama.
As a real life DM, you're only obligated to provide entertaining content for your players (while streams like Critical Role are meant to cater to the widest possible audience), so if you can sell a dungeon crawl campaign to your players and they're excited about it, you're golden.
This video has a lot of good wisdom about dungeons and their role in game design/play:
This used to be exclusively how the game was played back in the early days of the hobby and there's nothing wrong with it if that's the playstyle you like.
The reason you don't see streams doing it is because they're obligated to provide entertainment as well as a good dnd experience, and while an old fashioned dungeon crawl is fun to play, it can be hella boring just to watch, especially if you're the type of nerd that loves in-depth characterization and interpersonal drama.
As a real life DM, you're only obligated to provide entertaining content for your players (while streams like Critical Role are meant to cater to the widest possible audience), so if you can sell a dungeon crawl campaign to your players and they're excited about it, you're golden.
This video has a lot of good wisdom about dungeons and their role in game design/play:
That's what I immediately thought about... I think it's great that there are so many different Actual Play stories and streams available online, but it's also skewed what many players expect from D&D. I think there's a lot of stuff that's fun to do in real life, even if it's not particularly interesting to watch other people do it. Even then, there's nothing preventing characters from having meaningful roleplay while within a dungeon... it's not like it's an alternate reality where everyone is just reduced to their in-game mechanics... the characters are still characters, and even if they don't have a lot of NPCs to play off of, there's a lot that can happen with 4-6 friends stuck alone in a dark place for a long period of time.
I had considered linking that vid, but I preach Colville quite a bit so refrained. I’m glad someone linked it. It actually speaks to the point I had returned to make, that “dungeons” can come in many shapes and sizes. Towers, temples, castles, and Mansions have all been been dungeons for D&D. I know of one particular estate that was used as a dungeon in not just one official published D&D module, but two of them. If anyone thinks Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry isn’t a fantastic example for a suitable D&D dungeon, I strongly recommend rereading the series. One could easily make a whole 1-20 campaign and never leave the school, grounds, and nearby Hogsmead except for the occasional trip diagonally to Diagon Alley. (I wonder, is there an Orthogon Alley? 🤔) Every one of those locations could be dungeons. Heck, even whole cities could easily be conceived, planned, and mapped as dungeon. Look at Lost Laboratory of Kwalish for example. A non-D&D specific example would be the city of Mormereth featured in the short novel, The Lure of the Basilisk.
However, many natural environments could also easily be dungeons to crawl. A forest, swamp, mountain, or island (or a portion of one) could be a “dungeon” demesne of a mad Druid, coven of Hags, or whatever else one might imagine. There is no reason one couldn’t make overland travel work like an “open air” dungeon crawl of one wanted to. That would be a looott of hack-‘n-slash. But since that is the stated goal, why not?
A dungeon is the ultimate sandbox - unless you mean something like the small, single path dungeons that littered Morrowind . So if you don't like sandbox style play then "just having dungeons" isn't going to do it for you!
In a dungeon the players have free reign to direct their characters to turn right or left, listen at doors or even ignore some doors and never open them. They can check for traps every 5' or just stampede through like elephants.
I'm not sure it's the ultimate sandbox - put an adventurer in a room with a locked door and a riddle involving cups, and there's a finite amount of things that they can do. They can't go and climb the highest mountain to look for storm giants, or make a massive criminal underworld in the nearest town, or murder a whole village to gather enough blood to forge a sword, or... you get the gist. They can interact with the door, the cups, the riddle, and the walls, floor and ceiling. They're contained, with 2 options - push further or go back. Very much not a sandbox!
Sandbox is when you can basically say to the players "Right, what do you want to do?". It's hte essay writing part of the test, not the multiple choice part.
I'm not going to argue semantics with you (these forums have enough of that, bless them) but the most common features of a sandbox are from my reading:
- Players chose their own objectives
- The gameworld is constrained or bounded
A standalone dungeon is both those things - it's constrained by it's layout (which are the walls of the sandbox) and the players can do whatever they want within those constraints (they can metaphorically make beautiful sand castles or just make an unholy mess). I'd probably say you were confusing the idea of a sandbox with an open world (doesn't have any constraints on the adventurer's movements). Or continuing the metaphor you're confusing the sandpit with the garden.
