Quote:
Originally Posted by evileeyore
Hmmm. On one hand I'm bound (contractually) to agree that it makes an incredibly good excuse, and really does the job well, of 'why do these dungeons keep filling with monstrous humanoids"... but on the other... I don't use excuses, so... not much use to me.
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I have to admit it - most folks don't need any
excuse to explain the dungeon. What I was hoping for was to introduce a new
model of how the dungeon works.
Keepers started out as a source of "lower purpose," that extra fun special "Higher Purpose, Defend the Dungeon" variant Peter proposed all those moons ago. It gelled when he reported his players suspected that sufficiently successful delvers moved into the dungeon to become the boss monsters for the next generation.
But keepers provide more than just that.
Keepers mean that the dungeon is a
being with goals. It want's to protect something or things, but it
also wants fame. This means when the GM colludes to make the delve as epic as possible, there is an explicit tool to take up. When the monsters let the bard escape the TPK, AGAIN, there's a creature doing it. The crazy monsters are just the right kind of crazy to be fun, and not boring crazy or terrifyingly competent crazy. Etc.
There's also the possibility of the learned PCs or NPCs negotiating a deal with the dungeon itself. What will the PCs do when they learn that their fiercest rivals for the King's favor have mostly been bribing the Keeper spirits with really good tavern tales?
But the core of it is actually my brain, which sometimes does do much better when there is an excuse for the monsters to be just the right kind of crazy, the traps to be just the right kinds of flashy almost lethal nonsense, rather than something effective, and the talky monsters to be just the right kind of entertaining. For those of y'all for whom this sort of nonsense is not even a bit off-footing, well ... a keeper is you.