The anti-dungeon, negadungeon, or trap dungeon, is a dungeon in Classic/OSR RPG play that is purposefully a bad experience. If you're still not clear on the concept, Gus L has a really good essay explaining anti-dungeons.
Simon Carryer, in his D&D adventure module Should Have Stayed at Home, argues that the bad experiences of anti-dungeons will "make your campaign better." I will argue that this might sometimes be the case, but it's heavily dependent on how your campaign is structured. Furthermore, if you include anti-dungeons without the consent of the players then it could lead to a mutiny.
This essay is in part a critique of Simon Carryer's D&D adventure booklet Should Have Stayed at Home. I don't mean to cast aspersions on Simon. The booklet is full of his usual cleverness, creativity, and interesting connections. However, I feel strongly about anti-dungeons and want to analyze them in more detail.
Should Have Stayed at Home contains 4 dungeons. I'll give you a brief, spoiler-free description of each so that we might discuss them:
When I was younger, I got it in my head that I wanted to play a really tough competitive game online. I was unhappy that I couldn't play competitive sports anymore and felt that I could maybe find some of that competitive spirit online. I didn't like first-person shooters like Counter-Strike, so I eventually opted for a birds-eye-view MOBA DotA 2. I thought this game was cool and really wanted to get good at it. But DotA is an extremely painful and punishing game to play, especially for a beginner. It takes painstaking preparation, memorization, and ridiculous amounts of practice to get good. And the practice part means getting beaten to a pulp over and over. And yes, there are some amazing moments when you carry the game and feel like a god. But most of the time, the DotA play experience is absolute misery. The fact that the other players are hugely toxic doesn't help.
At some point, I realized that playing DotA was hurting me and twisting me up inside. It was feeling like a job. A bad job where you're treated like garbage and where you're a volunteer who isn't even being paid. I quit DotA and have never looked back. To this day, many years later, I have no regrets.
The idea of an anti-dungeon looks to me like DotA: it's giving yourself a bad experience because you're chasing the high of the big payoff. It's not actually good for you. In fact, it's very bad for you. If you know what you're getting into then maybe that's OK? But if it gets sprung on you without your knowledge then you are not going to be pleased.
I agree that a Shitty Dungeon, where the issue is that the dungeon's ratio of loot:danger is low, could still be fun for everyone. This gets across the point that the Referee is not promising you loot. Some dungeons just suck and that's OK! But some anti-dungeons seem like something that should be read for humour value and never actually inflicted on players. I got particularly upset when I read through Simon's Uniformly Boring Dungeon. I could imagine myself getting really angry if a Referee had the nerve of throwing this dungeon my way.
When you play an OSR game together, there is a social contract between the players and the Referee. In the typical case, the Referee promises to provide entertaining dungeons (that contain a mix of treasure and dangers) and to be a fair arbiter in adjudicating the fictional world's reactions to the players' actions. If an anti-dungeon breaks this social contract then the Referee should think twice before including it in their campaign. To do otherwise is to rupture the players' trust. The only exception would be if the players consented to this ahead of time, which means that you've explicitly negotiated a different social contract.
In some romantic relationships, partners can decide to spice up their sex lives in a manner called BDSM (Caveat: the linked Wikipedia page is sexually explicit). Because BDSM activities can actually hurt, it's crucially important for everyone to be onboard and to obtain consent. Nobody in their right mind starts a relationship this way without asking for consent first. On a first date at a restaurant, you don't just suddenly pull out a whip and start gleefully whipping the other person. There's a social contract at work here. It is commonly understood that a first date is an opportunity to get to know the other person and find out what they might like. You can happily pursue kinky stuff after establishing some common ground.
I'd argue the same social convention must be observed in an OSR campaign with regard to anti-dungeons. As a Referee, you had better make sure your social partners in the game (the players) are onboard and consenting to your anti-dungeon before you whip it out. It's going to hurt, after all.
I've heard the argument that it makes sense to include anti-dungeons in your campaign in the same way it makes sense to include trap rooms in a dungeon (trap rooms have danger but no treasure). As Simon Carryer puts it:
You place [anti-dungeons] in your campaign for the same reason that you put traps in a dungeon: they provoke [a] more interesting doctrine of exploration, they make the strategic landscape more varied and meaningful.
