Can D&D 5E be a good dungeon crawler?

Just watched this, and wonder what everyone thinks about this.

Please discuss.

Please note this is a lengthy video.

Maybe summarise it for those who don't have time to watch a lengthy video or don't know if they would be interested?

Maybe cover points like: Who is it by? When was it published? What does it cover (if not purely the thread title)?

Sure thing. The video is by Matthew Coville from MCDM productions. He's been hosting a Youtube channel about D&D 5e for six years now. This video was released yesterday I think. The title of the video is "What's a Dungeon For?" He actually discusses play style and game design quite a bit before getting to that question. He posits that D&D from 3e on doesn't really make a good survival horror style dungeon crawl like the original game from the seventies does. He states that equipment management and the relative weakness of low level characters in the first few versions of the game are evidence that it was designed for a more horrific style of play.

I would say that this is an argument, but not an objective truth. Dungeon crawling doesn't have to be survival horror, and I personally have never viewed those older editions of the game in that vein. I can see his argument, but I respectfully disagree. I don't see why 5e couldn't be a perfectly satisfying experience for dungeon-crawling. Indiana Jones is certainly an alternative for dungeon-crawling, and that isn't survival horror.

Hey, I watched that too!

If I recall correctly, he does note exactly what you've said Phil_Ozzy_Fer. He goes on to clarify could 5e do survival horror dungeon crawl? He even points out that the 5-room-dungeon is used to great affect in 5e, so it handles dungeons just fine. But the gear that still appears in the PHB for survival dungeon crawling seems out of place in 5e. He also agrees it's not an objective truth.

I feel like the video is a part of a larger conversation Coville seems to have been sorta-kina-maybe trying to have for awhile: "What's 5e trying to be." He gives his opinion in this video = "everything."

I actually agree with him. And like him, I don't think it's a bad thing. And like him I think some folks could save themselves some frustration by trying out a different system if they want to host a game that relies heavily on a specific tone or feel.

I actually thought the same thing as I was listening to the video.

That's another thing he talks about a lot: game culture.

I started on one of the red box sets, but I was kid. We did not track anything. Our games where super narrative focused and most things we did were based on fiat. My group and I didn't start caring about gear, stats, and player ingenuity until we were older and started going to game shops where we were told that's how we were supposed to play.

Watched the video, and thoroughly enjoyed it. Don't have much to add, as I have just recently began to know ttrpgs outside of d&d 5e and 3.5. I began enjoying Lancer with the playtest currently running on the site, and I can totally see how wizards of the coast is trying to portray d&d as a "generalist" kind of ttrpg which 1) it is not and 2) is flavorless/oatmeally (or at least leaves all mechanical-flavoring on the shoulders of the DM).

That being said, I still love D&D, even thematical adaptations it wasn't originally designed for (Bedzonell's Star Trek campaign is an absolute work of art), but this short time in Gamersplane has made me thirsty to experience different kinds of ttrpgs

And I love Oatmeal 😄

I legit went on a date once where the person I was seeing said I was boring because I like plain bagels. But a plain bagel to me is a blank canvas--I can cover it in peanut butter, butter and cheese, cream cheese and tomato, etc.!

I can totally get behind a hardy plain bagel base system. But are plain bagels the same as everything bagels 🤔...? No, probably not. I feel like he means to say 5e is an everything bagel?

What's you take @JoshuaMabry ? Could you use 5e to hist a survival horror fantasy at this point? Or should you?

I'm actually hoping to capture some of the emotional content he describes in both a game I'm running here and one I hope to run soon irl. Both are dungeon crawls, and both are using 5e. I hope I've already made the players of the game here a little nervous by reminding them of the potential deadliness of combat at first level. One of the PCs almost died in the first encounter. And I'm hoping to play with resource management, lighting and the environment, the exhaustion rules and a few other things. So we'll see.

Hm... "Can D&D 5E be a good dungeon crawler?" I would think 5e would be as good as any. It's combat system isn't terribly slow.

Great video. There's lots of opinions and thought over how people played back in the old days, but I certainly think in the seventies there was a lot of that style of dungeon play going -- where you didn't even really do overland / return to town stuff at all, you really just moved from dungeon to dungeon, and it was about surviving with your meager supplies and wits. I didn't play that way for long in the early 80s, after I started running AD&D -- we moved pretty quickly to full campaign, more open play on Greyhawk.

I think his point is about game design / mechanics, though, and I agree wholeheartedly with him. 5e isn't well-suited for the style of dungeon-delving game he describes unless it's modified, and then he gets into how much it would need to be modified, and whether it's worth it -- vs. playing a different game that has mechanics aimed at creating a specific experience.

I've always thought that D&D is ill-suited for Ravenloft / Gothic Horror type stuff, but plenty of people seem to enjoy it. For me, characters that see in the dark, can turn undead, can cast any number of spells that completely neuter the horror and tension -- having them present just makes it a different game. Neither good nor bad, but different. Incidentally, there are several good games on the market intended as "bridges" to the OSR from 5e.