Anyway, just my thoughts, have a good time with whatever solution you come up with. For me going back to the 1970s and having a dungeon crawl is always fun if done right.
You're so right. I got into DND because of tabletop's episode of Dragon Age as well as Titansgrave. I saw critical role from afar, but it felt like everyone on the internet wanted that sorta game.
I could improvise that game without rolling dice. But at that point, i have all of these monsters and magic items i never get to use or give to players.
I like the idea of uncovering a dungeon because it's dangerous. It's dark. You need to prepare. Yadda yadda yadda. I had no idea it was something people enjoyed.
This is very encouraging.
I'm sad that there is a negative effect to having all these YouTube streams where they do using maps and minis and instead use theater of the mind and a handsome cast. (It's not just CR, it's Pathfinder streams as well)
I'm sad that there is a negative effect to having all these YouTube streams where they do using maps and minis and instead use theater of the mind and a handsome cast. (It's not just CR, it's Pathfinder streams as well)
CR uses maps and minis, heck they have them custom built for them... even the one shots. They do a good balance of the tactical map and theatre of the mind if you ask me.
Really, a lot of early D&D players used a map copied off DMs dictation or guidance for a visual reference and while they saw where thing were on the map, if drawn correctly, it was also a lot of theater of the mind. Miniature play was (and I'd argue still is) luxury play (VTTs sort of brining down the cost considerably).
Anyway, plenty of people still do "dungeon crawls" as they're sometimes called. There's nothing wrong with playing that way. Your players may be expecting something else if they're main exposure is through the CR and adjacent streams. However, players who want an opportunity to fight monsters, overcome puzzles and traps, and _maybe_ role play a little to get at the mystery of the BBEG behind or in the heart of the dungeon may find it refreshing that they don't have to parse out their characters tertiary motivation derived from the third page of their back story. There's absolutely nothing wrong with playing the game that way.
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Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
I'm sad that there is a negative effect to having all these YouTube streams where they do using maps and minis and instead use theater of the mind and a handsome cast. (It's not just CR, it's Pathfinder streams as well)
CR uses maps and minis, heck they have them custom built for them... even the one shots. They do a good balance of the tactical map and theatre of the mind if you ask me.
Really, a lot of early D&D players used a map copied off DMs dictation or guidance for a visual reference and while they saw where thing were on the map, if drawn correctly, it was also a lot of theater of the mind. Miniature play was (and I'd argue still is) luxury play (VTTs sort of brining down the cost considerably).
Anyway, plenty of people still do "dungeon crawls" as they're sometimes called. There's nothing wrong with playing that way. Your players may be expecting something else if they're main exposure is through the CR and adjacent streams. However, players who want an opportunity to fight monsters, overcome puzzles and traps, and _maybe_ role play a little to get at the mystery of the BBEG behind or in the heart of the dungeon may find it refreshing that they don't have to parse out their characters tertiary motivation derived from the third page of their back story. There's absolutely nothing wrong with playing the game that way.
I’d also dispel the false dichotomy here. My players in my summer group genuinely roleplay almost as well as CR, but we still engage in deadly fights and clear a dungeon every session. They can exist side by side!
(And, of course, there’s nothing like a long backstory to ruin roleplaying…but that’s another story!)
I've been giving it some thought, sandbox doesn't work for me.
My question is, is it common for people to run dungeons and the occasional downtime?
I've been watching a lot of live play and the rp is nice, but i need - as a dungeon master/personal style of dungeon mastering - to roll dice as well. I like to be as engaged as my players.
Is this common? It's this is school? Or am I suffering because it only looks like dungeons aren't important because live play doesn't have as many dungeons with tons of combat so they lean on role play?
You don’t need to be in a dungeon to be “in a dungeon”
For instance you could set up a series of forest encounters, almost like rooms, that your players have to navigate to travel through.
Equally dungeons can have sprawling communities with tons of role playing opportunities, or factions that can be negotiated with.
I run a sandbox campaign and generally most sessions involve me rolling dice, I would say on average 1 in about 4-5 is combat free. I even run small dungeons, lasting a session or 2.
