Quote:
Originally Posted by corwyn
Even in DF, most players these days want some motivation other than "get more loot/xp".
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I'll suggest that, in fact, the goal of dungeon fantasy remains "get more loot/xp," but the entertainment value has never been just "kill the monster and take its stuff." That's a bit of a myth of what classic dungeoneering is like. The value has always been in the interesting situations and characters the players would get to engage in.
If you have a series of rooms in which the party simply slaughters all the monsters from the manuals in alphabetical order and takes all their treasure, you won't have nearly as much fun as when you suddenly encounter a little old hermit guarding a golden tree whose fruits glow with a pale light, and who gives you a riddle explaining the purpose of the tree. Can you figure out the riddle? Do you try eating the fruit? Do you kill the old man? Is he really just an old man? These are the sorts of encounters players will remember.
So what I want in a dungeon is plenty of interesting things to see and do, where "kill the monster" is usually the last resort, because you have failed at everything else.