Quote from: Justin Alexander;8023341.  Species that simply prefer living underground (either because they fear the sun like the drow or because they love the dark like the dwarves).

2. Magical construction techniques that make huge, underground constructions more plausible.

3. Magical creatures that either have an instinctual need to create underground complexes or which create them as an unintentional byproduct. (Where did all these twisting tunnels come from? Well, they started as purple worm trails. Then the goblins moved in.)

4. Catastrophes on the surface world that prompt people to flee underground are also a great explanation for underground complexes. (See Earthdawn. Or just an Age of Dragons.) Mix-and-match with the techniques above to explain how the huge cataclysm refuges were built. Then simply remove the danger and/or (better yet) introduce some new danger that came up from below and drove all the vault dwellers back onto the surface.

It's also useful to establish a method for underground species to generate food. In my campaign world there's fey moss, which serves as the basis for fungal gardens. Huge, artificial suns left behind in underdark chasms by the vault builders or the under-dwarves also work.

I don't find it valuable to do full-scale urban planning or figure out exactly how many toilets the goblins need, but I do find that at least some degree verisimilitude makes for better games: If the goblins get their food from fungal gardens, then their food supply can be jeopardized by destroying those gardens. And that's either the basis for an interesting scenario hook or it's a strategic master-stroke from the players or it's some other surprise that I hadn't even thought of before the campaign started.

On the matter of why build underground space is also a consideration. In the world im building right now the city of evil is located on an island so im probably going to give it a few underground layers and plently of tall buildings.

One of the best defenses of the fantasy dungeon is this.

We in the real world do not have dedicated races that live mostly underground and build their cities near exclusively underground.

Nore do we have people on a regular basis building underground fortresses with the specific intent to have areas to foil adventurers.

Nore do we have gods that can just point at a spot and go "I want some crazy. Here. RIGHT HERE!"

The closest we get in the real world are military installations which by the way can sprawl all the hell over the place. Sometimes deliberately.

Applying real world design to dungeons is the unrealistic part.

All that said. One thing I DO find unrealistic for a few dungeons is when you find one below ground in the middle of a swamp or other very wet locale.

Short of magic or extensive pump systems  theres about no way to keep these places from flooding or at least being very wet.

One of the great things about Keep on the Borderland is that all its dungeon sections are above the very wet surface level. And the place is mostly natiral caves and what may have once been caves that have been worked on and extended.

By accident or design they got it right.

Funnily enough, Gutenberg just posted a book on the Catacombs of Rome, which is essentially a dungeon.

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/47532/47532-h/47532-h.htm#fig_1

Quote

weird.

If I just made up gonzo shit my players would be saying stuff like "why is this tunnel so long? It would have taken them an additional week to dig this far and as they have shown themselves to be intrinsically lazy and ill disciplined that seems out of character." Then spend an hour or two of game time looking for the secret reason for the extra 50 foot or so.

They really expect everything to have internal consistency and an in game logic. It's on the list with NPCs have consistent personalities and goals, "monsters" use tactics commensurate with their intelligence and training, and if you get into a fight with Nick Fury he will kick your motherfucking ass, not cos he is high powered but because he is prepped for anything and will consistently roll 20s in any fight (funny story).

Even funnier when you consider that I won't even draw a map it will be all be in my head.

Anyway they will enter their first D&D dungeon on Sunday. Crumbling temple (extrapolated from a temple in Luxor but buried by time), goblin warrens, with underground tunnels (lifted from valley of the kings but more complex/numerous). We will see how it goes.

Quote from: jibbajibba;802347"monsters" use tactics commensurate with their intelligence and training

This here is something that is incredibly important, monsters should only be tacticly stupid if they are meant to be tacticly stupid

Quote from: tuypo1;802351This here is something that is incredibly important, monsters should only be tacticly stupid if they are meant to be tacticly stupid

Yes of course, well unless there is a McDonald's 20 feet above their heads that they share with a bunch of Zombies, cos then all bets are off, "You want brains with that?"

I love these threads full of maps and good ideas.  

Earthdawn rationalised dungeons as the Fallout-style vaults in which populations hid from the apocalypse. That made a degree of sense to me and allowed you to have long term communities or halls full of gibbering nightmares, depending on your mood. Good times!

I like having some sort of coherent structure and purpose behind my dungeons. My new campaign started with the team exploring a buried observatory, after "goblin" archaeologists had accidentally opened the dome and caused parts of the surface to fall in. So there was a structure to the building, the other entities in the structure had reasons for being there, and even a thematically appropriate puzzle (I don't normally do puzzles).

Nothing revolutionary, but that decision informed the design, made it easier for the players to make smart decisions (bastards!), and helped to ease the load on my poor tired descriptive muscles.  

One of the things I liked in Warhammer Quest (which while not a RPG is though a super dungeoncrawler) is that all the dungeons were originally dwarven cities that have been lost over the ages. Warhammer background even mentions a few of these. So there actually is a valid reason for there to be the mammoth dungeons full of monsters. Because the monsters kicked out or more often killed the people who actually built the place.

