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What do you consider to be a dungeon?

Sigourn

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Long story short: some guy on Reddit started shitting on New Vegas' unmemorable dungeons. I replied that New Vegas' doesn't have dungeons, but locations, and as such you can't judge those based on genre conventions. I doubt Obsidian made a cave, placed a couple of enemies on it and called it a "dungeon". Whereas games like Baldur's Gate have locations designed as pure dungeons, with lots of enemies, lots of corridors, lots of phat lewt.

So I ask you, nice and pretty people of the RPG Codex: what do you consider to be a dungeon? Is every cave, building, anything with enemies inside it a dungeon? Or a dungeon is only what the creator intended to be considered a dungeon?

Or how else would you define a dungeon?
 

Hobo Elf

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Long story short: some guy on Reddit started shitting on New Vegas' unmemorable dungeons. I replied that New Vegas' doesn't have dungeons, but locations, and as such you can't judge those based on genre conventions. I doubt Obsidian made a cave, placed a couple of enemies on it and called it a "dungeon". Whereas games like Baldur's Gate have locations designed as pure dungeons, with lots of enemies, lots of corridors, lots of phat lewt.

I don't get it. You single out New Vegas for not having dungeons, but by your definition it does. Care to explain your reasoning for it? Is it because it's not faux medieval?
 

Sigourn

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I don't get it. You single out New Vegas for not having dungeons, but by your definition it does. Care to explain your reasoning for it? Is it because it's not faux medieval?

I define a dungeon as a place built with the intention of giving the player lots of loot and things to murder.

Whereas New Vegas' locations are part of its worldbuilding. That's why there's so little loot and enemies. Most of its caves are devoid of raiders of any kind, it's just a few ants and not much more.
 

Maggot

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Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire
A place where I fight a lot of dudes. The Glow was a dungeon and so was that one rocket place in New Vegas full of supermutants.
 

V_K

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To me an RPG dungeon is any self-contained area with a clearly defined end goal. It need not necessarily have enemies (there are combat-less dungeons in e.g. RoA, LoX or Uukrul), and it need not even be a dungeon in the direct sense, i.e. underground (the swamp area in RoA2, or underwater area in RoA3 are clearly dungeons gameplay-wise). What matters is that everything in a dungeon works towards reaching its end goal, and once you achieve it you leave the dungeon to never look back (except for grinding and/or secrets).
 

deama

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I don't get it. You single out New Vegas for not having dungeons, but by your definition it does. Care to explain your reasoning for it? Is it because it's not faux medieval?

I define a dungeon as a place built with the intention of giving the player lots of loot and things to murder.

Whereas New Vegas' locations are part of its worldbuilding. That's why there's so little loot and enemies. Most of its caves are devoid of raiders of any kind, it's just a few ants and not much more.

So diablo isn't a dungeon crawler? I mean, you could argue that all the "dungeons" in that place all build up the lore and atmosphere of the game no?
 

Sigourn

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So diablo isn't a dungeon crawler? I mean, you could argue that all the "dungeons" in that place all build up the lore and atmosphere of the game no?

If it was designed as a dungeon crawler, they are dungeons indeed.

Moreover, if it existed in real life, you would call it a dungeon. Whereas if New Vegas' caves existed in real life, I doubt you would call them dungeons.
 

deama

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So diablo isn't a dungeon crawler? I mean, you could argue that all the "dungeons" in that place all build up the lore and atmosphere of the game no?

If it was designed as a dungeon crawler, they are dungeons indeed.

Moreover, if it existed in real life, you would call it a dungeon. Whereas if New Vegas' caves existed in real life, I doubt you would call them dungeons.

Of course I wouldn't call them dungeons, they're caves! But they sure behave like dungeons.
 

King Crispy

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A dungeon, in an RPG, is any location you can reach in the game whose sole purpose of being is to explore, specifically and explicitly at the risk of encountering hostile or dangerous forces there.

Unfortunately there can't be a more specific description, because "dungeons" come in so many myriad forms, such as earthen tunnels, above-ground stone tombs, abandoned buildings, etc. We may not like it that the term describes so many things, but it does.

If you ask why the danger aspect is tied to the term's definition, it's because without the explicit danger present, it just becomes another mundane place not worth the designers' time to model and/or implement.
 

Hobo Elf

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I don't get it. You single out New Vegas for not having dungeons, but by your definition it does. Care to explain your reasoning for it? Is it because it's not faux medieval?

I define a dungeon as a place built with the intention of giving the player lots of loot and things to murder.

Whereas New Vegas' locations are part of its worldbuilding. That's why there's so little loot and enemies. Most of its caves are devoid of raiders of any kind, it's just a few ants and not much more.

So a dungeon is a maze-like area with enemies and loot but doesn't fit the story and/or setting at all, and a New Vegas set piece of a maze-like area with enemies and loot but it is part of the story and/or setting so it isn't a dungeon? This is what you're saying.
 

