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View Full Version : DM Help Implications of my setting



Deremir
2017-01-26, 12:33 AM
I am going to be DMing a HERO campaign in a new setting I am creating and I'm hoping for some help coming up with all the realistic implications so that the world can really come to life.

Some background info: I decided on a low magic setting where magic always has a cost, the energy has to be taken from somewhere, and the most potent and renewable source of energy is ones soul. Because of this most potent magic is cast by wizard with strong wills, and powerful magical items are rare. Magic items are usually temporary, losing potency over time even if not used. The only way to make a permanent magic item is by using some renewable source of energy, which are only rarely naturally found.

The Scenario: About 80 years ago a man found a set of giant doors in a cliff face. These doors only opened for five minutes a month, and once you go in your locked inside until the month is up. Past the doors is a massive dungeon filled with treasure and increadably valuable permanent magic items. At the bottom of the dungeon is the grand prize: a wish, magic of a mythical status as it is the only thing that can resurrect someone, (or accomplish just about anything else you desire) and only a handfull of people have survived to claim it. The dungeon has ten levels of increasing size, with monsters that can provide some degree of sustenance, and on a little more than half the levels there is a well around which adventurers tend to congregate.

Outside the dungeon a town has popped up, doing business with the endless stream of adventures coming to try their hand at the dungeon, and due to conditions being viable for (admittedly very unusual) farming, adittional town have been created on the fourth and seventh floors.

Okay, that's all the essential information, now, as I stated earlier, I wanted help with the logical implications of this setting. So far what I have is:

* A local noble built a castle next to the town as the dungeon generates a large deal of wealth. The noble started taxing the town outside the dungeon but not those entering or exiting as some very powerful people enter the dungeon

*a few people have taken to the lucrative business of bringing luxury items into the dungeon towns from the surface and selling them at huge mark ups

* The wells, where possible, have thugs and/or businesses demanding payment for their use, and in some cases, using the water to run a bath house

* Their are some individuals who have grown up in the dungeon towns who do not have the strength to escape the dungeon on their own.

* Their are maps available which plot out the various dungeon levels, to keep the players from being able to regularly make use of these I've decided the dungeon occasionally restructured itself, requiring the maps to be redrawn and thus be quite expensive due to the danger of creating them.

I'd really appreciate any suggestions the playground would be willing to offer, as I really want to get my players as invested in this world as possible, and help them think outside of the traditional fantasy, dungeon crawling box.:smallbiggrin:

Maglubiyet
2017-01-26, 04:08 AM
What's the origin of the dungeon and how do the monsters live and repopulate inside? How does the wealth regenerate?

Why didn't the noble hire a military to clean the place out so they can simply mine the wealth every month? Couldn't someone use the wish magic for something like this?

Deremir
2017-01-26, 09:26 AM
What's the origin of the dungeon and how do the monsters live and repopulate inside? How does the wealth regenerate?

Why didn't the noble hire a military to clean the place out so they can simply mine the wealth every month? Couldn't someone use the wish magic for something like this?

The dungeon was designed to maximize deaths per day within its walls for near indefinite amounts of time, and generates new monsters and treasure in whatever empty rooms have been cleared to attract people inside towards that end. That being said, some intelligent monster races, such as kobolds ,do reproduce inside the dungeon and keep a scattered community together

The five minute per month time window is why a military hasn't taken over the dungeon yet, you can only get so many soldiers and supplies through the door each month, and then they have to either survive off brought in rations or move ahead in search of food. I haven't done the math but I figured it would be untenable to bring a full army inside, so the most that has been done is send some relatively large groups of elite troupes inside, which have had mixed success in making it inside the dungeon.

Jay R
2017-01-26, 09:55 AM
The inherent contradiction is that you are trying to maintain both a well-known, well-traveled area and a collection of deadly encounters at the same time and place, as if the dungeon is both civilized and wild at the same time. This isn't a dungeon; it's a deadly theme park. Somebody built the equivalent of a Jurassic Park where the dinosaurs are supposed to eat the guests. The real question is this - why?

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The dungeon has huge, powerful magic spells. Since magic always has a cost, what is the source of power?

A. It's draining power off the nearby people, who don't recognize that they are slowly getting more lethargic and less able to think.
B. It's an elaborate trap. Adventurers are its real prey and source of power.
C. Some mad wizard has learned to generate magic power from a nearby waterfall, and this secret is potentially far more valuable than the entire contents of the Dungeon. The dungeon is there just to keep people from noticing, and distract or kill anybody who gets too close.

Maglubiyet
2017-01-26, 09:57 AM
Given the extremely valuable nature of the treasure inside, what's to stop people from digging through the walls of the cliff or excavating down from the top of the mountain to break inside? Get an army of workers to chip through the walls.

