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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Sigurd" data-source="post: 2725518" data-attributes="member: 19412">Dungeons as treasure.Thanks for the Download.Especially in early level adventures, DM's tend to fall over backwards to create an elaborate space that is not too dangerous. The space is most often within reasonable traveling distance of the starting town, has stone walls and a minimum or local entanglements. Mostly they are independent locations created without thought to their construction cost or their feasibility as a stronghold\den\lair. Often the local populace is begging for someone to remove this source of fear and loathing.On some occasions my character has entered a dungeon cleaned it of every last monster to bare stone walls. They have taken all the treasure, from a place that seems to have kept away invaders by its sheer reputation, and journeyed on to a dangerous city with cuthroats and higher level characters of various alignments not their own.I always wonder "why did they leave?" At least half of them are more suited to the wilderness than the city anyway. Of the ones that head to the city, in a few levels they will be chomping at the bit to establish a keep but the dungeon, its stone, its excavations and even 'that marvelous fountain that healed them' (because the DM took pity on us) will have left their mind and evaporated.Other questions I think about: Are they morally responsible for letting just anyone have it when they leave?  Your characters kill 3 dozen various nasties and leave the twisted recess to spend their loot. Did they consecrate the bodies? Did they collapse the tunnels? Did their boasts of daring do alert the underworld of the local town to this great tunnel complex ? What will there reaction be when the revisit the sleepy town of homlet only to find that the new landlords of the space they cleared are 3 times more deadly and have killed everyone who helped them.The WOTC Stronghold builders guide says that a simple jail cell (assume 40' feet) costs 500 gold to build. If an early level party can clear out a lair of another humanoid, monstous or otherwise, why shouldn't they adapt it as a base. True their neighbors might be viscious and mean but the previous owners survived and the party was tough enough to kill them. Even more the party has brains and time to fortify their new free form keep.I know this is in some ways meta gaming at its worst, the adventure represents a challenge and the fun lies in the next challenge, but my frugal soul would sometimes give up my share of the portable treasure for clear title to the evacuated dungeon. It doesn't take many elaborate DM inventions to make me think -- hey if I expanded that....The last meta question I ask myself when confronted with a big hole full of dangerous monsters. What would happen if we just collapsed and sealed all the exits and left? Not forever mind you just enough to put 3 months of starvation and hurt on the whole enemy crew. In the meantime the local population could be watched to find out if anyone was alarmed by the burying of this deadly pit of vipers -- they would probably be accomplices <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />. Especially if they are mostly natural foes, 3 months without food and water should soften them up for sure. If everytime there was a bandit raid the party collapsed another bandit hide out the foes would be easier to find, just by process of elimination.SigurdIt is sort of vicious meta gaming. The DM picks rare elements to make a dungeon trek interesting to the party not to make them rich. Mostly you have to wink and go along with game conventions but sometimes ya gotta try the other approach.</blockquote>

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