I’ve talked in the past about how D&D 5th Edition doesn’t teach DMs how to run dungeons. In fact, it doesn’t even teach them how to key a dungeon map (or provide an example of a keyed dungeon map).
(To understand how weird this is, consider that the 5th Edition Starter Set includes a detailed explanation of exactly how a DM should use boxed text, but still doesn’t tell the DM how to run the dungeon that’s included in the sample adventure. Like, there was a perceived need to very specifically explain how you read text out loud, but not a perceived need to explain how you’re supposed to run a dungeon… the thing that’s actually unique to being a GM. But I digress.)
By contrast, the original edition of D&D in 1974 contains very specific instructions for both things: How to prep a dungeon and how to run the dungeon.
This is not some newfangled failure on the part of 5th Edition. It’s the end of a very long trend line (briefly interrupted, but only partially reversed by 3rd Edition) in which the D&D rulebooks have slowly stopped teaching DMs how to run the game at arguably its most fundamental level. 4th Edition, for example, still included instructions for keying a dungeon, but, like 5th Edition, failed to include any instruction for how a DM is supposed to run the dungeon.
Virtually the entire RPG hobby is built on three core structures:
1. Dungeoncrawl (often genericized to location-crawl)
2. Combat
3. Railroad
And virtually every published RPG has assumed that GMs already know to run a dungeon (because they learned it from D&D, right?).
So what happens when D&D stops teaching new DMs how to a run a dungeon?
Well, at that point all you have left is a railroad leading you from one combat encounter to the next.
PAYING THE PIPER
Although I’ve been talking about this problem for several years, it’s always been mostly theoretical and anecdotal: I would run into new GMs who were struggling because they’d never been taught a proper scenario structure; or I’d get e-mails from similar GMs who were thanking me for my essays on game structures or node-based scenario design or the like.
This is partly because, despite D&D no longer teaching these things, there was still a legacy of knowledge in the hobby: First, published scenarios were being designed by people who had learned how to prep and run dungeons decades ago, and new DMs could frequently intuit a lot from the published example. Second, many GMs were first players who learned to play from GMs who had, similarly, learned these things when they were younger.
Of course, these are basically oral traditions. And, like all oral traditions (particularly those which aren’t being deliberately passed on), they’ll degrade over time. Unsurprisingly, the first stuff to get lost are the procedures that were happening only behind the GM’s screen; players learning only from their actual play experiences only saw what those procedures created, not the procedures themselves, and therefore could not learn them.
Nonetheless, this legacy knowledge persisted.
Recently, though, I’ve been digging through stuff on the DM’s Guild and it’s become clear that the problem is no longer theoretical: It’s very real.
EXAMPLE 1: I’m reading through a module. The entire concept is that the PCs are exploring a ruined castle. But there’s no map of the castle. There are room-by-room descriptions of the castle, but no map to show how these areas relate to each other.
It should be noted that there ARE two other maps in the book: Encounter maps depicting specific rooms. So it’s not a budgetary issue. Cartography could have existed.
So I’m just confused, until I remember that… Oh, right. D&D doesn’t teach this any more.
EXAMPLE 2: This time it’s a whole collection of one-page scenarios. The creators have popped over to Dyson Logos’ website and grabbed his Creative Commons maps, and so every single scenario has a map.
None of the dungeon maps are keyed.
In some cases, this is because the locations aren’t designed for exploration (fair enough), but often the adventure features huge paragraphs of text trying to describe the contents of the dungeon room by room in a kind of narrative ramble.
The final kicker? These are 5-star rated products on the DM’s Guild. It’s not just that these particular creators didn’t know any better; the audience doesn’t know any better, either.
CONCLUSION
“How to prep and a run a room-by-room exploration of a place” is solved tech from literally Day 1 of RPGs.
But D&D hasn’t been teaching it in the rulebooks since 2008, and that legacy is really starting to have an impact.
Over the next decade, unless something reverses the trend, this is going to get much, much worse. The transmission decay across generations of oral tradition is getting rather long in the tooth at this point. You’ve got multiple generations of new players learning from rulebooks that don’t teach it at all. The next step is a whole generation of industry designers who don’t know this stuff, so people won’t even be able to learn this stuff intuitively from published scenarios.
UPDATE: This article was written primarily for the existing audience of the Alexandrian and it kind of assumes a shared framework of knowledge; it’s a “here’s an additional thought that builds on those other thoughts I’ve previously discussed” kind of thing. Based on the comments below, it appears that the article has somehow broken out into a MUCH wider audience. Although I did link to its immediate antecedent in the opening paragraph (Game Structures – Addendum: System Matters), that is clearly not getting the job done in terms of orienting new readers. If you’re feeling confused or angry or think I’m hating on 5th Edition here, I do encourage you to check out not only that addendum, but the entire Game Structures essay which discusses scenario structures in detail.
A few specific notes:
(1) A location-crawl structure (which is what the dungeoncrawl structure D&D used to teach is a specific example of) is not limited to old school dungeons. It’s not even limited to dungeons.
(2) Location-crawls are not the only scenario structure, but the argument that D&D has somehow grown beyond them doesn’t make a lot of sense: Every published D&D module from WotC features a dungeon. The fact they aren’t teaching new DMs how to effectively run the scenarios they’re publishing is clearly a problem. Beyond that, the basic skills of a location-crawl are also applied to other scenarios structures like raids and heists.
(3) Even if D&D had grown beyond location-crawls, the D&D core rulebooks don’t include instructions for designing or running any other scenario structures, either.
So is there a good place to learn how to run one? Which edition has the best guide? Who has published good guides on running a dungeon?
Long time reader and longer-time DM, but I’ve never been satisfied with my dungeons. Could you point me in the direction of a good resource on how to run a dungeon? Most that I’ve read assume a baseline level of knowledge, and I’d like a “from base principles” approach, if such a thing even exists. Thank you!
How do I key a dungeon map?
@Monkey Bars
Justin is almost certainly too modest to say this himself, but this website has very detailed articles on how to run dungeons – most of which are in the Gamemastery 101 link in the sidebar.
Check out Game Structures (obviously the one about dungeoncrawls is the most applicable), The Art of the Key, Breathing Life Into the Wandering Monster, and Dungeon as a Theatre of Operations.
There are many others which are more broadly applicable to any style of game, not just a dungeoncrawl.
Sarainy’s references are good ones. (Thanks, Sarainy!)
I am currently working on a Dungeons 101 post to fill what is clearly a pressing need for the “from base principles” approach that David talked about. Expect it to be appear here on the Alexandrian in the near future.
Even though I am running 5th edition, all the published material I am using is from the early 80s. The one time I tried adapting a 3rd edition adventure turned out to be the most disappointing session of the campaign so far.
