Throw him in the…Fortified Underground Defense Facility!!!

Many years ago, when I worked underground, I had a bumper snicker that said:  It’s not a Dungeon.  It’s a fortified Underground Defense Facility!  Then, It was particularly funny (at least to me), because that’s pretty much what I worked in.  There was a reason it was located where it was and why the doors were locked.  But, why Dungeons?  Dragons are obvious…western myth of these powerful fire-breathing creatures abound.  The are powerful and terrifying and a great evil for hero’s to slay (yeah, right!).  But where did the labyrinthine compounds built beneath the ground come from and why do orcs live over there, next door to the rust monster, just upstairs from the poison spore fungus, that the gelatinous cube leave be?

The dungeon, as far as I can tell, does have at least a bit of provenance…however tenuous…

There are the Mines of Moria, and The Labyrinth.  (You know, from Crete? Built by Daedalus?)  But since they were included in the name of the Grandfather (D&D) they can be found in almost all fantasy games and many games that are NOT fantasy!

(←Kudos to those who recognize that map!)

Hmmm…I have several hundred slaves, a lot of shovels and a bunch of doors, but no stone masons or brick makers…what can I do???

For the evil overlord who has the manpower, but doesn’t want a crenelated tower spoiling his view of the countryside, digging an underground complex might be the answer.  What other reason could a person have for building the monolithic multilevel complexes of hallways and separate chambers?

From a GM point of view, Dungeons are a great mechanic.  You know that the players are limited in their actions…(unless they decide they are just going to leave…but there are ways to counter that!  Ask My Lady wife about it!)  Almost all action that take place there are mechanical, rolled on dice, and it can become a great limit on resources…do they drop the latest treasure, or keep another week of food?  However, most settings just leave the dungeons in place because of these benefits.  They litter the countryside, and are filled with myriad creatures to challenge your players.  But then we get back to the question above.  Why?  A fortress?  Well, why not build a fortress?  You never have to worry about cave ins, and you can grow food, and save a huge amount on your torch bill!  A hidden fortress?  Better.  Why do you need a hidden fortress, and why doesn’t magic, or technology, work better to keep it hidden?  Do you have an army of underground builders who don’t know how to stack stones on top of each other, but can mold stone like clay?  Very good reason…how do you get water?  Air?  Food? Light?  All of these are questions that would push people away from using the traditional dungeon full of locked doors and death traps.  Are there any reasons to?

Earthdawn, one of my favorite settings, has a perfect reason for dungeons to exist:  Horrors.  The very short version of the great back story is that evil creatures exist that are unstoppable except by building magically protected cities beneath the earth.  With that  setting, you have a great reason for dungeons, with built-in Big Bad at the end!  However, it is not the only reason.  What if the surface of the planet is hostile, so denizens all live beneath the surface, with an inverse strata…those farther from the surface are the wealthier, because they are more protected from the inimical surface hazards.  Lost paths, or those that had sprung a leak to the surface…Instant abandoned (or recently re-inhabited) dungeon!  With only a little thought, you should be able to determine if dungeons will work in your setting or not.  But, maybe you can use dungeons that aren’t a series of man-made or natural caverns.  What about a badlands made up of canyons and gulches, that are generally to steep and unstable to climb…or that the hostile Indian tribe watches the surface and shoots anyone who comes out?  Perhaps they get into an office building…no windows on the first 5 floors, security you understand.  And the door that they entered cannot be opened from this side!  They need to find a way out…and of course the robots that patrol the corridors don’t recognize the intruders…

