What purpose does a dungeon have? What's the best excuse for a dungeon's existence? Share your experiences.
First we must define what a dungeon is.
What purpose does a mine have?
It really depends on what type of dungeon you are planning to use. Is it an abandoned ruin of some sort? A natural cavern? An artificially maintained structure?
Is the dungeon above or below ground? (And are you using dungeon to mean any monster infested adventure location, or something more specific?)
>>46544057
You want a hide-out?
Then you don't want a high-profile building like a castle. You want to go underground.
Want to have a big underground base?
Then you need to follow the rock. Your walls should be strong and sturdy so they can carry the weight. But that same material is bad for digging through. So you dodge the hard bits but stay close to them.
Then you'll need to add some vents in order to get fresh air in. Dig another tunnel towards an underground river. Suddenly everything is tight corridors that twist and turn in mind-boggling ways.
But you don't mind. At least it'll confuse any would-be attackers.
>>46544057
[duhn-juhn]
noun
1. a strong, dark prison or cell, usually underground, as in a medieval castle.
2. the keep or stronghold of a castle; donjon.
The purpose is pretty simple really: to keep something in, or to keep something out.
Dungeons don't need a purpose. They're labyrinths full of monsters and treasure. The monsters have a reason for being there and they move around, but you don't need a detailed history of why every room was built a certain way or how each pile of treasure got there.
Not to mention your players won't care.
>>46544057
they're basically castles, except they can be hidden
they have added protection against the elements
they prevent easy entry from fliers and large creatures
archers/artillery/whatever can't shoot into a dungeon
if you ward a dungeon so people can't scry or teleport into it, then it's more secure than a castle
except for hidden dungeons, I believe the best place for a D&D style dungeon is actually under a castle, because the castle can act as a big gatehouse; the castle protects the front door, but even if they get past that, it's still a freaking dungeon
basically, in a D&D world where you have magic, flying monsters, and large monsters, you need to upgrade to dungeons from castles
>>46544647
Not quite. From a tactical perspective, and what with the only real danger to high level BBEGs being a group of heroes, what they really want is a castle. The protagonists run in and then they get pelted from all sides with arrows, spells and stones.
A system of corridors gives a huge advantage to a small group of powerful warriors.
Best excuses for dungeons are obviously ancient ruins. Take a look at the Glow in Fallout1 if you want to know how to design perfect dungeon that is believable and dangerous, but not cliched.
Best place to hide shit is underground especially magical possibly dangerous shit hell
Dungeons exist for a similar reason people in the past would bury their dead with their wealth and servants when one died. The people who live near the dungeons don't rob from the tomb out of respect and fear of the deads vengeance upon their people. Of course, that doesn't stop adventurers.
That's the best excuse I've been able to come up with on my own for dungeons being everywhere and having untouched treasure.
>>46544057
Sometime shortly after the beginning of the universe, at least thats our best guess, some random species found out they can just up and take what they want supposing they're sufficiently strong enough or their targets sufficiently weak enough. This began an arms race for stronger warriors as various other races catch on. Most call this Natural Selection. As we became smarter and more civilized we started to streamline this process through training and military doctrines and practices. For most worlds like our earth this is a minor problem as we only have ourselves to contend with so the above procedures are all we need. In others, however, there's many races all competing against each other, this tends to complicate things.
As a quick and messy fix, much like evolution itself, the races made giant labyrinthine dungeons and filled them to the brim with monsters and traps as clever and vicious as they could manage to throw their warriors at in a meatgrinder to ensure only the toughest make it out to live, fight, and breed the next generation.
Gradually things cooled off and died down and civilizations began to claim lands, people built houses, families, and lives together and generally the only fighting that happened was between individuals or war.
This brings us to now where you and the rest of the party exist in a world, where this applies, and are adventurers of some stripe and due to the nature of adventurers i'm sure you'll eventually stumble upon one of these lost and forgotten, but still mostly functional, wonders of ages past.
>>46544057
Either ancient ruins, vast cave systems, or a lair excavated by monsters, really.
>>46544057
Dungeons are the physical manifestations of the bowels of the Dragon-Gods who rule above us in the Aetheric Plane. As above, so indigestion below.
>>46544057
Must of mine where ancient mine that wetre abandon when they run out then converted into living space by the monsters.
>>46544057
Here's something I wrote up in a thread a while back.
Posting the link because you might like some of the other ideas in the thread.
http://archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/42842530/#q42842530