I really quite like 5th edition most of the time, but when it comes to exploration and travel, I am still using the old Expert Rules from 1981.
Dragonlance was a mistake. :/
Justin,
If you publish this 101 as a book, I would buy it.
That’s something that bothers me to no end. Menser’s Red Box is still, to this day, the best teaching tool not only for DMs, but also.for players to understand the game. 5e is a mess of a game and a product, and the only reason we keep playing is bc is D&D, and we know what’s supposed to feel like. But it hurts to do so.
Given your remix of Descent into Avernus, would you say that even the people at WotC don’t know how to structure an adventure?
It all comes down to the ages tho. If this were the 80’s and there wasn’t already a wealth of knowledge accessible online then yeah I can see your point but we live in 2020. The internet is at almost everyone’s finger tips. The rules for running a game are loose cuz the game has moved away from the tactical war game it was based off of and moved on to a more theater of the mind approach. To sit there and grid out an entire year long campaign just isn’t reasonable anymore especially when you don’t want to railroad your players and keep them interested. Battle mapping is a good solution for tactics but not every encounter is a battle and not every battle needs a map. It all comes down to are you stuck in an AD&D mindset with convoluted initiative maths and restrictions at every corner or do you move on to the liberty that 5e grants and use it to your advantage. Everyone can play D&D but not everyone is meant to DM.
I see folks asking for the Alexandrian guide to keying dungeons: https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/35180/roleplaying-games/the-art-of-the-key
It’s interesting how you can see some people who not only don’t know how to create a scenario, they don’t know that they don’t know it.
Thank, Justin! To add to Sans: I’d throw buy that book also.
This is an amazingly prescient post–my spouse and I were just talking today about the far-reaching lack of this sort of baseline training (not just for DM-ing) but for *any* (semi)-administrative job.
As educators and Dungeon Masters (and there’s already so much crossover), it seems like this sort of baseline training has simply slipped away in favor of “get the job, then learn how to do it by doing it, perhaps poorly, over the course of time.” I’m excited to see the upcoming Dungeons 101 post.
Oof someone’s ego can’t handle criticism
Wait I forgot you’re a pro dm with recognition from WoTC. That’s right no you’re not, you’re just an internet nobody attacking someone who explained why your logic is flawed.
I thought the D&D essentials kit that came out as a companion to the 5e starter set was great. It certainly had keyed maps and was readily available at Target of all places. I really like that 5e has more of a sandbox feel to it than previous editions as well. D&D snobbery is what lead to the edition wars in the first place. Just my two cents but I’m sure I don’t know that I don’t know what I’m talking about.
As an impartial outsider, I’ve got to ask, why the hate for Jushin? Is it that you don’t agree with his “theater of the mind” approach to D&D 5E or more along the lines that he’s missing the point of your post? I can see the value of keying a map for quick access by the DM or completely outlining a dungeon, but I guess in my experience these haven’t been terrible obstacles for my, admittedly limited, array of DM’s. I think a large part of the move away from peoples perceived need of these things, at least in my experience, is that no one really runs true old fashioned dungeons anymore, I know I’ve never ran one, all my campaigns have been extremely open ended with improvisation left and right. Sorry for rambling about this, I guess I’ve just never consciously been as affected by the current lack of these things as other players.
I’m definitely looking forward to that Dungeons 101 post.
And apparently some people don’t know that they don’t know logic, either.
For those of you as confused as Jushin here, a key is not a battlemap.
Also regarding “the Internet has made things easier to access”, because I always seem to see some variant of the argument about omissions. The fact that the Internet has made something easier to access a piece of information is not relevant to this discussion. Fact of the matter is, you can’t Google something if you don’t know what to type or that such information exists. The DMG should make new DMs aware of this information, but it does not and that blindspot has created problems for the community.
I always felt that I was missing something important when I read over the DMG. This makes sense why. I’m eager to learn and also would love to learn to construct an in play tutorial for new players coming to 5e.
I heartily recommend B1 In Search of the Unknown, as it’s a thorough introduction to keying and running dungeons, and you can comfortably swap the stats for the monsters to newer versions if you want to use it with a newer edition. You definitely want to do the standalone version, not the compilation.
Also, Jushin, you’re kind of embarrassing yourself.
So when you use D&D’s lapses as a window for your takeover of the rpg world, what would you like your movement to be called? Alexandrians? Justinites? Structuralists? Some obscure Shakespeare reference? I’d like to get an early start.
Vote for a book too. Not just Dungeons 101 but Justin GM Tools please.
Jushin he made his remark because 5e has far far more rules than early DnD (really everything pre 3rd edition) and modules were nearly always run theater of the mind. A keyed dungeon allows the DM to quickly describe and keep a dungeon alive without having to resort to time robbing mapping. Further, a paragraph chunk of text, while it can be useful, presupposes a specific direction and way of entering a location which leads to yet more railroading tendencies. If you want a better sense of who the author is (I get if this is all you’ve read why you might underestimate him) check out his gming 101. Specifically, [xandering] a dungeon will give you a sense of what he is about and will assuredly be of great value to anyone playing, regardless of how long they have been doing so.
This is a fun Rant…I don’t know that it merits an article.
As to keying Dungeons, notes and letters seem to do the trick.
I’ll agree with the trend of modules not being solid, but if we are comparing game play to older games? Dungeons as structured are somewhat idiotic. Playing through an entire maze with random dangers at each turn becomes silly. Many of the early games played like board games do today, decent, Gloomhaven do a better job than D&D did with this, and in a faster format.
Lastly, assuming it’s 10 pages of instruction. In today’s age, most books are skipping the “what is a role playing game?” Section…we have search engines, podcasts and videos to educate us.
That said, a well keyed map, regardless of environment would be a nice addition.
I miss the days of blackmoor and those little books. That said, I am still learning new ways creating adventure modules. There seems to be great ideas all the time. In addition, every GM develops their own style that works for them. They learn over time of what works and what does not work. The complaint does not have much to do with running games; it is more about a trend of building the cheapest and most simple product possible for customers to by. Some, don’t even have art.
If everyone could back off on Jushin a bit, I’d appreciate it.
One thing that’s happening here is that I wrote the article for the existing audience of the Alexandrian and it kind of assumes a shared framework of knowledge; it’s a “here’s an additional thought that builds on those other thoughts I’ve previously discussed” kind of thing. Based on the comments below, it appears that the article has somehow broken out into a MUCH wider audience. Although I did link to its immediate antecedent in the opening paragraph, that is clearly not getting the job done in terms of orienting new readers.
I’m going to add an addendum to the end of the post in the hope it clarifies things.
