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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dykstrav" data-source="post: 5643242" data-attributes="member: 40522">I also love a good dungeon crawl, although for somewhat different reasons. I like the factor of exploration more than killing things and taking their stuff. A cavern complex of orcs? Meh. The ancient barrow-tombs of a sorcerer from a vanished civilization? Hand me my ten-foot pole and iron rations, please.I believe that a supplement during the 3.5 era (was it Dungeonscape?) had a discussion about dungeon ecology. It did address some real-world concerns, but boiled down to, "this is a dungeon, not an ecology experiment, your players are never going to notice how the food chain doesn't quite work or ask you how these creatures get air down there." It's basically hand-waving, but there's nothing wrong with that unless the GM and players want it differently.By default, I sort of require that a dungeon has a background and be somewhat logical in its design and layout. As a player, it just won't hold my interest if it's a series of encounters linked by corridors. As a GM, coming up with reasons for what the characters find is at least as important as what they find. Let me share with you a dungeon that I'm working on for my upcoming Pathfinder game.The characters are searching for an artifact, and their investigation has lead them to a temple dedicated to Demogorgon. This temple is located deep in a marsh, and takes the form of a ziggurat surrounded by brackish water. At the top of the ziggurat is a single shaft leading down--it goes all the way through the ziggurat to and underground lake where the demon-worshippers breed aquatic monsters. Tunnels branch off of the main shaft, leading to different areas of the complex.The upper levels are reserved for worship. The temple has two main altars and two high priests. Demogorgon has two heads that are often at odds with one another, each priest serves one of the two heads. Depending on what they do, they might earn the favor of one faction or the other and get carte blanche from that faction to raise all sorts of hell in the other faction's stuff. If the characters rile both sides, they'll have to deal with them both at the same time (with far more difficulty).The mid-levels are quarters, storage, and the like. They've deliberately sandwiched the living quarters between both the upper and lower levels in an attempt to have some line of defense in case of invasion--characters will have to fight their way through the upper or lower levels first, giving the rest of the temple a chance to regroup and establish a perimeter (or escape, as the case may be).The lower levels are at the underground lake, where monsters are bred. You could theoretically get into the temple here by swimming through the water outside. This place has fiendish crocodiles, gars, piranhas, and other aquatic or amphibious things. Ritual sacrifices are carried out here by dangling living creatures from the shaft above, so the resident monsters are well-trained to respond to creatures descending through the shaft on ropes.</blockquote>

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