I really fucking hate dungeons/caves/crypts/sewers in RPGs.

[jancobblepot]

I liked the old U6 dungeons. Not to long and not to many trash mobs from what I remember.

Could be that I have rose colored glasses on since it has been almost 20 years.

¿Really? Those sewers below Lord British's castle were awful. That and the pirate map almost ruined the game IMO.

 

[Zarniwoop]

But seriously, is there any game that actually has a good dungeon design then, if it's indeed possible?

I enjoyed dungeons in Risen greatly, and I generally dislike dungeon crawling.

Yes, Risen did it quite nicely. Had some damn hard fights in there too. Although that might just have been because of the absolutely shitty combat system.

 

[circ]

I liked the old U6 dungeons. Not to long and not to many trash mobs from what I remember.

Could be that I have rose colored glasses on since it has been almost 20 years.

¿Really? Those sewers below Lord British's castle were awful. That and the pirate map almost ruined the game IMO.

Really? I thought it was pretty fun that I remember. Running around killing rats and finding campfires with LOOTZ. Well some kind of campfires. And it was HUEG.

 

[Jools]

But seriously, is there any game that actually has a good dungeon design then, if it's indeed possible?

I enjoyed dungeons in Risen greatly, and I generally dislike dungeon crawling.

Yes, Risen did it quite nicely. Had some damn hard fights in there too. Although that might just have been because of the absolutely shitty combat system.

On that line, Gothic1 and 2 provided some sensible caves/sewers. They were functional to the story/setting and made sense within the context, rather than being really random and gratuitous.

 

[mangsy]

Arcanum had that Black Mountain Clan that made the game almost unplayable...gets my vote for worse dungeon ever, just for how it ruined the game.

Looks like you've never played Dungeon Master: Chaos strikes back. Now THAT was a frustrating dungeon :-/

Damn, Dungeon Master. Had completely forgotten about those games. I remember the second one made me shit my pants when I played it as a kid. Never played Chaos Strikes Back. Those games were pretty difficult, right? I remember getting owned repeatedly.

 

[Luzur]

i never get that feeling with Daggerfall Dungeons, which are copypasta mazes with no end.

 

[ArcturusXIV]

Any specific recommendations for Dungeon Crawls, btw? I bought an old netbook without a video card, kind of want to emulate or play old games I missed... Ultima Underworld, so on.

Traps, levers, secret doors, exploration, customization, and creepy atmosphere/VERY unique art style. Also, puzzles...

 

[Johannes]

I recommend Chaos Strikes Back. Basically it's just a huge open-ended puzzle filled with brutally tough monsters.
Though start with vanilla Dungeon Master if you want a simpler game with the same system first (CSB is just harder and more complex dungeon, and less need to grind for stats, otherwise they're the same mechanically), or get a hardon from importing characters from one game to another.

Dark Heart of Uukrul is another good one, at least judging by the times I've glanced the LP here. With turnbased combat, if that is a must for you.

 

[ArcturusXIV]

Thanks! Dark Heart of Uukrul looks awesome...

Let the recommends continue! Thinking Ultima Underworld first...

 

[Unkillable Cat]

There's a reason no game has ever done a sewer properly.

# Sewers are designed to shift water away from one location (here) to another (somewhere far FAR away). I can't think of a single RPG sewer that actually has water doing anything else than just being a backdrop. For water to flow, for example, there must be some inclination, right? How come most RPG sewers are flat? Where is the water coming from? Where is it going?

# Sewers aren't generally interesting as locations. At best they're early game material, your first stop (or a short transitory location in the mid-game) on a journey towards another, more interesting location. It's also quite uncommon to find anything of interest in a sewer. Maybe a pack of animals, probably some disgusting omnivore species. Maybe a small pack of thieves hiding from the Law. The cliché of a lone monster hiding in the sewers and killing off homeless people at night has been done to death by so many forms of media that no respectable sewer system can be without one. There's probably a wanted ad for that "position" running in the papers. "Gruesome monster wanted to increase tourist/adventure revenue for urban area. Free room & board in quiet and sparsely populated area of town. Applicants must present credientials and previous job experiences, plus references."

 

[MMXI]

Thanks! Dark Heart of Uukrul looks awesome...

Let the recommends continue! Thinking Ultima Underworld first...

