What Are Dungeons For?

Does D&D facilitate the game you want to play?

🐦 Follow us on Twitter!

#RunningTheGame #MattColville #MCDM

[CaelReader]

Some OSR (Old School Renaissance) systems to look into for dungeon crawling: Knave, Cairn, Five Torches Deep, Old School Essentials, Dungeon Crawl Classics, Electric Bastionland, Maze Rats, Worlds Without Number

[davidmartin]

I think the hallmark of a Running The Game video is the moment where I realize I haven’t been listening to Matt for the last 45 seconds because my mind wandered off to my own game and what I can do with it based on the ideas that have been put in my head.

[joshuapossin]

Aragorn and Boromir do in fact argue about taking a rest-
“Give them a moment, for pity’s sake!”
“By nightfall these hills will be swarming with orcs”

[Theycallmetomu]

Based on this video, easy way to show 5E isn't a survival horror game:

Light is a cantrip.

[lindybeige]

The mirrors were not (primarily, I believe) for peering around corners in dungeons. That wouldn't work, because you'd need what was around the corner to be illuminated, and your own light source, if you had one, would then be flashed towards your foes. Of course, it could work sometimes, but I don't recall anyone's using them that way. They were for detecting vampires, which don't reflect. On the same list were wooden stakes (? not always), holy symbols, and wolves' bane. Iron spikes were commonly carried, and their main use was to hold doors open or shut.

[balthizarlucienclan]

As an old-school player, I often make action decisions with my character that baffle my much younger dungeon masters. A perfect example was an encounter with abyssal chickens which I mistook for cockatrice (based on the description provided.) I fought the entire battle at a disadvantage because I refused to look directly at them. After the fight, the DM asked why I acted that way, and I had to explain the tactic and why I was using a small hand mirror instead of just facing the enemy. I sometimes feel foolish when I play because I still think about dungeons like I used to. This is why 5e feels so low-stakes to me.

[phil_metal_jacket]

I will say this for starting equipment: one of my players is brand new to the game and started as a level one rogue, and now they are near-obsessed with their bag of ball bearings.

[johnreiland]

To me, this is *peak* Matt Colville. I can open my brain wide and just pour this right in, let it slosh around. It was a joy to start with a close shot on the equipment list, pull back until we're examining narrative genres, and then zoom back in again until we're talking about loot and monsters. Killer video.

[fitzgigler]

You can see the appetite for Dungeon Crawlers in the board game space. Gloomhaven, Chronicles of Drunagor, etc. Are designed to give you varying levels of intense strategic dungeon crawling, without the need for a DM.

[mr.pavone]

My kids have gotten interested in D&D. They play 5e and I'm an OG D&D player. My first exposure to the game was the original white box set that my dad brought home. So, me and the boys have talks about the differences in editions. One of the things I keep telling them is that to understand each edition and what it's trying to do, you need to understand the media the designers consumed. OGD&D was about wargaming because Gygax and his crew were all hardcore, historical wargamers and they cared very much about supplies and logistics. They knew what it took to keep an army running so they worked it into their game. Hell, they made getting the loot out of the dungeon part of the game. If every coin weighs an ounce, then 16 make a pound so 500 gold coins weighs 31lbs 4oz. That's TWO BOWLING BALLS worth of gold! 5e seems to be designed for people who watched a lot of anime and played a lot of video games, not that that is a bad thing. But 5e certainly comes off as a game that facilitates players in their acting out those kinds of fantasies with the mechanics of video games and cartoons that don't sweat little material details.

[SSkorkowsky]

Great vid, sir.
I've tried many times to explain how 5e D&D isn't the designed for, or the best for Horror compared to other games. Inevitably someone responds, "Not the best for Horror, huh? Ever heard of Curse of Strahd?" before dropping the mic and strutting off.

[mcolville]

I thought about calling this video Styles of Play? But it really only covers one style of play. I thought about calling it Dungeon Crawling, or What Is D&D About?

But really I wrote this whole thing as a reaction to seeing people online refer to 5E as "a dungeon crawler." CAN you do that in this game? Sure. But is that actually what it is?

[algorithmancyTube]

5e: We’re a heroic fantasy game, not a dungeon crawler!
Also 5e: We’re balanced around an adventuring day of 6-8 encounters...

[BigRoyBad]

This video makes a really good case for leaving D&D behind and trying all kinds of different systems for different games

[LailaJohanna]

I love how Matt's meandering almost archaeological discussions of D&D and ttrpgs provide you with such a solid foundation to think about your game. I've been working on a campaign and from the beginning I knew I really want a robust system for herbology, harvesting wild and strange plants, ores, earths etc. and definitely for butchering monsters and using their parts, interesting weather effects and more and - to me - it just felt like D&D is just fundamentally missing these aspects. I now think, the reason I want this, is because I am creating a game that is about exploring nature and being immersed in a natural environment and D&D isn't necessarily about that; it doesn't give you nearly enough ways to interact with nature in the way I imagine. Thanks! Now I can approach this issue in a far more targeted way!

[tagg]

Ben Milton on the questing beast channel has a great video on "the lost dungeon crawling rules", or something like that. He starts with a great little monologue about how 5th edition "dungeons' and dragons barely has any rules for dungeons.

[mewwww]

The 2/3 mark of this video created a link in my brain to Jacob Geller's "Does Call of Duty Believe in Anything?" video.

I've often monkeyed with D&D mechanics to try to make it about different things and conveyed this to the players. However, I'm realizing along with this video that it may be best to develop or work off of entirely different systems. The expectations everyone has of D&D and the built-in mechanics I've forgotten to consider have frequently subverted these attempts.

[snoozd]

In the DMG, in the section about fantasy genres, they describe heroic fantasy mainly through the lens of "heroes" (not necessarily heroic, but crucial to the plot) using their powers to destroy monsters and villains, and I think that is what this game is about. Making player characters the heroes of their own story. You can pretty easily put different genre wallpapers over it, but their characters are always immportant to the plot and uniquely capable.

[eriktyrrell]

The Ars Magica game I'm playing now really is very informed by the rules. There is a lot of "this is really important, I can study a different magical art over the winter than the one I had planned to, invent a relevant spell in the spring, and we'll get back to this in only six months".

[tiggerdyret]

I remember Matt saying he didn't think he would ever get into other systems because DnD still had so much untapped potential. I was pleasantly surprise about that he seems to be diving into more systems and schools of thought once again now that he is designing games. My biggest gripe with people not being willing to try other systems is because I was one of those people. I knew systems were different from DnD, but I always kinda assumed that the were that same thing handle slightly different. Now that I've tried a couple of systems and seen how differently they play and how much the gameplay changes the stories and tone of the game, I've become a madman for new systems a regular RPG addict. I wish people would try different systems, because finding a system that suits your intention for the game is such a freeing experience compared to hammering DnD mechanics into place to get the result you want. If you are having fun. Great, keep at it, but I will tell you, you don't know what you're missing.