Afterschool Trope Special: The Dungeon Crawl, Part 1

This is Post # 600 on Musing of the Chatty DM!  To celebrate this and my Dungeon theme week, I decided to write an article in the style that has made me known as a RPG blogger: a Trope post!  You are new to the blog and don’t yet know about Tropes?  Here’s a handy link to get your started.

In order to celebrate Dungeon Week at Musings of the Chatty DM, and to get your gears going for our little contest, I thought we could explore one of the two foundation Tropes of our favorite Fantasy Roleplaying game:

Dungeon Crawling

Dungeon Crawling is the act of exploring a dungeon (or other dangerous area) while looking for treasure or some other important object. The characters must battle enemies (usually monsters) and use their skills and equipment to negotiate obstacles (usually traps.) Usually, but not always, there is a Boss Battle at some point, and a Mac Guffin or Plot Coupon at the end.

(Snip)… it is actually Older Than Dirt, since even old myths feature it (heroes like Orpheus voyaging into the Underworld, for example). However, it was the Cliff Hanger film serials of the early 20th century that defined the trope, and the Indiana Jones movies that made it popular again later.

Dungeon Crawling.  The word implies slow progress through damp corridors of an underground complex, carefully checking every square inch for potential death traps.  For decades, adventurers have prodded the depths of countless published and home-brewed dungeons, equipped with such classic staples as 10 foot poles (to trigger the traps), Iron Spikes (to stuck doors shut or prevent sliding doors from closing)  and a mule-drawn cart to transport treasures.

Of course, experienced players of old school dungeon crawls have found much more creative uses for such staples and anything else that they could their hands on.

Dungeon Crawling can be defined many ways, as each era of Dungeons and Dragons found new ways of staging adventures around the concept of exploring a (relatively) fixed site where PCs discover various challenges and reap whatever material rewards they can find.  Hot debates are sparked daily in RPG blogs and forums about Old school gaming and how it differs from the game styles encouraged by later editions of D&D.

My goal is not define what dungeon craweling is, nor to add to the debate.  Rather, I’d like to explore dungeon crawling through the lens of game’s history to explore applications of the trope.

The Dungeon as the Campaign Setting

Many early campaigns (and several current ones based on retro–clones of older editions of D&D) were based upon the exploration of large, multi-levels underground structures.  Later renamed Megadungeons, these sites were where most of adventures would occur.  Partys of adventurers, drawn from gaming groups that could sometimes be counted in the dozens, got together and explored the dungeon, clearing large swats of a given levels before exploring deeper.

One of the core assumptions of such campaigns was that the deeper PCs explored, the harder the challenges were and the higher were the potential rewards.  Another assumption was that cleared levels of the dungeon would eventually be repopulated, forcing returning adventurers to deal with new occupants or find alternate, less crowded paths to the deeper parts of the dungeon.

Creating a Dungeon-based campaign

Starting such a campaign is relatively simple, you need to set your dungeon in an area of your favorite game world (or you may create your own world to host it).  You don’t need to flesh out the outside world too much.  You can usually place your dungeon under ruins of some sort.  Popular choices are:

• A ruined monastery, See here for a very recent example.
• Under a Mountain, usually within and under the ruins of some sort of underground city
• Under a City, like Forgotten Realms Undermountain found under Waterdeep or Monte Cook’s Ptolus
• Under a Castle, like the classic Blackmoor and Greyhawk campaigns from the co-creators of D&D

But you can also break out of the classic approach and build your megadungeon in other ways:

• Inside a crashed Spaceship (like the classic Expedition to the Barrier Peaks module which could be grown bigger by adding more floor decks)
• Inside the cone of a volcano (making your dungeon doughnut shaped) like Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil
• Across worlds/planes of existence (by placing portals that transport PCs from one world to the next)
• Outside! By making the dungeon stand on the various ‘levels’ of a stripped mine or on the side of a mountains with gigantic ‘steps’ carved on its surface.

Its usually a good idea to find a reason for your dungeon to exist.  This will help you define the type of encounters found within it, acting like a baseline theme on which to build upon.  If you build your dungeon in a desert, you might want to borrow from Egyptian myth to give your campaign an exotic flavor.  In a similar manner, if you want to place your dungeon under the ruins of a lost Jungle temple, than you can borrow from Indiana Jones or a plethora of classic pulp era adventure and Sword and Sorcery stories.

Once you have chosen the site of your dungeon you need to chart the closest point of civilization (City, town, village, Frontier Keep, etc) to the dungeon. The further away your dungeon is from civilization, the longer the transit time between forays and resupplying expeditions, allowing more restocking of the dungeon. Large distances may also explain why the dungeon hasn’t been touched by other adventurers before and may play a role in your choices if you are the type of DM that likes to have such questions answered.

Finally, a dungeon far from civilization often makes it more likely to remain the sole focus of the campaign as there is little or no ‘distraction’ to deter PCs from exploring deeper and deeper.

Dungeons that sit closer to civilization are more likely to be plundered faster, with shorter resupplying interludes between forays.  It could also make it more likely to have been partly cleared by prior adventuring parties or being explored by ‘competitors.  Such NPC adventurers may interact with the party, acting as friendly but competitive  support or antagonistic cut-throat jerks.

In my own Primal/Within campaign, I made the City so close, it’s actually inside the dungeon itself!

Once you’ve established your dungeon and the closest point of Civilization, you are free to start mapping your dungeon. The one-page dungeon template is an excellent tool for that!

Such campaigns often don’t have an overarching plot line, the story is the one that the PCs forge through their exploration.  In such cases, story arises from the players actions in and out of the dungeon.  Planning future forays with other PCs, forging alliances with dungeon factions, buying real estate outside of the dungeon and developing lasting relationships with hirelings are all ways that roleplaying occurred and stories progressed in such campaigns.

DM creating such dungeons can therefore focus more on story hooks than developed storylines.  By creating various opposing factions within the dungeon you create opportunities for PCs to discover and exploit the possibilities of such opposition.

Example:

The Orcs of the 4 fingered-Claws have recently invaded the Kobold Warrens of the 1st level of the Great Abyss, a semi-open megadungeon set on a mile-high cliff overlooking the cursed Dagonite Ocean.  Many kobolds are now enslaved to the Orcs, the remaining kobolds have retreated to the cliff side network of ledges and tunnels.  Hating the orcs above all, they will willingly let adventurers safe passage through their new found lair so they can get to the orcs faster.

The Brotherhood of troll-magi, a group of highly intelligent trolls trained in the arcane arts have subdued a Dragon and taken control of its sizable horde, scattering the dragon’s minions to other, less ‘comfortable’ parts of the dungeon.  As the PCs explore the dungeon, looking for the horde, they catch hints that something happened to the dragon and need to prepare to face something mightier what they initially planned.

If you are interesting in capturing the tropes of classic dungeon-based campaigns, here’s an excellent list of assumptions to run an Old School dungeon (mega or otherwise).

Do you have ideas and concepts for dungeon-based campaigns you’d like to share?

Part 2 will be about… I don’t know yet, but definitively about more dungeon goodness!