One thought to ponder: D&D originally had several scenario structures in the rulebook (not all of them great). They quickly lost all of them except the dungeon. Now they’ve lost the dungeon.
It’s not just that the loss is bad. It’s that D&D should have actually gone the OTHER way: If the DMG included explicit instructions on how to design and run dungeons, mysteries, raids, heists, etc. etc. etc. we’d have better DMs, better scenarios, and better games.
It’s all about “Theater of the Mind” and simplification with this edition. I agree that’s important and they give the GM more flexibility in scenarios. However, there is something fundamental about mapping/keying in D&D. I will always have my trusty graph paper next to me, running my campaigns.
As somebody who has never played a single game of DnD despite years of tabletop roleplaying experience, I have to wholeheartedly agree with what Justin says here, in the specific as well as the general, because I am very much the new, ignorant generation of gamer (and game designer) he is talking about, and very unhappy about it.
The matter is, that state felt very much publisher inflicted. I would get myself a RPG rulebook, crack it open, read the rules, turn to the “How to GM” section and then wallow in disappointment. Because invariably, the section wouldn’t explain how to bring those rules to the table, how to put together an adventure when you as GM were as fresh as the players. Often it didn’t even include any hint of what kind of adventure would be appropriate for the setting!
For example, the Horror Companion for Savage Worlds spends page space on explaining to you that to create an atmosphere of horror, you should get yourself a skull-shaped candle. It doesn’t say “You need to write a scenario with revelations that make things worse” or “A horror scenario needs to invoke fear” or even “A horror monster is allowed to be overpowered, because it’s not meant to be faced head-on. As GM, you *need* to stick to genre conventions and have the beast run off after killing a person, instead of sticking around and killing the rest”. It only manages to say “Wandering monsters are not a good idea in a horror scenario”, and that it doesn’t even say in the GM section, but in a small side box in the monster section.
If you’ve never played in a setting or system before, your only exposure to what GMing looks like is via published adventures. And if those are all invariably railroads, the only thing you learn is railroading.
And for the matter of “It’s on the Internet”, that’s a poor defence for bad practises. For one, because there’s many GMs suffering from Dunning-Kruger who think they don’t need to look things up. After all, they read the “How to GM” section and are modelling things just like the sample adventure. Clearly, they have to be doing everything right. And even if, it’s not like typing “How do I become a better GM?” is likely to get you the help you need. I had to trawl through a lot of sites talking about generalities, or things which even then I smelled as just being railroad turd polishing, before finding the Alexandrian.
I’ve read his posts, and used his scenario structures, and found that they enhance my ability to GM, to tackle bigger and more complex adventures, to make a campaign that isn’t a railroad manageable and enjoyable immeasurably. And for me, the lack of “How to key a dungeon” became painfully obvious when I tried to run one. Because it was an utter failure. I had a map, and numbers on it, but those numbers meant nothing because there was nothing to interact with in the rooms, and the whole evening was one long and horrible slog.
So based on my experiences, I fully disagree with Josh. “Theater of the mind” or “wargame” doesn’t matter, if you want to be a good GM, you need a bloody map. Not always a literal, room-and-key map, but always a map that shows you the relationship of things, not merely their sequence. And you need a source teaching you how to use, and more importantly, how to create a map like that.
So what it boils down to is guys like me that started playing in the late 70s and early 80s will open up 5th edition material and think “wtf is this $%@!$?? Lol Sadly I’ve run into some players (and DMs) over these past several years that were woefully under instructed. It’s a new generation.but they still desire to play.
Theater of the mind is too often an excuse for bad writing.
Hello all, first post here.
I have been devouring the 101 game master pages (nearly finished). It has been a great read so far, so bravo dear blog master.
My comment that I have, and sense, is there is a problem and it’s soon on the horizon. The widening of the gap between player and gm has become too much, even though we are at the near pinnacle of popularity with all aspects of RPGs. A fundamental switch is soon to be here, and I fear it’s mostly the fault of the players. We are about to go into a dark age of gaming if things keep going how they are. In fact we are on that decline now.
A mindset has steadily grown that people just want to play characters and not be in charge of the game mastering. The they rather have a module or scenario ready, and just play instead of fussing about every minor detail. Sure there are still plenty of people wanting to gm, but it’s not dwindling because the tools are not in the book, it’s that play is so much more fun if it’s ready to go. No thinking needed on the railroad to awesome town, I fear. Mostly, I think it’s this has grown from the cancer that is online gaming. While sure it’s fun, addicting and sparkly it lends it’s self to character fantasy, not gm. So with emphasis squarely on the character, it’s natural that gming is on the decline scope for quality, and depth.
What really needs to be done is more focus on meaningful advancement of developing gm centric material. More world building, and collaboration. More things to get excited about, with proper guidance. I don’t blame our current state of affairs at all and in what is consumed, it is after all, pre maid slop for players to enjoy. Current GMs don’t know any better. What can be done is more global, and massive on any other scale we have ever seen, it’s just current ideological thinking needs to be guided that way. It can be done. A gathered of gm forces so to speak, where a tutelage of leaning can commence. A global university of theory, practice and building upon a shared goal can begin.
My idea, and what I’m always constantly thinking about is how to shape this. I have an idea, and it has been done before, but its popularity lacks, plus it was a bulletin boards thing. What it is is a consortium of ideas, senarios, and theory to be built upon a massive shared world. The biggest hexcrawl of them all. With GMs, adding to it, voting, rebuilding and advancing on a shared timeline. Think faerun, but bigger, active 24/7 and GMs dictating their own area using some sort of voting process. Multiple GMs can stack on areas and players would vote to set in stone certain events. imagine the possibilities. There would be set period of time between voting blocks. Think the living campaigns, but on steroids, and players vote in what happens, no matter what it was.
My idea is basically this. I think the it would save us. It’s also a huge Undertaking.
Any ways my two cents. Keep going with the blog. I will soon assimilate it all, it has been very enjoyable.
Funk out.
I thought DND was learn as you go. Because ever DM has there on style of of DMing. And that’s what makes the game fun.
I was reading the 5e starter set recently. I found it ponderously difficult to read. I have read extensive war game manuals that were easier. I just assumed it was me, but now I realize it is the game design and prose itself.
When Dan Boggs and I were working on Tonisborg Dungeon we wrote extensively on how to be a DM. We felt it was necessary to teach players how to play in the OD&D style.
It’s an interesting article you’ve written and it really points to the differences between older gamers and the new crowd.
Griff
Hi, thank you for the interesting article.