All right.  You have decided that you can use dungeons and so you begin throwing Orks over here, giant centipedes in this hall.  Skeletons down these stairs, and giant spiders in the other room over there.  That should prove a challenge!  Well..yes, it does…a challenge to the suspension of disbelief!  When keying (or populating) your dungeon like complex, think about why it is here.  You obviously know you are going to use it…but why?  Is it an abandoned Dwarven stronghold?  Why did they abandon it?  Is it a maze with a minotaur at the center?  Is it an ancient kaer in which the citizens have forgotten why they buried themselves and degenerated into a dog eat dog stratification?  Once you have thought out why it is there, you should see some obvious current inhabitants.  The ancient bane of dwarves is the goblins!  So, mostly what you find is goblins or goblinoid creatures…and don’t goblins often set traps?  Do they keep pets?  Wild boars for food, and for cavalry?  or maybe they eat large spiders!  “But Refmentor!  When can I put in the dragon?!!  Well…There wouldn’t be a dragon in this complex.  Unless it is what drove out the dwarves.  And if that is the case, will the goblins still be hanging around?  Not likely.  It is possible that a few scroungers have taken up residence well away from the dragon, but they are either very cunning, or completely stupid…and fighting might well rouse the super senses of the main resident.  (We will talk another time about when to use such creatures in your settings). 

Dungeons do Not have to be part of every story, but the can definitely be used for certain purposes.  But, as this is an “Ecology of…” article, there is one final consideration for your fortified complex (Underground, overground, or where ever) and that is…ecology!  What do your resident eat?  Do they need water?  What about waste?  Where do they live?  Why is there a magic pool, not alone a dozen in one room?  Although you can create a food web, and then determine what the byproduct of that web are, how things decay, or degrade  and so on, or, like so many other things: think about it.  You can be very detailed, or general.  Flora generally needs soil, light and water.  There are real world exceptions, so there is no reason you cannot have exceptions…Giant leathery mushrooms that absorb water from the air, and actually blacken and weaken in sunlight…not very tasty, but full of nutrients!  They naturally occur, but are often cultivated, but the glow ball fungus never grows with them, and always on the edge of running or at least not-stagnant water…OK…You have a basic food source and even some light.  A particular breed of cave pig is bred to eat these fungus, but they are eaten as well, and their waste can be used for fuel for fires!  OK…Now you have food, light and fuel…now place things that raise/eat them…with a “Bottomless pit” that is used to get rid of waste…bones, feces, dead grandma’s…

With a bit of thought, you can have a relatively believable location with reasonable encounters…It might take a little more investment than you had hoped, (ARE there undead that spontaneously generate?) but as with most everything else, the more you put into it, the more the players get out, which give you more back!

 

Well, That’s the story.  Take it, or leave it.  My trucker buddies, they believe it!

Murder is Bad, um-kay?

Ways to deal with Characters in the setting

Before I go into this post, I want to explain something…I am not posting a (directly) world building article.  But, there are a couple of reasons for that.  1st…I wanted to post this article.  Second, World building is a HUGE topic.  As far as RPGs go, it really is setting building, so any of the “Ecology” articles will be relevant.  What are people looking for?  The various and assorted dregs of ideas that I use to build new settings?  Tools to build world/universe maps? Building stories and plot arcs?  I guess I set the question too broad…So, I will be posting another poll…but it will be a fill in the blank…What kind of things do YOU want to see?  And lastly…what do you think of my new layout?  I might be playing around with them a bit in the near future.  Please NOTE: The hexes at the top Right are the menu’s!

Now…to the point!

One of the issues that ref’s have is dealing with disruptive characters.  The player is usually fine, but the character is causing problems (usually a psych type motivation or maybe a bestest) .  The fighter who gets into fights with the least provocation…not with fellow PCs, but with NPCs…bar patrons, thugs, etc.  The thief who feels the need to pickpocket every merchant they see, and relies on quick feet when the roll fails…the assassin who routinely murders people because they look at them cross-eyed.

None of these are necessarily BAD character types, but they can make for disruptive games.  So, what can you do?  Actually quite a lot, ranging from the “settle down” comment to the player, to the Blue bolt from the sky, leaving only a smoking pair of boots! (Yes, even if the character was barefoot…but that is a bit of a more  gruesome sight…)  But, this post has a bit of world building to it, so let me lean on that.   I have already addressed some of the problems of the troublesome player, and will assume you have taken care of that.