Yes, definitely! I and most DMs I've played with run dungeons in the vast majority of sessions. Granted, they aren't all huge maps, and a "dungeon" might take the form of a wilderness journey or urban investigation, with fights peppered along the way. But they're dungeons at heart nonetheless. And my players are big fans of "episodic" gameplay, which goes from dungeon to dungeon instead of telling one massive story.
What you see in streams like Critical Role is more akin to improv theater than "real" D&D. It's entertainment. A good home game probably won't look like that (and honestly wouldn't be much fun if it did!)
I would disagree with the last point, I don’t believe everyone should run like critical role but I have been involved in campaigns as a player and a dm which did run exactly like that in many ways (ignoring voices I can’t do voices). But that was a gaming group that also had a huge Vampire LARP campaign and we also used to do a lot of fantasy live action roleplay. So our table top gaming was naturally an extension (some players would turn up dressed up in character most sessions).
now they where specific player types but we played that way. Critical role is a home game, that is how they played at home.
I feel like this thread is swinging in the opposite direction to be against the CR style narrative roleplay heavy campaign and I just wanted to pull that back a little. I often play that way when I'm playing with my friends who like RP more than combat and it's a perfectly fine way to play, there's nothing wrong with it and it really embraces the storytelling potential of D&D.
And, while yes, your home game shouldn't feel pressured for everyone to be professional actors and writers and designers like are involved in the show and if you watch the show with that expectation then you'll be likely disappointed in your home game, I certainly wouldn't compare them to the Kardashians. Yes, a lot of the game is performative (they're performers playing D&D, that was always their pitch) and the production value is really high with all the custom minis and everything, I wouldn't say that they're doing anything deceitful or not true to the game. It's just a different game with different resources, it's a product meant to appeal to a large audiences. Through the lens though, you can see why it would be different than your average game, it has to be to exist, but it's still a fine game and playstyle.
CR and shows like it have influenced how people play dnd, a lot of new players get exposure to the hobby through them first so naturally more people try to emulate them, but I wouldn't say or imply that CR has "corrupted" the game at all.
Dungeon crawls are fine, narrative roleplay is fine, everything is fine as long as the table is all on board and everyone's having fun.
now they where specific player types but we played that way. Critical role is a home game, that is how they played at home.
I assure you that how critical role the show is today is absolutely nothing even remotely in the ballpark of what their home games were like. The fact that many people actually believe that the show is a representation of how a typical D&D game is, is the crux of the problem.
This right here is a typical Matt Mercer game before Critical Role became a show https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-M5NH9PGi4 . This is more representative of what D&D is actually like. Which is to say, watching it, you would have no idea what is actually going on, its typically chaotic, people having fun and their sure as hell isn't some sort of deep, 1st person narrative taking place. Plain and simple.. real D&D as most people will experience at their home table.
What your describing is the same phenomenon we get from people watching the Kardashians and believing that this is how real life is, or looking at a glamour magazine and believing that this is how people look or having bedroom expectations based on watching ****.
It's actually extremely damaging as it sets unrealistic expectations and when people are faced with inevitable reality of how things actually work, they become disappointed and disillusioned by the whole thing.
Now I'm not suggesting that what CR the show represents is not achievable, or that Matt Mercer is not a fantastic DM, because it is and he is, what I'm saying is it's not achievable for the majority of the people who will play D&D and it won't matter how long they try and this is the other big part of the issue. As players sit down to play D&D, their reaction shouldn't be driven by the disappointment of what the D&D in their house game is because they aren't getting the same experience as they see in a youtube show.
The reality is that the typical D&D sessions that the overwhelming majority of people will experience in their house game would make for a very boring show to watch, I would say it's right up there with watching someone do their taxes or watching paint dry.
Before CR was a thing I was running and a part of games like this in old editions of DnD. Yes CR has become a little more polished since the early days but having watched it from episode 1 and certainly the first 40 or so episodes followed this trend, when you take something online it will tweak It somewhat and The main thing is that the players and Matt let things breathe a little.
