You really need to read Gus L.’s blog. Across a series of informative and enjoyable essays, the man has been gradually detailing the “Classic Dungeon Crawl” style of play (and how to apply it to more recent RPGs).
I find his argument about the utility of location-based play particularly compelling:
[Read more…]“[T]he dungeon is first a simplification and a gamification – a game board that strips away many of the complex problems of an open fictional world… As a game ‘board’ rather than a ‘structure’ or ‘narrative’ the dungeon first creates spatial puzzles – its mechanics and principles often relate to how best to move through it as a location. With a spatial orientation in its design (the map being far more important in a Dungeon Crawl then it is a scene based game) the spatial puzzle leads to exploration, a game where it’s valuable for players to determine and understand the physical layout of the dungeon: entrances, exists, regions, locations of interest and the interrelations between them.”