I mean, some sort of setting that justifies players exploring dungeons one after another and progressing in the process?

The first thing come to mind is Rammstein's Sonne. The players are factory "wageslave" dwarfs delving deep into dark underground tunnels to find precious metals for the factory-owner Snow White.

But really, the setting could be anything that comes up with a good justification for having these holes in the ground and players having to delve into them. Do something like this exist?

Nightmares Underneath has the following set-up :

 "The Realm of Nightmares invades the physical world, sending incursions in the form of dungeon to undermine and destroy society.[...] The justification for dungeoncrawling in this setting is that adventurers are raiding nightmare incursions, to find the treasure that keeps an incursion anchored to the physical world. Once the treasure is looted, the incursion is destroyed, and the adventurers profit."

Well, from a video game perspective you have Diablo where demonic beings swarm out from underground, ancient dungeons which means people have to go into those trying to stop it. You also have the option to hunt for riches and knowledge in ancient (underground) ruins & dungeons like in Pillars of Eternity's 'eternal labyrinth'.

The most obvious option for me is to turn the idea upside down and have the players start deep down in ruins or a labyrinth for whatever reason (could be a mad wizard trying to 'larp' as a real dungeon master, as punishment for something, or maybe your group was in sci-fi/realistic setting cryogenically frozen due to some illness or danger and when they woke up their original location -which could be a city- was already deep underground for centuries+)... in which case the players just have to work their way up to the surface.


Actually, I ran a campaign in Fallout setting (more or less) before fallout 3 came out, set in Europe, actually UK to make sure everything is kinda new even for fans of the Fallout games who know their stuff about the USA. It began just like my last example: being frozen for medical/science experiment reasons with plans for having a whole underground bunker city later. (Once they woke up they realized the city was already built, and long abandoned -by humans that is- and then took ages to get out where they were greeted by something in between medieval scenery & mad max, also elves: because genetic engineering)

Astulae's setting is a sort of interdimensional megadungeon consisting of bits of other realities connected by gates that only some beings (including the PCs) are aware of. It's got various factions hailing from various realities as well as natives of the Astulae itself, which might be alive/conscious. Each group has their own reasons for venturing into the labyrinth.
The rules/physics vary between location... which can be low tech, high tech, pure weirdness, and even Wonderland-style nonsense.
It all sounds a bit random but a GM is free to pick and choose which locations to use... and there are some rules to the place and key locations that house the prominent characters/groups.
It's got expansions that add things like a zombie plague, a war, consequences for planets connecting to the larger mix, and explorations of the settings 'underdark' regions.

Quote from: kobayashi;1012664Nightmares Underneath has the following set-up :

 "The Realm of Nightmares invades the physical world, sending incursions in the form of dungeon to undermine and destroy society.[...] The justification for dungeoncrawling in this setting is that adventurers are raiding nightmare incursions, to find the treasure that keeps an incursion anchored to the physical world. Once the treasure is looted, the incursion is destroyed, and the adventurers profit."

Was going to mention this one.  Excellent theme and has a Middle East setting.

Quote from: Itachi;1012663I mean, some sort of setting that justifies players exploring dungeons one after another and progressing in the process?

The first thing come to mind is Rammstein's Sonne. The players are factory "wageslave" dwarfs delving deep into dark underground tunnels to find precious metals for the factory-owner Snow White.

But really, the setting could be anything that comes up with a good justification for having these holes in the ground and players having to delve into them. Do something like this exist?

D&D: Ruins everywhere. Lost knowledge and artifacts everywhere. Delving may be the only way to get these things. Its also one of the reasons for poking into the underground in Tekumel too according to Adventures In.

One reason to go out and explore them is to curb, or totally end monster raids on the surrounding lands. Another is to reclaim lost mines and cities.

Warhammer Quest, while not an RPG, has the players exploring abandoned dwarven cities. That is also mentioned in Forgotten Realms.

In another game the reason for delving was that if adventurers didnt then ever larger monsters would come boiling out of the dungeons.

In Mikyuu Dungeon the whole world is a dungeon. Adventurers have to keep clearing the areas around towns or else the maze would grow into the towns and effectively end them. Also the PCs are looking for resources and artifacts to improve their kingdoms.

I've been working on a bit of a setting for use with GURPS Dungeon Fantasy.  I have a map and a few place names at this point  But my main notion has been about epochs and cultural strata being the reason dungeons get more deadly as you go down.  So at the bottom you've got the weird ruins of the incomprehensible elder things and the remnants of their whatever-it-was, then the lizard people with their weird sorceries, then the Neolithic humans with their standing stones and their villages, then the elves, the dwarves, the civilized humans from the east, and finally the civilized humans from the west.  The reason for dungeon exploring is that the world is essentially a magical minefield full of dangerous stuff that needs to be defused and dealt with.

There was a campaign I had planned some time ago in which dungeons were built because of early wars of a pre-human (a precursor race that later became elves and humans) civilization vs aliens, and that several types of tools were created to rapidly build self supporting dungeon passages. After that time, various races populated those dungeons and also expanded on them, some of whom made use of the leftover tools.

The Fallout 1 developers have said that they based the game on the RPGs they were playing at the time, primarily Earthdawn.

From the tv-tropes page for Earthdawn: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/TabletopGame/Earthdawn

QuoteJustified Trope
Many aspects of the setting seemed designed to justify the traditional fantasy role playing tropes. Why are there dungeons filled with monsters and treasure lying around everywhere? They are kaers that are breached. Why do characters have discrete levels where they get better at things? Because each discipline (aka character class) is tapping into the "true pattern" of that discipline, and your level represents how well you have learned to do this. Why is that fighting monsters gives you points that you can then spend to get better at, for example, foreign language? Because all abilities are magical, and the greater your legend, the stronger your magical power grows. There is no question that they are all justified by the nature of the setting.
All this makes Earthdawn perhaps the only setting where you can talk about your "Class" and "Level" without breaking character in the least. "I'm a Sixth Circle Thief," for example, simply means "I'm a magician who practices a school of magic specialized in hiding and freeing others from the burden of ownership, and I have undergone five advancement rituals."

Oh yeah, Earthdawn has great built-in reasons for going to crazy dangerous places. It even has a 'megadungeon', Parlainth, which is a whole city (and undercity) that was infected by Horrors, and has a small adjunct boomtown whose economy runs off people coming to loot the ruins.

Quote from: Thornhammer;1012685Was going to mention this one.  Excellent theme and has a Middle East setting.

Yep, the designers City of Poison for the setting is also wonderfully imaginative.

There is also Jason Lutes Freebooters of the Frontiers which tweaks DW to make it more like early D&D play and his terrific Perilous Wilds/Deeps supplements that are full of terrific tables to build the world, wilderness and dungeons out of.

In my experience, human beings (and especially PCs) need no further reason beyond "because it's there".

Count me as another one with my usual plug of Earthdawn.