Something I have learnt to do at my tables, but it lines up in many ways with my experiences over 20 years at some of my tables. Yes I have also run games for players who hate first person roleplaying or just want to hit stuff till It’s dead and then hit it some more. But the most emotional I have ever got was a call of Cthulhu game where a player, who was investigating her husbands death and children’s kidnap, found out they had been killed in a ritual. We uncovered the cult and saw them destroyed and spent 2 hours roleplaying the fall out, sat in a hotel bar, her telling tales of her children. Then the player took her character upstairs and the next morning we found her hanging a letter written to us that the player had written and read out. we all sobbed round that table for about an hour after that moment.
These are some of the people I played with at university and since then. But like I say we also used to do Larping where we would go full immersion for a whole weekend or even a week in character from waking up to going to bed even when just having a drink. Or we would go once a week to a local pub where we hired a room and all pretended to be vampires playing vampire LARP.
There are many many people who play roleplay games like DnD in this way, who fully immerse, like I said I once ran a 2 year campaign where at every session at least half the players where dressed up cos playing their character, those who couldn’t usually where rushing from work etc. they would be in character from the moment they arrived. 2 of them I can genuinely say I don’t remember their real name, it was told to me once and from that moment I only ever called them by the character name, even in text or a phone call. That was after uni, I have other players who will do an accent and fully commit to the character and I have players who are not into that but love being part of a group who are.
Now where our games “online video ready” probably not, there was lots of confusion, lots of doing silly silly stuff and lots of just wasting time in game talking to random NPCs but the players where fully 100% immersed.
I actually liked the Youtube clip more than the usual CR stream. But I'm also aware that CR is a performance, not exactly theater, but definitely a performance. In actual home play there's cross talk, etc. You get that a little bit in CR but I think there's also this performativeness that I imagine frustrates the players sometimes, because "I have to take a dramatic pause to get the audience with me, and keep my diction at deliberative tempo to keep the audience with me BUT I REALLY JUST WANT TO DO THE THING!" I think the one where they did Mighty Nein v. Vox Machina recently stands out as probably them just playing.
But this thread really isn't or shouldn't be about Critical Role. Rather, it's to validate the OP's intended game as a DM. Of course it should be validated, and yeah I did lay it on thick in constructing the style of play I inferred the OP felt challenged by. This is actually reflective of the DMG's contrast of "hack and slash" and "immersive play." There's a lot of styles between those points, and those two poles can nevertheless intermingle.
There's been decades of game design including one specifically branded "storyteller system" (though there were plenty of other games informing the conversation) that have resulted in a continuum between, through and around wargaming and improv (albeit sometimes frustratingly scripted improv, ahem, backstories) which I think in practice all just stir and stew in the same role playing cauldron of everything. Players and DMs have their strengths and tastes with various ingredients, but I do believe what the OP wants to play and what CR plays in a production studio are both playing Dungeons and Dragons. They both can ladle it on as heavy or light as they want.
tl:dr Stew or punch bowl not race track (I follow the analogy but the race track analogy implies people using the track differently get in each others way. TTRPGs don't really have that problem, though the soap box manufacturers association wants everyone to think differently).
I will say as a dm and a player I don’t like dungeon crawl adventures, but I fully accept that it is very possible to run them. I was late coming to DnD and the thing that stopped me and my friends from playing was that the idea of dungeon crawl followed by spending spree when compared to games like Cyberpunk, L5R, Vampire, Mage and Wearwolf just sounded boring and dull. Why would anyone get any fun from that lol.
But there are many examples of these dungeon crawl type adventures and, as I have said, you can apply that mentality to an outside environment as well. Or even to a town. You can also as a DM give the players less information and less agency to make your adventures more linear outside. A player will only do the things you present them the chance to do in your descriptions.
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I've been giving it some thought, sandbox doesn't work for me.
My question is, is it common for people to run dungeons and the occasional downtime?
I've been watching a lot of live play and the rp is nice, but i need - as a dungeon master/personal style of dungeon mastering - to roll dice as well. I like to be as engaged as my players.
Is this common? It's this is school? Or am I suffering because it only looks like dungeons aren't important because live play doesn't have as many dungeons with tons of combat so they lean on role play?
"All I'm hearing is words... DO SOMETHING!"
I find a lot of my sessions are made up of combat. Next is puzzles and my players planning out jobs and then it is role play. In a few weeks time, we would have been playing once a week for a year, so I think they've been enjoying themselves. In the end, it depends on your players. I would talk to them about it.
