Likes and dislikes of the implied setting

[tetramorph]

jmccann , in another thread you said this:

I prefer to discard portions of the OD&D game that I just don't like (dungeons, non-humans, many of the monsters). OD&D is a mishmash of many design themes, not always well integrated (pretty sure I am preaching to the choir here). I like the parts that are systems that can be repurposed, and dislike some the world-building assumptions that underlie a lot of the game (what we now call mythic underworld, alignment, some of the later classes). I like to have more prominent larger scale battles and some way for the players to take a part in these events. So while I am happy to consider the published FFC in its entirety, not just the parts that reflect early play conditions for Arneson and his gaming crew, those rules regarding troop composition, upkeep, fortification building and so on, which I imagine have a fairly direct connection to the earliest Chainmail campaigns, are the ones I am most interested in. I won't take those systems entirely as written any more than I do D&D itself, but treating the book as a source of design elements to consider in constructing a campaign, those are the parts I pay most attention to. I find the entire book to be very interesting and useful though.

I wanted to respond but I did not want to derail that thread and I thought this discussion would deserve its own thread.

I LOVE the approach of "Dungeon as Mythic Underworld," for literary and archetypal reasons. Nevertheless, I, too, grow weary of endless dungeons and "dungeon crawls." Would you please elaborate on why you don't like dungeons? Why don't you like "dungeon as mythic underworld?"

What are "non-humans," and why don't you like them?

What are the monsters you don't like? Any you wish were included that you do include in your campaign?

That 0e is a mishmash of many design themes, not always well integrated, is part of the "gonzo" feel that I have come to love about 0e. I tire of settings that are a bit too "pure" pretty quickly. What is at issue, here, for you?

I too do not like later classes. I do not even like theives! I don't even use my radically redesigned one!

Sounds like you prefer the more "hex crawl," "wilderness adventure," aspect of 0e. Am I right here? Do you, nevertheless, have lairs that are not full-blown dungeons for your characters to explore?

Thanks!

[mormonyoyoman]

May 13, 2016 16:32:04 GMT -5 tetramorph said:

jmccann, in another thread you said this:

I prefer to discard portions of the OD&D game that I just don't like (dungeons, non-humans, many of the monsters). OD&D is a mishmash of many design themes, not always well integrated (pretty sure I am preaching to the choir here). I like the parts that are systems that can be repurposed, and dislike some the world-building assumptions that underlie a lot of the game (what we now call mythic underworld, alignment, some of the later classes). I like to have more prominent larger scale battles and some way for the players to take a part in these events. So while I am happy to consider the published FFC in its entirety, not just the parts that reflect early play conditions for Arneson and his gaming crew, those rules regarding troop composition, upkeep, fortification building and so on, which I imagine have a fairly direct connection to the earliest Chainmail campaigns, are the ones I am most interested in. I won't take those systems entirely as written any more than I do D&D itself, but treating the book as a source of design elements to consider in constructing a campaign, those are the parts I pay most attention to. I find the entire book to be very interesting and useful though.

I wanted to respond but I did not want to derail that thread and I thought this discussion would deserve its own thread.

I LOVE the approach of "Dungeon as Mythic Underworld," for literary and archetypal reasons. Nevertheless, I, too, grow weary of endless dungeons and "dungeon crawls." Would you please elaborate on why you don't like dungeons? Why don't you like "dungeon as mythic underworld?"

What are "non-humans," and why don't you like them?

What are the monsters you don't like? Any you wish were included that you do include in your campaign?

That 0e is a mishmash of many design themes, not always well integrated, is part of the "gonzo" feel that I have come to love about 0e. I tire of settings that are a bit too "pure" pretty quickly. What is at issue, here, for you?

I too do not like later classes. I do not even like theives! I don't even use my radically redesigned one!

Sounds like you prefer the more "hex crawl," "wilderness adventure," aspect of 0e. Am I right here? Do you, nevertheless, have lairs that are not full-blown dungeons for your characters to explore?

Thanks!

I don't much like classes, and in most cases treat them like day jobs. What made RPGs uniquely new was that a player can try anything. Oftentimes failing but at least failing magnificently. One smart aleck, a rules lawyer, said his thief jumped to the sun. I told him that he succeeded and to roll up another character.

