The Dungeon Problem

Thoughts inspired by the Between Two Cairns podcast.

I'm listening to Yochai Gal & Brad Kerr's podcast Between Two Cairns, this week joined by Kelsey Dionne of The Arcane Library to review Gradient Descent by Luke Gearing. Gradient Descent is one of my favourite dungeon modules of all time, Luke is a dear friend & collaborator, I'm only seven minutes in, I haven't even got to the review part of the podcast and I have to stop listening because I am already brimming with thoughts about the discussions at hand - "what is the biggest design problem in modern module design?"

I don't agree with the initial foray - "the module has to be written specific to the system it's written to support" - for reasons those of you familiar with my philosophy on games writing will doubtlessly chuckle at, but it is moreso where they go next that has my attention piqued. Kelsey opines that for her, her biggest challenge in module writing is how to incentivize exploration, balancing that against the cost of that exploration - a "lethality balance" that is not too punitive but is challenging to the players nonetheless. The premise as presented: "dungeons are dangerous and no rational person should want to explore them" is absolutely sound and is, I think we can all agree, a fundamental basis of the dungeon fantasy genre. I think we also can and do all agree that Play involves motivating either the players or their characters (hopefully both!) into behaving irrationally and exploring that dungeon anyways. Where I start to get lost is on whose responsibility that motivation or incentivization is supposed to be.

Kelsey, Brad and Yochai are all seemingly firmly in the camp of motivation/incentivization to be the responsibility of the module writer - and by extension the game designer, based on systems comments. One of the example concerns brought up is in "unused" or unexamined content; dungeon rooms or areas that remain unexplored by players and are thus "wasted" because of an imbalanced risk/reward factor. So as presented, there are options such as the time constraints of the Shadowdark resource system, which measures torch length and thus ability to safely and effectively explore dungeons. If you have an hour of real-life time before your torch runs out, groups are motivated to press on, make decisions quickly, not over-plan or over-think and to take risks they ordinarily would not need to. An alternate suggestion presented is a sense of mystery, a desire to find answers to narrative questions, which is potentially more of a player-facing hook than a character-facing hook. And of course there is the old standby of treasure, particularly in systems where treasure is exchanged for XP.

I don't necessarily disagree with any of the above (save for the idea of "wasted" dungeon rooms). Rather, I think it is the mindset that the players and/or their characters have to be motivated to expose themselves to risk is at least misguided, if not overthought. And it's a mindset that I think comes from the overemphasis on and the exagerated importance of System ("here Noora goes on and on about System again") as an all-encompassing and all-determining entity that creates homogenity in play experience. Kelsey obviously has significantly more experience writing 5e modules than I do. But I do think it is a little silly to insist that 5th edition is incompatible with exploration/delve-focused D&D-alike situations and particularly modules (I've even heard it stated with a straight face that Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition cannot run a dungeon crawl). I'm sitting right next to seven very large editions of Goodman Games' classic conversions of Keep on the Borderlands, Isle of Dread, Barrier Peaks, Lost City, Castle Amber, Hommlet and the Temple of Elemental Evil - all presented as both the original B/X and/or AD&D and 5th edition. They are eminently explorable. And I don't buy for a second "you can't play dungeon exploration/obstacle modules with 5e because the characters have too many abilities (darkvision, polymorph, etc) that allow them to bypass abilities." Have you read the OD&D spellbook?

A Bluesky thread by Zedeck Siew provides one alternative: that "deathtrap-dungeon hostile environment is kinda over-represented in standard TTRPGs... Non-miserable geography + horrible NPCs = kickass adventure that gives players a material or moral reasons to keep going." Zedeck's premise here I think is just a good one from both a dungeon design perspective of "utilize non-standard and unexpected environments for dungeons, such as places where PCs might ordinarily or currently feel safe"; but also from a very literal perspective of "rob a rich person and occupy their fortress-like manor," which is something I wish we'd see in both the real world and fantasy worlds. However, like Kelsey, Brad and Yochai, I think Zedeck here is also still too hung up on the perceived necessity of incentivizing player (and character, but mostly player) behavior through dungeon writing.

I have three alternative thoughts to all this, all derived from an alternative mentality: allow the table to inventivize itself. The purpose of a dungeon module is not to incentivize exploration or risk, it is to motivate and inspire play in whatever form that might take.

1. If we can (and I think we do) agree upon the statement "dungeons are dangerous and no rational person should want to explore them"" then regardless of whether or not the players actually enter the dungeon or not, a compelling play situation unfolds. If the characters want to enter the dungeon but don't need to (more on this later), there's a compelling "why" involved and that's something entirely player-driven and not beholden to the whims of any writer or game designer. If the characters need but don't want to enter the dungeon, that is also a compelling "why" that is entirely a player-driven narrative and not dictated by the module or game manual, either. And if the characters don't want or need to enter the dungeon, the circumstances that have gotten them there and the fallout (or not!) of not entering the dungeon is also a compelling situation - entirely player-driven, outside the confines of your A5 (or 8.5" x 11") booklet and the narrative scaffolding you've created with your writing. Do you see what I'm getting at here? The goal isn't to get them into the dungeon or keep them there - they're going to decide that for themselves. Focus that energy on amplifiers for why they might stay and why the players themselves enjoy the ride - but don't be mistaken that they are there on the merits of your adventure writing.

2. "Dungeons are dangerous and no rational person should want to explore them" might be a true statement but it is, ultimately, a useless one. People are not rational actors and routinely do things that no rational people should want to do. There are entire industries dedicated to this - extreme sports, some might argue regular sports, exploration-based travel... 332 people have died attempting to climb Mt Everest. 444 people have died BASE jumping. Five people died only a few months ago after taking an aluminum tube to the bottom of the ocean. Thrill seekers behave irrationally in the real world. Why wouldn't they do so in a fantasy world? The entire concept of mercenary adventurers plundering tombs for treasure are based on real life colonial grave robbers "explorers" and archeologists. These people, one could argue, were not behaving rationally. Why would any adventurer? Their motivation is simple: its either money, fame, or being able to say they've done something nobody else has or could. But once more: these are all player-derived motivations. A dungeon doesn't require the players to be motivated. It just is.

3. From a ludological perspective: you would hope that the players would be motivated to participate in Play by virtue of showing up to engage in a recreational activity with their friends. This to me is the most straightforward thing and one that I think writers and "game designers" have a hard time letting go - that their words do not in fact have the power over people they think and want and dream they do. That is not to say that good writing cannot draw people in - however, remember it is unlikely that the players are actually going to read those words! In all likelihood the module's writing is being read by one or more referees who are then interpreting, riffing off, adding to or eliding large parts of and overall adapting those words for the specifics of the group. The referee has a great deal more to do with player buy-in than any words on a page. Those words might help that referee feel more inspired herself and thus convey that excitement and enthusiasm to her group to help inspire their own buy-in - but let's be clear here. The players have decided whether or not they are going to participate long before the book opens, and there isn't much in that book that's going to change their behavior unless they themselves are willing to allow their behavior to be changed. Which, again, is happening through the other participants of Play. Unless you, the writer, is at the table, you simply do not have much of an impact on what happens at that table. Sorry.

Design dungeons that do fun things when interacted with. Write characters with traits that inspire engagement and intimacy. Make fun buttons to press! That's the purpose of a module. It surely isn't to incentivize the kind of Play you want to see.