It is all about how you set up the story. You could make a whole island into a 'dudgeon'. If the players are stuck and there are only hostile creatures around then you can treat portions of the islands and rooms and just let the players decide which rooms they tackle when (to a certain extent as they will have to move through zones to get to others).
Players do like role play but if you can find another way to immerse them, then you might not need as much of it. An intense survival game where the players are trapped somewhere and have to spend every day fighting to escape won't have to much role play between you and the players but it can have it between the players.
Games that are made to be viewed by the public will have more role play because it is more interesting for the viewer. Combat is rolling dice and saying you hit something. I think this is why you don't see as much of it.
At the end of the day, you should also be having fun so do what you feel you will enjoy.
Official campain "Waterdeep: Dungeon of the Mad Mage" is pretty much just that and it is very long campaing (lvl5-20). Im currently running that (started with Waterdeep: Dragon heist) as a core of campaing, but in my campaing there are lots of adventures outside of those dungeons aswell (currently players were portaled in another mission to high forest, around 500 miles from Waterdeep and they dont know how to get back :) )
Yes, definitely! I and most DMs I've played with run dungeons in the vast majority of sessions. Granted, they aren't all huge maps, and a "dungeon" might take the form of a wilderness journey or urban investigation, with fights peppered along the way. But they're dungeons at heart nonetheless. And my players are big fans of "episodic" gameplay, which goes from dungeon to dungeon instead of telling one massive story.
What you see in streams like Critical Role is more akin to improv theater than "real" D&D. It's entertainment. A good home game probably won't look like that (and honestly wouldn't be much fun if it did!)
Wizard (Gandalf) of the Tolkien Club
Back before all of the various campaign “formats” (I suppose?) were invented, all there really was were dungeons for the most part. Campaign formatting across multiple dungeons like “sandboxing,” “railroading,” “west marches,” “points of light,” etc. kinda got invented as a narrative reason to link the dungeons together as a means of explaining why those characters were doing those things in those places. You can totally strip all of that away and just run a series of unconnected dungeons with downtime in between. If you look in the rules, it’s pretty much all designed for dungeon crawling and the rest is more than a little… let’s be nice and calm it “minimalistic.”
In those games. Session 1 often started with them standing literally directly outside of a dungeon about to go in. (That’s called a “hot start.”) iThey proceed through killing all the bad people and monsters and taking all their stuff for the purpose of more effectively killing future foes. Once done, you narrate a little downtime montage to cover the couple weeks/months until their PC’s have accomplished whatever downtime activities they wish. (Even if those activities consist solely of blowing all their money on gambling, wine and “companionship” in the pirate style.) Then, next session, you open by narrating the PCs sitting around in a taproom talking about how bored they have gotten and how they are getting itchy for some more action… “when suddenly…!” or perhaps “when they overhear….” or even maybe “when a stranger approaches and says ‘I couldn’t help but overhear your conversation, I’m old and frail and ill-suited to your line of work, but I happen to have this map… I’ll split it with you.” (Those are examples of a “cold start.”)
Just be sure to let your players know what kind of campaign you have planned before character creation so they don’t create their PCs expecting a more story-oriented campaign. Let them know it’s basically like the TTRPG version of running missions in a game like Destiny 2 as an example. Otherwise someone will inevitably plan this whole socially geared PC with an in depth backstory that will never come up ever. You could either tell them to skip backstories altogether, or else perhaps ego with my “Three Sentences” if they want to create a backstory.
One final FYI, if you look online you can find free or inexpensive downloads of old modules from the 1e/2e days. Those are so old that distributing/acquiring them for free is completely legal.Those were written back when they actually were “modular.” That was so a DM could either easily fit them together into a campaign That was also so a DM could just plunk them down in front of their players one after another with no regard whatsoever towards how they fit together at all. That will likely save you lots of time, money, and will definitely save you lots and lots and lots of work mapping out new dungeons.
