Dwarrowdeep!

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Moonglum

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Just needed to get a thread going on Greg Gillespie's new opus, 'Dwarrowdeep'. It is a mega (MEGA!) dungeon that you can think of as a sort of homage to middle earth's Moria, but with many unique design features that make it more of a classic D&D campaign setting and less of a simulation of a chapter out of the Lord of the Rings.

True to Gillespie's form, this thing is incredible: Roughly 100 square miles of subterranean goodness, assembled from a sort of mixture of three elements: set-piece locations mapped in detail (at least a dozen large dungeons worth), plus a hex crawl style depiction of the broader environment (a bit like the D1-3 series for AD&D, but with a greater level of detail and more fleshed out), plus a system of random dungeon tiles for filling in detailed maps of all the vast spaces in between (sort of like was done in ICE's Moria module, but, again, developed in far greater detail).

I'll write more later, when I have the time, but the punch line is that this is not to be missed, unless you just don't care for D&D-style open ended adventure.
 
Sounds interesting.
I wonder how common pure dungeon delve campaigns are anymore.
I imagine it has its fans but I'm guessing most modern players want more variety (social interaction, political intrigue, investigation) then a massive logistical puzzle.
 
If this fucker wasn't forcing his students to buy copies of his books for classes he teaches I might look into it harder.
Sounds like there is a wild story out there I haven't heard. What do you mean by that? Your comment is pretty cryptic to anyone who hasn't followed whatever obscure online information source you are drawing on.
 
Sounds interesting.
I wonder how common pure dungeon delve campaigns are anymore.
I imagine it has its fans but I'm guessing most modern players want more variety (social interaction, political intrigue, investigation) then a massive logistical puzzle.
I'm not sure what 'most' means in this context. Yes, there are lots of people who prefer playing social games and think that means a game with social rules and a setting with pre-fab social situations at its center. There are also lots of people who prefer classic sandbox sorts of fantasy play, which can involve murder and theft, or can be as social and political and investigative as the players care to make it (though the settings don't tend to feed you starter intrigues and so forth; you kind of have to cook those up on your own).
 
Sounds like there is a wild story out there I haven't heard. What do you mean by that? Your comment is pretty cryptic to anyone who hasn't followed whatever obscure online information source you are drawing on.
So I looked into this a little bit. Looks like he's not a particularly loved teacher and he may have required his books to be purchased as part of courses as well as require reviews of the book. I believe I saw that on Reddit.
 
Mind you a ton of professors use their own texts in curriculums, the questionable part is not only the reviews he allegedly made students leave but also the fact he allegedly required them to show him proof of purchase for the text. The fact the institution he teaches at allows that tells me it is an institutional problem as much as it is a professor problem.
 
If this fucker wasn't forcing his students to buy copies of his books for classes he teaches I might look into it harder.
My friend's dad teaches electrical engineering at university and wrote a book on the topic. He didn't make his own book the mandatory course materials because he didnt think it was ethical. Let's just say he didn't win any friends with his colleagues for this stance because virtually every university prof who writes a book makes it the mandatory course material.
Oh, and to make sure next generation students don't buy old copies they "update" the text with new example or problems and make those the homework. Basically forcing people to constantly buy new copies. This is why you often see classic works on the 17th or wtv edition.
So while I understand your point of view I will just say that it seems par for the course.
I know I know.... "do better".
 
Mind you a ton of professors use their own texts in curriculums, the questionable part is not only the reviews he allegedly made students leave but also the fact he allegedly required them to show him proof of purchase for the text. The fact the institution he teaches at allows that tells me it is an institutional problem as much as it is a professor problem.
He also allegedly fails the student on the two assignments in his class that reference/require the book if they didn’t buy it and provide the proof of purchase, and those two assignments make up 40% of their final grade.
 
Sounds interesting.
I wonder how common pure dungeon delve campaigns are anymore.
I imagine it has its fans but I'm guessing most modern players want more variety (social interaction, political intrigue, investigation) then a massive logistical puzzle.

Does a megadungeon exclude those things if properly run? I don't think so although obviously the book should facilitate it not just being a massive monster zoo and leave all the work up to the GM to make it so.
 