[mormonyoyoman]

That was not supposed to quote the whole thread. Dang Tapatalk.

[jmccann]

I have thought about making a post like this for some time. Give me some time to think about it and I will respond to your questions. I will also post something about Perilous Realms.

[jmccann]

There is a lot of ground to be covered so I think I will break
this up a bit.

Regarding dungeons, it is not that I am completely opposed to
underground adventure settings, but I like verisimilitude in my
settings, and I have a problem with the tightly packed, heavily
populated dungeons that are typically found in dungeon settings.
An underground setting with a believable rationale which could
reasonably be built, where the inhabitants act seemingly
realistically according to their own motivations, is not
something I will have a problem with.

To me, the dungeon as mythic underworld is just not appealing
enough to overcome my desire for verisimilitude. I think that
for many it is that appealing though.

I prefer to start with dungeon-like settings that exist in our
world. Tombs and barrows, cellars under buildings, natural
tunnels and caverns all exist in our world and can be combined to
form interesting settings. Smuggling tunnels, hidden caches,
remains and ruins - these are all rich elements for gameplay and
do not require extensive supernatural support. They could work
just as well in a high-magic or low-magic setting.

I think the sheer size of a megadungeon is one of the things that
puts me off the most. Just keeping the size of the setting to
something that could be built using appropriate technology
(of course this can include magic) is a good start toward
producing a dungeon I can live with.

[hengest]

This post by jmccann makes a lot of sense to me. As much as I like the idea of the mythic underworld, I see that 

1) it doesn't necessarily have to be a now-traditional dungeon or megadungeon
2) there's no compelling reason not to come up with multiple linked and non-magical underground places for adventure. You can even import the "monsters move back in" to some degree.  Or have a degree of natural magic, but that doesn't have to justify the whole place.

I got to visit the salt mine in Wieliczka, Poland.  Here's a composite image also from Wikipedia.  They've got tons of religious and other figures carved from salt down there, not to mention all the mining stuff...and the cathedral.  It was a total tourist attraction now, but...that was a real dungeon!  The guide said that horses were somehow lowered down and then spent the rest of their lives in the mine.  

I've been a little stuck on the dungeon front lately.  I think I'm going to try some of what jmccann suggested storywise (actually having a history) with the mythical feel.  I mean, Moria to me is the dungeon, and it totally had a reason to exist!  But the navigation through it gave it a sense of endlessness...

Edit: ancient salt mine connected to transport tunnels and shafts, branching out into burial areas (salt mummies?) for dead miners, pickled corpses in an underground lake of brine that fills a cavern farther than you can see, statues and religious symbols with increasing frequency as you get to the temple, originally subordinate to the mine but later eclipsing it in importance, accidental traps, squatter dwarves, salt lichen...

[jmccann]

May 15, 2016 17:49:02 GMT -5 hengest said:

This post by jmccann makes a lot of sense to me. As much as I like the idea of the mythic underworld, I see that 

1) it doesn't necessarily have to be a now-traditional dungeon or megadungeon
2) there's no compelling reason not to come up with multiple linked and non-magical underground places for adventure. You can even import the "monsters move back in" to some degree.  Or have a degree of natural magic, but that doesn't have to justify the whole place.

I got to visit the salt mine in Wieliczka, Poland.  Here's a composite image also from Wikipedia.  They've got tons of religious and other figures carved from salt down there, not to mention all the mining stuff...and the cathedral.  It was a total tourist attraction now, but...that was a real dungeon!  The guide said that horses were somehow lowered down and then spent the rest of their lives in the mine.  

I've been a little stuck on the dungeon front lately.  I think I'm going to try some of what jmccann suggested storywise (actually having a history) with the mythical feel.  I mean, Moria to me is the dungeon, and it totally had a reason to exist!  But the navigation through it gave it a sense of endlessness...

Edit: ancient salt mine connected to transport tunnels and shafts, branching out into burial areas (salt mummies?) for dead miners, pickled corpses in an underground lake of brine that fills a cavern farther than you can see, statues and religious symbols with increasing frequency as you get to the temple, originally subordinate to the mine but later eclipsing in importance, accidental traps, squatter dwarves, salt lichen...

