For various reasons, I can't seem to come up with a better working idea for a campaign than dungeon crawls.   What do other people use; I mean, other than modules?

A fun one I enjoy is hunting down a missing person who may or may not wish to be found, an abductee who has fallen in love with her captor, or maybe an escaped "villain" who is actually innocent or a double agent. This type of adventure can pull in whatever types of themes your group of players likes most... intrigues, chases, investigation, exploration, heist/kidnapping, rescue, gobs of combat or very little... super flexible and gives you fodder to guide the story based on the players' actions and assumptions.

There's nothing like a good hexcrawl. Either as an exploration game or as a kingdom-building campaign. They're my favorite type of "traditional" dungeon-fantasy play.

Build your villain before prepping the adventures.  What tasks does the villain need to complete their master plan?
Now write your stories/prep your adventures around the villain's goals and needs.

Those are all great ideas.

Remember, too, that it isn't always the destination that's important, sometimes it's the journey itself. Getting there can be half the fun.

The other side of the coin is the dungeon itself. If it's odd or extreme enough, it may not seem like a dungeon at all. Something like a flying castle. Or take Expedition to the Barrier Peaks.

Another way to do it is to have several small 'dungeons' linked by portals. That way, each one may not feel like a dungeon at all. Perhaps retracing someone's steps to find them. You get dungeon and journey all in one.

Another option is aboard a ship at sea. Perhaps looking a lost/buried treasure of Black Bart. You have islands to explore, a single cave to search, it could lead underwater.

Or the ship could be a flying ship. The 'dungeon' could be a cloud.

Just my 2 cents.

I'm currently running two shipboard games. I tossed in a dungeon crawl in one for a change of pace...and the pace is now nearly a full stop.

But you can do a lot at sea. Bring legends to life: Jolly Roger, the Flying Dutchman (I use Earth as my setting, more or less) Odd new worlds...like the stuff in the western ocean where "Here There Be Dragons" is all the charts say. Or even the mystical islands around Britain, where the elves live.

For that matter, a small sea full of new islands worked in the Sinbad movies. I've done that, too.

I find shipboard games present a LOT of options that even overland games don't.

Not that a dungeon crawl isn't fun, but I find it works better table top.

I've discovered that as well.   Can't hurt to have more ideas floating around out there.

This is one of my personal-favorite ways to write adventures and campaigns.

I'm currently running a campaign, wherein the entire jumping off point was a random, one-off character from a book series so old most people wouldn't know the name: "Thieves' World", the character: Lalo the Limner.  His entire shtick?  He painted people's "souls".

From there, the jumping-off point turned into: "what if an entire organization sprung up around a few people discovering that they could literally turn artwork into real life things?"

From there, I asked: "well who could be a painter in a feudal, medieval world?"  Either children of successful merchants, or disenfranchised nobles.

From there, I asked well, "what they do with this power?  How would that skill and power progress?"

Answer: small summonings (like binding familiars), to small diseases (literally poisoning a water-well out of sheer recklessness), to rapidly crafting items that would have required a forge or other specialized equipment.

How did this matter?  Very disruptive group, but their methods aren't obvious.  So far, everytime the adventurers encounter these people, mostly: they encounter the effects of this group.  Like trying to purify the waters of a village, or stomping a rampaging sabretooth, or stopping a tiny (but tough) imp from stealing everyone's food.

Most of the results have been NON-combative, as a consequence.  The players have been able to employ nearly every skill that they have, and only resort to combat when absolutely necessary.

 Also, don't forget genre and inspiration, which can often have wildly divergent origins.

 One game we played in D&D featured each of several mid-low level PC's as 'community leaders' in several close-by settlements of assorted groups. A high priest, a baron, the head of a tribe, that sort of thing, all in an isolated area, all low-tech, fairly low-magic.

 We had to start working together when isolated settlements were being raided by unknown attackers - we only had a few 'consequential' NPC sorts to assign and had to do the major lifting together, rushing to respond to incidents ourselves.

 It wasn't until we downed our first Neogi Spelljammer and had to start reverse-engineering their alien thaumaturgy that we realised we were playing XCOM. ^_^

You don't have to have 'dungeon crawls'.

Consider the following campaign... the players are part of a Mercenary Company (size many hundreds). They can be the command crew which gives one type of RP. Or they can be part of the rank and file which gives another. Or both which can be even better

Now hypothesis the company has been sent to garrison a city

• Someone needs to hunt down the heretics/rebels/bad guys ... insert correct flavour for the game
• Someone needs to do guard duty when NPCs are robbing a valuable thing
• Someone needs to escort the valuable caravan to the next city because it has pulled political favours and asked for help
• Someone needs to go out and investigate the werewolf/bandit attack on the village/caravan/trader

Then we can have a campaign shift and move to war. War has battles, has scouts and counter scouting. And after the war there is new territory to occupy

This style of RP can be heavily social as well as combat. On RPOL social tends to work better and the games last longer

For inspiration read 'Black Company' by Glen Cook

Black Company even got a 3.5 setting book: https://blackcompany.fandom.co...any_Campaign_Setting

With all said... it is difficult to escape the "dungeon" feeling. The game is designed to give that feel. Pathfinder is D&D 3.75 and 3rd edition was all "Back to the dungeon". I remember Cityscape and Heroes of War saying that a city or a battlefield was like any other dungeon.

Prepare your game, but also take into account your players. If you want a social struggle, tell the players that maybe brutes will not be as useful as they normally are.

I have to admit I've not had any problems avoiding the dungeon feel... Just don't do dungeons.

One of the funnest campaigns (this was d20 not pathfinder, but hey) was playing all Drow. In this the Drow were modeled on 'Venice in the 14th century'. So lots of parties, lots of festivals. Every two or three days there was something. We had a ton of little 'detective' things to do... Items would arrive in the news, perhaps we'd see something, or our spies would report something to us.

When it came to the festivals usually there was 'something you had to do'. 'Favourite sister day' happened once a year (and was the most feared of all the festivals). In this you had to give publicly a suitable present to your favourite sister. This of course has enormous political ramifications ... Other festivals might be hunts where we would go out and find the biggest prey.

In this campaign the background of festivals and parties was an excuse to RP but also there would be clues for the detectivy bits. There were so many detectivy bit threads on the go that we didn't worry too much about the whole 'what do we do if the players don't get the clue'.

Another great campaign was 'delivering the Mandate of Heaven at the end of the Tang dynasty'. In this we were mostly 'traveling'. There were random encounters on the way (very similar by design to the tales of Sun Wu Kong/monkey). I banished an evil ghost at one point, and the evil ghost raised a court case against me for 'unlawful exorcism'. So I had to hire a demon lawyer. And then of course we had to resolve the court case (which ended up in a fight, because no sane demon actually wants to take the risk of getting to court). We had the whole 'R&D' aspect from paranoia wedged into here (gunpowder devices, flying kites,...other insane things). I think we had about two 'dungeons' in this which were 'investigate the tomb' and that was it.

You can also do 'on board a ship'. Be the crew of a ship. As you travel there are strange islands, other ships, pirates. Navigation is so poor that if you don't investigate the island / pile of drift wood/ ghostly ship/sargasso now then it won't be there in the future. You can do exactly the same idea with camels: ships of the deserts. Lots of short set pieces.

In reply to Siran (msg # 13):

100% correct here. Replacing dungeons with vignettes is a great way to keep a theme without spending months in a single place.