The RPG Epistles of Paul T: Negadungeons and the Texture of Death
by Ramanan Sivaranjan on December 29, 2024
Once again my friend Paul T. drops a blog post as comments in the discord server we use to organize our #TorontOSR meetups. As you are no doubt aware, I hate when interesting posts are lost to the ether of the Internet. So enjoy this discussion of campaign design, which makes the case for the infamous negadungeon, which he calls anti-dungeons below. Paul argues that existence of true crap-sack environments for the players to explore adds real tension to a campaign, makes the choices players make when they explore more meaningful.
If we imagine a dungeon where every room is roughly the same — e.g. each room has an Orc or some other 1 HD enemy, and 50 gp — we can say that the dungeon is “balanced” (for the sake of this example). But it has very little texture. The game might still be fun — how much gold can you collect before you overreach and snuff it? — but it’s fairly monotonous. The choice of room you go into matters very little — you could go through the dungeon in any direction, and it wouldn’t really matter. Just leave after you’ve pushed your luck far enough, and that’s the only choice to be made, really. Over the long term, you’d get bored of play rather quickly; it has fairly little depth.
But if there are some rooms that are huge scores, and some that are total deathtraps, which should be avoided, now the dungeon has a lot more surprise, tension, and variability. Suddenly it really matters which way you go and which rooms you explore, and in what order. You start worrying about how to, if possible, look ahead, scout, do some reconnaissance, etc.
There is more variability, more tension and excitement, and much more difference in terms of how the game can go and what comes of it. You could step into the dungeon and walk into a deathtrap, finding nothing, and losing many men. Or you could bypass that room and find the treasure and walk out victorious. The gamble is heightened, the tension is through the roof, and players really have to think (and their cleverness is rewarded a lot more). It adds new dimensions to the game.
You can imagine this applying to larger areas of the dungeon — groups of rooms, themed areas, or levels. The upper caves are dangerous but not profitable; the crypt is a well of wealth. Once the players learn this, they can take advantage of it, so it becomes a question of how and when they can manage to figure it out (hopefully before they die!).
Now we scale this even higher, and apply it to dungeons. This gives texture to the whole campaign, overall. Aesthetically, thematically, etc — e.g. the premise of your campaign is that there are Dwarven tombs around, and those are full of wealth, but goblin-holes also exist, and they rarely have much in them but death and offal.
Of course, it does matter a great deal what your social contract is and what kind of timescale you’re playing on. Old-school D&D has the potential to be played at variable depth, and can become an incredibly deep game — but at the cost of increased commitment, patience, and so on.
If I’m doing a one-shot for some friends, I’d never pull out an anti-dungeon. But if we have a larger campaign setting, long scale, and other priorities [as you would find in a West Marches campaign], it might be a great tradeoff for the group if there was a lot of texture in this sense, on a larger scale.
I don’t know many people who are currently using anti-dungeons (except for horror-themed one-shots), but I do know a similar example: Eero, in his campaign, has a rule, which is that any adventure hook has a 1 in 6 chance of being a fake, a lie, or a trap. When he generates adventure hooks, he rolls a die for each. If it’s a 1, it is something like this. The “treasure map” actually leads you into a dead end canyon, where you’ll be surrounded and robbed by bandits. The “missing princess” is long dead, and you’ll be press-ganged into working in the mines, instead. And so on. If you were just playing for one night, and you rolled a 1, that would likely be frustrating and unsatisfying for most people (although there are many/some who really enjoy this kind of thing, as well, whether sincerely or perversely).However, add that to a sandbox campaign setting, and dynamics emerge.
When you know that every adventure has an expected payout perfectly relative to its difficulty, like the rooms in the dungeon, it almost doesn’t matter what you choose. The GM gives you an adventure hook, you strap on your armour and you go in. But if some rooms are jackpots and others are deathtraps… and the same goes for dungeons or adventures, then suddenly you have to get a lot more discerning and more clever. The game takes on new dimensions. You might learn you need to investigate an adventure hook, find clever ways to pursue it without putting yourself in danger, do proper reconaissance or background research, and come up with new ways to approach any apparent problem. There’s an added layer of richness there. Where before your game was all, “hey, there’s a Dwarven mine under the mountain? Ok, let’s go loot it, boys”, now instead it becomes something more like, “well, shit. What do we know about Dwarven mines? Where is this information coming from? Do we know anything about the history of the region? Who else knows about it? Can we interview people who live in the area? Were Dwarves known for hoarding gold, by any chance?” Etc. You have to evaluate and strategize at a higher level; the game takes on a different kind of depth.
This has effects on the kinds of campaigns and settings you might be able to come up with or play in, as well. It can allow you to have a much more anti-ludic orientation in developing your setting or campaign, as well as the kinds of things that happen within it.
Let’s say you know there’s a farm out by the forest, and the farmer is under a curse; anyone who stays in his home turns into an undead, mindless, ravenous creature. Over the years, he has dug a pit under his farmstead, where he keeps all the ravenous undead. If something happened to him or the enclosure, it could endanger the whole area.
If your game presumes that all adventures have payoffs, you can’t even include this in your game; you’d have to finagle some reason why there’s an appropriate amount of gold there, as well (or whatever your game demands). The players can see a rumour of a missing person and zombies and go, “ok, cool, sounds like an adventure, let’s do it!”
But if you like the idea of a living, breathing, more real, more textured, anti-ludic setting and game, you totally can place this cursed farmstead in it: there is nothing to be gained by visiting this place, but it can exist in your setting, and that can lead to a more interesting and variable setting.
After all, you don’t know where the game will go - as Brendan says, every trap is also a weapon. Perhaps the PCs will become the foes of a local band of brigands, and they can lure them onto the farmstead and unleash the undead. Or one is a budding necromancer, and can learn to control them and make them into his own army. Or whatever; the possibilities open up a lot.
[So there is one reason for anti-dungeons.] The game expands and takes on new dimensions; many more and many different outcomes are possible. Some of your play might be unrewarding to the PCs or unsatisfying or dangerous, and players have to be more careful, but now all kinds of things might happen which wouldn’t in your “correct” setting where each adventure has a guaranteed payoff.