Simmilar to how some people have discovered and repurposed decomissioned missile silos and bomb shelters. Or the caves of Nottingham which have been repurposed into taverns, bike workshops, apartments, etc.

Quote from: Omega;802370One of the things I liked in Warhammer Quest (which while not a RPG is though a super dungeoncrawler) is that all the dungeons were originally dwarven cities that have been lost over the ages. Warhammer background even mentions a few of these. So there actually is a valid reason for there to be the mammoth dungeons full of monsters. Because the monsters kicked out or more often killed the people who actually built the place.

Simmilar to how some people have discovered and repurposed decomissioned missile silos and bomb shelters. Or the caves of Nottingham which have been repurposed into taverns, bike workshops, apartments, etc.

and when you look at some of the things people do in dwarf fortress crazy layouts are not that far fetched

I don't buy the notion that plausibility and fun are incompatible when it comes to dungeons. No, you don't have to use real-world architectural and engineering considerations when designing a dungeon. But if you give some reason for it to be constructed the way it is, and give some thought to the engineering and ecology of the locale, it makes the dungeon feel more substantial, with a history and coherence.

Paul Jaquay's dungeons were cited up thread. They're great examples. Dark Tower and Caverns of Thracia are two of the funnest dungeons I've explored as a player. They're evocative, labyrinth, and elaborate, with all sorts of memorable features, hidden crannies, and clever connections. They also make sense physically. One is two towers and a village buried in a mountain-slide and then dug out from below by undead inhabitants. The other is a series of crypts and shrines featuring a huge natural cavern with a palace built in it. Fantastic. And they meet a baseline of plausibility too.

Quote from: Will;802249Oh hey, fun real world examples:

Kaymakli is interesting to consider, with an eye toward dungeons:

http://www.goreme.com/kaymakli-underground-city.php


Also, mythical Xibalba is basically a 'dungeon dimension' from Mayan mythology!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xibalba

I've been to Kaymakli (and Derinkuyu). Those maps only show a small fraction of the cities (only a fraction is open to the public, and much are unexplored altogether). One of the cool features about them that you don't get from the maps is the stone disk doors, which were slid into place if the place was assaulted from the surface.

Quote from: RPGPundit;802219The layout of almost every dungeon in almost every D&D adventure module ever made makes no sense at all (with the exception of a very few historical-accuracy type adventures, and a few where they were semi-credible cave complexes rather than 'intelligent design').

That is, if you look at real "dungeons", real burial chambers, real tombs, even mines, catacombs or ancient sewers, NONE of them look like the often seemingly-random spattering of corridors, rooms, and multiple levels that you see in a D&D dungeon.  They make no sense even from a construction perspective; and of course, most of the times the ecology of the dungeon makes no sense at all (sometimes this last note is worse than others, like dungeons that have giants or dragons that literally couldn't fit through the door out of the room they're found in, or ancient sealed dungeons unopened for centuries that somehow have contemporary equipment, groups of randomly-placed goblins, etc.).

So how do you handle all this?

Do you just not give a shit, and not address it at all?
Do you create some kind of flimsy justification for it ("a crazy wizard did it. Yes, all of them!")?
Do you actually make some kind of effort to at least try to have your dungeons be internally logical to the setting somehow?

Anyone actually want to try to defend the dungeon with some argument other than "fuck you, it's fun and I don't need to think about it"?

RPGPundit

In my most recent large dungeon, just ended a few weeks ago, it involved a mad lich wizard teleporting in whole sections of dungeons, and their occupants, from other places within a 500 mile radius of the dungeon.  The lich would then "bind" the occupants to not leaving the dungeon in exchange for food, water, and weapons to defend themselves against other recently-arrived occupants of the dungeon.

There was an existing core small dungeon, that made sense, that was very old which the lich occupied.  The other new teleported-in dungeons were a hodge-podge tacked onto the old dungeon however the lich could fit them.  And they sometimes contained creatures that could have never fit "down" the dungeon to get to that room, because the whole thing was teleported in from some other place where they could have fit.

Anyway, that's how I explained it.  My players thought it was cool, and liked how each new section of dungeon was totally different from the others - different stonework, different wood, different designs, sometimes sections which would end oddly in a blank wall or a collapsed section. They liked negotiating with some groups with or against other groups, and that each group was almost as new as the PCs were to the region.  They'd like small touches, like how a bathroom would have not been teleported in for a section and so the occupants had converted another room to one, or things like that.

However, I suspect they would not have cared or asked for an explanation had one not existed.

Quote from: JeremyR;802345Funnily enough, Gutenberg just posted a book on the Catacombs of Rome, which is essentially a dungeon.

Thats a great link. Thanks!

Also Gutenberg is soooo cool.

Quote from: Will;802249Oh hey, fun real world examples:

Kaymakli is interesting to consider, with an eye toward dungeons:

http://www.goreme.com/kaymakli-underground-city.php


Also, mythical Xibalba is basically a 'dungeon dimension' from Mayan mythology!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xibalba

Same location:



And this is Derinkuyu: