Should "dungeons" be verisimilitudinous living spaces for monsters and outlaws or more akin to portals to fantastic realms?
>>94796408You have any thoughts of your own on the matter, chomo?
There is no "should". It depends.
>>94796421I favor the living space approach, but there's room for the other. Albeit, they should be very rare. No more than 2, preferably 1 per setting. And it should be difficult to even access, let alone start exploring. Only the insane or heroic should have any use for it, not just the usual profiteering adventure.
>>94796408I make them large interconnected and non Euclidean subterranean underworlds as inhospitable as the zone in stalker They are teeming with danger and life, and the sapeint creatures that do live there hole themselves up in tight fortified lairs and confines Now OP you should play and run more games and consume and steal more ideas from niche media And not be fucking afraid to slap them into what you run
>>94796408both
>>94796408The latter.
>>94796408Depends on how many adventurers your setting is meant to support.If it's only the player party and maybe a scattering of others then the former.If adventurers are a big enough force to have such an economic impact that they have dedicated parts of the market that cater to them then the latter.
>>94796408When I go to play a game, I really don't care about verisimilitude, I care more about having fun with the game.I generate dungeons as I play, because I think randomly generated dungeons are fun in games, not because I believe that any of the resulting designs are practical or could be habitats.Does it make sense for some of the monster combinations to live together in the same habitat? No. But it's fun to explore the tactical aspects of fighting those monsters when they're combining their abilities.Does it make sense for said monsters to fight until they're dead, with no regards to their own well-being? No. But it's fun to get loot from the monsters I defeat, without having to go on a merry chase.Is there any believable reason there are fucking Mario-blocks everywhere on the surface and in dungeons? Absolutely not, but it's fun to see what items are inside, use the blocks for cover/stealth, or to smash enemies with said blocks.I like games, and I don't have to believe them to have fun with them.
>>94796886>Is there any believable reason there are fucking Mario-blocks everywhere on the surface and in dungeons? Absolutely not, but it's fun to see what items are inside, use the blocks for cover/stealth, or to smash enemies with said blocks.Never heard of someone using Mario blocks in RPGs.
verisimilitudinous living spaces
>>94796878Fair point, I tend to play that adventurers are comparatively rare unless the setting explicitly says otherwise.So in any given nation there's a handful of heroic level groups and maybe one paragon in the kind of region wherethey might be needed. Same goes for villains, an enemy adventuring group is a rare and major adversary.
>>94796408Depends on what system you're running, and the setting in question.
>>94796408both, depending on the game and the setting.Maybe the world has nonsense type dungeons that are magic pyramids or whatever that do have such portals, but the same world also has forests, abandoned prisons or caves that do make sense but in practice are also rpg dungeons.Just don't do the fucking stupid japanese living magic dungeon ecosystems designed around being explored by the local fucking adventurers' guild.If you do that, I hope you get bone cancer.
>>94796984I just put things I have fun with in my games.
>>94796408Depends on the game, dunnit? What a pointless question.
>>94797231Based.
I once ran my PCs through my Kobold Camp base, as accurately as I could get it. It was a disaster. They fought their way to the other side of the base and discovered that it was just the other side of the base. They spent most of their time searching the kitchen and stockpile for secret treasure because that was the largest structure.So now I keep my autistic simulation to myself and just throw monsters and rooms at them and we're all happier.
>>94796408I generally design the lore for my dungeons first, then the actual dungeon.
Frankly i do not care. Dungeons exist to explore and have stuff that can be killed. If you want to write a whole ass novel to explain why goblins have a treasure chest with magic scrolls be my guest, doesn't effect me either way.
no
>>94797368What did you expect them to do?
>>94796408It's called "funhouse" for a reason, because it's fun.
>>94797878i think that's why "dungeons" was in quotation marke
>>94797878>typical Harn player
>>94796408As it is often the case, depends.You and your group might have a preference, you might have a style, and it might be better to have both exist in the same campaign sometimes, etc.
