-- Dodgdy Dungeons --

-- introduction --

To the ones used to the always present parade of cartridge looking role-playing games (not to insult the oft beloved offspring) I need not remind them of the recurring appearance of the element that will remain the centerpiece of my article. And a most hideous centerpiece it is, having plagued my days and lured my moments of ease into spasms of desperation. Who might be the much hated guest? Well, dungeons of course.

Why so much contempt for a feature that has become one of the defining characteristics of a successful genre? Frankly, because I despise them, or rather the way they have been used (and overused) over the years. Before adressing some of the most pressing issues about this designer’s resource, I’d like to say (and perhaps warn) the reader, that I’m well aware of the multitude of “hack and slash” happy people (and even I might have indulged in a taste of such activities) that would and will disagree. All I ask is a more convincing argument than “you’re not l33t”. Let’s move forward...

Since I don’t have unlimited space, nor time, I’d like to focus on what I consider to be three of the most important aspects of the fiend:

1) The use of dungeons as a resource, in order to increase the length of a game. A cheap and uninspired resource, that is.

2) The systematic repetition of an activity that isn’t exciting in the first place.

3) The terrible results this element yields for the purpose of achieving a successful suspension of disbelief.

-- a few defenitions --

And before diving into a perilous pool, let’s clarify some pressing matters. What today can safely be called RPG’s would be best defined as: menu based action-strategy games (with different degrees of action and strategy, depending on the game) framed by one or several story arcs that provide main and parallel goals justifying a set of strategic or tactic procedures (agreeing on the fact that we can arrange all sorts of “story development” in one of these two categories, and which should warn the reader against an interpretation of strategy and tactic only as war-related elements).

That being said, we can now define a dungeon as: a particular environment designed for the strategic and/or tactical deployment of actions that takes place in a series of events lead by one (or more than one) goal providing story arcs. Such element, that in most games is designed in such ways to allow it to be taken as a whole structure (which means unity of theme, and unity of purpose), can be defined (or rather be outlined) by a triad of pairs consisting of: exploration-reward, Necessity-plot advancement, peril-purpose.

-- the three elemental properties --

a) exploration-reward: because of its very same created (and this is important) essence, dungeons are made to be explored fully, and this is a very interesting fact indeed. First of all, let’s cast aside the most obvious of answers: the game itself is made to be explored, the creation of a dungeon is per se, creation of game, ergo it is to be known/played through. While this point often seems banal or easily disputed by claims that “most dungeons have parts or paths you can skip”, it provides a basis for our arguments. Why? Because if it’s made, it’s meant to be played, even when parts may be skipped and sections forgotten that doesn’t constitute the designer’s (and most players for that matter) desire or part of their “immediate goal pool”. To really prove the importance of this matter we have to go further into the dungeons themselves...

Most dungeons (whether they are cloaked, such as the sewers or the halls of a sith base, or not) respond to long term goals in which they play the role of obstacles. Even if they are not defined as “obstacles”, that is, they don’t lie in your path to challenge you (and it’s the purpose and justification of any obstacle to be beaten, and only then it must be –on different levels- convenient and consistent to specific story arcs), even if an effort has been made to integrate the very same resolution, the solving of “the dungeon scenario” into a short term plot goal; even then it is the resolution (that is the death of the challenge) itself which is sought, and not the process through which said resolution is obtained (both from the characters’ and the players’ point of view, of course, not the game designer’s). In other words, the dungeon itself it’s a medium to deploy strategic and tactical sequences (and while action is probably more common, “story development” is very much possible). By accepting this (which we will for the rest of the article) we can tackle the issue of dungeons as a more practical/pragmatic kind of designer’s resource, rather than a vital element of the genre.

That being said we can return to the previous pair of characteristics. My attempt then, is to make an underlying tension visible. Let’s agree for a moment that through the looking glass of a game character (and most of the time ours) all goal oriented procedures are described in a line rather than a curve. That is, that even when regarding mediums (that is, the need to use specific “tools” or “actions” for a task in order to obtain certain results), goal achieving actions are straight forward. In other words, are best performed when focusing just on the tasks needed to achieve results. A dungeon tries to subvert this, by making itself (and it’s my belief that dungeons are one of the most blatant “curves” in game characters goal obtaining actions) the “straight forward” method. How do they do this? Three important methods come to mind: 1)-necessity (not to be mistaken with the third pair: Necessity-plot advancement), that is the physical necessity of going “through” the dungeon instead of “across” the dungeon (that is, putting the need of beating the obstacle in the most time consuming and thorough way); 2)-rewards (which I’ll deal in the next paragraph); and 3)-Necessity, which although it’s relevant here, will be dealt with later.