If that's impossible, how do enchantments that powerful exist in a low magic world?

Deremir
2017-01-26, 12:56 PM
Ok, probably should have mention from the beginning, the whole dungeon is an elaborate system a mage created to get people to die within a certain area, so that he could harvest their souls in an attempt to attain godhood, with a portion of the energy the souls provide going back into maintaining the dungeon, refilling it with monsters and treasure. The description of a deadly theme park where the patrons are meant to die is very apt.

I suppose I will have to come up with some explanation for why they aren't just mining the mountain to expose the complex, magic is the easiest explanation but it seems a bit lazy. Perhaps they tried but the mage controlling everything killed them off in a mysterious fashion to dissuade future attempts?

ellindsey
2017-01-26, 12:59 PM
Perhaps the dungeon is actually in a private demiplane, and what looks like the front door is just a permanent gate to the demiplane? If people dig into the mountain, they just find solid rock.

Jay R
2017-01-26, 01:52 PM
I suppose I will have to come up with some explanation for why they aren't just mining the mountain to expose the complex, magic is the easiest explanation but it seems a bit lazy. Perhaps they tried but the mage controlling everything killed them off in a mysterious fashion to dissuade future attempts?

I wouldn't bother explaining it. If your players never think of that idea, you don't need an explanation. And if they do, why explain away what could be a great adventure hook?

The mage is scrying, and probably has spies as well. He'll know when somebody tries to mine, and will have a plan to counteract it. Don't tell them the plan to prevent the PCS from trying it; play out the plan if they do.

SethoMarkus
2017-01-26, 03:49 PM
I wouldn't bother explaining it. If your players never think of that idea, you don't need an explanation. And if they do, why explain away what could be a great adventure hook?

The mage is scrying, and probably has spies as well. He'll know when somebody tries to mine, and will have a plan to counteract it. Don't tell them the plan to prevent the PCS from trying it; play out the plan if they do.

I disagree with this just a bit. Or, rather, I think it is a wonderful idea but I do think it would be better to construct an explanation as to why no one has attempted it before, or, if they did, what happened.

Do not volunteer this information to the players. If the PCs want to try mining outthe mountain, let them! Certainly don't block their efforts or lead them away from it with information counter to their plan. But, I suggest having a response prepared for if the question "why didn't anyone do this before?" pops up.

Now, this answer can be anything from the noble lobbying against excavating the dungeon because then he can't tax the town, to no one has the resources or incentive to have attempted it yet, to magic death-squads killing anyone that tries. Just be prepared foe the PCs to go places and try things you didn't anticipate :smallwink:

DarkestKnight
2017-01-26, 03:52 PM
I'm intrigued by the magic rules more than the dungeon, so I'll start there.

What methods are there for offsetting these magic costs? You mentioned that a soul could be used, does that have to be the user's soul? Can the cost be passed to another being? To me this could be used to create different magic oriented groups who are all trying to unlock the powers of the universe, because really when won't the wizard want to break the laws of all creation? Off the top of my head you could get necromancers soul trapping (like the BBEG of your dungeon, but on a lesser scale), druids/blighters that mitigate the cost by distributing it among the local flora/fauna, mages that store their own soul energy in gems to use later (pre-paid magic within a certain timeframe if you will) and another that uses cohorts of slaves as kindling for their spells.
If you have time for some extra reading, I'd suggest The Fionavar Tapestry. The magic used in it is powerful, but with a matching cost, and there is a good deal of discussion about mages and their sources. Additionally, The Obsidian Trilogy has different types of magic, with interesting spell/cost systems.
Has artifice/science become a significant thing in the world? Only mighty wizards can toss lightning around, but a fellow with a hand cranked taser could still be something. I don't think this fits so well, but I thought the question worth asking.

As for the dungeon itself, I would highly suggest reading Kaveman26's journal 'Cattle Driving Necromancers'. In addition to being a fantastic journal, he covers some behind the scenes work and material about running a mega dungeon (which the journal runs through). Basically anything I could offer, I learned from there.

I would ask, how did the BBEG actual create the dungeon in the first place? I like how it has been set up as a self renewing facility, but the start up costs would be huge, unless the dungeon was/is actually growing proportionately to the surplus of souls taken. Would ruins of a past city, whose inhabitants were said startup cost, be found as the new one expands over them?

I do like Ellindsey's suggestion of a demiplane. That could buy you a lot of hand waving solutions.

Deremir
2017-01-26, 05:02 PM
Perhaps the dungeon is actually in a private demiplane, and what looks like the front door is just a permanent gate to the demiplane? If people dig into the mountain, they just find solid rock.