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I think this question, of how the structure of a setting or system relates to the style of play at the table, underlies half the debates on sites like this. It is just true that there is basically nothing explicitly folded into most old-school D&D (and relatives) core books and setting materials that guides the player through intrigue, influence and other sorts of social interactions (other than trivial things like reaction rolls). On the other hand, there is a general understanding among most devoted players of those games and settings that social interactions reflect how you play, not what you play, and can be the centerpiece of any campaign in practically any game or setting. I basically agree with this second position, but think OSR style games leave themselves open to valid criticism on this point by never having really taken to heart questions of character status, job, titles, property, place within hierarchies, etc. These concepts were part of character creation and advancement in lots of first- and second-wave roleplaying game rules (Traveller, En Guard!, Flashing Blades, Chivalry and Sorcery, etc.). The fact that D&D has cranked out literally dozens of editions and variants with very little thought to these issues says something.
 
If the text is relevant to the course than I would say requiring purchase of professor published material is standard. That doesnt even seem to be a major complaint by his students. A lot seems like his personality as a teacher. Hard to say given any rating site is going to be heavily negatively biased.
 
I feel like this sort of internet hearsay is enough to convince me not to go back to college and take his class, but it is totally irrelevant to my thoughts about the dungeons. This isn't like the several cases of gaming producers who jumped on twitter and outed themselves as fascists or whatever; we are basically debating whether this guy is good enough at his day job. Like, if I learned a game author also delivered newspapers to make ends meet, should I go check his route to make sure he's getting those bad boys on the door stoop where they belong before I crack open his module?
 
HERE is the thread on Dwarowdeep from last month.

I just looked at an OSR megadungeon recently, but I think it was a different one (?). I like seeing the megamaps and ideas, but the OSR ones tend to have too much D&D stuff and gonzo for me to want to play myself.

As for the question of whether or not a megadungeon can have "social interaction, political intrigue, investigation" in it - of course it can, and the one I was reading certainly did, and it sounds like this one does too. So do the ones I've made and run. Anyplace with different factions and parties and history and unknown things to discover will tend to have all of those (unless the players only kill everything on sight and don't investigate anything).
 
Saying standard is a bit of a stretch based on my experience.

If it’s relevant, yes, I understand, but it appears that he is the one deciding that it is relevant and is actively punishing the students for not purchasing it. Having to prove the purchase is not common at all. I have borrowed books from friends who have taken the same course before and that was accepted. I didn’t have to buy them directly from the school bookstore, they didn’t care how I got them, just that I had them. That wouldn’t be allowed in this circumstance. I have also never been failed immediately on an assignment for not owning the required reading.

When it comes to digital texts, which are the standard in my current program, they are provided by the school. I am not required to buy anything additional for the course. The books are available via the school’s course materials library while I am taking the course, and my access to that portion of the library is revoked when I am no longer enrolled.

Different universities may have different policies (his doesn’t appear to care), but in the two physical and two online colleges I have attended, I have never once been required to purchase a teacher’s book retail and provide a receipt.
Well in the classes where I was required to use a particular text written by the professor in both cases the text was a school produced comb bound 300+ page document. They didn't last long.
 
(other than trivial things like reaction rolls).
It is my experience that if you want intrigue, politics, faction conflict etc ... in your dungeon (or wilderness, or what have you) sandbox, leaning hard into reaction rolls goes a LONG way to enabling and supporting that. Which is to say, I don't feel they're a trivial component at all.
 
Well in the classes where I was required to use a particular text written by the professor in both cases the text was a school produced comb bound 300+ page document. They didn't last long.
Is that the comb bound text that didn't last long, or the professor..... or both?

I think we've had another thread about making your own rpg texts, and I don't think anyone there expects such binding to survive contact with the user.
 
Is that the comb bound text that didn't last long, or the professor..... or both?

I think we've had another thread about making your own rpg texts, and I don't think anyone there expects such binding to survive contact with the user.
Comb bound text. The teachers were there forever
 
If the text is relevant to the course than I would say requiring purchase of professor published material is standard. That doesnt even seem to be a major complaint by his students. A lot seems like his personality as a teacher. Hard to say given any rating site is going to be heavily negatively biased.
I know a load of academics and I can honestly say that banning second hand purchase of textbooks isn't at all standard in my experience. Maybe that's different cultures though; I don't know US academia that well.