AArmanFV

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A Dungeon is a Dungeon, not a cave or whatever. A place like a maze, with traps, monsters, loot, a "dangerous" place made for adventurers, conventionally located underground (for "upward" dungeons I prefer to use the term "tower" if I can).

I don't know the point of this thread. Standardize the definition or discuss if New Vegas has Dungeons?
 

Sigourn

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So a dungeon is a maze-like area with enemies and loot but doesn't fit the story and/or setting at all, and a New Vegas set piece of a maze-like area with enemies and loot but it is part of the story and/or setting so it isn't a dungeon? This is what you're saying.

What I mean is that I find it hard to consider New Vegas' locations as dungeons, since they are very barebones, often empty.

I can't call a cave with four or five nightstalkers a dungeon, because I wouldn't call a real life cave with four or five coyotes a dungeon.

A Dungeon is a Dungeon, not a cave or whatever. A place like a maze, with traps, monsters, loot, a "dangerous" place made for adventurers, conventionally located underground (for "upward" dungeons I prefer to use the term "tower" if I can).

I don't know the point of this thread. Standardize the definition or discuss if New Vegas has Dungeons?

Both, if possible.
 

Hobo Elf

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So a dungeon is a maze-like area with enemies and loot but doesn't fit the story and/or setting at all, and a New Vegas set piece of a maze-like area with enemies and loot but it is part of the story and/or setting so it isn't a dungeon? This is what you're saying.

What I mean is that I find it hard to consider New Vegas' locations as dungeons, since they are very barebones, often empty.

I can't call a cave with four or five nightstalkers a dungeon, because I wouldn't call a real life cave with four or five coyotes a dungeon.

A Dungeon is a Dungeon, not a cave or whatever. A place like a maze, with traps, monsters, loot, a "dangerous" place made for adventurers, conventionally located underground (for "upward" dungeons I prefer to use the term "tower" if I can).

I don't know the point of this thread. Standardize the definition or discuss if New Vegas has Dungeons?

Both, if possible.

They're barebones and empty because they're shit, but they're still technically dungeons since all the aspects are there.
 

Zed Duke of Banville

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A dungeon is an indoor location of adequate size, containing monsters and traps, which the player-characters navigate in order to obtain treasure or complete a quest.

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In a grid-based blobber, an outdoors environment constricted by hedges, trees, cliff faces, and the like may functionally serve as a dungeon level. Unlikely to have an outdoors dungeon in other kinds of CRPGs, though.

Long story short: some guy on Reddit started shitting on New Vegas' unmemorable dungeons. I replied that New Vegas' doesn't have dungeons, but locations, and as such you can't judge those based on genre conventions.
New Vegas contains a few large vaults that are, functionally, dungeons. Arguably a few other locations, as well, even in the base game.
 

Momock

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Or how else would you define a dungeon?
It's a place that is it's own thing, kind of "disconnected" from the rest of the world of the game. You have to enter in it and obtain something while dealing with the particular challenges it throws at you: puzzles, traps and enemies that can only be found in this place and that are thematicaly consistents. They can also have their own particular rules or alterations of the pre-established rules: you can walk on the ceiling, casting magic burns the user (uses HP), only one member of the party can enter in some rooms for whatever reason, etc.

Did I forget something?
 

Sigourn

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I gave this some more thought, and came up with these two questions I would like to have answered:

1. How would you make a cave in New Vegas without people calling it a dungeon?

2. Is any real life cave with a dead explorer inside and with wildlife in it a dungeon?

These are basically the breaking point of my argument. If you answer question 2 as "no" (which is the only reasonable answer), you admit games can have locations that resemble real life locations, and that only the fact that they are videogames suddenly turn this normal locations into dungeons, even if they remain exactly the same.

The first question is basically the same question put into perspective after you answer number 2. If caves are inherently dungeons because of their game status, then it is impossible to make a cave that it is not a dungeon, which is absurd.
 

Hyperion

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If you answer question 2 as "no" (which is the only reasonable answer), you admit games can have locations that resemble real life locations, and that only the fact that they are videogames suddenly turn this normal locations into dungeons, even if they remain exactly the same.

Except you're comparing the literal definition of a dungeon as it is in real life to video game jargon for an area where we go to play the game. It's semantics again. If instead of dungeon, we used the word cellar, or vault (as would be fitting for Fallout entries), would that suddenly change the issue you're describing? At some point, an area we enter to get rich and kill everything in sight isn't going to mesh with the real definition of the word and we're back here.

In short, dungeon is an all encompassing word for areas we enter in games, but is literally an underground prison.
 

Sigourn

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Except you're comparing the literal definition of a dungeon as it is in real life to video game jargon for an area where we go to play the game. It's semantics again. If instead of dungeon, we used the word cellar, or vault (as would be fitting for Fallout entries), would that suddenly change the issue you're describing?

Of course it would. If you described a cave as a cave, it would get rid of the issue completely.

My first question still stands: how do you make a cave in New Vegas without people judging it as a dungeon?
 

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