Dungeon Fantasy Settings

[tantric]

I'm curious about the campaign settings people use for DF. Exactly how do you go about creating a world that has lots of interesting abandoned ruins loaded with goodies and baddies?

I was considering a continent of folks who fell under the influences of the elder gods, devolved into subhuman troglodytes and now their lands are up for grabs....

[Collective_Restraint]

I think the easiest way to handle ruins and lairs would be a world that went from a period of prosperity to a period of dark ages created by massive wars or natural disasters. A world like this would have a lot of historical records missing and plenty of abandonned castles, ruins and cities.

A quick example like this is the world of Krynn from Dragonlance where a foolish priest angered the gods and it resulted into a major catastrophe; cities sinking into the earth, mountains popping where there was none before, major geographical changes, etc.

[vitruvian]

I think the easiest way to handle ruins and lairs would be a world that went from a period of prosperity to a period of dark ages created by massive wars or natural disasters. A world like this would have a lot of historical records missing and plenty of abandonned castles, ruins and cities.

Well, yeah. It can even be better if this has happened *many times*, and at different times in different parts of the continent or other campaign area. That way, you can dot the landscape with a variety of very different types of dungeons. The Gothic (in the architectural sense) castle that was sacked by revolting peasants just a generation ago and since then has been inhabited by ghosts and other undead can be quite different from the ancient ruined city of the Golden Oldies, and can be quite different again from the ziggurat temple that's found other several meters of earth or the city of Blackjack that's been rebuilt 21 times (so far), with all the earlier layers of the city still navigable underneath the streets and accessible from everybody's basement.

[sir_pudding]

I've always wanted to run a game where an insular society suffers some crisis and needs to seed adventures into the world, only to discover that their community is inside a huge subterranean realm, or cyclopean ruin.

[Omniplex]

Someone posted a setting idea on these boards to justify the Dungeon Fantasy style that I thought was cool.
http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread...8&page=1&pp=10

[Xenophile]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

I've always wanted to run a game where an insular society suffers some crisis and needs to seed adventures into the world, only to discover that their community is inside a huge subterranean realm, or cyclopean ruin.

There's an illustration in one of the preview books for D&D 4E that depicts this cozy little hamlet by the woods, but when you look closer you can see massive and ancient dragon statues that the houses are practically built on top of. It's pretty cool, and rather like a smaller-scale version of your idea.

[vitruvian]

Someone posted a setting idea on these boards to justify the Dungeon Fantasy style that I thought was cool.

That was me, but I've since decided that rather than have there be *one* past civilization of Ancients, it would be more fun to have had civilizations rise and fall a good dozen times or so. Each past society can leave behind distinct types of dungeons, and if the last 'Fall' was around 500-1000 years in the past, there can be plenty of individual small kingdoms and holdings that have sprung up and fallen into ruin, just more locally.

Actually, enumerating the types of past civilizations, what types of ruins they would leave behind, and how they fell would be another useful exercise. I'll start -

1) Pseudo-Roman Empire (Tiberians? Quirinians?) with strong use of college-based magics including use of Earth spells to create a system of roads. Leaves behind buildings and entire cities and towns of strong stone or wood construction, frequently with a central atrium area open to the sky, frequently buried by hostile action using Entombment or other Earth magic. Fell in the War of the Trees (Oak vs. Olive), when rampaging hordes of Druid-backed barbarians (small b- not all of them were SM+1) not only sacked most of the cities but also covered them with rapidly sprouting forests.

[Anaraxes]

Progress is a relatively modern notion. High fantasy typically hearkens back to myth, and very often includes the notion of a fall from a previous Golden Age. Civilization devolves. Heroes of the past were always mightier, and the elder wizards had a better comprehension of mighty magics lost to us today.

[jimmyjimjam]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

I've always wanted to run a game where an insular society suffers some crisis and needs to seed adventures into the world, only to discover that their community is inside a huge subterranean realm, or cyclopean ruin.

Ala D&D's "hollow world" campaign setting?

[ravenfish]

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

Progress is a relatively modern notion. High fantasy typically hearkens back to myth, and very often includes the notion of a fall from a previous Golden Age. Civilization devolves. Heroes of the past were always mightier, and the elder wizards had a better comprehension of mighty magics lost to us today.

Very true. A 'in the ruins of fallen (metaphorical) giants' setting isn't only great DF, it's not all that bad history. Roman ruins, while short on orcs, certainly stood, for a time, amoungst people who had little clue how to replace them.