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Mr. Mask
2014-02-26, 08:12 AM
It's fun wandering around a complex of tunnels, filled with monsters and treasure. But here is a question I would like answered: Why is there such a place?


Below are my thoughts on the problems that get in the way of having mega dungeons. I have some ideas for how to settle these, but I'd like to hear your explanations and theories.

PlaceNatural tunnels. Natural tunnels have little in the way of life or predators, especially lower down. Natural tunnels also occur in places without valuable minerals to make for a source of treasure. They also tend to be really dangerous not form monsters, but from falls, drowning, spikes, and getting lost--spelunkers have a tough time.

Man made tunnels. They are fairly direct in their construction, without a lot of diverging paths. Underground fortifications also tend to be very narrow and short-ceilinged.


Mines will branch out somewhat as they follow the minerals--maybe if you had mineral deposits which were in a complex pattern, necessitating the miners to make a really weird mine?

Underground cities are a possibility. Many rooms and pathways to explore with multiple levels. Need to get the monsters and treasure (and a reason why it isn't populated, or why the treasure isn't taken).

MonstersThe types of monsters associated with dungeons are:

Intelligent. Goblins, dwarves, orcs, kobolds, bandits, etc.. Sentient groups who take up residence in the dungeon. They need a reason for staying there, and not somewhere else. You don't want them too organized if you're going to fight them.

They could be outlaws hiding out (bandits, terrorists, rebels, cultists, etc.). They might just be living underground (goblins, dwarves, people who just find it convenient).


Beasts. Slimes, giant worms, whatever. Underground predators.

Many predators will make their home in dens, but these aren't far underground. They're always close to the surface, so they have some light, and so that it isn't awkward to go out to the surface to hunt. They need a reason to live and hunt underground, like a subterranean ecosystem.

They also need to be able to survive in their underground habitat (natural caves are treacherous, and would kill many predators), and be suited for it in such a way that they aren't better off going up to the surface.


Restless dead. Tombs are underground. This makes the bodies of the dead a prime candidate for underground creatures, if you can justify a suitable number of bodies and means of providing undeath. The undead don't need to eat (usually), can wait in place for ages, and are resilient to the perrils of a natural cave (supposedly).

The undead are also dumb (usually), so you don't need to worry about them being too organized for dungeon tactics to work.


Demons and abominations. If Diablo is being resurrected on the bottom floor, you're likely to see some evils from another world turning up. They'd got the advantages of the undead (usually), except for being smart (usually). This requires reasons for them to not make an organized resistance--usually it's that they have too little cohesion to organize themselves.


TreasurePillaged loot. If there are bandits in the dungeon who are raiding places then bringing the loot back to their dungeon lair, you get some treasure.

Like predators, raiders don't live deep underground. If they are raiding dwarf settlements, then they would have a reason to live deeper.


Mining. If people are mining minerals, that's a source of loot. Mining is hard work, so you can't really expect to just take up a pickaxe and snatch the loot yourself (unless it is an extremely rich vein). So you'd be taking the processes minerals.

Minerals don't really occur near natural caves. And an abandoned/unoccupied mine indicates that it has run dry.


Bounty. You can get treasure in the form of bounties on creatures, persons, or things. This could be that a rare monster's hair is useful for something so you take back its pelt, or it could be that the town is paying for bandit scalps because they're sick of bandits.

It requires there to be a reason for the bounty, and a nearby economy willing to pay you for the job. The economy has to not be willing/able to sort out the dungeon themselves by sending in an army. It has to be solving its problem for whatever reason with crazy mercs like yourself.

Sith_Happens
2014-02-26, 08:25 AM
In the case of Undermountain at least, the answer to "Why is it there?" is "Because Halaster was off his rocker."

Rhynn
2014-02-26, 08:51 AM
Dreams in the Lich House (http://dreamsinthelichhouse.blogspot.fi/) has three awesome megadungeon projects going on: Skull Mountain is a megadungeon built by Hades, who lures heroes to their deaths with the promise of gold because he likes drinking from the skulls of dead heroes; Vaults of Xibalba is basically an underworld filled with gold; Harrow Home Manor is an ancient manorhouse in England, under which sorcerers and cultists have delved and created vaults and tunnels, possibly in the search of... something.

Fun fact: Harrow Home Manor is basically a Ravenloft megadungeon, which is probably the one setting you'd think wouldn't work for megadungeons - but it does!