You will obviously have to update the challenges (monsters, NPCs, traps, etc.) to be 5e compatible, but that’s pretty easy a lot of the time. If the Monster is a Wight for example, use the Wight. If it’s a trap, use a 5e trap, and get rid of anything “save-or-die,” those are definitely not 5e compatible. If however it’s an NPC listed as “a Xth-level [PC Class],” then you gotta do a little more work to create a statblock for your own use. Creating NPCs as PCs was the norm in those days, but even those mods had abridged/condensed entries for them not unlike a 5e statblock. Trust me, running combat with actual character sheets for enemies is less than effective for a vast many reasons. The real thing to watch out for are the magic items (including consumables). It’s way too easy to accidentally give the party something way over/under powered simply because the item is now at an entirely different power level than back then.
Good luck!
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A dungeon is the ultimate sandbox - unless you mean something like the small, single path dungeons that littered Morrowind . So if you don't like sandbox style play then "just having dungeons" isn't going to do it for you!
In a dungeon the players have free reign to direct their characters to turn right or left, listen at doors or even ignore some doors and never open them. They can check for traps every 5' or just stampede through like elephants.
I'm not sure it's the ultimate sandbox - put an adventurer in a room with a locked door and a riddle involving cups, and there's a finite amount of things that they can do. They can't go and climb the highest mountain to look for storm giants, or make a massive criminal underworld in the nearest town, or murder a whole village to gather enough blood to forge a sword, or... you get the gist. They can interact with the door, the cups, the riddle, and the walls, floor and ceiling. They're contained, with 2 options - push further or go back. Very much not a sandbox!
Sandbox is when you can basically say to the players "Right, what do you want to do?". It's hte essay writing part of the test, not the multiple choice part.
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This used to be exclusively how the game was played back in the early days of the hobby and there's nothing wrong with it if that's the playstyle you like.
The reason you don't see streams doing it is because they're obligated to provide entertainment as well as a good dnd experience, and while an old fashioned dungeon crawl is fun to play, it can be hella boring just to watch, especially if you're the type of nerd that loves in-depth characterization and interpersonal drama.
As a real life DM, you're only obligated to provide entertaining content for your players (while streams like Critical Role are meant to cater to the widest possible audience), so if you can sell a dungeon crawl campaign to your players and they're excited about it, you're golden.
This video has a lot of good wisdom about dungeons and their role in game design/play:
https://youtu.be/BVKRUrBDCGc
That's what I immediately thought about... I think it's great that there are so many different Actual Play stories and streams available online, but it's also skewed what many players expect from D&D. I think there's a lot of stuff that's fun to do in real life, even if it's not particularly interesting to watch other people do it. Even then, there's nothing preventing characters from having meaningful roleplay while within a dungeon... it's not like it's an alternate reality where everyone is just reduced to their in-game mechanics... the characters are still characters, and even if they don't have a lot of NPCs to play off of, there's a lot that can happen with 4-6 friends stuck alone in a dark place for a long period of time.
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I had considered linking that vid, but I preach Colville quite a bit so refrained. I’m glad someone linked it. It actually speaks to the point I had returned to make, that “dungeons” can come in many shapes and sizes. Towers, temples, castles, and Mansions have all been been dungeons for D&D. I know of one particular estate that was used as a dungeon in not just one official published D&D module, but two of them. If anyone thinks Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry isn’t a fantastic example for a suitable D&D dungeon, I strongly recommend rereading the series. One could easily make a whole 1-20 campaign and never leave the school, grounds, and nearby Hogsmead except for the occasional trip
diagonallyto Diagon Alley. (I wonder, is there an Orthogon Alley? 🤔) Every one of those locations could be dungeons. Heck, even whole cities could easily be conceived, planned, and mapped as dungeon. Look at Lost Laboratory of Kwalish for example. A non-D&D specific example would be the city of Mormereth featured in the short novel, The Lure of the Basilisk.However, many natural environments could also easily be dungeons to crawl. A forest, swamp, mountain, or island (or a portion of one) could be a “dungeon” demesne of a mad Druid, coven of Hags, or whatever else one might imagine. There is no reason one couldn’t make overland travel work like an “open air” dungeon crawl of one wanted to. That would be a looott of hack-‘n-slash. But since that is the stated goal, why not?