75% of the genre are dungeon crawlers. Take your pick.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

On the subject of "other" bland and generic dungeons: Caves are rarely long and complex. Risen (and the Baldur's Gate games) got those right. What Risen didn't do right was the last dungeon. That one was horrible. Walk 10 feet, kill monsters. Repeat. Ooh! A locked door. Look around for lever. Walk 10 feet, kill monsters. Repeat. Ooh! A lever! Wonder what pulling that does? Go back to locked door. Walk 10 feet, kill monsters, etc...

Tombs aren't always haunted, but that doesn't mean that they shouldn't always be occupied. Necrovores and omnivores regard tombs like all-you-can-eat buffet tables, but the only such critter we tend to see in RPG tombs are ghouls. What about large insects or fungi? Or maybe some animal found its way inside and made it into a home? A den of wolves, perhaps?

One of the best examples I remember of a "dungeon" that was just a little too crazy to contemplate was the Darkmoon Temple in Eye Of The Beholder 2. Outside forest area? Check. Temple itself? Check. Basement serving as a storeroom and living quarters for the soldiers? Check. Catacombs serving as a prison and staging area for a LARGE undead army? OK... Ancient ruins of older temple that are only accessed by digging through unstable walls AND is also being excavated by Giant Ants? That means the foundation for the whole temple is unsafe and might collapse at any moment, especially if the catacombs are to serve as barracks for a whole army, right? Not exactly smart.

Wait, it gets better. The temple has three towers. One of the towers is walled off from the rest of the temple and serves solely as a gigantic test of faith for new initiates, not to mention being infested with all kinds of pests like giant wasps, giant mantii, giant flying snakes and Beholders. That's a large waste of real estate if you ask me. The central tower, meanwhile, is a goddamn ZOO that houses Basilisks, Bulettes, Medusas, Frost Giants and daemonic guardians from another plane! What the hell are they for?!? The Frost Giants are captives there, but any sensible person can tell you that it's not very hard for a whole clan of Frost Giants to... I dunno, BREAK DOWN THE WALLS? Not to mention that Bulettes (a.k.a. Land Sharks) are known for BURROWING through stuff. They're stupid enough to try to burrow through a man-made structure, if given half the chance.

The final tower at least serves some purpose, it's where all the Mages hang out with the Big Bad and plot how to take over the world. If it wasn't a one-way trip. So about half the temple is being wasted on trivial and/or stupid things, not to mention being built on an unstable foundation. This is what happens when developers don't think themselves, or assume that the players don't think at all. You think stupid dungeons are a new fad, look again.

EDIT: Forgot a valid point.

 

[Erebus]

The dungeons in Arcanum are so fucking horrible that it makes waltzing through them with Invisibility a wonderful pleasure.

 

[20 Eyes]

In a lot of titles, the caves/sewers/crypts are just filler to extend length or because the developers were too lazy/rushed/broke to put anything better there. The main problem is, most of these games don't have interesting enough gameplay to pull it off and the end result is horrible and tedious drudgery. The sewers in Bloodlines and most of the dungeons in Neverwinter Nights 2 are especially bad.

Letting the game's combat system carry the game for a while is fine, when the game has a good combat system (Knights of the Chalice). Even the Infinity Engine games had smooth enough combat (to me) where I didn't mind the occasional combat-filler section.

 

[Comrade Goby]

Agreed those locations are terrible.

Unless it's really colorful or some kind of unexpected theme.

I'd rather just have more characters and dialogue or more depth to the outside world or houses.

 

[aries202]

Any specific recommendations for Dungeon Crawls, btw? I bought an old netbook without a video card, kind of want to emulate or play old games I missed... Ultima Underworld, so on.

Traps, levers, secret doors, exploration, customization, and creepy atmosphere/VERY unique art style. Also, puzzles...

The old might and magic games (the rpgs, not the rts) comes to mind. At least when it comes to traps, levers, puzzles and exploration. Suddenly you fall down because you stepped on wrong plate in the floor.
Creepy atmosphere in the dungeons in Might and Magic rpg games....? I can't remember if that's the case....

Maybe the Tomb Raider games could fulfill your needs...

 

[MMXI]

The old might and magic games (the rpgs, not the rts) comes to mind.

 

[Santander02]

I liked the sewers in TESIII: Tribunal. Mournhold was built over the ruins of an older city, and some parts of the sewers connected to the old city ruins, so you could come across some interesting places when you explored them.