I personally love the Underworld approach. I've got a few ideas I've been working on:
- An Ancient Mesopotamian setting, where the megadungeon is the Underworld of Irkalla, entered through the holy Apsu Waters in E-en-gur-a, the House of Subterranean Waters, a temple in the city of Eridu.
- The vaults and dungeons beneath a cathedral that turn into the upper reaches of an infernal Underworld as you go deep enough. :smallamused:
- Under-Tyr, the tunnels and buried city streets of thousands of years of urban development, all built over the sleeping machinery of the Ancients; connected to the great Ziggurat of Kalak, filled with magic, treasures, traps, and monsters.
- The Undermountain, delved from ancient Dwarven halls by Halaster the Mad Mage over centuries; the upper reaches used as a dumping-ground for undesirables by the rulers of the city, but also used as a gathering-ground by cultists and thieves who know its secrets. (I'm using the original published boxed set as a base for a re-imagining.)

I think megadungeons belong just about everywhere in D&D. :smallbiggrin: Even Dragonlance has Thorbardin and buried cities like Xak Tsaroth and Pax Tharkas. Planescape and Spelljammer megadungeons would take a bit more creativity, but I can immediately think of one idea for each: a planar dungeon version of Sigil (the Dungeon of Doors?) and "that's no moon - that's a dungeon!"

I haven't come up with a megadungeon for my 1001 Nights setting concept yet; obviously, it would have to be djinn-built... probably some kind of awesome palace. Maybe an ancient ruined city from an ancient civilization (Mesopotamian-style, with a ziggurat), concealing deep and dark secrets. Sword & Sorcery's excellent Ancient Kingdoms: Mesopotamia presents the Ziggurat of the Ghoul Queen, which could easily be converted or adapted... and it's got absolutely wonderful Lovecraftian flavor.

Speaking of Lovecraftian, the cyclopean ruins of ancient inhuman creatures make great megadungeons in general: R'lyeh, Irem, Pnakotus... Call of Cthulhu books present complex underworlds that could make for great Journey to the Center of the Earth... With Cthulhu! -type campaign backdrops. Not coincidentally, Dreams in the Lich House (http://dreamsinthelichhouse.blogspot.fi/) has a "Black City" campaign, in which vikings have established a town on an arctic island to explore a buried black city built by inhuman creatures in ancient times, very much similar to the Antarctic city of At the Mountains of Madness.

Such Lovecraftian megadungeons also fit perfectly into the Hyborian Age of Conan, and similar but more traditionally fantastic cities would work great in Stormbringer/Elric!.

Edit:

Also, Middle-earth Megadungeons! Moria is obvious, but the "roots of the mountains" where nameless things gnaw (canon from LotR by way of Gandalf!) are an inspiring idea, and then there's the real megadungeon: the ruins of Utumno and Angband in the far north, ruined by the Host of the Valar, collapsed on themselves (under the ruin of Ancalagon the Black)... but no doubt many deep vaults and tunnels still survive, and connect into the deep tunnels of the earth that run even under the Misty Mountains.

Still inhabited by orcs, trolls, and far worse things, these dungeons are where the Balrog, Durin's Doom, lurked and hid for thousands of years before the dwarves of Moria broke into the tunnels of the deep earth.

The dungeons are filled with gold and treasures collected by Morgoth in his might, because Morgoth was inclined to place his power in objects and creations; and in gold the taint of Morgoth, mordo, was strongest; for Morgoth's "ring" was the entirety of Middle-earth. This taint is why the greed for gold leads to corruption and ruin.

NikitaDarkstar
2014-02-26, 08:59 AM
Undead are an option. Underground cities is a very good option. Take a place like Ubar for example. The entire city was swallowed by a sinkhole. Most people most likely died instantly. Mix in some magic and superstition and you have some very good reasons for a gigantic underground dungeon filled with undead and restless spirits. And the treasure still being there? Well the place was only recently rediscovered of course, or people have known about it for a while, just no one who's tried to explore it has come back.

Also don't forget about lower ranked predators. You know the ones who prey on others, but are also preyed upon by bigger, nastier things. They'd have plenty of reasons to retreat deeper into caverns and tunnels if it means they're less likely to be killed by whatever preys on them.

But overall I do agree, they're hard to justify, at least the underground type. Now massive, long lost ruins of ancient civilizations? Those are slightly more believable, but overall I've honestly not ran into that many massive dungeons in the years I've played.

hamlet
2014-02-26, 09:17 AM
Read up on Castle of the Mad Archmage and Stonehell. Both are fantastic megadungeons and have great reasons for being.