This sounds like a great start for an adventure locale. Salt mummies are a great idea too... Local necromancer figures out how to reanimate pickled corpses.  Hmm.

[jmccann]

By non-humans I mean the non-human character types, elves, dwarves etc. Here I object to the "stock-and-standard" feel of campaigns that use all of these. In the campaigns I am working on now, there are no non-human characters, although I have thought some about how to include elves, in a couple of different ways. One way might be to have a Fairy realm which sometimes comes into contact w/ the human world, the other would be for a character to have been a changeling - swapped at birth with a human baby.

[Admin Pete]

jmccann I understand where you are coming from and like anything else in this game our own personal threshold for "verisimilitude" are not going to be the same either. I love dungeons and mega-dugneons; however, they vary all over the place. Within the last 6 months the party(well part of the party) traveled through a massive underground installation that was still functioning and was completely deserted (or at least it seemed that way most of the time) with the exception of now and then they felt they were being watched. Altogether they traveled over 40 miles underground without an encounter, but the entire time was tense and nerve-wracking.


A river running 1500 -2000 feet in width and 150 - 200 feet in depth comes to an abrupt end at a huge round pile of boulders where it drops and goes underground (and enters the above system).

[hengest]

May 15, 2016 21:43:22 GMT -5 jmccann said:

By non-humans I mean the non-human character types, elves, dwarves etc. Here I object to the "stock-and-standard" feel of campaigns that use all of these. In the campaigns I am working on now, there are no non-human characters, although I have thought some about how to include elves, in a couple of different ways. One way might be to have a Fairy realm which sometimes comes into contact w/ the human world, the other would be for a character to have been a changeling - swapped at birth with a human baby.

I would never try to argue that the implied setting doesn't have "stock-and-standard" demihumans.  There are a couple approaches that make sense to me:

1) humans only
2) something like what jmccann describes above 
3) go with stock and standard
4) mechanical effects of character races the same, but shake up their places in the setting -- dwarf aristocracy on the surface while the human undercaste works in the mines (how did this happen? etc.).  
5) As 4 above, but swap mechanical benefits accordingly 

To me each of these is pleasantly suggestive of "setting hooks", even if they're not new:

1) other races were slaughtered, exiled, or otherwise 'lost'
2) fairy realm high-magic, local realm low-magic.  OD&D magic bleeds through into human realm near access points?  Or magic works everywhere but is known only to those who travel to Faerie.  Time distortion -- MUs have been gone for a decade+ when they come home at first level.  Known that MUs "come like ghosts to trouble joy".
3) whatever, OR have a diff origin for this: humans are 'breeders' up to age 30 then shrink and harden to dwarves or 'elf up' into elves.  Random, choice, or some other way of determining.  No elf or dwarf children.  
4) "setting in disorder" with races not using their full potential.  Mining poor, depressing cavelike houses.  
5) PCs don't "expect" their bonuses but have them (keep it all behind the screen).  Fun for a one-off or short campaign for ideas.  

[tetramorph]

May 15, 2016 14:06:27 GMT -5 jmccann said:

Regarding dungeons, it is not that I am completely opposed to
underground adventure settings, but I like verisimilitude in my
settings, and I have a problem with the tightly packed, heavily
populated dungeons that are typically found in dungeon settings.
An underground setting with a believable rationale which could
reasonably be built, where the inhabitants act seemingly
realistically according to their own motivations, is not
something I will have a problem with.

To me, the dungeon as mythic underworld is just not appealing
enough to overcome my desire for verisimilitude. I think that
for many it is that appealing though.

. . .

I think the sheer size of a megadungeon is one of the things that
puts me off the most. Just keeping the size of the setting to
something that could be built using appropriate technology
(of course this can include magic) is a good start toward
producing a dungeon I can live with.

Okay, jmccann , I totally agree about the size issue. I have found myself using Dyson Logos' maps, as I do not enjoy mapping. His are tight, concise and creative.

But I must say, that the idea that a dungeon must have a believable rationale sounds very 1e, "advanced," and Gygaxian to me. When I finally learned about the Dungeon as Mythic Underworld, something just "clicked" for me. It's what keeps it fantastic.

Here is my most recent campaign setting idea:

"Dungeons" represent "eruptions" of the mythical, and therefore perennial underworld onto the surface of the land -- usually and mainly wilderness, as lawful lands create a kind a lawful "hedge" against such eruptions. This corresponds to me to the land dreaming bad dreams!