If you want to know why this went into masses, well, I cannot speak for others, but for me, I found this article on my “Google Now” screen on my phone. Probably because board games is one of my interests
Petr
Middle generation gamer here. I started with the D&D3.5 DMG, it does a pretty good job of teaching GMs how to run locationcrawls and how it’s not just restricted to dungeons. I rember my first adventures included a prison break, an overland journey and a camp raid among more generic ancient ruins.
It really failed at teaching anything else. There was a short section on timelines, useful tool, but not expandable to fill an entire evening. Then there was a one page description of “event based adventures” which advised you to create a choose your own adventure style flowchart – which doesn’t really work. I remember being super frustrated by the instructions and at the lack of any example adventures (Wizards had a ton of free adventures on their site, all of them dungeons).
3.5 was the time when roleplaying games really blew up in my country. There was a clear disdinction in my local scene between those who had learned by the book and were running dungeons, and those who had learned by oral tradition and were running free improv.
Running dungeons was (and kind of still is) considered quaint, old fashioned and lame. But there were no other structures either, so GMs from the oral tradition had no choice, it’s either railroad or hoping for lightning in a bottle improv. Preping anything beyond worldbuilding was considered bad form, beacuse what else are you going to prep, if not a railroad?
The result was terribly boring “free” or “sandbox” games, which just meant wingin it.
Are new players under the impression that Theatre of the Mind is a new idea?
“Virtually the entire RPG hobby is built on three core structures:
1. Dungeoncrawl (often genericized to location-crawl)
2. Combat
3. Railroad
And virtually every published RPG has assumed that GMs already know to run a dungeon (because they learned it from D&D, right?).”
Do you mean “the whole of the hobby”, as in “every other rpg besides D&D”, or meant to say that D&D is representative of the whole hobby?
Admittedly, I am not as “old school” as some. I started playing when I was 12, which would put the year at 1985. What’s with all the rigidity? D&D was always flexible in our games because we were gathered together to have fun, first and foremost. The game has always been evolving. Now some people like carnival style dungeons with ecosystems that just don’t make sense. Some folks like the crunchiness of what led to “mathfinder”. I won’t tell another DM how to run a game because it is their game as much as my game is mine. There is a lot to learn all around. My question is this, with more people starting to play and have fun with it in the last two years than in the history of the platform…..why do you seem like you aren’t having fun? DM’s really should be flexible and have imagination and creativity to spare in my humble opinion. If a person has the propensity to get bogged down in the details, maybe they are just not yet ready to run a game. No set of rules will help with that. But you know how opinions are.
I’ve been teaching D&D to my kids for the past couple of years, off-and-on. The materials here have been influential on my GMing over that time period, and I appreciate the work that Justin puts in here. I, too, would purchase a book that he wrote on “How to GM.” In fact, I’d probably buy a couple of spare copies and send them to friends.
I just started a 5e game with my three older kids and my wife, running The Lost Mine of Phandelver from the Starter Set. It’s a good adventure, especially since it provides a path for the adventurers to work on but it also provides some freedom of movement within the plotline. And it makes heavy use of the Three Clue Rule, which I appreciate.
Looking back over the Starter Set material though, you’re right: The intro product from the common introductory point to the game doesn’t really include any “how to” material for the GM or the players. The best intro to RPGs I’ve read is still my Moldvay Basic set from ’81. It’s got a detailed example of play and it specifically tells GMs the basic structure of the game, and gives players an example of play to run on. D&D needs to get back to that level of product so that new players can crack the book and play.
For those asking about examples of how to key a map and run a dungeon, Justin’s articles that are referenced/linked earlier in the comments are definitely valuable. But I think even they may assume a certain core level of understanding of what the goal of the exercise is.
Both OD&D book 3 and the AD&D DMG contain examples of keyed dungeons along with examples of play at the table (descriptions of what is said by GM and players, key rolls made, and so on). In particular, I spent hours poring over the AD&D DMG examples (pp 94-100). While the detailed game systems and many play conventions have changed since then, this is still a great example of how the map, map key, and play at the table all interact, and I think reading and re-reading those pages helped me see what it was to be a GM in that time. (Note, the 3.5 DMG has essentially the same partial map key example on pp. 83-84, and a similar example of play on pp. 8-10, both translated to 3.5 rules, but NO MAP — a crucial omission IMO — unless it’s buried somewhere else in the DMG and I’ve forgotten it.)
Nowadays I still play with my group of friends (a bit longer in the tooth now), and a few of our children have joined our group. My son is even talking about running a game for us. He DMs a campaign at his high school, too. But that’s got me thinking – how do you learn what’s going on behind the screen or in the head of a DM when you’re the player? You see the result, but often not the process. My current campaign is going to be wrapping up in the relatively near future, and after that I’m going to pull the curtain back to show the players that are interested what kind of notes/keys I used, how I designed the campaign, what worked and what didn’t, and generally what I was doing to run the game. Because without some concrete example of what you do AS PREP and IN YOUR HEAD when you’re the DM, the only example players have is WHAT YOU SAY TO THEM AT THE TABLE. And what you do at the table, even if it’s NOT a railroad or a “DM making-it-up-on-the-spot” situation, might well LOOK like that. Because how can you tell the difference?
[Note: making it up on the spot doesn’t have to be wrong or bad. But if you’re making EVERYTHING up on the spot, it’s not really a location-crawl in the sense we’re using the term.]
Can you point to a specific example in an older edition that you think does it right?
This was very well put!
I definitely feel in fifth edition as opposed to previous editions there is a lack of giving the keys(Tools) to the kingdom to the newer DMs out there and it is kind of sad home it makes for a homogenized system that’s easy to pick up and run say adventure league or a scripted module but doesn’t really empower the DM like pervious editions have for a lot of us seasoned DMs. I’ve personally pointed out past editions DMs guides that had great advise like identifying the types of players at the table and more importantly how to spot what types of games they are asking to play (without them actually asking because we all know they won’t come out and say it :D).
Thank you for this post and we’ll definitely be sharing it!
@Leland J. Tankersley I had never realized that until I just read this. But you are right. I have been my group’s DM for the longest of time and have taught a few of my younger friends how to do it. Those that have only seen my DM are usually the ones that struggle with all of this. Those that I sat down and explained the process of creating an adventure, linking it into a full-fledged campaign etc are generally better at it and much more fun to be a player in their games. I hadn’t realized how this migh be the issue: the ones that have only seen me do it, only know what they saw! Not everything else going on in the background.
I overall agree with your statement above – even without having read the other two articles fully as of yet.
One thing I would point out though is that there are many more areas of the duties and tasks a gamemaster must handle throughout a game that are all too often neglected when teaching both new and old Gms how to run the game. Especially when it comes to NPC interactions and roleplaying fun and entertaining social encounters for your players.
I would say your work on Game Structures is some of my favourite stuff on the internet about D&D full stop, and it has really impacted how I run games.
