dungeon fantasy evolution

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Black Leviathan

Dungeon Fantasy is a weak platform to build a game that makes sense on.

Yes, but that's what makes it an interesting challenge.

[thorr-kan]

Originally Posted by Varyon

Combine it with being infectious. If those killed by a wraith rise as wraiths themselves in a few nights, you can quickly depopulate a city, replacing those who fail to escape with wraiths. Alternatively, have the insubstantial threat be a harbinger of sorts - perhaps it can spawn new (corporeal) monsters, teleport others in, and/or bring down the city's defenses for the forces waiting outside to enter.

DnD fandom has a term for this: wightpocalypse. And it's an easy way to end a campaign.

Originally Posted by Varyon

If that's the one I'm thinking of, I tend to make use of the concept from it of "adventurer" being a formal profession that reduces the sorts of restrictions one is under, like very weak legal enforcement powers/legal immunity. Otherwise-second-class (or lower) citizens - monstrous races, women, etc - tend to be overrepresented compared to what one might expect amongst adventurers, due to being an adventurer giving them rights they'd otherwise lack.

That's the one.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Black Leviathan

Dungeon Fantasy is a weak platform to build a game that makes sense on. The setting has no organic basis to support the existence of any of the classes. The economics of that kind of world would be untenable. Villages or even towns would just collapse from mountains of coins washing over them from randomly timed dungeon crawls. I'd suggest you build something from Dungeon Fantasy instead.

"Town" could easily be something put together in a hurry near the dungeon, like the old Gold Rush towns, with large quantities of wealth being shipped out while dungeoneering gear is shipped in. Realistically, everything in such a shantytown would likely be far more expensive than it is elsewhere, but price fixing via royal decree or similar could avoid that issue. In Oubliette, merchants and the like flock to the area when a new dungeon is discovered. They typically set up shop in an established town near the dungeon, but some enterprising (and well-guarded) few will set up near the dungeon entrance itself, where they can dictate higher prices (to compensate for their increased risk; delvers are often willing to pay for the convenience of not having to trek all the way back to town as well). There are even dungeon prospectors of various flavors, including merchants who setup near where they think a dungeon will soon be discovered.

[Black Leviathan]

I could see peddler wagons camping out around a town that's near where a dungeon has recently been unearthed. Maybe if a lot of money comes out of that dungeon merchants would upgrade or even come together to build a nicer marketplace in town. I don't think you could realistically base a long-term economy on something like a dungeon. No merchant would know if the next group of adventurers will pull the last copper coins out of that hole, or if a cooler dungeon will be discovered and it could be months before the next adventurer arrives. Maybe one of those adventures will take their hoard and buy a nice house outside of town and become a long-term boon to business, but you could never count on that..
Adventuring would be a great way to bolster the business of a town temporarilly, keep the Inn full, keep bards moving through, bring in exotic traders. Just the buzz of the newly discovered dungeon, without any adventurers, puts a town on the map.

[Apollonian]

Originally Posted by Black Leviathan

Just the buzz of the newly discovered dungeon, without any adventurers, puts a town on the map.

Or removes it from the map, if it's a particularly dangerous dungeon.

[thrash]

Originally Posted by Black Leviathan

I don't think you could realistically base a long-term economy on something like a dungeon.

It depends on what you mean by "long-term." This model worked well enough for gold rush boom-towns in history, some of which still exist long after the gold played out.

The "dungeon town" model is really more suited for CRPG-style dungeons that continuously respawn monsters and loot. I understand the appeal; I've even seen almost reasonable backstories for why such a thing would exist (cf. the DanMachi franchise). It's not for me, though -- too much perpetual motion machine. (I have problems with the growth rate of the xenomorphs in Alien(s), if I stop to think about it.)