Just as walls and rooms might shift and change in an old school dungeon, whole levels might shift and change, disappear and reappear.

Each "level" actually represents the lair of an evil denizen in the wilderness. At some point or place in each level, there is an opening to the wilderness location of the lair. It is as if the underworld keeps swallowing up these abodes of chaos and stacking them together in its nightmare!

Players could walk out and find themselves suddenly in an unexpected wilderness situation. Likewise, wilderness adventurers stumbling upon a lair might find themselves at an entrance to one of the deeper and scarier "levels" of the "megadungeon."

So, the wilderness and the (mega) dungeon are one! All the ref has to do is decide where in the wilderness each "level" opens out as a lair, or, conversely, which "level' each lair represents. Always keeping in might that this can shift and change as levels are "cleared" and as the underworld "swallows" more chaotic hold-outs.

This keeps things actually tighter and more focused than the megadungeon while simultaneously making that megadungeon even more vast and scary!

This relates to an old thread I had going with merctime when he was still posting.

jmccann , I know you wouldn't want to run it, but would you play in such a campaign? Can you dig my jive?

[tetramorph]

May 15, 2016 21:43:22 GMT -5 jmccann said:

By non-humans I mean the non-human character types, elves, dwarves etc. Here I object to the "stock-and-standard" feel of campaigns that use all of these. In the campaigns I am working on now, there are no non-human characters, although I have thought some about how to include elves, in a couple of different ways. One way might be to have a Fairy realm which sometimes comes into contact w/ the human world, the other would be for a character to have been a changeling - swapped at birth with a human baby.

Okay, I read you. So I take it that you still include the "fell" races, such as orcs, goblins, and the like?

I like the "stock-and-standard." Why? Because the more vanilla the campaign, the less I am writing my own fanfic and the more I am gaming the shared fantasy world that most folks share at the table.

That said, I usually only have encounters with fey races (hobbits, elves, dwarves) in the wilderness (the "fey wilds") and I only allow playing characters from those races once the party is in the wilderness and their human character has died.

Changelings. Oh yes. "Muh-ha-ha" <mustachio twisting>

[docsammy]

I personally prefer the wilderness adventuring to dungeon crawling, and I do like the idea of a dungeon as a mythic underworld, though in my current campaign world I'm building, most conventional dungeons are the standard dungeon archetype (such as a series of caves, an abandoned manor, or the ancient and arcane ruins of the lost Tuatha De Danann civilization, where high technologies and powerful magical relics lay within), while any "mega-dungeons" I would incorporate (if I choose to include them at all, again I prefer to emphasize wilderness adventuring over dungeon crawling) would be more along the lines of a Hollow Earth or Mythic Underworld.

[bravewolf]

I was fully into Gygaxian naturalism until I read two things: Wayne Rossi's implied setting and especially Ursula Kroeber LeGuin's The Tombs of Atuan. Tombs demonstrated for me the power of the mythic underworld in D&D; the underworld is out to get you!

[bravewolf]

One of my favorite PC statements during the last two sessions of our Arduin AD&D game is, "How the hell do these doors keep closing on us when they're so hard to open?!"

[Hexenritter Verlag]

Aug 16, 2017 23:18:58 GMT -5 bravewolf said:

I was fully into Gygaxian naturalism until I read two things: Wayne Rossi's implied setting and especially Ursula Kroeber LeGuin's The Tombs of Atuan. Tombs demonstrated for me the power of the mythic underworld in D&D; the underworld is out to get you!

I have to read UKL's The Tombs of Atuan now. It was reading OD&D and 'Is it Wrong to try to pick up girls in a Dungeon?' light novel that peaked my interest in the Mythic underworld, mega-dungeons and the whole living dungeon concept. In the past I tried to have a rational for dungeons and populate them with monsters that fit the region they were located in. 'Is it wrong to try to pick up girls in a dungeon?' though campy and manga-style super-hero style fantasy elements might put some readers off, it really seems capture the whole OD&D mega-dungeon/Mythic Underground trope well. Even if you cut out the manga bits you can take the core tropes of the series and they would translate well to a OD&D campaign.