The first thing is character boundaries.  I have discussed the need for building a team of characters.  So, the first thing to do, if your character wants to play a low down murdering scum bounty hunter / assassin, but your game is about lawful obedience to gods of light…you might veto the character.  OR you might sit with the player, explain the arc, and see if this character can be led to a path of redemption.  If that works, then you have a hook…the first priest who assigns the task has seen this poor urchin, and charges one of the paladins to convert him from his heathen and un social ways!  (sorry…we are not worried about hooks…but that one was too easy!)  If the character doesn’t fit the adventure, find out what appeals to the player and see if you can fit their wants into a character that does fit.  Or, would everybody rather play a dark and EVIL campaign…(I will cover EVIL campaigns sometime).  I won’t go into this discussion for now, we already have a given that the PLAYER is not the problem.  The next, and perhaps most important thing, is societal boundaries.  One of the biggest jobs for a ref is to try to suspend disbelief in a game about the Ahlflin, a small creature with small eyes, big ears and Huge teeth, who is driving the living spaceship at 100 times the speed of light through the heart of a black hole in pursuit of one of the mighty space dragons.  Part of that suspension  is to represent the society in which they live.  And society has rules.  I am not talking LAWS and I am not going to get on my high horse about legislation and morals…Rules for people to live together.  No matter the setting, Killing people is bad.  Behavior that disrupts society is BAD,  and every society has a way to enforce that.  A society is any group of people.  a party of 4 have their own society.  And they have ways of enforcing it.  A star faring civilization of trillions of souls have a different society.  The general rule is that the larger the society, the more rigid the standards.  It is ok for a single couple to live however they wish, doing what ever they wish…but, when millions are involved, the rules are more restrictive to keep order, if not peace.  So…how does this play to RPGs and reffing?  ENFORCE THE RULES!

I am not talking about the game book.  I am talking about the society.  If someone attacks a city militia member, they will be, at the least, shunned.  If no one saw it, and the perpetrator ensured their were no witnesses, then the militia/guard will increase their patrols…either nobody traveling alone or more often patrolling the area.  If entire guard patrols are wiped out, then every available guard will be called out…they may fail morale checks, and for a while, your characters may rule a town out of fear…but that leads to secretive enemies, who may try to murder them…and eventually, they will send for a band of adventurers to deal with these evil tyrants.  What about Assassins?  OK.  You allow assassins in your games, fine.  Do you also include guilds, or are they all self-employed and freelance? Either way, the establishment will likely not appreciate people working “their turf”  without sanction…and any assassin worth the title won’t kill for free…and they then becomes a target of the locals.  Thieves and pirates will draw the ire of law enforcement.  People who don’t pay the graft to the keepers of the shadow market will be separated from their outlet…at least!

How can you catch the player who is breaking these societal norms?  Investigation!  Somebody will be in charge of seeking out the ne’er-do-wells.  How can they find them?  What tools do they have?  Magic?  Science?  Divine guidance?  What value is magic in criminal investigation? How difficult is it to kill someone when you can bring in the local necromancer to ask the spirit of the victim who killed them?  So how does your murderer keep the spirit from speaking…oh what games just that trail of crumbs could lead to!   What about a theocratic society, based upon a pantheistic belief?  They may use Paladins of the god of justice to investigate crimes.  Priests of the goddess of Revenge to carry out punishment.  Temple of the Patron of Slavers to deal with sentencing.  Technology…extrapolate any CSI type show.  In short, you can use whatever tools available to carry out enforcement of rules.  Maybe is just the Biggest thug that hangs out at the dock…for a few coins, he visits the perpetrator with a whack-bonk.  (What’s a whack-bonk?  A leather bag filled with lead shot…whack someone upside the head, and you hear a bonk as the head bounces off the floor!).  Maybe it is hiring gunslinger from San Francisco…he has a gun, and he travels!  Summoned Demons?  Summoned Angels?  Created bio hunters that track a single DNA pattern that never sleeps?  Or just calling the police.  All of these can be used to keep players in line.  Your game, no matter the setting will have some rules and some punishments.  It may range from a death sentence by stoning for any infraction, to banishment, to weregild  Man has inflicted some harsh punishments upon other men throughout history.  Sometimes it is just because they were the enemies…but sometimes they were enemies because they couldn’t live in the rules of their society.

Simply put, think about the society.  What are the rules of that society?  How are the rules enforced? And then have your society enforce them!

 

That’s my story.  Take it or leave it. My trucker buddies, they believe it!