I’d like to focus on rewards for a couple of lines. Dungeons rely on rewards, all of them do, although the degree of this dependance may vary. More often than not, exploration has to be justified by some kind of reward, or reward system (which may take the form of a short term goal, but more often than not it takes the form of a “power increase” reward). That is, it is necessary for the dungeon to create a new set of goals or transform old ones, in order to cloak this “curve” between us and our previous goals (and please don’t look at this as either a good or a bad thing, I’m just defining our object). But something important is left unnoticed; we agreed on the practical nature of dungeons (that is, their nature refers more to a mechanic, than a content wise story element, *even* if the existence of the physical place which *contains* the dungeon –this is very important- is part of one or more story arcs), and if we did we must now agree that both types of reward: “power increase” rewards (the ones related closely to game mechanics –a trivial example would be: experience, items, weapons, skills, and so on-) or short term story based goals (i.e. we had a goal before, to get through the enchanted forest, but now we find that we have to convince the five old druids, scattered around the forest and requesting something specific of each, to let us pass), both of these are ad-hoc to the development of plot lines (or arcs, as I best like to describe them) ultimately causing the plot to bend around the dungeons, rather than the dungeons subdued by the plot.

b) Necessity-plot advancement: I’ve capitalized the first word to try and establish a difference from the “necessity” of actually travel the length of the dungeon in order to solve what we have called a “dungeon situation”. On the contrary, my objective here is to make reference to the existence itself of the dungeon, and the justificacion of said existence. I’ve said it before but I’d like to say it again: the dungeon is not, content-wise (of course here I’m talking about most scenarios, I’m sure special cases could be discussed further) a part of plot oriented goals. Why? I’ll explain. I have been describing dungeons and dungeon situations as a characteristic of a certain “physical” (in whatever ways) element inside the game; that was an effort that ultimately should lead to the realization that dungeon situations need not be in “dungeons” themselves. You’re going inside a cavern to get to the other side of the mountain? The road has probably been travelled before, and even if it didn’t there’s hardly any good reason to loose yourself in a maze of tunnels. Need to recover something useful from the storage room of an enemy base? I don’t know how visiting every secret corridor, every barracks, every bedroom (and the kitchen of course) will help; and why doesn’t anyone complain about the awful design of these buildings?, if the bad guys are really bad, I expect to see some architect’s head on a pike in one of these damn rooms.

But to return to the actual point on this pair of characteristics I shall say this: to me, to this article, a dungeon *must* fulfill this condition before every other, to be “Necessary”, that is, to be unavoidable in terms of plot advancement. This, as you very well may know, is a very broad condition to fulfill, but it’s very restrictive too. It’s composed of two parts: first the resolution of the dungeon must advance the plot (and while it needs not be the main plot, it’s hard to say that avoidable secondary plots really can be considered to this definition....for now, we will); second, it must be the only way to advance the plot, thus being unavoidable. Anything that doesn’t do that might very well resemble a dungeon, but it isn’t. Not to the ends of this article, and not in my personal point of view, both can be discussed.

c) peril-purpose: but it should be a mistake to make an interpretation of dungeons (based on the last topic), that would describe plot advancement as their purpose. No, plot advancement defines them, but it doesn’t give us their purpose. Why? Because we’ve said before that “dungeon situations” are a characteristic of elements tied to one or different plot arcs, not plot elements themselves (the “dungeon situation” is not a certain thing, but a certain way of having to do things). No, their purpose is peril. Which I reckon it’s a terrible way to say things, and if it would be for me I’d say their purpose is to impose a terrible frustration and wasting of time upon the (by now) expecting player, who can do nothing else but swallow the bitter pill. But I think peril serves us well to complete our definition, and while it doesn’t always involve danger of death (but most times it does), the risk of failing is ever present, and it should because dungeons are obstacles. We have said that before, but now we know more about such obstacles...more than enough to say that they are but one choice among others.