>>94797930Kill the kobolds and go back for the quest money. I was playing a kobold tribe at the time and thought it'd add realism to have my actual vidya base, but all it did was confuse the players because base = loot. I probably should have had an obvious chieftain's hut with an emerald or something but it's hard to describe just how destitute your fucking lizards are with the kobold camp mod.
>>94798241I'm confused that it took much time for you to tell them they didn't find anything. It also seems odd that a group that hadn't managed to loot anything at all was worth someone paying a bounty to destroy.
>>94797368Skill issue.
>>94796408https://archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/92795102/#92795102https://archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/86117515/#86117515
>>94796408I vastly prefer taking a space that either currently or previously had clear function and then trying to route through it in a way that is dungeonesqueSome are easier than others, like limiting paths on the basis of collapsed tunnels in a castle or something.
>>94796408In terms of player popularity, I’ve had a goblin infested mine that was very well received and I’ve had a dimensional crossroads cave where every room had an encounter thematic to it, but no two rooms had any firm relationship to each other that was similarly well received. Having the nature of the dungeon be communicated (even if not 100% accurately or clearly) by the NPCs and environment is the main thing. If your players are expecting an underdark ecosystem and they get a mad wizards’s menagerie except in a cave and without any cages, they probably aren’t going to appreciate it as well as they would if they had been clued into what was going on beforehand.
>>94796408The former for low-fantasy, the latter for high fantasy.As soon as you have Wizards teleporting across the continent dropping meteors and Fighters that can slaughter an army of bandits before lunch, the dungeon basically has to be a portal to the realm of infinite demons just to keep up.
>>94796408Verisimilitudinous living fantastic realms
>>94796577>Consume niche media like stalker and anime!!!! Kill yourself
>>94796408Probably one of those or maybe some other thing
>>94797878In an authentic dungeon the real treasure are the friends you made along the way (criminal).
>>94796408The latter. Only they're more like a reflection of the platonic ideal of The Dungeon.
>>94796408
>>94796408It depends
>>94796408They should be ruins of great structures long abandoned to the wilderness, with passages closed or opened by collapses and the livable areas infested by whatever evil creatures have seized it as their own.
>>94796408If a player points out at any random creature asking what does it eat and you don't have answer ready you should just quit GMing.
I use dungeons as a slightly otherworldly place. I also allow people to use them.
No furnitureNo decorationsNo puzzlesGray bricks onlyYep it's dungeon time
>>94796408What game?
>>94796408Depends on the fucking "dungeon", now doesn't it? Obviously the former should be the norm, as we're dealing with a living world, whether we're talking caves, forests, a castle, a ship, or whatever, but the latter is also a legitimate potential type of very specific dungeon.What a useless question.
I stopped putting library rooms in dungeons because invariably a player would say something like "I pick up the third book on the shelf and open to page 17. What is the 43rd word on the page?"I would try to give a general answer like "its a book of kings of an earlier age, it will take some time to study" but that wasnt good enough for them
>>94818376Them pushing you for a specific word is unreasonable behaviour, you both know there is no word, because there is no text, because there is no book, because there is no library, because there is no dungeon, because it's all fucking make-belief. The correct answer is to tell them to stop trying to disrupt the game with hyper-specific questions that are just meant to upset the GM. Optionally if you for some reason you have reservations against telling someone to stop being a disruptive player and just want to engage in the same bad behaviour, then consider having page 17 be a hyperrealistic charcoal drawing of their mother being fucked in the ass, and be very specific as to details.
>>94796408A 'dungeon' shouldn't have a meaning in the world. It's a game term, not a setting term.
>>94796408prefer the former rather than the latter since it gives the player greater context for the setting of the game and allows them to bring knowledge their already have but their is something to be said sending players in Non-euclidean hellscapes
>>94818376Each time they ask just say "the".
>>94796408Wherever your players want to go.
>>94796408dungeons are a series of flow charts intended for the players to enjoy
They need to be verosimil, but that only means internally logical. If a dungeon has an elevator to hell next to a bowling alley that could be reassonable for that dungeon.The word you meant is realistic, and no, realistic buildings are pretty boring since they aren't made to have fun getting lost.