A demiplane would provide an easy explanation for a lot of questions, but it feels like that's too much power, even for this villian. If you can create your own demiplane you're already half way to god hood.


I disagree with this just a bit. Or, rather, I think it is a wonderful idea but I do think it would be better to construct an explanation as to why no one has attempted it before, or, if they did, what happened.

Do not volunteer this information to the players. If the PCs want to try mining outthe mountain, let them! Certainly don't block their efforts or lead them away from it with information counter to their plan. But, I suggest having a response prepared for if the question "why didn't anyone do this before?" pops up.

Now, this answer can be anything from the noble lobbying against excavating the dungeon because then he can't tax the town, to no one has the resources or incentive to have attempted it yet, to magic death-squads killing anyone that tries. Just be prepared foe the PCs to go places and try things you didn't anticipate :smallwink:

I like noble idea, I will probably come up with some reason why initial mining attempt failed, which the PCs can find out for themselves, and say that the noble is grateful for it because he fears if the dungeon could be mined it would become so lucrative he would be supplanted by more powerful nobles/the monarch.


I'm intrigued by the magic rules more than the dungeon, so I'll start there.

What methods are there for offsetting these magic costs? You mentioned that a soul could be used, does that have to be the user's soul? Can the cost be passed to another being? To me this could be used to create different magic oriented groups who are all trying to unlock the powers of the universe, because really when won't the wizard want to break the laws of all creation? Off the top of my head you could get necromancers soul trapping (like the BBEG of your dungeon, but on a lesser scale), druids/blighters that mitigate the cost by distributing it among the local flora/fauna, mages that store their own soul energy in gems to use later (pre-paid magic within a certain timeframe if you will) and another that uses cohorts of slaves as kindling for their spells.

Oooh! now that is something I hadn't thought of, but its wonderful! I think I'm going to play it as a mage can take energy for their magic from basically any source, heat, light, chemicals, enchanted items, and yes, others souls, but each different method of manipulating energy requires special training. Since I'm playing this as souls being the most potent source of energy by far, the methods you mentioned would probably be more prevalent than most others, although I could see some location specific groups popping up with a fair bit of power, such as fire mages gaining their power from a volcano.


Has artifice/science become a significant thing in the world? Only mighty wizards can toss lightning around, but a fellow with a hand cranked taser could still be something. I don't think this fits so well, but I thought the question worth asking.

I don't think much in the way of science has been used, but there are probably some standardized low magic items that get used by those of high enough position, such as magical beacons for high profile town guards.


As for the dungeon itself, I would highly suggest reading Kaveman26's journal 'Cattle Driving Necromancers'. In addition to being a fantastic journal, he covers some behind the scenes work and material about running a mega dungeon (which the journal runs through). Basically anything I could offer, I learned from there.

Thanks! I had previously read the journal, but I didn't realize he went over the process of managing a mega dungeon.


I would ask, how did the BBEG actual create the dungeon in the first place? I like how it has been set up as a self renewing facility, but the start up costs would be huge, unless the dungeon was/is actually growing proportionately to the surplus of souls taken. Would ruins of a past city, whose inhabitants were said startup cost, be found as the new one expands over them?

I haven't entirely decided where he got the initial energy from, my current thinking is that he would have sacrificed a town or some large group of people, and then traveled to a new location to build the dungeon, as he wouldn't want the connection between the massacre and the dungeon in case people started catching on.

does anyone have some ideas for what the general populace in and around the dungeon would be doing? what unique businesses might be viable? or what interesting politics or conditions might arise from having a permanent town inside the dungeon? (for reference, I'm currently thinking that the way the dungeon towns farm is by feeding a strange moss that's abundant on their levels of the dungeon to giant beetles, and then milking/slaughtering the beetles. Like ants (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ant#Relationships_with_other_organisms).)

Quertus
2017-01-26, 06:09 PM
I'm glad the OP made the world consistent enough that my guess as to how things worked was correct.

As a PC, I'd be most interested in studying the effect, to duplicate or subvert it. And, perhaps, in trying to identify and ally with the wizard who made it.

Alternately, I can see me playing a cult leader, who attempts to harness the power in the souls of my cultists, using a similar mechanism. For really big effects, a sacrifice may be required, so perhaps even the exact same mechanism.

So... where do "permanent" items get their power? If they all require one or more souls trapped within to power them, that realization could be... interesting. Definitely liking the "sacrificing cultists for the cause" themed character idea more and more. Although my signature character, for whom this account is named, would certainly... encourage... the use of willing spirits in such endeavors.

Also... when the party makes it to the end, a) do they each get one wish; b) what keeps them from camping out at the wish-granting spot?