As Moonglum has said though, this doesn't really say anything about the quality of his book, merely his academic practices/marketing. At most, I'd just take sales figures with a pinch of salt as an indicator of quality here.
 
I know a load of academics and I can honestly say that banning second hand purchase of textbooks isn't at all standard in my experience. Maybe that's different cultures though; I don't know US academia that well.

As Moonglum has said though, this doesn't really say anything about the quality of his book, merely his academic practices/marketing. At most, I'd just take sales figures with a pinch of salt as an indicator of quality here.
So I guess I didn't mean to imply you had to buy it new. In my cases it was not possible to buy it second hand but requiring a text that happened to be written by the professor seems like that would be fairly common for some areas.
 
So I guess I didn't mean to imply you had to buy it new. In my cases it was not possible to buy it second hand but requiring a text that happened to be written by the professor seems like that would be fairly common for some areas.
One professor that shall remain nameless at my uni "accidentally" left a list of links that had a pirate copy of his article open on the overhead projector and then nipped out for five minutes while everyone copied them down.
 
Open access requirements in the UK dictate that all articles are made available free of charge either in a university digital depository (author version - green in the jargon) or via the publishing journal (gold).

Here’s the directive for those who prefer to dwell on research policy rather than gaming.

 
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As for the question of whether or not a megadungeon can have "social interaction, political intrigue, investigation" in it - of course it can, and the one I was reading certainly did, and it sounds like this one does too. So do the ones I've made and run. Anyplace with different factions and parties and history and unknown things to discover will tend to have all of those (unless the players only kill everything on sight and don't investigate anything).

Specific to Dwarrowdeep, an attempt by the dwarven government in exile to reclaim its lost domains (plus all the riches and industrial capacity that implies) means that the campaign cannot but have social and political elements. The PCs may just be pawns in the game to begin with, but when they reach a high enough level their progress will be watched closely by both the people who want the dwarves to succeed, and those who don't.
 
So is Dwarrowdeep pretty much just Moria with the serial numbers filed off? Is there anything that makes it unique? How flavorful is it? How much interactivity does it have? Traps? Puzzles?
 
So is Dwarrowdeep pretty much just Moria with the serial numbers filed off? Is there anything that makes it unique? How flavorful is it? How much interactivity does it have? Traps? Puzzles?

Not quite. It is compared to Moria because of the "previously owned by dwarves" bit and the size, but it is not a duplicate.

In terms of format, it is unique (?) in the way the GM is expected to generate much of the dungeon using the random modular maps and tables provided in the book.

Thematically, the different sections of the dungeons - different dungeons, really - are occupied by different evil humanoid races, some allied with each other, some who merely tolerate each other, and some of who are hostile to each other. As the PCs explore the dungeons, they will find runestones and inscriptions which tell tell them about dwarven heroes of old, which will provide them with clues about what treasures they will find in their tombs.

Some evil races lay traps, but these are the "DEX save vs DC 16" type and not the problem-solving type.

Puzzles as far as I can tell (I haven't read the whole thing yet) are of the guessing password and finding a key at another section of the dungeon type.

In terms of interactivity with the "monsters" in the dungeons, I think it's pretty much up to your GM. One of the dungeons is occupied by neutral Xorns, which provide the option of negotiation, but the others are occupied by evil, slave-using races which probably have little reason to negotiate with a few tomb-robbers.

I think the biggest issue with Dwarrowdeep as written is that there is little information provided to the GM on how the dwarves plan to retake and hold ground. I think an experienced GM can kind of get a sense of how to do this, but it would help if the author provided some ballpark figures. Like how much money the dwarves can expect to make if they retake the mines, and restart production, and how many mercenaries they will be able to afford to help them retake the foundry, which in turn will make them this much gold, etc.

Seen as a part of an operation to retake and repopulate a lost realm, with some economic framework (like how are you going to afford the food to feed all these dwarves who are mining your ore, smithing your products, and guarding those miners and smiths?), this can be the background to an epic campaign. With what is in the book, it's a just megadungeon with a history.
 
Open access requirements in the UK dictate that all articles are made available free of charge either in a university digital depository (author version - green in the jargon) or via the publishing journal (gold).

Here’s the directive for those who prefer to dwell on research policy rather than gaming.

Just to continue the separate subthread on academia ;) it's worth noting that's only been in place since April. Really promising step although it only applies to UKRI funded research.
 
