It is kind of funny that after years of trying to find a good explainer on how to run a dungeon, running dungeons, then running a megadungeon, the case is that to run a dungeon you need rooms with activities in them, and when you have completed or become bored of an activity you move on to the next one. Also, agency and exploration are expressed by foreshadowing activities (or not!) and letting players pick which activity to engage with.
It's really that simple. The practices is more about the individual trees than the cohesive forest. That's what dungeons have been and all they have to be! A way to organize the roleplaying game activity into a variety or prompts. The Dungeon is the obfuscation technique that is deployed to enchant the whole process. Not only are you cycling through roleplaying prompts, you are doing so in the context of a series of "rooms" within the dungeon.
It's a little frustrating to me that this is all it is! There's an affect I am chasing that the format as it exists has not produced in me. The dungeon format, where everything is in a little map that you uncover and make concrete isn't what I'm after. I want to go into something unmappable so it feels like we are playing without a net.
I think exploration just means something totally different to me. Exploring seems to just be, going around as you please. I want, going somewhere and trying to understand what's going on. Now how the fuck am I going to build the tools to do that?
