Homebrew Dungeons and Where They Came From

[Indagare Nogitsune]

Dungeons usually serve the purpose of hiding something within that Adventurers want or need to find. Of course, whether they are still inhabited buildings or ancient structures no longer occupied by their original dwellers can vary. They can come from other sources too: the cancerous wounds of a dying goddess or some sort of living organism that is not dissimilar to the Backrooms. Perhaps they are created by some mysterious force to challenge humanity.

It would be pretty easy to make a setting where the deities created the first dungeons, making them akin to those in Solo Leveling where they provide some loot and 'adventure' for any that try them. Or, of course, at some level they could be elaborate traps created by the Fey: allowing fairly easy access and exit at first, but becoming harder the further in one goes.

How do you have or explain dungeons in your setting? What differentiates them from a normal building or ruin?

Some of this is inspired by my own musings as to what the various structures on Earth might end up becoming if people were unable to maintain them, but could later visit them and poke around inside.

 

[Ghost2020]

Earthdawn has one of the best reason for dungeons. People built them to hide in during an incursion of astral creatures that lasted centuries. When it was over they came out into the changed world. Leaving the cairns behind, and other things can and do move into them.

 

[Reynard]

Earthdawn has one of the best reason for dungeons. People built them to hide in during an incursion of astral creatures that lasted centuries. When it was over they came out into the changed world. Leaving the cairns behind, and other things can and do move into them.

Earthdawn had the best reasons for almost all the old D&D tropes. I really love that setting, even if the game system is the 90sest thing ever.

 

[Reynard]

In one campaign I ran, a thousand years before , Dragons were a much greater threat and so there were lots of underground fortresses and cities. The dragons were defeated by a mythic hero and over time, those fortresses and cities became classic dungeons as monsters, bandits, crazy wizards, etc... used them as bases of operation away from the civilized surface folk.

 

[Mannahnin]

In The Nightmares Underneath, dungeons include some ruins, but more primarily are incursions into the waking world from the Nightmare Realm. They are nightmares spawned from some act of human tragedy and horror and the disturbed inner life of a human being.

Each one opens into the physical world and spills out monsters. If left alone each one expands and gets worse, like a cancer. Each one has a Crown, a chief monster type in it, and an Anchor, a physical object infused with strong emotions by the human or humans whose nightmares formed the dungeon. If the Anchor is removed from the dungeon it will weaken, lose its connection to the physical/waking world, and collapse.

Human beings who enter nightmare incursions normally go utterly mad, but a small percentage seem to be immune to this, and PCs are all of this group. This creates a reason for society to tolerate many otherwise disreputable adventurers, because they are needed to fight the nightmare incursions.

 

[el-remmen]

In my current setting, there are two worlds, the surface and a hollow world with the core as its sun. Dungeons are the result of the ancient passages that made their winding way towards the center, and the various structures and civilizations that grew up along those ways. Later, war and catastrophe broke those passages, blocked off subterranean places creating a much more fractured in-between world where dungeons dwell and various creatures have moved into them or were trapped in stasis waiting to be discovered.

 

[Reynard]

In my current setting, there are two worlds, the surface and a hollow world with the core as its sun. Dungeons are the result of the ancient passages that made their winding way towards the center, and the various structures and civilizations that grew up along those ways. Later, war and catastrophe broke those passages, blocked off subterranean places creating a much more fractured in-between world where dungeons dwell and various creatures have moved into or were trapped in stasis waiting to be discovered.

I have a megadungeon that was the weird science fantasy hollow earthers mining their way to the surface before their magitech went wonky and killed them all (except those preserved in cryo) but the automated systems dug to the surface anyway. I ran a portion of it as a Shadowdark con campaign. Maybe one day I will write the whole thing up properly.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

In The Nightmares Underneath, dungeons include some ruins, but more primarily are incursions into the waking world from the Nightmare Realm. They are nightmares spawned from some act of human tragedy and horror and the disturbed inner life of a human being.

I'm pretty sure they're something similar in 13th Age as well.