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<blockquote data-quote="Mad_Jack" data-source="post: 8980883" data-attributes="member: 6750306">For me, personally, it's always been a struggle against my own brain to be able to slap down a dungeon (or other location) without having compelling reasons for its existence...Why is this dungeon there - what's the reason for its existence? Who put it there? (Especially if it's out in the middle of nowhere with no other civilization around...)If it's anywhere near civilization, why hasn't it been discovered/fully explored/pillaged yet?Since the dungeon was obviously built for a purpose, what was that purpose? And keeping that purpose in mind, how does each room in the dungeon serve that purpose, without just existing simply to add more rooms to the map?If it has monsters in it, how do they survive? What do they eat? How do they manage to coexist without the more badass ones killing off the weaker ones?And, as Quickleaf mentioned in the post above, even if the rational narrative justification for having a dungeon exists, how do I make it interesting for the party? Should every last forgotten ruin have some dire magical prophesy or legendary lost item associated with it, or house some powerful enemy or faction?Given that I've taken classes in sociology, anthropology, and psychology, and enjoy reading about history, linguistics and other stuff, it's tough for me to just add something to my game worlds without at least a rough idea of how it fits into the world around it and how it affects both the past and present of my game.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Mad_Jack, post: 8980883, member: 6750306"] For me, personally, it's always been a struggle against my own brain to be able to slap down a dungeon (or other location) without having compelling reasons for its existence... Why is this dungeon there - what's the reason for its existence? Who put it there? (Especially if it's out in the middle of nowhere with no other civilization around...) If it's anywhere near civilization, why hasn't it been discovered/fully explored/pillaged yet? Since the dungeon was obviously built for a purpose, what was that purpose? And keeping that purpose in mind, how does each room in the dungeon [I]serve[/I] that purpose, without just existing simply to add more rooms to the map? If it has monsters in it, how do they survive? What do they eat? How do they manage to coexist without the more badass ones killing off the weaker ones? And, as Quickleaf mentioned in the post above, even if the rational narrative justification for having a dungeon exists, how do I make it interesting for the party? Should every last forgotten ruin have some dire magical prophesy or legendary lost item associated with it, or house some powerful enemy or faction? Given that I've taken classes in sociology, anthropology, and psychology, and enjoy reading about history, linguistics and other stuff, it's tough for me to just add something to my game worlds without at least a rough idea of how it fits into the world around it and how it affects both the past and present of my game. [/QUOTE]

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