When I started, back around 2002, I was very much a make it up as you go kind of DM, with only fairly broad outlines in my head, no maps and definitely no keys. I have changed over time from reading stuff here and in other places.
5e is generally missing structures for exploration. Wilderness exploration is essentially handwaved, if not outright removed by having a Ranger in your party. Procedures for dungeoneering are broadly absent. There is an acknowledgement of the old school playstyles in a lot of the products, and they do promote stuff like hexcrawls and dungeon crawls in some of the products so they do see the value of it, but they seemed to miss the step of explaining that to players in the DMG.
I think it goes along with making people consumers of product rather than creators of their own worlds.
Thanks again to Justin for all his wisdom and insight. Add me to that book buyers list!
Been playing D&D since 1985 or so. I skipped everything after original AD&D until 5e came along. I was surprised and disappointed that 5e didn’t have the examples of play and dungeons maps/keys that have been mentioned upthread- as others have said, they were so completely valuable to me when I began building my own dungeons and worlds. The omission from 5e of even just 3-5 pages discussing this is egregious IMO.
But I disagree there are no resources to be found online. The Alexandrian is a perfect example, I stumbled here googling stuff. YouTube is also a great resource, with people like Matt Colville, Runehammer, WebDM, Seth Skorkowsky and others that have great advice on all sorts of topics regarding rpg play and running the game.
Certainly I am not the greatest DM in the world but after all these years I find myself still trying to learn, still trying to understand new ideas and approaches, still trying to make my skills sharper and the game better. I hope new players and DMs will do the same and see all the amazing gifts that are out there, free for the taking out of love for the game and for fellow gamers.
Polarization of the community is saddening to me, there’s plenty of that in the real world these days.
OSRIC, a 1E retro-clone, is one freely available source that I think does a good job. Other OSR works may be likewise comparable to the treatment in for instance Moldvay and Cook (1981).
People new to being a dungeon master should get the 1st edition Dungeon Master’s Guide.
@Paul, Justin is not talking about whether ecosystems make sense, or about how detailed or mathy the rules are. He’s talking about GM skills and the art of running a fun game that flows well, doesn’t have awkward pauses while the GM tries to figure out what to do next, and that leaves lots of room for player decisions that matter. For example, see “The Art of the Key”, https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/35180/roleplaying-games/the-art-of-the-key , or “Smart Prep”, https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/39885/roleplaying-games/smart-prep .
Teaching “how to run a dungeon” means teaching how to make play time spent in a dungeon interesting, challenging and fun. If you don’t recognize that that’s a skill, maybe you learned it so long ago that you forgot you had to learn.
For those asking where to read about how to prepare and run a dungeon/adventure, just read anything from Pathfinder. The Gamemastery chapter in Core Rulebook is a simple way to explain it, but the hardcover Gamemastery Guide do teachs it completely!
For practical learning, ANY Adventure Path should be more than enough!
I stumbled into D&D the ass-backwards way of playing BioWare CRPGs like Baldur’s Gate, Neverwinter Nights, and Knights of the Old Republic first, then modeling my early GMing attempts after the structure of those video games.
Funny thing is, it actually kind of worked. At their best those games nailed the structure of introducing a threat/story hook with an initial encounter (often a quick combat or introductory dungeon), expanding out into an urban area where the party would gather information and clues about a mystery, following those clues to a dungeon, crawling the dungeon through room-by-room exploration and then later expanding the loop out into wilderness exploration. Along the way you’d pick up side quests and related hooks that themselves might either be simple encounters along the way or blossom out into big structured episodes of their own.
Obviously as video games those BioWare RPGs had a distinct lack of freedom beyond a critical “savior or psychopath” choice at the end of each quest, but they did teach me basic principles I was able to transfer to my first tabletop campaign along with a decent grasp of the D&D (2e and 3e) dice systems without ever having actually played D&D before.
I run games very differently now 15 years later, of course — always learning — but I shudder to think what kind of empty and meandering thing I would have come up with for my first campaign if I had just tried to wing it off the 5e DMG today without any preexisting conceptions of campaign structure.
Fwiw the roll20 version of the 5e essentials kit has a good example of a hex map with a bunch of keyed dungeons/encounter locations and the Xanathars guide to everything has rules for running an open table as well as keyed maps for some monster lairs. Coming to table top rpgs to crpgs it never occurred to me to not use some kind of keyed map as maps are a fundamental part of most video games.
Edit: It’s the Volos guide to monsters that has the maps for monsters while Xanathars has the open table rules.
Hey Justin, if you DO put together a 101 book, tap me in and we’ll make sure the maps do precisely what you want for the book.
In 1974, the book was the single source of info, now not so much. Crisis averted
Sounds like a list of problems, why not offer a solution to your perceived problem? The DM’s guild would be perfectly suited for such an endeaver.
It took me a moment to understand that what is advocated here is not necessarily a return to the OD&D structure for dungeoncrawls but a return to having a structure for dungeonscrawls at all. And then I realized I have been playing a game recently which offers exactly that without being directly part of the D&D tradition: Ironsworn, or rather Ironsworn’s recently released Delve expansion. I think it does exactly what you talk about here in a way that is very different from D&D but provides exactly the kind of structure you rightly say is missing from 5e. And it does so in a way that builds upon PbtA structures, which helps you to see that the point is the question of structure itself, not the particular RPG tradition. People interested in that should check it out (it is a great game anyways).
I’ve GMed many games over my time in the game. Honestly, a book like your talking about can never truly exist. You see the reason for that is because it started with the mind’s eye style of gaming. We didn’t have special maps or even miniatures we were pretty poor. And as I grew more into the game I added those things in because I liked seeing as a GM, the battlefield. But it was my own initiative that drove me to do it. To draw out maps and make a key one for me and another for my players. I became so good at it locally that other GM’s would ask my help in that development.
Honestly, there is only one true concept a GM needs to grasp and that is the art of storytelling because that’s what you are. You lay the story Infront of your players and they bring it to life. Books, maps, keys and everything else are just guidelines. As long as your table is having fun and you are as well maps don’t have to be a concept. If you need it as a GM then research it. Research how to do it, it took me 15 min to learn the basics, and it took me 2 hours to draw my first map. It was fun for me and I enjoyed it. But making a book that says this is how you GM a game it’s kinda dumb. There’s no one correct way to do this. I played under 5 different GM’s before I led my own game. They passed their knowledge to me and I have done the same for others. That’s how it should be because no offense to Matt Mercer, I love his work, but if someone like him wrote how to be a GM then everyone would think you have to be that way or not play. The best we can do is use websites and give our knowledge and advice to newer GM’s that way they can choose what works for them.