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I'm not going to argue semantics with you (these forums have enough of that, bless them) but the most common features of a sandbox are from my reading:
- Players chose their own objectives
- The gameworld is constrained or bounded
A standalone dungeon is both those things - it's constrained by it's layout (which are the walls of the sandbox) and the players can do whatever they want within those constraints (they can metaphorically make beautiful sand castles or just make an unholy mess). I'd probably say you were confusing the idea of a sandbox with an open world (doesn't have any constraints on the adventurer's movements). Or continuing the metaphor you're confusing the sandpit with the garden.
Anyway, just my thoughts, have a good time with whatever solution you come up with. For me going back to the 1970s and having a dungeon crawl is always fun if done right.
You're so right. I got into DND because of tabletop's episode of Dragon Age as well as Titansgrave. I saw critical role from afar, but it felt like everyone on the internet wanted that sorta game.
I could improvise that game without rolling dice. But at that point, i have all of these monsters and magic items i never get to use or give to players.
I like the idea of uncovering a dungeon because it's dangerous. It's dark. You need to prepare. Yadda yadda yadda. I had no idea it was something people enjoyed.
This is very encouraging.
I'm sad that there is a negative effect to having all these YouTube streams where they do using maps and minis and instead use theater of the mind and a handsome cast. (It's not just CR, it's Pathfinder streams as well)
"All I'm hearing is words... DO SOMETHING!"
CR uses maps and minis, heck they have them custom built for them... even the one shots. They do a good balance of the tactical map and theatre of the mind if you ask me.
Really, a lot of early D&D players used a map copied off DMs dictation or guidance for a visual reference and while they saw where thing were on the map, if drawn correctly, it was also a lot of theater of the mind. Miniature play was (and I'd argue still is) luxury play (VTTs sort of brining down the cost considerably).
Anyway, plenty of people still do "dungeon crawls" as they're sometimes called. There's nothing wrong with playing that way. Your players may be expecting something else if they're main exposure is through the CR and adjacent streams. However, players who want an opportunity to fight monsters, overcome puzzles and traps, and _maybe_ role play a little to get at the mystery of the BBEG behind or in the heart of the dungeon may find it refreshing that they don't have to parse out their characters tertiary motivation derived from the third page of their back story. There's absolutely nothing wrong with playing the game that way.
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I’d also dispel the false dichotomy here. My players in my summer group genuinely roleplay almost as well as CR, but we still engage in deadly fights and clear a dungeon every session. They can exist side by side!
(And, of course, there’s nothing like a long backstory to ruin roleplaying…but that’s another story!)
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You don’t need to be in a dungeon to be “in a dungeon”
For instance you could set up a series of forest encounters, almost like rooms, that your players have to navigate to travel through.
Equally dungeons can have sprawling communities with tons of role playing opportunities, or factions that can be negotiated with.
I run a sandbox campaign and generally most sessions involve me rolling dice, I would say on average 1 in about 4-5 is combat free. I even run small dungeons, lasting a session or 2.
I would disagree with the last point, I don’t believe everyone should run like critical role but I have been involved in campaigns as a player and a dm which did run exactly like that in many ways (ignoring voices I can’t do voices). But that was a gaming group that also had a huge Vampire LARP campaign and we also used to do a lot of fantasy live action roleplay. So our table top gaming was naturally an extension (some players would turn up dressed up in character most sessions).
now they where specific player types but we played that way. Critical role is a home game, that is how they played at home.
I feel like this thread is swinging in the opposite direction to be against the CR style narrative roleplay heavy campaign and I just wanted to pull that back a little. I often play that way when I'm playing with my friends who like RP more than combat and it's a perfectly fine way to play, there's nothing wrong with it and it really embraces the storytelling potential of D&D.
And, while yes, your home game shouldn't feel pressured for everyone to be professional actors and writers and designers like are involved in the show and if you watch the show with that expectation then you'll be likely disappointed in your home game, I certainly wouldn't compare them to the Kardashians. Yes, a lot of the game is performative (they're performers playing D&D, that was always their pitch) and the production value is really high with all the custom minis and everything, I wouldn't say that they're doing anything deceitful or not true to the game. It's just a different game with different resources, it's a product meant to appeal to a large audiences. Through the lens though, you can see why it would be different than your average game, it has to be to exist, but it's still a fine game and playstyle.
CR and shows like it have influenced how people play dnd, a lot of new players get exposure to the hobby through them first so naturally more people try to emulate them, but I wouldn't say or imply that CR has "corrupted" the game at all.