Really, to have a sensible type of megadungeon, you just have to have the seed of an idea of why something would be there, and then just grow it. Perhaps it used to be a huge military complex that housed thousands of soldiers and research mages manufacturing potions and magic weapons for use in fighting a war against evil outsiders invading the prime material world. A bastion of civilization and life against the outer darkness.

HighWater
2014-02-26, 09:34 AM
What you really just need is a form of energy (light/heat/negative energy) and low-tier things that feed on that (algae, plants, moss), this will support any foodchain (and therefore dungeon) you want (up to underground nations)!

Avilan the Grey
2014-02-26, 10:08 AM
Depending on the mine, "branching out a little" is a vast understantement.

Here in Sweden we have the biggest underground mine in the world, which total length of all it's meandering tunnels and shafts are bigger than the total length of all streets on Manhattan.

That said I once saw a drawing of a concept dungeon that worked just like a standard D&D dungeon, except with the maintenance tunnels on either side of the main tunnels were drawn in. You know the ones where the monsters actually live, use to change torches, reset traps and actually eat and sleep. :smallbiggrin:

Anyway, underground eco systems are not weirder than "overground" or underwater ones. It's just a matter of matter. I think it's more a matter of asking "what has moved in here, and does the tunnels end or open up to say an underground river or something?"
To me, whatever it has been before, should end up as one of three arcetypical dungeons to work:

Tomb. Probably was a tomb to begin with as well. Main monsters are rats, bats and undead. Traps are likely to protect the funeral sites.

Goblin (or any other similar) home. A tunnel system has been taken over (mine, natural cave, whathaveyou) by intelligent beings making a home there.
Monsters would be the residents, their pets, spells. Not much traps at all.

BBE home. AKa Dragon's Lair. Instead of goblins moving in, a Dragon or similar creature has made the tunnel it's home. Monsters would include anything that can live on the leftovers from meals or of the droppings of the monster, offspring and maybe something else. Traps unlikely unless leftover from before reuse by the monster.

Brother Oni
2014-02-26, 12:07 PM
Taking a page out of Earthdawn, they expected a magical apocalypse to occur, thus they built kaers, or underground cities, to hide and shelter the population.

Over the long years of the Scourge, some kaers' defences failed, either due to flaws in construction (e.g. insufficient resources to sustain the population) or to external interference (e.g. mind influencing effects from the monsters scratching at the walls trying to get in) and the inhabitants all died.

After the Scourge ended, the populations of surviving kaers came out and started to rebuild, stumbling across these abandoned kaers which could be uninhabited, re-inhabited by mutated creatures, or still occupied by their undead former inhabitants.

The failed kaers could have been expanded by their undead populations at the whim of their Horror masters, for much the same reasons as Halaster's Undermountain - because the critter with the alien psyche wanted to.

kyoryu
2014-02-26, 03:27 PM
Well, there's no reasons for the existence of a megadungeon, just rationalizations. The *reason* to have a megadungeon is "it's fun".

I think the two best rationalizations for its existence are "a wizard did it" and the "underworld", especially if you're truly going for a *mega*dungeon.

Dawgmoah
2014-02-26, 03:50 PM
Don't forget the idea of a city silted over or sunk into the ground due to some natural calamity or another. As time moves on people will tunnel down into the area looking for treasure, animals will begin to lair there, more animals will come to hunt the ones living there. Areas would be taken over by either humans or some monstrous race. Think of the salt mines near Wieliczka, Krakow that are over eight hundred years old and places people have not visited in hundreds of years. Or the big cavern system near Porta Rosa in Slovenia. Then add in the fact D&D has all of the underground races which natively are already living far under the ground. Take a page from Florida and have a few houses fall into a sinkhole created by Derro years ago....

Avilan the Grey
2014-02-26, 04:59 PM
Don't forget the idea of a city silted over or sunk into the ground due to some natural calamity or another.

Welcome to Old New York.

Jay R
2014-02-26, 05:53 PM
I assume that there is a vast underground network of inhabited caverns. The most powerful entities have kicked the others out to the extremes, and the midrange ones have kicked the lesser ones out even further, and so on. But the extremes includes going up.

If miners go far enough down, then they will break into the kobold regions, right above the goblins, who are near the hobgoblins ...