But what are obstacles? A dictionary definition will help us get on the right track. Obstacles are something immaterial that stand in the way and must be circumvented or surmounted in order to achieve a goal. What do obstacles permit then? To increase gameplay time. You could say (and I agree to an extent), that obstacles permit a certain feeling of acomplishment, should it be from the defeat of a villian, from a maze solved, from a puzzle understood; all of them provide challenges for the player to overcome and then move on. In this sense obstacles could be said to be essential to any game, even electronic role playing games. But, it still we face two problems: the first is that this doesn’t justify dungeons, that is, it doesn’t justify the specific picking of an obstacle. The second, that all of the “benefits” of obstacles as described above can not be controled at game design, they are secondary (although in some ways vital) in the game maker’s point of view. What does justify dungeons then, from a designer’s point of view?

Time. Dungeons rely on a simple series of premises, broadly known (the ones I outlined before are merely the most general ones, but there are a wide array of knowledge both practical and theoretical that also can be included here) by the gaming audience that provides a common territory for obstacles (which means typified acknowledgement of the situation, typified responses in order to solve the obstacle, and typified expectations about certain outcomes). That is, “dungeon situations” have become one of the “bread and butter” elements of electronic role playing games. And this is where we face the opinionated topic. Which means that from now on I can take you by the hand no more. Two of my major concerns about dungeons were their overuse as means of stretching gameplay hours far more than plot would permit. The second is related to the first, by their very nature, what has defined them over the years, dungeons rely on very close and similar premises/choices of activities which result in all dungeons being more or less the same endless repetition of a scheme. I said here I could not take you by the hand, I’ve established what I consider the facts (regarding the first two points) and the judgement is left to you.

However, I still have a very important topic to deal with. My third major concern, that relates very closed with the content-related nature of dungeons, which I had decided not to talk about until now. I’ll say this for a second time: I’ve used the term “dungeon situation”, to add more strength to the fact that a certain location is not, per se, a dungeon but it’s made to be a dungeon. The biggest problem with this course of action is that dungeons are just not coherent in relation to the story-backdrop (which can be defined as a series of story arcs that are not “in process” but taken as-is to provide a setting for ongoing story arcs, with the ability to modify themselves or be modified by certain events). This creates two kinds of situations, both I think highly undesirable: a)- a situation where the dungeon itself creates such disortion in present story arcs to mantain itself, that it’s merely looked at as some particular section of the game completely related to something that could be called “the mechanics of the game” with no real relation to the plot, creating the sense of two different games in one: a plot oriented game, and a mechanics oriented game. b)- a situation where dungeon integration was deemed very important, but thanks to the disorting nature of most dungeons, the result is a main plot being twisted in order to accommodate dungeons, instead of dungeons being a natural extension of the plot (another debatable issue, I consider the plot to be the element others must be subordinated to, not the other way around); this I consider worse, creating hilarious or sad situations where you feel sympathetic for characters who must maintain a poker face while trying to sell a tale noone believes in.

-- final words --

At the magical forest, with serpentine pathways and thick as iron vegetation; at the stinking sewers which, although government personel seem to have no problems in navigating them and keeping them clean enough so that the princess in your party will not dare to spit an objection to the course, always have a mazing daze and are populated by a bizarre array of monsters; at the enemy base where you finally realize why “good” must always win in the end, as the bad guys have really little staff, poor security measures and they insist on hiring incompetent architects (they spend all their money in dashing interior designers, go figure); at the forgotten cavers, the only way between lands oft forgotten, but not forgotten enough to leave enough treasure chests to convince the fellow adventurer not to go all the way around; and finally at the classic underground dungeon filled with traps and an evil fiend awaiting at the last rooms (which most likely reflects either the good quality of traps or the bad idea of not writing down where you put them...probably both), which reminds us of a prime fact which you my gamer mate should take in mind: take it easy on the bad guys, if you were an all mighty warlock forced by some force of destiny to patiently wait in the lairs of a humid, stinking, monotonous dungeon until the dreaded day where a fourteen year old who by some chance got hold of a magic sword that could overthrow kingdoms comes and destroys you just to get 200 coins, three potions and some rusted magic item......well, you’d be grumpy too.