@ Mike: “Sounds like a list of problems, why not offer a solution to your perceived problem?”
If you read his comment #5, you’ll see that he’s already planning to do so, right here in this very blog.
@ Paul: “…why do you seem like you aren’t having fun?”
He runs an RPG publishing company and has his own RPG blog, in which he regularly posts campaign journals from his RPG sessions. Do you really think anyone would do that if they didn’t enjoy RPGs? Enjoying an activity doesn’t mean you aren’t allowed to point out ways in which you think it could be done differently so that it would be *more* fun. Also, in case you missed it, he said that what prompted him to write this was talking to multiple GMs who were struggling with how to run an enjoyable game. Just because you think *you* don’t need help doesn’t mean he shouldn’t offer his advice to those who do.
@ Paul: “I thought DND was learn as you go. Because ever DM has there on style of of DMing.”
“DM’s really should be flexible and have imagination and creativity to spare in my humble opinion.”
@ Tom: “There’s no one correct way to do this.”
There’s no one correct way to build a cabinet; cabinets come in many different shapes and sizes. To build a cabinet, all you need is some wood, tools, and your imagination and creativity. There are different types of wood, such as oak, maple, walnut and mahogany. You should feel free to choose the kind of wood that you like best. To cut the wood, you’ll need a saw. You’ll also need a hammer and some nails. Nails come in various sizes, so pick the size that works best for your cabinet. Of course, you don’t *have* to build a cabinet. You could also build a table, a bed or a chest of drawers. Although cabinets are very popular, because they can be used for a variety of different purposes. Now you know everything you need to know to build a cabinet. You shouldn’t let anybody tell you that you’re doing it wrong. Every carpenter has their own style of cabinet-making, and you can learn as you go.
Do you feel ready to go out and build a cabinet now?
“I played under 5 different GM’s before I led my own game.”
In other words, you had mentors to show you how it was done. Good for you. But for those who aren’t so fortunate, don’t you think it would be helpful if there was a book that explained how to do it?
“If you need it as a GM then research it.”
That’s a fabulous idea! You know what’s really helpful when you’re doing research? Books!
*If the book that says it tells me how to run the game doesn’t actually tell me how to run the game, then I can always go read about it online.* This may be true, but it doesn’t mean there wasn’t something wrong with that book in the first place.
That said, it’s also true that GMing is a complex art, and I wouldn’t expect one book to teach me everything worth knowing about writing a novel or performing a play, either. It’s inevitable that lots of things will have to be left out. That makes it worth considering what has been left out, and what needs to be filled in elsewhere.
I don’t actually play 5e and I haven’t read the 5e DMG. But this conversation has made me go flip through a copy for comparison. Relevant to the subject of “how to actually run a dungeon”, there seems to be:
Ch 3 (p 71): A reasonable outline of some goals of a good adventure (credible threat, focus on the present, something for everyone, surprises, etc. It calls out “Useful Maps” and says that it’s important they have meaningful decision points, but doesn’t otherwise say much about what makes a map useful or how to make a good one.
“Location-based Adventure” is called out as an important adventure structure. The advice unfortunately leans toward teaching a new DM how to build a railroad, because it instructs them to “Consider the Ideal Climax” and “Plan [the] Encounters” ahead of time. There are good tables of ideas for, for instance, varying the party’s goal in exploring the location. “Most encounters are keyed to specific locations on the map. For each room or wilderness area…, your key describes what’s in that area: its physical features as well as any encounter that plays out there. The adventure key turns a simple sketch of numbered areas on graph paper into encounters designed to entertain and intrigue your players.” But there is nothing in this section about what that key looks like, or about differences between exploring dungeon, wilderness or urban areas. The railroady flavor of this section is the only part that actually seems *bad* to me.
This section doesn’t mention how random encounters fit into dungeon crawls, but pp 85-7 has a decent overview of how to use them in general.
Ch 5, pp 99-102 has a good set of random tables and prompts for creating a dungeon with history, theme, inhabitants, ecology and factions (sort of). Pp 102-105 are where the advice about mapping is, and there are a few things to note about it:
* There is an example map, but it is NOT keyed. The rooms are not labelled or described.
* The map uses the standard symbols for doors, secret doors, portcullises, statues and pit traps, but NO LEGEND is provided. I’m not sure how the new DM is supposed to guess what a star in a circle or a box with an X through it are supposed to mean.
* The “hazards” section mentions a couple kinds of mold and green slime, but for some reason traps are left til 15 pages later, pp 120-3. Once you get there, the traps section is reasonably good.
* Concepts like hiding in shadows or listening at doors are not mentioned.
* It does not talk about levels or stairs except to advise that it’s somehow not a good idea for encounters to get more difficult as you go deeper(?).
[I said “sort of” about factions up there, because it does mention that monsters can have opinions about each other, and that they can have goals and approach PCs looking for alliances. This is good, but it’s kind of wishy-washy compared to, say, Dungeon World’s advice on Dangers, Grim Portents and Impending Doom. There is no real advice for how to manage monsters actively responding to anything the PCs do. But I don’t remember there being much in previous editions, either.]
Appendix A, pp 290-301 has a bunch of decent random-generation and stocking tables for dungeon features.
Appendix C, pp 310-5, advises not to bother trying to draw your own maps(!) but instead to repurpose existing ones, and provides some sample (fancy) unkeyed maps.
The big thing to me that is notably not included is any actual Example of Play. Having a few pages with some annotation of what the DM does, what they’re thinking and why seems huge to me.
I think you could come away from all this with the idea that a dungeon map should be a pretty picture with a few places marked for programmed Encounters and a Big Bad boss fight at the end. Or that it’s mostly for use for showing to players as a battlemat. That’s unfortunate.
Colin, utterly in agreement about the lack of Examples of Play. Black Dougal, Sister Rebecca, Fredrik, and Silverleaf taught me the basics about playing D&D back in 1981, and I wish that my son had similar help today with 5E.
The decline started with AD&D, especially 1e and2e. They moved away from role-playing to rule-playing. Players look at me funny when instead of just rolling dice my gnome rolls under the wagon and whacks the bad guy in the knee…
Leland J. Tankersley, you’re right that the sample dungeon map was left out of the 3.5 DMG (although A dungeon map is included in the tokens and poster at the back). That dungeon map (an update of the 1e monastery) is included in the 3.0 DMG (page 127).
@Erika: ah, thanks. And looking now, I see that they also put the map, sample key, and example of play all together in the 3.0 DMG — much better IMO.
I’m of two minds about all of this. In the first place … it’s hard to anticipate things like this, it’s hard to put yourself in the headspace of someone that is unfamiliar with everything you’re trying to tell them about. Writing good documentation is HARD. But on the other hand … that is literally the point of the book, and they had a pretty big organization that should have been dedicated to getting it right, or at least doing better.
