So a bit of background first, DnD was not the first, 2nd or even third roleplay game I played. I started with warhammer fantasy roleplay, then cyberpunk, Cthulhu, paranoia, mercs 3000, the world of darkness (vampire, mage, wearwolf) and legend of the 5 rings. This is late 90’s early 2000’s I started roleplaying. I played a bit of pathfinder and then when the 5E PHB was released a friend picked it up and we gave it a go, 

The thing with all of these original games I played for years is they never involved a dungeon crawl type adventure. In fact those I played with looked down on early DnD because it was just about trawling through a dungeon, killing monsters, getting loot then onto the next dungeon it wasn’t an open world expansive game with complex politics and npc’s. I remember one game group refused point blank to play DnD because it was “boring” 

Since then I have come to DnD and understood it is a far larger system then that linear one we thought it was in the late 90’s early 2000’s but I still hate dungeon crawls, yes there are times my party will explore a crypt, a tomb or even go to the underdark but that idea of a room to a room to a room for level after level I really struggle to see how a story can be constructed from that. I prefer open world expansive games with complex stories and intertwining adventures vs a linear room by room adventure. 

A couple of players recently came into a campaign with me having only played dungeon crawls in DnD and are loving the change in approach I thought the dungeon crawl had gone out of fashion but I have seen DMs on here comment on how they run them.

So I am intrigued in 2021 how many of you still enjoy dungeon crawls, how many of your players want that experience from the game or are you finding they want that more open world experience?

I just want to say I am not saying there is anything inherently wrong with you enjoying a dungeon crawl it is just something that isn’t for me I am just intrigued as to how popular they still are?

May I suggest a poll?

I think dungeon crawling is still an extremely important part of D&D, and always will be.  It is the natural "stage" on which ADVENTURERS (yes, that is what every PC is) actually carry out their profession.  Much like a blacksmith at a forge. 

Clearing dungeons, either for a predetermined reward or in hopes of plundering valuables is how practitioners of the trade of adventuring make their income.  Every character that I make understands that first and foremost being an adventurer, and that is their primary motivation.  

As far as do I enjoy dungeon crawls, sure you bet.  They test how good a player is at the game side of role-playing game.  You need to be good at combat, but also be perceptive and tactical with how you maneuver through the dungeon.  You need problem solving skills, and the discrete environment necessitates a strategic approach.  Well designed dungeons will challenge these skills, thus indicating exactly how "good" of an adventurer you actually are.  

So yes, dungeon crawling is very important.  I'm not advocating every campaign be a megadungeon, but if all you are doing is role-playing then you might as well call it Diplomats and Dragons. 

+1 for dungeon crawling. Like running them, absolutely love playing them. If it's in person and we are mapping with graph paper, dibs on being the mapper. Love it.

Quote from Pantagruel666 >>

May I suggest a poll?

 poll done :)

I've never actually done a straight-up dungeon crawl campaign, I've always been part of more open-world style ones ever since my 3.5 days back in college, so for me I still feel something of a novelty when we do get around to a classic crawl. 

One group I'm in especially is with a bunch of people who are super into RP and we regularly go multiple sessions without any combat (or sometimes much of anything) taking place, so every now and then it's fun to throw aside the political complexities and social intrigue to kill monsters and steal loot for a few sessions. 

As a player, I don’t hate dungeon crawls, but they tend to get boring after I’ve been through a few of them.  As a DM, I find them excruciatingly boring to run, but a couple of my players really enjoy them, so I make sure I give them opportunities to do a crawl or two, periodically.  For me, the best part of D&D is exploring and roleplay, so unless I deliberately think to add dungeons, my game completely lacks them.  I knew at session zero that my players prefer balance, but it can still be hard for me to do!

I do not mind running dungeon crawls and my players do not seem to mind them at all.  Though I rarely will do a back-to-back crawl as the same playstyle can be tedious to everyone and it good to mix things up to keep the adventure fresh. 

I've been running Tales of the Yawning Portal which is primarily dungeon crawl modules there is a lot of story to the crawls so it does not feel extremely like you are going from room to room searching for traps and hidden loot or doors.   

I love dungeon crawls as a player, but as a DM, they're so hard to pace and balance that I'd rather not bother. The majority of my sessions still include dungeons, but they're short, linear, and easy to cover in one game.

As a new DM, I find dungeons a fantastic place to practice basic skills such as narration, action adjudication, environment description and the like, as well as the big one - combat. Players have such less choice in a dungeon, compared to open world, that it can really reduce the mental load of the DM as there is a lot less they have to anticipate/prepare.

Also, because there is less that players can do, it you gotta really flex those basic skills to keep it interesting. 

Kinda like a musician practising chords or something? Simple, but if you get really good at it, it makes everything else you do better.

I almost never do dungeon crawls unless it specifically advances the story. Even then, I offer RP alternatives for almost every encounter, which lets me drop a bit of lore a build more complex and memorable NPCs. The players might even get a chance to make some new allies.

If you are talking straight "clear a dungeon and get loot experience" then no. I love a good dungeon though, the more creative the better. The trick is to not make it expressly a dungeon. Send them to steal something from a museum that happens to be three levels full of traps, wards, regular guards, magic dog guars or whatever for example. Incorporate opportunities for RP by having some neutral monsters, NPCs or whatever that the players can engage with. Give them time to RP amongst themselves - especially when trying to figure out where to go next. A regular old dungeon can be a grind but with a little imagination it can be a lot of fun. 

