New Campaign- Castle Xyntillan/Operation Unfathomable/Hubris
- Thread starter Evard's Small Tentacle
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DangerousPuhson
Should be playing D&D instead
Dungeon ecology and world ecology are different.
Living dungeon ecology rarely makes sense in old-school modules - Caves of Chaos especially springs to mind immediately, as does the rise of the funhouse dungeon (which lampshade the ecological mistakes by turning the whole thing into an artificially-constructed gauntlet). The whole "what are these fifty orcs living in the dungeon for months even doing for food?" or "how can a carrion crawler just have a nest right next to the gnolls without conflict?" type scenarios are definitely hallmarks of old school adventures. I think that's what rredmond was talking about.
Funny enough, I personally believe that modern authors' attempts to swing this the other way tend to be the biggest culprit of that ultimate Brycian sin of describing what things used to be - the author wants to make dungeon ecology too plausible, to the point of getting into extraneous details that don't matter in play.
Living dungeon ecology rarely makes sense in old-school modules - Caves of Chaos especially springs to mind immediately, as does the rise of the funhouse dungeon (which lampshade the ecological mistakes by turning the whole thing into an artificially-constructed gauntlet). The whole "what are these fifty orcs living in the dungeon for months even doing for food?" or "how can a carrion crawler just have a nest right next to the gnolls without conflict?" type scenarios are definitely hallmarks of old school adventures. I think that's what rredmond was talking about.
Funny enough, I personally believe that modern authors' attempts to swing this the other way tend to be the biggest culprit of that ultimate Brycian sin of describing what things used to be - the author wants to make dungeon ecology too plausible, to the point of getting into extraneous details that don't matter in play.
Beoric
8, 8, I forget what is for
I do not worship at the altar of Gygax. However, in terms of defining "old-school play" I think his words are relevant. Review the section "Monster Population and Placement" in the DMG at p. 90 to see what I mean.
B2 didn't make sense in terms of scale generally (look at the scale of the overland map). Leaving aside the obvious errors, I think this was in part because of the limitations of non-digital technology ie. having to fit the caves of chaos into a single two-page spread on paper. And it as a training module, so the kind of hex map seen in the D series wasn't appropriate. And it was Basic, which Gygax was trying to convince people was a "kiddie" system, so he probably wasn't worried about it. Compare that to T1 or S3 or S4 or Isle of the Ape (Dungeonland and its sequel obviously don't count).
There is a vast divide between the Gygaxian idea of putting stuff where it makes sense to be, and writing an irrelevant backstory for every room. I suspect the latter started when DMs/writers were trying to justify why they were putting things where it didn't make sense for them to be (usually a futile attempt since only the DM knows the backstory and it still seems arbitrary to the players, if they care). It got picked up by adventure writers who wished they were novelists (reading Dungeon Magazine is like watching American Idol auditions, if the judges didn't cut them off and automatically let them go on to the next round). And it was allowed so much it became the standard.
rredmond
A FreshHell to Contend With
While I'm enjoying where the conversation is going, I was just making a joke hopefully at the spam poster's expense. I don't think anyone's D&D is badwrongfun and enjoy it all. If you want to put that hill giant in the 10'x10' room or have 2,000 unguarded copper pieces in an otherwise empty area, it's all good by me! If you want an elaborate backstory, with a lot of logical and cooperative (or not) monsters in the dungeon, that's great too.
Beoric
8, 8, I forget what is for
Yeah, I had the same reaction at the time. I'm less sure now, I suspect that, like a hexcrawl, it just needs different procedures to navigate, and maybe a different layout. I know it would have been way cooler if the player's map had snaked around crazily, instead of being more or less a straight line. Of course, now it would be easy to remove the hex overlay from the player's map, which would make it look a lot better. That would have made it harder for the players to map if they decided to stray from the map, except that the nature of the module makes it unlikely they would do so.
I couldn't have pulled it off in the day, but I bet I could now.
BTW its another example of how Gygax had no concept of scale. The overland map implies that the Vault of the Drow is 3 x 2 miles in area, when the local area map shows it more like 5 x 4. And it implied that the trog caverns and shrine of the kuo-toa were 2 x 1 mile in area, when they are a tiny fraction of that. But at least it didn't repeat the error in B2 of drawing a small, not to scale version of the Caves of Chaos on the overland map, so that you don't actually know what square to place them in.