I suspect that the people in charge of the 3.5 revision thought of their task as essentially producing a patch on 3.0, and lost sight of what was probably a more coherent strategy for the 3.0 version. So someone thought “hey, we should lead off with the example of play to grab attention” — which makes sense, but then they split it off from the sample map key, and lost the map entirely.
I’m new to d&d and started on 5e. I played Baldur s gate, nwn etc so had reasonable background knowledge of d&d, I loved the setting and idea of it but had no clue how to play it as a tabletop experience with others. So I bought the core rules and starter set. The aim was to DM games for my children aged 11-13 so I was anxious that keeping it simple and flowing was essential to keep them engaged. Iv got to say that this article definitely rings true for me. The dm guide is basically just a huge background knowledge book with a few rules and suggestions. The bulk of it seemed to be around rolls for simple encounters or very small events or scenarios for players. This may sound stupid, but it was also confusing that, in my opinion, the majority of solid rules for the game were found in the players handbook rather than the dm guide. Anyway, as a newbie and knowing that my children would need me to know the rules inside and out; I picked it up as in depth as i possibly could. I wanted clear guidance on scenarios so I knew what to do and how to run a game my children would actually enjoy playing, I didn’t want to be fumbling around, winging it. I read a few of the official adventure hardbacks and felt completely overwhelmed looking at the dungeon maps. I wasn’t sure whether the players were meant to see this map at the risk of spoiling elements of it, whether I was meant to draw it for them as they go through it. The starter set recommended not letting players see the keyed map at all. All in all it prevented me from ever running any of the games and instead I just made easier maps and simple adventures. I feel like we are all missing out on the potential of d&d due to this though. The main problem is, I don’t know where the solution is. If someone can point me to good guides or earlier editions that explain how to run dungeons and certain scenarios that would be a great help
@Brent: The first D&D product I ever owned was the Basic D&D “black box” set from 1991. It was specifically geared toward new (and younger) players, and it included a one-shot tutorial dungeon. I don’t know if it would address your specific needs, but it might be worth a look. You’d need to convert it, but that shouldn’t be too hard (especially since you’ve had prior exposure to earlier editions via Baldur’s Gate).
Unfortunately it doesn’t seem to be available from DM’s Guild, although I did find several copies on eBay for under $30 (plus shipping). It’s also available at The Trove if you want to preview it (it’s filed under Boardgames in the D&D folder). The full name, for Googling purposes, is “The New Easy to Master Dungeons & Dragons Game”.
[…] Whither the Dungeon? – The Decline and Fall of D&D Adventures by Justin Alexander, from the blog The Alexandrian: In this post Justin explores the idea that modern Dungeons & Dragons, which he notes most everything from D&D since 2008, is failing to teach players how to run a dungeon and instead is teaching them to run a module. The argument essentially falls on the idea that unless a skill is expressly being taught that it is failing to be learned. While I disagree with his conclusions, I find myself coming back to this article time, and time again. […]
I thought this post was really well done so I added a link to it in my BEST READS OF THE WEEK! You can check it out at this link if you want: https://bit.ly/36NS2SQ
Dear Justin,
I have a question for you. At the moment I am the DM of a Rappan Athuk 5th edition DnD game. Of course, this edition lacks of robust procedures for dungeon crawling as also 3th edition does. I mean something like exploration turn, duration for the exploration tasks and a good ratio between wandering monsters and time spent in the dungeon. In S&W edition of Rappan Athuk, the 30 minute roll for wandering monster created a very different effect compared to 5th edition, since every exploration turn lasted 10 minutes. In fact in 5th edition, but also in 3th edition, movement and exploration tasks last very little time.
What do you suggest to resolve these issues, in order to have consistence among movement, short rest, random encounter rolls, rituals and search? How would you run this procedures in 5th or 3th edition games?
To capture the old school pace/etc., what you’ll want to focus on is the ratio of movement-to-check. In OD&D:
– 1 exploration turn was movement = 10 x one round of combat (possibly, it’s a confusing book)
– Most exploration tasks (e.g., searching for a secret door) took 1 turn or, occasionally, 1/2 or 1/4 turn.
– A wandering monster check was made every single turn with 1 in 6 chance.
– Every 6th turn you had to stop and rest.
You can adapt that pretty literally: Look at the slowest member of the party, multiply their speed by 10, and then count that as 1 exploration turn. Check every turn. (I’d skip the resting every 6th turn thing, YMMV.)
Now, this exploration turn was also 10 minutes in length. So in terms of actual time spent in the dungeon, you’re still going to see shorter delves. In terms of gameplay, I don’t think this makes a big difference.
But there may be value here: The theory behind the 10 minute turn was that it assumed characters were proceeding slowly and carefully. You could refer to that as “exploration pace” and:
– Allow passive Perception to notice hidden things.
– Trigger traps 1 in 4 times.
– You’re assumed to be moving stealthily.
And so forth.
Moving at the standard 5th Edition rates (i.e., rushing through a dungeon as quickly as you would move on the field of combat) could be referred to as a “hasty pace.” Traps always trigger, passive Perception does nothing, you can’t make Stealth checks, etc. The advantage would be that wandering monster checks would only have a 1 in 8 chance per hasty turn (instead of 1 in 6). (Monsters have less time to just stumble onto you, but you’re more likely to run into them.) Also obviously preferable if time is actually a factor.
I might go for 5 minutes per turn for exploration pace; 1 minute per turn for hasty pace.
Rather than delineating a specific list of how much time various activities take up in terms of exploration turns, I’d probably just eyeball it with a lean towards “typical interaction in a room = 1 exploration turn.” (So if you stop and search a room, we’ll just call that 1 exploration turn. Same thing if you stop and do something non-movement in a hall — search it, cast a spell, change your equipment load out, etc.) There’s no hasty pace for this sort of thing.
If people (or your own brain) pushes back on this, there are a couple things to keep in mind:
– This is all an abstraction in any case. Maybe searching that room took 8 minutes and searching this room took 3 minutes. It all averages out in any case.
– We have a tendency to analyze the game world with a hypothetical efficiency that would never exist in the real world.
How to handle wandering monster checks when combat breaks out is also a question. Three broad philosophies are:
– Don’t make any extra checks.
– Make one extra check per fight (to see if reinforcements show up).
– Make an extra check each round.
Generally speaking, I would treat “end of combat stuff” (healing, looting, etc.) as an exploration turn (which would inherently mean another wandering monster check, which would almost certainly be characterized as somebody who heard the fight showing up too late to help their friends).