But there's also a vast area over there held by a necromancer and his undead, and another cave complex filled with dragons, and ...

Frozen_Feet
2014-02-26, 05:58 PM
How big does a dungeon need to be mega?

'Cause based on wandering in Helsinki underground, the reason for some pretty impressive man-made caverns is simply "we needed a place to park all those cars in" followed by "and then we needed the air-conditiniong, plumbing, heating and lighting for those places."

I could imagine plenty of mega-dungeons simply being the remnants of maintenance infratstructure for cities that had their above-ground portions razed to the ground.

Dawgmoah
2014-02-26, 09:57 PM
How big does a dungeon need to be mega?

'Cause based on wandering in Helsinki underground, the reason for some pretty impressive man-made caverns is simply "we needed a place to park all those cars in" followed by "and then we needed the air-conditiniong, plumbing, heating and lighting for those places."

I could imagine plenty of mega-dungeons simply being the remnants of maintenance infratstructure for cities that had their above-ground portions razed to the ground.

Ruby Falls Cavern, in Tennessee, is part of a series of caves and caverns (http://www.thelivingmoon.com/45jack_files/03files/Endangered_Earth_Underground_Water_Tennessee.html) that are estimated to stretch over a 120 kilometers along the mountain chain. The State of Tennessee has over 8,000 known caves and several of the largest caverns known in North America (though the new find down in Mexico is rather staggering in its scope.) This is the sort of system I imagine goblins, trolls, duergar, etc, inhabiting. Perhaps Kish (http://www.tehrantimes.com/highlights/99408-kariz-underground-city-a-step-back-in-time-experience)in Iran would be a good model for a dwarven or human city built underground.

And as pointed out, the manmade subterranean complexes found under a modern city are good examples of mega dungeons; if just for D20 Modern.

AMFV
2014-02-27, 03:01 AM
There's another one that we're forgetting, Sewers, for example in Paris there are sewer systems so large that they might qualify as a dungeon in their own right, if there were living things down there.

Abandoned transportation systems, such as are present in Moscow and other cities in Russia might qualify as well.

Necropolises could also exist on that scale, Egypt had many (though they were primarily above ground), but a race that venerated earth or stone (such as Dwarves), might be inclined to view those things in a different light, and that could be their monuments.

Rhynn
2014-02-27, 03:33 AM
I could imagine plenty of mega-dungeons simply being the remnants of maintenance infratstructure for cities that had their above-ground portions razed to the ground.

That's basically my Under-Tyr. One of the main features is an enormous moisture-trapping and water-collection system that spans miles around the city and still feeds some wells in the city itself.

No parking lots, though...

TheCountAlucard
2014-02-27, 08:59 AM
How big does a dungeon need to be mega?One million dungeons. Or one thousand kilodungeons, or one trillion microdungeons, or one-thousandth of a gigadungeon.

EDIT: Unless we're doing it like data sizes, then a megadungeon is 1,048,576 dungeons. More if there's parity dungeons.

Rhynn
2014-02-27, 09:34 AM
How big does a dungeon need to be mega?

There's three good "definitions" I've read:

1. A dungeon so big, one party will never explore all of it.
This is a dungeon of finite size, but so big that they're never going to explore every part of every level and go "okay, we're done." These are publishable.

2. A dungeon so big, the GM will never finish it.
This is a dungeon of theoretically infinite or finite size, but in either way so big that the GM will never finish it; either because he never needs to, or because it's so expandable he can keep adding new levels and sub-levels to it. These are not publishable.

3. A dungeon so big, it can serve as the setting (or centerpiece) for campaigns.
This sort of subsumes the two above - but they're not mutually exclusive definitions, anyway. Basically, if the dungeon is so large that you can run entire campaigns of indefinite length that revolve around it (where the PCs return there time after time, even if they do other stuff in between, adventuring elsewhere, in other dungeons, etc.), it's a megadungeon.

Blightedmarsh
2014-02-27, 10:35 AM
Here is one:

You have a bunch of golems or some similar mindless construct.
You order them to start building a dungeon for some purpose or another.
You die and people forget to (or how to) stop them.
Thousands of years later they are still at it; digging the largest dungeon in all of creations.

hamlet
2014-02-27, 11:49 AM
Here is one:

You have a bunch of golems or some similar mindless construct.
You order them to start building a dungeon for some purpose or another.
You die and people forget to (or how to) stop them.
Thousands of years later they are still at it; digging the largest dungeon in all of creations.