I'm fairly new to DMing so I've not had much opportunity to try out either way, but one of the things I've aimed for is to expand the tried & trusted dungeon crawl into other aspects of my world - such as a tower which has multiple floors to negotiate through, or treating a forest to travel through as an "open world" dungeon, where I map it out as "Goblin territory", "Giant Spider Territory", "Swamp" and so forth. Then as the players progress through the forest I can describe changes in the scenery like webs in the trees or heads on goblin spears, so they get the gist that they have strayed into a new area of the forest. If they like they can try to skirt around it, and instead go through different areas of the forest. It doesn't take a lot of planning (it's not a beautiful map, looks more like a drunk venn diagram) but it gives the forest more flavour than "it has bears in it" if the bears have a territory which they roam, avoiding the Green Dragon's territory by the lake and trying to hunt goblins on the border of goblin territory in the north. That way you can offer the players description and see if they notice the webs and think "ah, must be giant spiders here!" or of they just think "ah, just a detail of the forest".

I prefer open world expansive games with complex stories and intertwining adventures vs a linear room by room adventure. 

I think it's worth mentioning that there can be a middle ground here. You can run a big dungeon with npc factions, multiple branching paths, and a story that reveals itself as you progress. Dungeon's don't have to be just a linear chain of combats and traps. The Angry GM has a good example in his megadungeon. I think it's really just a matter of scale more than anything else.

I don't really run a lot of literal dungeon delves, but whenever I run a series of encounters where I don't intend to allow rests, I still think of it as a dungeon. A scene or encounter is a room. A decision point is a branching corridor. Doesn't matter if they're in a forest or desert or sailing on the sea, my roughly sketched diagram/flow-chart looks like a dungeon. It's just a handy way to visualize a series of events. So I feel like dungeons are still alive and well, they just tend to look different.

I prefer a sandbox with a variety of adventure type that include dungeon crawling but that is not solely limited to it.

I run a very "sandbox" kind of game.  I'm a seat-of-the-pants style of DM.  That said, my setting is seeded with dungeon type setting the characters can try to track down.  Delve below the streets of the city?  You'll find things.  Travel across the country and into the jungle filled with exotic creatures?  You'll find things.  Everywhere in between, there's a chance for a Dungeon to crawl around in.

Nothing on the level of the Dungeon of the Mad Mage.  If they can't clear the place and escape with the loot in a few sessions, it's beyond what I want to deal with, unless I am running a published Adventure, and not the Mad Mage one.

I vote for None Of The Above (please explain).  I don't have a "few" Dungeons for the players to go around looking for, there's a ton of them if they want to go crawl in them.  I might even let them walk.

I like dungeon crawls as it makes players have to think about resource management. Outside of a dungeeon, unless you are using gritty realism it is hard to realistically have more than one or two encountersw a day and by the time you get to tier two that means players run out of enemies before high level spell slots.  This makes players have to assess how dangerous a particular foe is and whether they should use their levelled spells / action surge rage etc or keep it for a later fight.

There should be more to a dungeon crawl than killing monsters and getting loot. You can through in NPCs that have been dominated by the bad guy, have factions within the "dungeon" that oppose each other, for example an NPC who wants ot take over the leadership of a cult and take it in another (possibly less evil) direction and would want ot use the adventurers as a method to kill rival.  Sure the politics will never be at the same depth as an is more expansive areas but a am not saying the whole campaign should be a dungeon.  As a player I am playing Call from the deep which hads a nice balance,  the majority of the campaign (in our game it took about 15 months) is open world with a few small dungeons while you are trying to identify and locate the BBEG about 3 months ago we found the BBEGs base and we know there is still a huge amount of the base still to explore.

Just because you don't typically map it the same... there are just as many Social Dungeons as there are holes in the ground with monsters and adventures.  All a dungeon is in it's rawest form is a progression from one point to another in search of an objective dealing with whatever lies between where you are and where that objective is.  Sure, in the 80s and 90s we mapped a lot of these and they were underground.  But as a DM, when you build out an adventure... you are still doing the same thing as mapping out a dungeon to fill it, whether that is aboveground and in a town or in the countryside or whether you are under the depths of a mountain.  The key to all of this is enjoying the journey that leads us from the beginning point to the ending point... and knowing that the path can lead us in all kinds of directions (either as a player or as a Storyteller / Game Master / Dungeon Master).  

Quote from Grayfax >>

Just because you don't typically map it the same... there are just as many Social Dungeons as there are holes in the ground with monsters and adventures.  All a dungeon is in it's rawest form is a progression from one point to another in search of an objective dealing with whatever lies between where you are and where that objective is.  Sure, in the 80s and 90s we mapped a lot of these and they were underground.  But as a DM, when you build out an adventure... you are still doing the same thing as mapping out a dungeon to fill it, whether that is aboveground and in a town or in the countryside or whether you are under the depths of a mountain.  The key to all of this is enjoying the journey that leads us from the beginning point to the ending point... and knowing that the path can lead us in all kinds of directions (either as a player or as a Storyteller / Game Master / Dungeon Master).  

 I am aware of the idea that every campaign is just one long dungeon crawl and I get the theory but, a dungeon crawl does not allow the players to head in any direction randomly deciding what to do, generally there are walls and doors to force some sort of binary decision.