There’s also the issue of flight/pursuit situations.
Thanks wyvern, I’ll check that out!
Completely skimmed over the fact that there how guides for dungeon keys at in this site. I’ll check these out too. Thanks for the advice on here Justin
One of my favorite experiences larping was the time we got permission to do a (very slow, very controlled) event in an abandoned WW2 bunker at night. Even with modern electric lanterns for light, and doing things way more slowly than D&D tends to assume, it gave me a lot of respect for just how small your effective circle of light is, and hard it is to figure out what’s going on outside of it. And how hard it can be to tell where the spooky noises are coming from.
@Brent, in old-school play, the DM is the only one who sees the real map. It usually has at least some secrets on it (traps, hidden passages) that players shouldn’t see. The DM then describes rooms one at a time to the players as they enter them, and the players try to draw and keep track of things as they go along. Small errors might accumulate in the players’ map, adding the possibility of getting lost. Some people still like playing this way, as it contributes to the feeling for the players of really exploring the unknown and gradually constructing a map. It’s an accomplishment earned.
Other people find mapping tedious and frustrating, and it’s always been possible for the DM to be the one who draws each new room on the players’ map as they enter them. You can draw things as accurately or loosely as you feel like – personally as DM I usually do quick scrawls to communicate roughly where things are, because it’s easier than trying to use describe just with words, but don’t worry too much about making the lines straight or the corners square or anything.
As things like battlemats and printable pdf maps and virtual tabletops have become a thing, it’s become more possible for the DM to unveil a pre-rendered view of each room as the players enter. Usually players love that, but it’s still way more work for the DM so you should totally keep open the option of doing it the old school way.
If you are totally new to D&D and have to start as the DM, that’s a tough position to be in. Keeping things simple as you learn is totally understandable.
Swords and Wizardry is a free retro clone of original D&D, and the rules include an example of play for a bit of classic dungeon crawling.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/sp3hv368bky58og/SWcore4.rtf?dl=0
@Colin: Now I’m curious, what country was this bunker in?
Fort McNab, Halifax Harbour Defences. (I’m not sure when the tunnels we used were built, but last used in 1945.)
https://mcnabsisland.ca/galleries/military-structures
https://www.pc.gc.ca/apps/dfhd/page_nhs_eng.aspx?id=277
I am here only to congratulate for Piranesi’s jail image choice
Yes.. you are right. I suggest you send in a letter to the head of D&D at Wizards now Mearls has moved on, and suggest you write a chapter for the next book that has play advice and stuff.. the next Xanathar or Mordenkain in other words. I bet they’d be very pleased with your style and it’d be a great chapter..
>The next step is a whole generation of industry designers who don’t know this stuff
Have you read any of the Pathfinder adventure paths? I submit that we have already reached this point.
Justin really nailed it here; 5e has been a massive disappointment, to the point where 4e starts looking attractive. Seems like WotC wants to keep their consumers buying their railroad, amateur hour adventures and to that end, they’re intentionally keeping them in the dark regarding adventure design and campaign construction.
I really wonder why Justin devotes so much time and effort into fixing these seemingly mass-produced style 5e campaigns. They hardly seem worth the effort.
But this issue with 5e has made our group extremely wary of new players, many of whom expect to be put on rails where every encounter is in the Goldilocks zone, and the party is never really in any danger. The whole point of a sandbox or freeform campaign is that it’s a living, breathing world you’re interacting with, complete with entities and factions that you’d be wise to avoid for a time. It’s tiresome seeing 5e praised as some kind of instant classic or something, when it fails in so many ways.
The people new to 5e don’t love 5e; they love the Critical Role, the Matt Colevilles, and the thousand other streaming personalities that make a living off of promoting 5e and all of its “must-have, 10/10” accessories. Wizards couldn’t win me back even if they brought back Birthright, and that’s saying something.
If you learn how to create your own dungeon/adventure you will not need WotC $50 campaign book
This article kind of broke my brain (in a good way) but seeing that the bulk of the comment thread was written a year ago…any chance we could get an update on the “Dungeons 101” project you mentioned? I mean heck, you could just add a “Dungeons 101” list of your articles related to running dungeons, similar to your “Gamemastery 101” list of links. I really love 5E, but I am starting to see more and more gaps in it and I would love to have material that fills in those gaps. Plus, I can make use of the small platforms I have to point people here so they can get that information too.
@Megan: The Dungeon 101 articles got waylaid by COVID. They’re still on the To Do list, though, and I’d love to write them up soon. So keep your eyes peeled.
Great commentary as usual, and still as pertinent today as it was three years ago or fifteen years ago.
These days, when WoTC includes maps, they are of the most sketchy kind. They aren’t even as detailed as the things we bought in modules in the early-to-mid 80s. I can’t tell if they’re going for an art style or they’re just trying to leave the market open for map creators to upgrade the original work. (Me, I just think they’re lazy.) Perhaps they’re trying to show what an average DM might create on their own, with a kind of hand-drawn esthetic.
At the very least, it sets the bar extremely low.
On another note, it seems there’s been a trend to follow some of the more …let’s call it “story” style of DMing, of the like from the Whitewolf games. I saw this in the now defunct Star Wars line from Fantasy Flight Games. Very little written down, everything kept in the DMs head, and the players just have to imagine where things are. No gaming map, no figures, no nothing.
As a player and a DM this drives me crazy. (When I did the Star Wars campaign, I made sure we used maps and figures, and players could see their characters in relation to the world around them w/out having to imagine it.) I’m not against being creative or imaginative, but I’ve always wanted player to feel they have agency. And if everything’s in a DMs head (no figures, no maps, and in some games, even no dice), they really don’t have any agency at all. They live at the mercy of the DM.
Hi all,
Having read some of the comments, I think this is clearly a matter of clash of generations. When I was young, Guns’n’Roses were mainstream, and I, as a hard-rocker, thought that people were just a soft commercial and artifficial product, not deserving my attention. Nowadays, I wish something like G’n’R were half as succesful as they were back in the 90s. Music most young people listen nowadays seems awful to me. Am I right? Am I a music expert, and have I better musical taste than young people? Although my heart would say a clear “yes!”, I think, rationally, that it’s not true. I don’t have the cultural background to be able to love this new kind of music (as some young people lacks the background to love Beatles, Nirvana or Led Zeppelin).
Sorry for this poor musical analogy, but I think this is, more or less, the same that is happening in the RPG scene. Having said that, I am a new gamer, but not young, and I feel naturally attracted to old D&D editions rather than to 5e. I believe this is because I was educated in the 80s, and my mindset fits well old-school way of play RPGs. But I don’t think young DM’s don’t know how to run RPGs, we simply don’t like their style.