 

[Roguey]

To just run through BMC is an exploit...almost the same as modding Fallout 2 so you don't have to go through the Temple of Trials every new game. It shows how desperate people where to get rid of it.

No it's not. If they really wanted to gate you into fighting those golems, they would have. Troika wasn't completely clueless, they knew people would want to go through it with a stealth or charisma based character, that's why they gave you those character building options to begin with.

 

[Excidium]

I hate underground levels that are copypasted corridors filled with hordes of the same creature types. Which is pretty common in RPGs...

 

[Sceptic]

The old might and magic games (the rpgs, not the rts) comes to mind.

Stole the rage right out of my, erm, hands I guess?

 

[sirfink]

If anything, rat-infested sewers beneath a city make more sense than the classic "dungeon." Weren't dungeons traditionally just an underground prison with maybe 4 locked rooms and a hallway? How do you explain these massive underground mazes of brick-lined tunnels? And what are all these goblins doing just squatting down there? I demand an explanation!

 

[Excidium]

And why do people leave chests filled with treasures laying around in dungeons?

 

[OSK]

Cities are always the best part of RPGs. Fuck the filler. Just give me an RPG that takes place entirely within a large, fleshed out city.

 

[eric__s]

There are two main problems with dungeons. The first is that they are unrelated to the rest of the world; when you step into a dungeon, you leave a rich, well-crafted world with interesting things constantly happening for a series of tunnels with nothing in them. Dungeons are microcosms that exist separately from the events of the rest of the game, and that's bad. Did the Black Mountain Clan suck because of those golems that were impossible to kill, or because Arcanum was a game about dialogue and exploration, two things that the BMC abandoned completely. Probably a mix of both of those reasons. Except for whatever item you're in a dungeon to retrieve, it bears no relation to the outside game world, regardless of what a dozen pages of lore will tell you.

The second problem with dungeons is that they are mostly uninteresting. Nothing happens in dungeons except that you kill enemies. Depending on the mechanics of the game you're playing, this can be fun but I'm going to use Arcanum as an example again. Arcanum did not have a good combat system, but even if it did, its strengths were its dialogue and world. The dungeons were bare; nothing happened in them, there was nothing to see or explore. You went from room to room searching for whatever item would allow you to leave, and that is also bad.

One game I played with very good dungeons is Dark Sun: Shattered Lands. One of the first dungeons you go to is this wizard lair in the sewers. It's entirely optional and you don't have to go to it, but it's neat and interesting. When you enter, you meet a rat character who offers to guide you and warns you about the wizard. The rat guy guides you into the lair, where you're introduced to a minor character, the wizard's henchman. As you wander throughout the lair, the rat guy tells you about each of the rooms, what the wizard does in them and what you should look out for. What's really cool is that you can do a couple experiments in the wizard chambers; you can summon oozes if you use the right items or make potions. It's an interactive environment and that's pretty fun! There is one room the rat guy tells you not to enter: a room with a zombie in it. The zombie turns out to be semi-lucid and will follow you. Here's the really interesting part - depending on your actions, the story changes. If you kill the rat guy, he's just a regular rat guy who was trying to help out and kill the wizard. If you get the zombie to follow you after the rat tells you not to, he turns out to be the wizard in disguise. If you ignore the zombie all together, the wizard will kill the rat guy when you confront him. It's a really interesting dynamic that makes it a much more enjoyable experience.

But what can we take from this dungeon? First, the environment is interactive. There are things to do in the dungeon - you can do weird wizard experiments, free prisoners, mess around with this rat guy, free the zombie. Secondly, the dungeon has a story and things actually happen inside of it. Instead of a boring search for an item, you get involved in this sub-plot about a wizard, a rat, a zombie and a crazy henchman. The game always manages to have your attention because something is always happening.

I think the solution is this: blur the distinction between dungeons and the outside world. Instead of having dungeons, have dangerous areas with NPCs in them. Instead of a labyrinthine ruined castle, have a ruined village with a handful of survivors, maybe other explorers, monster inhabitants that you can interact with. Remember New City or that T'Rang base in Wizardry 7 that had monsters in them, but also things to actually do? Maybe a better example is Stonekeep, where the entire game is a dungeon but there are always people to interact with, puzzles to solve and even a town.

Dungeons need to be interesting and well-planned. If a dungeon exists just so you can retrieve an item from it, it probably doesn't need to exist.

Anyway, I just bought Knights of the Chalice. I hope it lives up to the talk!