Dungeon crawls are fine, narrative roleplay is fine, everything is fine as long as the table is all on board and everyone's having fun.
Before CR was a thing I was running and a part of games like this in old editions of DnD. Yes CR has become a little more polished since the early days but having watched it from episode 1 and certainly the first 40 or so episodes followed this trend, when you take something online it will tweak It somewhat and The main thing is that the players and Matt let things breathe a little.
Something I have learnt to do at my tables, but it lines up in many ways with my experiences over 20 years at some of my tables. Yes I have also run games for players who hate first person roleplaying or just want to hit stuff till It’s dead and then hit it some more. But the most emotional I have ever got was a call of Cthulhu game where a player, who was investigating her husbands death and children’s kidnap, found out they had been killed in a ritual. We uncovered the cult and saw them destroyed and spent 2 hours roleplaying the fall out, sat in a hotel bar, her telling tales of her children. Then the player took her character upstairs and the next morning we found her hanging a letter written to us that the player had written and read out. we all sobbed round that table for about an hour after that moment.
These are some of the people I played with at university and since then. But like I say we also used to do Larping where we would go full immersion for a whole weekend or even a week in character from waking up to going to bed even when just having a drink. Or we would go once a week to a local pub where we hired a room and all pretended to be vampires playing vampire LARP.
There are many many people who play roleplay games like DnD in this way, who fully immerse, like I said I once ran a 2 year campaign where at every session at least half the players where dressed up cos playing their character, those who couldn’t usually where rushing from work etc. they would be in character from the moment they arrived. 2 of them I can genuinely say I don’t remember their real name, it was told to me once and from that moment I only ever called them by the character name, even in text or a phone call. That was after uni, I have other players who will do an accent and fully commit to the character and I have players who are not into that but love being part of a group who are.
Now where our games “online video ready” probably not, there was lots of confusion, lots of doing silly silly stuff and lots of just wasting time in game talking to random NPCs but the players where fully 100% immersed.
I actually liked the Youtube clip more than the usual CR stream. But I'm also aware that CR is a performance, not exactly theater, but definitely a performance. In actual home play there's cross talk, etc. You get that a little bit in CR but I think there's also this performativeness that I imagine frustrates the players sometimes, because "I have to take a dramatic pause to get the audience with me, and keep my diction at deliberative tempo to keep the audience with me BUT I REALLY JUST WANT TO DO THE THING!" I think the one where they did Mighty Nein v. Vox Machina recently stands out as probably them just playing.
But this thread really isn't or shouldn't be about Critical Role. Rather, it's to validate the OP's intended game as a DM. Of course it should be validated, and yeah I did lay it on thick in constructing the style of play I inferred the OP felt challenged by. This is actually reflective of the DMG's contrast of "hack and slash" and "immersive play." There's a lot of styles between those points, and those two poles can nevertheless intermingle.
There's been decades of game design including one specifically branded "storyteller system" (though there were plenty of other games informing the conversation) that have resulted in a continuum between, through and around wargaming and improv (albeit sometimes frustratingly scripted improv, ahem, backstories) which I think in practice all just stir and stew in the same role playing cauldron of everything. Players and DMs have their strengths and tastes with various ingredients, but I do believe what the OP wants to play and what CR plays in a production studio are both playing Dungeons and Dragons. They both can ladle it on as heavy or light as they want.
tl:dr Stew or punch bowl not race track (I follow the analogy but the race track analogy implies people using the track differently get in each others way. TTRPGs don't really have that problem, though the soap box manufacturers association wants everyone to think differently).
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I will say as a dm and a player I don’t like dungeon crawl adventures, but I fully accept that it is very possible to run them. I was late coming to DnD and the thing that stopped me and my friends from playing was that the idea of dungeon crawl followed by spending spree when compared to games like Cyberpunk, L5R, Vampire, Mage and Wearwolf just sounded boring and dull. Why would anyone get any fun from that lol.
But there are many examples of these dungeon crawl type adventures and, as I have said, you can apply that mentality to an outside environment as well. Or even to a town. You can also as a DM give the players less information and less agency to make your adventures more linear outside. A player will only do the things you present them the chance to do in your descriptions.