One day, they dig too deep, releasing an horrible plague upon mankind.

A great horde of Justin Beiber fans erupts from the dungeon, laying waste to the countryside. The PC's must enter the dungeon at the risk of their own lives and sanity and plug the hole into that terrible hell from whence these monsters have sprung.:smallwink:

arcane_asp
2014-02-27, 11:53 AM
Im currently running a campaing set in a mega-dungeon - a giant, jungle filled crater concealing ruins, monsters, natural features and other dangers.

Its got the feel of one giant area, with a handful of tiny towns on the periphery. I think it qualifies as a mega-dungeon - it is isolated, risky to get about in, and only a few entrance/exits. There are a few plot threads running through it, but essentially its a giant sandbox of features with some radndom encoutner tables.

The crater was once a mountain with a giant wizards tower in the centre. But during a magical war, an apocalypse-scale spell hit the tower and BOOM. Giant crater.
Over the millenia the jungle has reclaimed it, but theres enough malicious magic lingering to create plenty of hazards beyond the natural ones.

Feddlefew
2014-02-27, 12:17 PM
I think Dwarf Fortress succession games give one good reason: A long series of egotistical autocrats, each desiring to leave a mark on their city through megaprodjects, but whose rules are too short to complete them for any number of reasons. Of course, somewhere down the line, someone forgets what X was originally for, and they incorporate it into their pet project...

Brother Oni
2014-02-27, 06:16 PM
Speaking of dungeons being used as a campaign setting, there's a number of anime and JRPGs that use a massive tower as a dungeon substitute.

The Tower of Druaga (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tower_of_Druaga_%28anime%29) has a town that's built up around the base of this massive dungeon like tower and the economy is mostly based off the loot that adventurers bring out of the tower. There's also a military outpost with an attached settlement halfway up the tower as a safe refuge for tower climbers.

Azure Dreams (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azure_Dreams) is an old PS1 game with a similar setup, except that the adventurers capture and train monsters from the tower ala Pokemon.
The rest of the game is essentially a roguelike with dating sim and town improvement elements (it is a Japanese game with all the oddity that involves :smalltongue:).

Avilan the Grey
2014-02-28, 02:42 AM
Old sewers ARE large. Both Paris and London has sewers of the kind TVtropes mocks, the tunnels are big enough to walk in.

Paris ALSO have catacombs and other tunnels and they are all linked together.
Seriously Paris IS a mega-dungeons already. There are people disappearing in those right now, as we speak, and they are not fully mapped out even by the city.

Doorhandle
2014-02-28, 02:58 AM
I think Dwarf Fortress succession games give one good reason: A long series of egotistical autocrats, each desiring to leave a mark on their city through megaprodjects, but whose rules are too short to complete them for any number of reasons. Of course, somewhere down the line, someone forgets what X was originally for, and they incorporate it into their pet project...

Pretty much. You could easily take any 1 dwarf fortress succession game and make it a mega-dungeon.


I have no idea where anything is. I have no idea what anything does. This is not merely a madhouse designed by a madman, but a madhouse designed by many madmen, each with an intense hatred for the previous madman's unique flavour of madness."

Frozen_Feet
2014-02-28, 03:15 AM
2. A dungeon so big, the GM will never finish it.
This is a dungeon of theoretically infinite or finite size, but in either way so big that the GM will never finish it; either because he never needs to, or because it's so expandable he can keep adding new levels and sub-levels to it. These are not publishable.


I disagree on the "not publishable" part. A good set of random generation charts should allow for a virtually infinite play. Granted, it's much more laborous on paper than on computer, but it's possible. (As far as computer games go, many roguelikes, notably Moria and Angband do this. Each level is randomly generated or regenerated upon visit, so for all practical purposes the dungeons are limitless and perpetually unfinished.)

bpgoll
2014-02-28, 03:26 AM
I disagree on the "not publishable" part. A good set of random generation charts should allow for a virtually infinite play. Granted, it's much more laborous on paper than on computer, but it's possible. (As far as computer games go, many roguelikes, notably Moria and Angband do this. Each level is randomly generated or regenerated upon visit, so for all practical purposes the dungeons are limitless and perpetually unfinished.)

Agreed with you sir..

http://watchfree.me/10/w.png

Mr. Mask
2014-02-28, 06:14 AM
Sewers is a good point. They don't tend to be extremely deep, but no one said dungeons had to be deep. Lack of depth also makes it suitable for predators, raiders and the like.

