Quote from: Skarg;973884The version on page 22 of this: http://www.grey-elf.com/philotomy.pdf or another version?

There was a longer and better draft in Knockspell magazine #2. But that one will give you the basic idea.

Ah, thanks!

Quote from: estar;972185I will say it again a Dungeon is no different than any other setting except that it is a maze with rooms with possibly multiple levels. There is no default for a forest, island, nor there is a default for a maze with room. Make it mean what you want it to mean and run with it.

Preach it brotha!

My only assumption about dungeons, after many years of playing, is that any time I assumed something about the dungeon, I found myself having to roll up a new character.

Quote from: RPGPundit;972613Well, a large number of very significant people in our world's history did so.



They do, but almost never look like a D&D dungeon.



In fantasy you can always say "a crazy wizard did it", but if you ignore that particular reason there's still a lot of illogical elements to the physical structure of how most dungeons look like.

I think it's worth noting that in D&D, a crazy wizard is far from the only "crazy" possibility.  It could also be a crazy god right?  I mean D&D is a world in which the characters can potentially actually interact with gods and demons and all sorts of "extra-planar" entities.  I don't personally have any problem at all with the notion of a dungeon being simply a huge puzzle challenge.  It could be nothing more than some nutty god's plaything.  I envision my mega-dungeon as something close to a living entity.  It's a magical space that doesn't function according to any real logic and the deeper you get the weirder it is.  Questions like "how is this place ventilated?" and "where do the monsters go poop?" don't bother me much in a world where inter-dimensional gates and bags of holding and alternate planes of existence are part of "reality."

One Tunnels&Trolls megadungeon was built by the dwarf wizard-god Gristlegrim for entertainment. He allows groups of adventurers to go in and slay and monsters and loot treasures while he and his customers watch the goings on. It makes sense in a way.

The question of dungeon "ecology" that always got me wasn't food, drink, or poop (we would actually find piles of manure in dungeons, it's where the DM hid the rot grubs...), it was air. How did fresh air circulate into the depths of the dungeon? Especially with so many creatures breathing it?

Quote from: DavetheLost;977513The question of dungeon "ecology" that always got me wasn't food, drink, or poop (we would actually find piles of manure in dungeons, it's where the DM hid the rot grubs...), it was air. How did fresh air circulate into the depths of the dungeon? Especially with so many creatures breathing it?

I've always assumed that the presence of any kind of air elemental refreshes the local atmosphere. A minor summoning here and there, or just some nozzle-like direct gates from the Plane of Air. No real-world physics required.

Somewhere deep deep in the dungeon the players enter a huge cavern which they discover has walls that seem to be made of a weird soft, "fleshy" material.  These walls constantly undergo a slow, rhythmic  expansion and contraction and the players can feel a strong rush of air moving in and out of the cavern around them...

 It ain't rocket science.

Quote from: Zevious Zoquis;977509I envision my mega-dungeon as something close to a living entity.  It's a magical space that doesn't function according to any real logic and the deeper you get the weirder it is.  Questions like "how is this place ventilated?" and "where do the monsters go poop?" don't bother me much in a world where inter-dimensional gates and bags of holding and alternate planes of existence are part of "reality."

Same here. I have better things to do with my design time than puzzle over ventilation and bathrooms. Admittedly, some people can't or won't suspend disbelief to my extent, but thankfully those people and I don't have to play at the same table.

Quote from: Chainsaw;977519Same here. I have better things to do with my design time than puzzle over ventilation and bathrooms. Admittedly, some people can't or won't suspend disbelief to my extent, but thankfully those people and I don't have to play at the same table.

yeah, "I'm OK with magic and Elves and talking Dragons, but I need to know where the Bugbear's poop goes or I just can't buy in!"  lol...

I actually did design a dungeon with ventilation shafts once. Just once though because mapping them out as well as the water sources, sewers, etc turned out to be more trouble than it was worth.

Most of the time in my dungeon crawling days we didn't worry about any of this sort of thing. There were treasures to loot, monsters to fight and traps to avoid and we were content.  It was after we moved away from dungeon crawling and into other modes of gaming that really started worrying about this sort of thing.

Quote from: Just Another Snake Cult;972622Jason Cone's incredible essay The Dungeon as Mythic Underworld is what really "Sold" the concept of Old School megadungeons to me and allowed me to see that they could be just as sublime as they could be ridiculous.

"Beyond lay the wilderness of Dungortheb, where the sorcery of Sauron and the power of Melian came together, and horror and madness walked. There spiders of the fell race of Ungoliant abode, spinning their unseen webs in which all living things were snared; and monsters wandered there that were born in the long dark before the Sun, hunting silently with many eyes."

I think the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Coloring Album has a lot of that Mythic Underworld vibe. These pages, where the adventurers are aided by a Ki-Rin, for example.

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6044/6262094864_da03762def_o.jpg
http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6097/6259586910_b399d54fb9_o.jpg

I rather like the idea of the "funhouse" dungeon as a battleground where the forces of "good" and the forces of "evil" meet between the overworld and the underworld. Traps and tricks are there to hinder and hurt the adventureres, treasure is there to help them, and the opposing forces try to corrupt each other's influence.

A DM doesn't even have to explicitly make the idea part of the adventure. A bunch of adventurers may go into the dungeon simply out of greed. But the reason is there, and keeping it in the back of the mind, it can influence the placement and design of a funhouse dungeons features and lore.

Quote from: Zevious Zoquis;977520yeah, "I'm OK with magic and Elves and talking Dragons, but I need to know where the Bugbear's poop goes or I just can't buy in!"  lol...

McDonalds' on the seventh level...

Quote from: Zevious Zoquis;977509I think it's worth noting that in D&D, a crazy wizard is far from the only "crazy" possibility.  It could also be a crazy god right?  

Sure, it could be any number of creators, as long as they're insane.

It was back in the thread, but II'd like to point out that morale rules aren't part of the dungeon, but of the system you're using it with;).

And regarding the current topic of realism, I always try to make any dungeons I write as realistic as I can, but that's because thinking about this helps me find more interesting ideas. Then again, I seldom create actual dungeons, but even the lair of some warriors you need to take out might well contain a serious number of traps and other dungeon-like attributes:D!