On the nature of dungeons in your campaign.

[Rothe]

...
The dungeon is an alien realm inimical to surfaceworlders. So the party had better bring their "A" game if they want to survive. But a big part of the A-game is thinking rationally. So, as others have pointed out as well, if you have a room with a monster that seems very unlikely, or two monsters in proximity that seem an unlikely pair, there needs to be some rationale for it because you want to get your players into the habit of asking those questions... which means there will need to be satisfactory answers. However, there's nothing to say that those answers have to be evident at the time. ....

Exactly! I find this half the fun when designing a dungeon and actually enjoy starting off with some random population of monsters and coming up with some rationale for it.

 

[MaxKaladin]

MaxKaladin, I like your idea a lot. My only worry would be that it's very easy to present orcs as mundane and boring. If you can avoid that, and instill Tolkienesque orc-fear in your players, that'd work very well. If not, maybe a different more exotic race, or even a 'new' race; even if they're really just renamed orcs, calling them the Ancient Yrkhach Hordes of the Damned Realm or similar might garner more respect.

Yeah, you'd want to develop the orcs so that they're not mundane, everyday cannon-fodder orcs. That said, orcs would only be one foe. A lot of what you'd be facing would be undead of various kinds that came from the dead orcs, their slaves and the guardian creatures they kept along with whatever sorts of things wandered/burrowed in. I'd imagine most orcs would actually be opponents outside the dungeon (not wanting to go in for fear of catching the terrible plague even after all these years), though I can see some forgotten holds being populated by the degenerate survivors of the original orcs who have remained sealed in for generations.

 

[MaxKaladin]

MaxKaladin, good stuff. I might have to yoink your idea.

Feel free.

 

[Shadowslayer]

heh...thanks muchly for the permission, but its too late....it was yoinked already!

But I'm using lizard-y types instead of orcs. Always had a fondness for Trogs. (Who says they were ALWAYS a subterrenean race?)

 

[frankthedm]

Dragons fly how fast?!
How high up can a flying mage shoot fireballs from?!
Stoneshape can comprimize my castle walls how much?!

I'll build down, not up in the D&D game!

 

[Imaro]

When I've finished my Dark Legacies campaign(sometime in Spring) I will be running a C&C game based in a homebrew world of my own tentatively titled "The Isle of Mists". After reading a fair amount of Fey love threads I realized I really like them and have decided they will play a major role in my campaign. Anyway(sorry for rambling) back to dungeons.

In my game the fey are divided into courts(dependent on alignment and my own judgement) of Summer(LG,NG,CG) Winter(LE,NE,CE) Spring(CG,CN,LN) and Fall(CE,N,CN) or something like this(still working on it). Over the past 100 years the fey world and the human world have slowly begun to mesh due to an unknown cataclysm in the fey world. Many of the ruins, dungeons etc. are remnants of this cataclysm that have bled into the human world. The court that whatever fey built or resided in these "lost" abodes colors the structure, appearance etc. of each particular "dungeon". So an example might be that an abandoned Winter Court stronghold might be constructed from the bones and skulls of children or a Summer court city might have sparkling pearl walls with prism rooftops etc. Nearly all monsters are the result of the energies of the Fey world and the Human world interacting violently and creating things that we're never meant to be, mutating humans, etc. These "monsters" are drawn to these remnants of a world they can never truly be a part of but feela longing for.

I know, it still needs a little work but I'm slowly getting there. Anywho just an example of what my dungeons will be like.

 

[diaglo]

all the world's a sta... dungeon.

in my campaigns everything is the dungeon. the entirety of the campaign. every place visited. every creature met is a monster. including that cleric that healed the injured PC.

 

[mcrow]

I treat any enclosed structure as a dungeon in my games. Whether it be a cave,ruin, palace of a current king or a long dead one they are all dungeons.

That said most of my dungeons have a perfectly logical reason why they would be there and why who/what is there. Sometimes thoug we like a good old school dungeon where nothing really need to make sense.

 

[Tonguez]

In my latest campaign I decided to use only 'natural dungeons' - karst cave complexes, sulphur caves (snottites = green slime), lava tunnels, Slot canyons, collapsed coral terraces, glacial caves, underwater caves, salt caves, mountain passes, overgrown swamps, jungle, thorn bush forests (thanks Tarzan), purple worm tunnels, giant fossil nautilus shells and of course the occasional ruined temple overgrown by jungle, or city lost beneath ice.

The other thing of course is that in a world of subterranean races its not so farfetched to find caverns that have been 'built on' by inhabitants, mines that cross through a natural cave complex and other constructed tunnels interlinking various 'other' complexes (ie underdark)

The King Kong PS2 Game captures the idea of natural dungeons and the beasties that lurk within.

a section of Antelope Canyon (a Slot Canyon)

 

[PapersAndPaychecks]

In my world, Law is in the sky. The heavens, planes of ultimate law, lie beyond the clouds and birds are the messengers of Law. The piercing rays of the sun are represented by spears and arrows, which are the weapons of Light and Law, the arrows fletched with bird feathers for symbolic as well as practical reasons.

Chaos is underground, gnawing like a worm at the heart of the world. When you descend into a dungeon, you leave the realms of Law behind and venture into the realms of Chaos. The spreading tendrils of chaos are represented by flexible weapons such as flails and chains and whips.

Chaos being what it is, it can pervert anything -- including the Law itself (hence creatures like orcs, which are Lawful, but live in Chaos' realms of dungeons and darkness and work to serve it). And Law being what it is, it can regulate anything -- including Chaos itself (hence creatures like elves, which are Chaotic, but live in Law's realms of the surface and light and work to serve it).

Err, there are a lot more implications which aren't germane to the subject, but basically, if you go underground, things stop having to make sense -- and the deeper you go, the less sense they make.