SiuiS
2014-02-28, 08:41 AM
The Megadungeon, a true dungeon, is a manifestation of the Underworld. In places where chaos and entropy pool, the world skins breach, and the physical reality warps. Labyrinthine tunnels of indeterminant age coil about rooms of treasures stolen by shadows and horaded by darkness. Underworld things begin to claw their way through the tattered skein into the Real, at the upper levels; trolls, aberrations and even fiends finding metaphysical breaches big enough.

That's not to say that's the only threat. This low level evilness actually spawns kobolds, turning normal rock face into porous sacks like the back of a Surinam toad, spewing the doggish things into the world to act as janitors, maggots of the twisting ways. Normally innocuous and pervasive fairy life grows mean, bitter and large, becoming gnashed tooth goblins. Hatred and seething anger boils in jungle basins, and collects from precipitation on mountain peaks, forming the orcish hordes. And they all seek to spread their entropy to the world.

Talderas
2014-02-28, 08:48 AM
There's another one that we're forgetting, Sewers, for example in Paris there are sewer systems so large that they might qualify as a dungeon in their own right, if there were living things down there.

Part 5, Jean Valjean; Book II, The Intestine of the Leviathan, ch.1, The Land Impoverished by the Sea.

You know something is massive when an entire chapter of one of the great literary works, published in 1862, is entirely dedicated to describing it.

Frozen_Feet
2014-02-28, 09:55 AM
There's another one that we're forgetting, Sewers, for example in Paris there are sewer systems so large that they might qualify as a dungeon in their own right, if there were living things down there.

As a plumber, I have to ask: what makes you think there aren't living things down there?

Sure, most of them aren't as big or interesting as those in D&D, but the diseases and parasites in the 1st Ed AD&D. I can guarantee you, you can catch all those things if you sample through sewage unprotected.

Also, there have been cases of whole criminal gangs and resistance movements hiding in sewers, such as in Warsaw during WWII. Which is decidedly more D&D like, though less likely to happen in everyday life.

Feddlefew
2014-02-28, 10:11 AM
As a plumber, I have to ask: what makes you think there aren't living things down there?

Sure, most of them aren't as big or interesting as those in D&D, but the diseases and parasites in the 1st Ed AD&D. I can guarantee you, you can catch all those things if you sample through sewage unprotected.

Also, there have been cases of whole criminal gangs and resistance movements hiding in sewers, such as in Warsaw during WWII. Which is decidedly more D&D like, though less likely to happen in everyday life.

I believe there were death cults in Paris' sewer/catacomb/cellar/labyrinthine mess system after the Black Death. They were just taking care of the hundreds of thousands of bones that were stashed down their and asking the dead to communicate with the saints and divine powers on their behalf.

SimonMoon6
2014-02-28, 10:44 AM
A wizard did it.

AMFV
2014-02-28, 12:09 PM
As a plumber, I have to ask: what makes you think there aren't living things down there?

Sure, most of them aren't as big or interesting as those in D&D, but the diseases and parasites in the 1st Ed AD&D. I can guarantee you, you can catch all those things if you sample through sewage unprotected.

Also, there have been cases of whole criminal gangs and resistance movements hiding in sewers, such as in Warsaw during WWII. Which is decidedly more D&D like, though less likely to happen in everyday life.

I didn't say there weren't. Only that having them would make it qualify as a dungeon in the D&D sense at least. There are certainly things living in the sewers and in basements and hidy-holes of any kind.

Jay R
2014-02-28, 12:33 PM
You can put some cool stuff under your cities. Here is an actual photo from the catacombs in Paris:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d6/Catacombs-700px.jpg

SiuiS
2014-03-01, 06:58 AM
A wizard did it.

Well yes. But why?

AuraTwilight
2014-03-01, 05:21 PM
I always liked the idea of dungeons that spontaneously create themselves. One of my favorite campaigns involved a mega-dungeon that was constantly changing, and who no one could take credit for creating, because it was actually an intrusion of an elemental plane of Dungeon.

Pokonic
2014-03-01, 05:36 PM
I actually had an excuse for my mega-dungeon:

One of the larger city's in the world was being attacked by two opposing armies that met in the general area of the city. The shear amount of powerful entities duking it out on both sides worried the gods, so they caused the city and the area around it, roughly the size of Beijing, underground, armies and all. The gods of the area then separated the entire underground area into small caverns and set up openings to the place on the surface guarded by both holy warriors and golems and such. Meanwhile, the city itself was divided into chunks by solid walls of rock splitting off sections of the area.

