Is megadungeon play about exploration? I've heard that it is. It seemed to be a truism back when I was reading material that caused me to launch a megadungeon-based game.
But how exploration-based is it?
A thought experiment
If you have three choices in front of you in a megadungeon . . .
- treasure in a known, already-explored area (guarded, unguarded, doesn't matter)
- a fight that doesn't have any treasure
- new areas to explore
. . . which do you choose?
In my games, you choose the treasure. If I was playing a D&D-based class-and-level system with treasure providing the bulk of the XP, I'd choose the treasure as well.
So my megadungeon game is not about fighting or exploration. It's about treasure.
Fighting is a means to get treasure.
Exploring is a means to get treasure.
If your game rewards exploration, and treasure is a nice thing to have because it enables more exploration, you'd probably explore more.
I'd argue that megadungeon play in a treasure-centered XP system isn't about exploration. You're doing that because it's required to get treasure. Meta-game wise, you're also doing it because it's fun - combat fits this as well. In the game, you fight because some fights are required for gaining treasure or can't be avoided in the process of gaining or finding treasure. Sometimes you fight because you're bored or annoyed or want to try out your spiffy new spell. It might be a bad choice. But then again, sometimes exploring is, too. "Let's just go back down this one corridor and see what's there" dropped my own PC deep down into the dungeon once.
If you wanted it to be about exploration, you could reward exploration directly with rewards - finding new things would give XP, and monsters and other combat encounters would be obstacles to overcome to get to new areas. Treasure could be a secondary objective, or not an objective at all - it might be its own reward as it gives you assets to expend on resources to use exploring.
Tenkar's original B-Team xp approach in the Castle of the Mad Archmage is a good example of a game where the megadungeon play was was heavily about exploration. PCs received an escalating amount of experience points for each new, numbered encounter area explored . . . and since it went up and up, you were driven to go "just one more room" because it was worth more than the previous room. Treasure was a major source of experience but the main XP came from exploration. We still sought treasure as much as possible and avoided fights (risky, least XP) - but we'd explore just to explore. Had Tenkar made treasure XP even smaller, we'd just have skipped known treasure for unknown rooms unless that treasure was trivial to get.
Does any of this change if there is more than one adventuring group exploring the dungeon? I have some thoughts that I'll post up tomorrow.
I miss the B-Team games.
ReplyDeleteI do too, especially Minister/Mirado/Rul and friends.
DeleteHm, I think this makes a lot of sense, and also explains why I have not had much luck when I have attempted mega dungeons. See, I'm terrible at adding loot. Sometimes I end up forgetting and just rolling some dice to see how many coins are in the enemy's pockets.
ReplyDeleteWhen I prep I like to make maps, because w/o the map there is nothing to go to. And I try really hard to make interesting encounters (combat or otherwise) because without them, there isn't really a game. But when it comes to loot... that is almost an after thought with me. It is the bottom of the priority list and I find it really hard to make interesting and useful items that the PCs will want to go find week after week.
Maybe if I gave more thought to the treasure, and then build the dungeon around it...
I make sure that treasure is part of the first pass after I map. Even as I map, though, I eye spots as potential set-piece encounters, special treasure areas, areas with interesting rewards, etc. In a game where XP is loot driven, the game must have a lot of loot. That's less the case in a game where loot is something you get alongside exploring and fighting.
DeleteA better way to put the truism might be that megadungeons are about investigative exploration. The players aren't exploring the complex for the sake of exploring, happy to find out whatever happens to be there; they're exploring with goals in mind. Specifically, the twin goals necessary to sustain a dungeon campaign: burgle the treasure to advance the characters, and solve the mystery central to the megadungeon. (Such dungeons are only truly interesting if in some sense they're a big puzzle in need of solving.)
ReplyDeleteStill, I think that exploration is a means to an end. It's like saying megadungeon games are about exploitative combat. Yeah, sure, but to exploit what? Treasure. As long as treasure is what drives the reward system of the game, I think it will be the central goal. If you make the XP about combat, fighting will be the central goal. If you make the XP about finding new things, exploration and investigation will be the central goal. It's an interesting means - exploration - but it's still a means.
DeleteIt's interesting that you say "solve the mystery central to the megadungeon." Not clearable and not solvable are actually two main tenants of how I build my megadungeon. If you can solve the mystery, then what?