Open access requirements in the UK dictate that all articles are made available free of charge either in a university digital depository (author version - green in the jargon) or via the publishing journal (gold).

Here’s the directive for those who prefer to dwell on research policy rather than gaming.


I hope this expands. Researchers don't get any money out of articles behind paywalls, it all goes to publishers. A part of how researchers are judged is how many people cite their research so they would prefer their articles to be more accessible.

This has no effect on the textbook industry screwing students, though. Many professors try to mitigate the problem.
 
I hope this expands. Researchers don't get any money out of articles behind paywalls, it all goes to publishers. A part of how researchers are judged is how many people cite their research so they would prefer their articles to be more accessible.

This has no effect on the textbook industry screwing students, though. Many professors try to mitigate the problem.
Absolutely. The commerical academic publisher is the natural predator of the academic, not the ally.
 
Absolutely. The commerical academic publisher is the natural predator of the academic, not the ally.
This is generally true, though it should also be noted that quite a few academic publishers are non-profits associated with scholarly societies and managed by other academics. So, not all of the negative aspects of modern academic publishing can be traced to simple profiteering.

Nevertheless, speaking as a long-standing academic with a big H index, I think the best thing that could happen to most fields would be a period of what amounts to publishing anarchy: anyone is capable of uploading anything they want to freely accessible online file sharing services, so what's to stop us from just presenting our research like that? In fact some disciplines routinely 'pre-release' finished works this way, just before or during formal review and publication. The main counter argument is that all sorts of crap will get published if you bypass the review process, but there is no reason why authors can't request reviews or ask colleagues to solicit and handle reviews. And there is nothing to prevent uploading of those reviews plus any edits or responses the authors feel are appropriate. In any event, the crap studies just won't get used and cited, except by other crap studies. I'd rather be part of a community that handles discussions through this sort of grass-roots chaos than the staid, over-conservative approach taken by most journals.
 
I honestly have zero trust in the peer review process these days anyway.
Im not going to zero but I feel the scientific community internally acknowledges the failing but externally upholds it as a reason scientists should be trusted more than others. It is a political and social process like most human activities and prone to just as much abuse.
 
I honestly have zero trust in the peer review process these days anyway.
Which is a huge shame, isn't it? Peer review was what I'd hoped would have been a safeguard if published research findings were bullshit.

Like: "Look at these findings! This is a cure for Disease X! At last! Let's focus several decades of research on my totally not self-serving shit sandwich of a report!"

Peer review: "hang on, lemme try to replicate this... holy shit you're a hack fraud! Boy golly thank goodness we verified if you were going to set back research and cause the deaths of countless thousands..."

...

:sad:
 
Peer review works and is an important reason why nihilistic attitudes and conspiracy theories about the scientific method and community are nonsense. But a robust peer review doesn't demand the claggy bureaucratic oversight of traditional journal editors and staff. It's the bureaucratization of the process and profiteering of many of the owners of for-profit journals that sucks. The concept and effects of peer review itself are great.
 
Sorry, I seem to have derailed the thread a long way from gaming.

The scholarly tests are originality, rigour and significance. Most academics can’t achieve those things without discipline: editors, peer review, research assessment help provide discipline.

Problems arise when academics invent disciplines without discipline: the rule of thumb is that anything with the suffix “studies” is going to be crap

I present to you Japanese Studies, the University of Manchester and the academic journal Qualitative Research published by SAGE.


Puzzled gamer readers of this thread will be glad to know that at least manga was involved in the research.
 
I honestly have zero trust in the peer review process these days anyway.
Indeed. I have seen enough articles on COVID published in the early days of the pandemic that cannot possibly have undergone any real peer review process between the date of submission and "epub ahead of print".

Everyone was rushing to be the "first to publish", with no real regard for the amount of damage their "findings" would inflict down the road.
 
I present to you Japanese Studies, the University of Manchester and the academic journal Qualitative Research published by SAGE.

I think whatever AI is posting the adverts on this site, it has a sense of humor.

The following screenshot shows what displayed as I read the linked article, and somehow I felt that it was very appropriate in a subtle way....2022-08-13 19_33_40-University slammed for allowing 'PhD in Masturbation' _ JOE.co.uk.png
 
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