Flash forward a hundred years, the holy warriors are reduced to the occasional lost paladen, the descendants of both armies hold chunks of the city, and the undead generals of both armies continue to wage their war for the powerful magical item of unknown purpose said to be hidden in the divinely warded center of the city.

Avilan the Grey
2014-03-01, 05:59 PM
Well yes. But why?

Because Bugbears are so BORING without a dungeon to put them in.

AMFV
2014-03-01, 06:00 PM
Well yes. But why?

Your honor, we plead that the Wizard was clinically insane when he did this.

Pokonic
2014-03-01, 07:56 PM
The wizard was actually a powerful orcish shaman-sorcerer who desired a grand fortress for his hordes. As such, he had constructed a massive series of chambers and constructs to be built, and his army marched in and settled down inside it in due time. However, due to the shaman and his varying warlords being assassinated and the constructs malfunctioning, the descendants of the army squabble and fight amongst themselves for scraps of power.

Mr. Mask
2014-03-01, 09:00 PM
The Viet Cong tunnels were pretty narrow, short, and direct in their pathway, as were other military tunnel examples. That's why underground cities are good, they justify high ceilings and a lot of pathways and rooms (and layers).

Endarire
2014-03-01, 10:23 PM
"Because we can."

Followed by, "Because we want to."

Acacia OnnaStik
2014-03-01, 10:44 PM
There's always the "I think those were the townsfolk" approach, if it was once a city. The people who used to live there have become the mindlessly violent monsters, through some mishap of mad science or magic or a good old zombie plague.

Broken Crown
2014-03-02, 06:45 AM
Dungeons are former mines.

When 3rd Edition D&D first came out, a friend of mine complained that making black onyx a material component for the Animate Dead spell made the classic undead army prohibitively expensive.

I reasoned that black onyx was simply extremely common, and that all the implausibly large dungeons, up to and including the entire Underdark, were simply places where black onyx had been dug out of the ground to create undead hordes.


You know something is massive when an entire chapter of one of the great literary works, published in 1862, is entirely dedicated to describing it.
Not disagreeing about the Paris sewers, but 19th century authors had a habit of dedicating entire chapters to describing just about anything.

AMFV
2014-03-02, 06:55 AM
We've also forgotten about prisons, which are frequently built in desolate or inescapable areas, and underground is one of the most escape proof areas that there is. Which would help explain why it would be extremely difficult to leave said dungeon, why there might be traps, why doors might lock themselves and passages would be confusing. A prison is a good option.

Rhynn
2014-03-02, 09:59 AM
Not disagreeing about the Paris sewers, but 19th century authors had a habit of dedicating entire chapters to describing just about anything.

Chapter 55 - Of the Monstrous Pictures of Whales
Chapter 56 - Of the Less Erroneous Pictures of Whales and the True Pictures of Whaling Scenes
Chapter 57 - Of Whales in Paint; in Teeth; in Wood; in Sheet-Iron; in Stone; in Mountains; in Stars

DigoDragon
2014-03-03, 09:40 AM
One adventure I had run years back was where the dungeon was actually a bio-spaceship. The ship survived it's crash landing, but the crew all died upon impact. Thus, she ship slowly grew on it's own, having no crew to direct how it grows, so it began to take a maze-like appearance inside. The ship had a few breeches that remained open, allowing native wildlife to enter and form mutually beneficial ecosystems in its veins and organs (passageways and rooms).

The ship only has a limited intelligence (like an animal). So if a party of adventurers came in to kill the inhabitants and loot valuables, it would try to defend itself as best it could (alerting the inhabitants or setting off 'traps').

Jay R
2014-03-03, 10:31 AM
Not disagreeing about the Paris sewers, but 19th century authors had a habit of dedicating entire chapters to describing just about anything.

They were paid by the word, not by the number of readers. This tells you a great deal about the layout of 19th century stories.

Elvenoutrider
2014-03-04, 02:04 PM
Pathfinder introduced a specific species of dragon called a dungeon dragon. These types of dragons are motivated to build large dungeons just for the purpose of luring people in and watching them crawl through them.

Extrapolating on this, I designed a dungeon in my recent campaign that was built simply because the dungeon lord, a black dragon was insane and simply enjoyed watching groups of people struggle through his traps. It was all a game to him.