There’s been a lot of talk about Dungeons & Lasers, and it should be no surprise; these sets are absolutely breathtaking. But before you dish out enormous sums of money, ask yourself this question: do I need modular dungeon floors and walls?
Who runs endless megadungeons these days? Who has the time? If you manage to get your entire group around a table for a few hours, first, you’re my hero, and second, would you like to run a fresh, eventful adventure with beginning, middle, and big finish – or are you simply going to pick things up where you left off three months earlier, in room number 18c, and proceed to rooms 19 and 20... and perhaps 21a, if all goes well?
So here’s the truth.
You can handle the truth.
Corridors are a nuisance.
Corridors are killing the fun of role-playing games by making it always the same fight: wizard in the middle, fighter up front, rogue rearguard, cleric at the ready to heal the tank. You’ve seen it before, haven’t you?
Static. Boring.
Even in Gloomhaven. Yes, and the reason why so many groups fail within the first room is because it’s the first room: you can’t park your tank in the doorway and then do everything else with ranged attacks – which is what you do in rooms 2 and 3. Not always, mind you, but most of the time.
You cannot change Gloomhaven, but you can change your own game of D&D—
Get rid of corridors. And staircases.
Open spaces only, à la Chris Perkins.
Take Prisoners of Slaughterfast, for example – the game they played at PAX Prime 2010. Aeofel is stranded in Hell, all alone, standing in front of a huge fortress. In other words, he is fucked. And then, just in the nick of time, his three friends appear in the distance, riding on the back of a hell-cow!
The entire fight takes place in front of that hellish fortress, in the open, with the big bad looking on from the top of the battlements. Now that’s D&D.
In the PAX Prime game of 2015, a robot beholder apparatus takes the party to a cavern somewhere in the Underdark. There is a noxious pond in the middle, steep cliffs on both sides, and the head of a (dead) purple worm jutting out from the top of a mound; there’s even some sort of lodging inside the worm’s gaping maw. Looking for loot, Jim climbs up there – and starts hallucinating. Meanwhile, Viari is up a cliff and cutting off a rope bridge, while Omin and Binwin are down by the pond, gauging an Illithid and a weird, shambling Kuo-toa.
They didn’t split the party, not really, and yet they’re all over the place – still within earshot of each other – in that awesome-looking cave. It ain’t static. It ain’t boring or tedious.
Another example: the PAX Unplugged game of 2019 happens in and around a colossal hell-vehicle made from part of a tarrasque’s carapace, complete with a stage on top of it, and seating for more than 60 people.
You should always run that.
I blame video games for the way doors and corridors are “tactically” put to use in tabletop role-playing games these days.
Imagine you’re reading one of Robert E. Howard’s classic Conan the Barbarian stories, and you get to a part that goes like this:
“Broadsword in hand, Conan stepped into the sanctuary; eleven demons lurked in the low-lit columned room, wielding warped, unholy blades. The Cimmerian quickly closed in on the first two demons, delivering five savage slashes and two backswings – but then he had to retreat into the corridor, because his arms and chest were severely lacerated by the demons’ nasty claws and curved blades.
“Conan drank his first potion of healing.
“When he reentered the sanctuary, he noted that one demon was in his death throes, sprawled on the blood-soaked pavestones. More demons charged towards the intruder.
“Conan’s sword chopped off an arm and punched right through another demon’s jaw; that opponent toppled immediately, while the one with the chopped arm was reeling. Conan freed his weapon just in time to swing it at another demon – then, alas, he had no choice but to retreat again into the corridor.
“He was bleeding profusely from at least ten grievous cuts.
“He downed another potion of healing and ate a magical berry that the priestess of Asura had offered him right before he journeyed to this fell temple.
“Conan reentered the sanctuary. Eight demons left.
“The melee resumed, and the Cimmerian parried scores of deadly blows. He managed to hit the two demons closest to him; one died, and the other lost a leg below the knee.
“Conan retreated to the relative safety of the corridor yet again.
“He was covered in blood: his own, and the demons’ evil blood that burned his torn flesh.
“He quickly drank his third potion of healing.
“Five down, six to go, he thought.
“Bellowing Crom’s name, he charged back into the sanctuary...”
Who would read that? It’s absurd. It ain’t entertainment.
Personally, I would throw such a book out the window.
But that’s how most video games work.
Don’t allow that to happen in D&D. No corridors. Your game can only be improved. There are no downsides whatsoever. And if the party is overwhelmed, the wizard can still cast rope trick, and they can take refuge in there for a while.
The Dwarven Forge and D&L stuff is beautiful, but you don’t really need it. The only thing you need is one fantastic location, Sly Flourish style, with lots of different things going on in that place. Players and monsters will do the rest.
And sometimes you don’t even need miniatures, only a detailed diorama – this is gonna blow a few 40K minds, obviously. Take a look at the PAX West 2017 game (Tomb of Annihilation), or the Apothecary / Switcharoo games of 2018, or that one with the aforementioned tarrasque vehicle, and you’ll see.
I don’t despise modular dungeons per se; I just don’t want D&D to become Warhammer – loads and loads of terrain with a tiny thread of actual gaming buried underneath all that pricey hardware.
Folks who build and assemble their entire dungeon up front suffer from what we might call the Minecraft Syndrome. If they have fun doing it, that’s fine. Personally, I don’t have that kind of time, so I cut corners – like a movie director. Indeed, when you shoot Star Wars, you don’t build an entire Death Star, you only build the 5 or 6 parts you need for your story.
I’m not against D&L or Dwarven Forge: I just can’t afford it. But if you have the money, knock yourself out. I shook Stefan Pokorny’s hand after the premiere of The Dwarvenaut. “Lucky you,” I said. “You do what we all love.”
Model-building is a wonderful craft: you listen to your favorite music, drink some tea or coffee, and forget about absolutely everything else. Hobbyists have been doing it for over two hundred years.
If you still want to build the whole thing, suit yourself; play Minecraft D&D and then Call of Duty D&D if that’s what your players want. The only overarching rule is fun.
But if your group seems to be ready for a style that is more targeted and more “open” at the same time – get rid of corridors! Instead of building megadungeons to accommodate your awesome adventures, build awesome adventures to accommodate unique, extraordinary locations, whether it be a vast purple worm cavern or the Darkmagic mansion or the Moloch statue from the iconic cover of 1978’s Players Handbook or a gigantic tarrasque vehicle in Avernus or Arneson’s Comeback Inn (e.g. once the PCs have entered, whenever they try to leave the establishment, they “come back in,” as in inescapable pocket dimension).
Jeremy Crawford, Chris Perkins and Dave Arneson all did it.
Why wouldn’t you?
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