This analogy relies on the perilous assumption that what's true in a dungeon scales up to the level of a campaign. If this assumption were true, then the Earth would have giant spiders the size of houses running around eating people. Fortunately, we know this is not the case and it's because exoskeletons don't scale up to house-size on land. If you increase the size of an exoskeleton, at some point not far beyond the size of a tarantula the exoskeleton stops working. Scaling to the next level of abstraction usually doesn't work in nature. There are surprising and interesting exceptions (like Benford's Law or fractals), but they're rare.
The bottom line: There's no guarantee that putting anti-dungeons in a campaign will have the same positive effect on the campaign as trap rooms have on a dungeon.
Simon Carryer goes on to say:
A trap dungeon prods us to do something different next time. If we want to have fun playing this game, we need to work at it. This is the radically empowering heart of this game: It is exactly and only what the players make it, for good and for ill.
Here again we have a problematic assertion. Fortunately, Simon provides the counter-argument in his own essay:
We have limited time on this trash-fire earth, why waste any of it on something that makes your life even worse?
Precisely, Simon. What Simon fails to understand is that most players don't want to hurt. They are joining a game in the hope of having a fun social experience with their very limited free time. Slapping them in the face with an anti-dungeon is very likely to cause them to quit. The Referee had better make sure that a slap in the face is what the players want before proceeding.
Furthermore, even for a Referee that is a perfectly neutral arbiter, the choice of what dungeons to make available is still one of the Referee's inputs into the play experience. This is not something chosen by the players. In an open/sandbox campaign the players can decide which dungeons to interact with, but this is still only a veto and not a choice of what options are available. This veto is further disempowered by the characters being unable to obtain perfect information. Players will be told that every dungeon is perilously dangerous. How are they supposed to know which ones really are death traps unless they stick their characters' heads in the trap?
Hence, Simon's argument that an anti-dungeon somehow empowers the players is bunk. This is further proven by the simple thought experiment of a campaign that only contains anti-dungeons. The only thing the players can do to save themselves is to avoid playing altogether.
A big part of what makes an anti-dungeon terrible is the monumental waste:
The smaller an anti-dungeon is, and the easier it is to escape from, the greater the chance of mitigating the harms it can cause.
Not all anti-dungeons are created equal. Simon proposes 4 kinds of anti-dungeons in Should Have Stayed at Home, but I've uncovered at least 4 other variants. I'll list all of them here, along with my thoughts on them. Note that there might be some overlap between the different types, they're not necessarily mutually exclusive.
| ANTI-DUNGEON TYPE | DESCRIPTION | ANALYSIS |
|---|---|---|
| Shitty | A dungeon with a bad loot:danger ratio | Okay as a change-up pitch |
| Archaeological Dig | A dungeon where you dig rather than explore | If the players like digging then it seems harmless |
| Uniformly Boring | Has neither real danger nor treasure | Cruel: it's a boring play experience |
| Unsubstantiated Rumour | Rumours of a dungeon but no dungeon | Mildly cruel, short-lived, and possibly funny |
| Uniformly Awful | Very dangerous but contains no treasure | Cruel: destroys hard-won player resources without any possibility of winning |
| Uniform Payout | Has no danger but lots of treasure | Cruel: seems fun at first, but is ultimately boring and ruinous to the campaign |
| Over-Leveled | More treasure, but way too much danger | Mildly cruel, as some PCs are likely to die before the players realize what's happening, but it could pay off |
| Campaign-Destroying | Contains a doomsday device | Cruel: annihilates possibly years of effort |
Some of the anti-dungeons seem like they could still fit within the typical OSR social contract, especially if they are rare occurrences. However, for the anti-dungeon types I've marked as being cruel, I think the Referee should always obtain explicit consent before including them in a campaign.
Anti-dungeons aren't all bad. In fact, for some play groups they might be just what the (mad) doctor ordered! Here are some ideas on how you could effectively make use of anti-dungeons in your campaign:
In conclusion, I would argue that, as a Referee, you should be crystal clear with the players as to where you stand on the anti-dungeon question. Will the campaign potentially include anti-dungeons? If yes, which kinds? You should also consider the players' input in answering these questions and ensure you have their consent before moving forward. This will ensure that everyone has fun.
Watch out! Surprising your players with a cruel anti-dungeon could be the last game you run with them.
Happy Gaming,