Quote from: Hackmastergeneral;309812Elliot - I like your bunny.

Thanks, he's the best f***in' rabbit in the world. PM me and I'll send you a link to his awesomeness.

Quote from: Hackmastergeneral;309809There were wizards in the real world?
;)

Quite a few, although most didn't amount to much.  Even today there still are many people who claim to practice what amounts to magic, and gain significant amounts of money or power by doing so.

Even without the mythic underworld concept, fantasy settings contain dwarves and other subterranean dwellers who make tunnel complexes the same way surface-dwellers build cities.  In folklore they were mostly part of the underworld, but in a lot of settings they're a bit more mundane.

I also recommend "The Descent" by Jeff Long.  It's basically about a mining company discovering an under-earth of tunnels and caverns, which, of course, necessitates sending a bunch of marines down to subdue the denizens.

I haven't seen the film based on the book, but I hear it's good but very different.

real world rabbits, prairie dogs, insects, and rodents often burrow extensively.

Canids, weasels, some reptiles, and some birds dig shallower burrows.

A gameword with giant ones should have correspondingly larger burrows....

Quote from: aramis;309865real world rabbits, prairie dogs, insects, and rodents often burrow extensively.

Canids, weasels, some reptiles, and some birds dig shallower burrows.

A gameword with giant ones should have correspondingly larger burrows....

Something like a bulette would leave an extensive tunnel network in its territory.  After it died, who knows what might move in.

Quote from: Technomancer;309796after reading Philotomy's OD&D Musings about the dungeon as a mythic underworld with its own reality and separate laws, I have been more inclined to throw in some of the gonzo.

This particular musing made it into Knockspell, issue #2.
Which, like others have pointed out before me, is totally deserved, if you ask me.

Quote from: Hackmastergeneral;309809There were wizards in the real world?

Exactly.

Calling dungeons the "least historically sensible" thing about D&D when we also have magic missiles, umberhulks and ales for a gold piece, well...

Once you have magic, and monsters, and dwarves and elves and so on, it makes sense that some of them will live underground in areas which are labyrinthine, or which are labyrinthine in other ways, for example swamps, woods, rocky canyons, etc.

As for a dungeon of lots of different creatures and traps, well it can be made in a sensible way. In a real world forest you can't kick a dead log without find a zillion things that've decided to live there, fungi and beetles and worms and spiders and possums and feral cats hiding behind it, and so on. So if someone built a labyrinth full of traps - for whatever reason - but stupidly left a door open, or if there were earth subsidence over the years and cracks appeared, and if there existed fantastical magical creatures, well they need somewhere to live, too. So they move in.

You can make it gonzo and crazy, with orcs living in a room next to skeletons and a 50 foot dragon in a 10 foot room, and fungi masquerading as treasure, and needlessly elaborate traps that 200 years of monsters stomping about somehow never set off, and humans waiting like ninjas on the ceiling for centuries just in case an explorer happens by  - but it doesn't have to be so.

It's possible to do better than George Lucas at designing dungeons

Journey to the center of the Earth is an outstanding mythic underworld that predates D&D.
 
HP Lovecraft has some locations that could be considered mythic underworlds but the pacing isn't right for D&D.

Yeah dungeon is really just a catch all term for an adventure site.  Rarely are they generic dungeons with the 10x10 room with an orc in it.

Most of them tend to have some ecology or point to them, outside of the odd retro dungeon which is just there to be a proving ground like complex designed to keep people out of it.

Not that most RPG dungeons still don't do that, but if you think about it, what is the Death Star but a sci fi dungeon?  Its got reasons to exist and be tons of hallways and such, but its a dungeon.  

Your average castle or military base is a dungeon.  Howe Caverns up in New York State (IIRC the location) is a big cave complex and thus a dungeon of the underworld variety.  

New York City in Escape from New York is a dungeon.  A really zoggin huge one.  The skyscraper in Die Hard is a dungeon.

Quote from: kryyst;309784What spawned that I have no idea.  Egyptian pyramids maybe and Pompeii.

That would be my bet too. Gygax' love of Egpyt makes the Tomb of Tut-Ankh-Amon a natural choice. I mean, look at this visual - you could easily run a session of D&D based on "the tomb", and that's not even talking about Gygax' later work (Necropolis):

http://www.gearthblog.com/images/images2006/kv62.jpg

I also agree with Elliot Willen that Leiber's Swords Cycle was a primary influence. I'm rereading it now, and the moment when Fafhrd hits the Thieves Guild' forgotten underground tomb while the Mouser retrieves a cursed skull with ruby eyes? It certainly doesn't get more acererak than that.

Vance's Planet of Adventure also had an entire underworld of tunnels under its surface (explored at some length in The Pnume). Also, while not an actual D&D inspiration, I really like this article about the multi-level megadungeon below Moscow. Complete with cultists, orcs, treasure rooms and adventurers no less.

Did kids explore storm water drains and under houses the like before D&D? If so, it's probably a small step to "it'd be cool if there was buried treasure here...and monsters."

I've been using the dungeon-as-underworld metaphor since first reading Dragon Warriors back in the '80s. I generally find such creepy, otherworldly, subtly supernatural environments more satisying to design and play through than the logistically coherent monster accommodation that currently prevails.

Flint Dille told me a story once that he said was told to him by Gygax himself about the origins of dungeons as an adventure medium:

A wargame had reached it's end, with players invading a castle. They had successfully reached the throne room. It was very late at night, like 3Am, so game over, the players won. The players demanded to know what happens next.

The referee said well, ok, you get to the throne room, and the ruler throws a switch and disappears down a secret door, thus escaping. The end.

This was how secret doors were kind of established as a feature of dungeons as well, according to Flint.

The players said "well, that sucks. We chase him!"

So the referee, being tired, attempted to dissuade them. There's a trap. Some of you die. (Which established that traps are found in dungeons).

At this point the players continued to press on. The referee had no map, and no real plan, and he was very tired, so he started making things up. The miniatures used in the castle battle weren't really useful at this point.

Good lord, where to start?

Moria.  Angband.  The dungeons of the "Necromancer" (nee Sauron).  The tunnels (yes!) of the elves of king Thranduril, the caves of the goblins of the Misty Mountains.  And that's just Tolkien.

Someone mentioned Quarmall.  There's also Stardock, there's the tunnels leading to the sometimes-lairs of Sheelba and Ningabule, the castle in Adept's Gambit, the warrens of the rat-men, and I'm sure I'm missing more from Mr. Leiber.

Jack Vance has already been covered thoroughly enough by someone else.  

Let's go sci-fi (or at least, sci-fantasy): the Death Star, any of the Berserker's base-ships...

Point is, there's plenty of literary backing for dungeons.  And anyway?  Fuck realism, they're fun.

If you're some stick-in-the-mud DM who thinks that role-playing taxes and running errands around a town for some minor bureaucrat is fun, I pity you.