Ratio of wilderness to dungeon adventuring?

[garhkal]

Last game session my players mentioned they've yet to have any actual dungeons to adventure in.. And i agree. However when i wrote my realm out there was only a few spots i had dungeons wrote in for (a few citadels in the mountains, a tower and dungeon area on one of the islands of the east coast, some dungeons rumored to exist on the islands in the big lake, and the like)..

When you DM, what sort of ratio of overland to underground/dungeon adventuring do you generally go with?

Linked to that, i am surprised there's no dungeon download area in the download area.. with some generic dungeons people can yank..

[Halaster-Blackcloak]

I try to make a good mix of city/wilderness/dungeon areas. Sometimes the heart of the adventure takes place in an outdoor area, where the "dungeon" can be a cavern, a mountainous tunnel area, an area of the Underdark, a haunted forest, etc. Sometimes the "dungeon" consists of several sites set in the city. And of course, often the heart of the adventure takes place in a castle and/or underground series of actual dungeons.

In my current campaign, the first adventure entailed an overland journey to a different city to consult a sage, followed by a sea journey to a nearby land to rid the area of an infestation of goblins who worship a demon who had come to dwell in the Prime Material Plane. They had to attack and destroy a gate that was to be used to gate in other demons. So that one consisted of both city adventure and wilderness adventure with no dungeons.

The second adventure involved an overland/outdoor journey to a nearby mountain range, a perilous climb up the mountain, and a dungeon crawl in a castle with deep and extensive dungeons in an effort to discover and eliminate the source of a plague of undead seen around the lands. So both wilderness and dungeon crawl.

The third adventure was a very long one. It consisted of an overseas journey (complete with pirate attacks), a long section of adventure in an Egyptian styled city, another long journey across the desert wilderness, entering a desolated desert area where a mummy/priest of Set had set up an undead empire. That one also had "dungeon" chapters inside a pyramid and a great sphinx. So it was both wilderness (in several different areas - desolate desert, desert, ocean) and city settings (quite a bit took place in bars, temples, at the bazaar, etc) and also extensive dungeon crawling.

The fourth adventure was almost entirely outdoors, fighting an invasion of frost giants who had set up an artifact that was causing eternal winter to become established across the land. (This was the lethal snow problem I mentioned in the thread "I Think I Just Killed My World" or something to that effect).

Now the party is finding out that they did not kill off the source of the undead in the mountains and they're going back to re-explore the ruins and find what they misses, so a lot of actual dungeons in this one after a cross-country trip. So part city (research), part wilderness, and part dungeon crawl. The dungeon crawl party will probably take up 2/3rds of the play time.

[Billy_Buttcheese]

Another good topic.

I have often thought about creating more wilderness/town adventures for my groups but sadly, almost to a person, dungeons are always the preferred environment and the ultimate "goal" of all our sessions. I'd like to believe my skills as a DM are decent enough, but whenever I try to introduce something different, inevitably most all of my groups always ask, "When do we get to the adventure?" Roughly translated this means, why are we wasting time on this overland crap when we could be searching for hidden treasure and fighting the dragon? Needless to say, it can be very frustrating, especially if I spent a lot of time and effort on the journey. I take full responsibility if the error lies with my DMing skills but most of my players have lived for the dungeon and quickly become bored and restless when I try something new.

To answer the original question, for me, I would say the ratio is probably about 10:1, dungeon to other. Woe is me...

[Halaster-Blackcloak]

I would try putting abandoned dungeons in wilderness areas and having them connected, i.e. perhaps monsters from the wilderness frequent the dungeon for shelter, mating, storing treasure, etc. That way they have to see the wilderness as part of the dungeon. Maybe multiple ruins spread out over a wilderness area. Or dungeons set in other planes, etc.

I have to admit, I've been lucky to have had mainly players with different tastes, but also tolerance of others' tastes. Some love dungeon adventures, some were wilderness fanatics, others loved city adventures. Some were very much motivated by roleplaying, some enjoyed hack'n'slash over anything else, others were very absorbed with character development. So I tried to always incorporates aspects of everything in each adventures, so everyone would have a part of something they enjoyed most. And the dungeon delvers realized that this particular adventure might be mainly dungeon, and accepted the fact that the next one might mainly take place in the wilderness or the city for players that craved that above all else. It was always a pretty harmonious group.

[garhkal]

Looks lke i might need to start doing some smaller dungeon areas then.. Since the party's in the mountains right now, that shouldn't be too hard to have..