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

[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.

[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.

[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?

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by 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?

Centuries ago there was a major war instigated by the followers of a dark god. Among their other blasphemies, these men bred monsters - orcs, wvyerns, and other horrors were the fruits of their labours. They were ultimately defeated, their kingdoms destroyed and their works thrown into ruins, but not without cost - the good guys' communities that survived were in no state to occupy new lands or even to patrol them.

Now, those communities that survived have recovered and expended to the point where there are 'surplus' young people with no prospects for settled employment and enough wealth to be able to outfit themselves and explore for loot in the abandoned and/or destroyed cities and fortresses of their ancestors and the followers of the dark gods. The monsters remain, and even thrive, making life exciting in the wildernesses, and even pushing other, lesser, monsters down into the settled lands (mainly orcs pushing goblins into civilsed country), providing another source of adventure.

That's the gist of my current fantasy campaign.

[sjmdw45]

Originally Posted by 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?

One I've been considering...

My magic system has spells that scale power exponentially with difficulty instead of linearly (more like AD&D "strategic" magic than GURPS "tactical"). Think "hacking the universe's operating system code." It's also a lot more expensive than standard GURPS magic in terms of point-values (more expensive than Powers in most cases). But I digress--suffice to say that magic can potentially cause huge geophysical alterations like volcanoes, ice ages, California falling into the sea...

Take a medieval fantasy world. One day and for no apparent reason, across an area the size of France, underground "dungeons" begin appearing. These dungeons are, initial investigations reveal, usually full of hostile creatures as well as treasure. There's not enough food in the dungeons to support the monsters that are there, and no good reason they should have the treasure they do--but somehow they do. So far, most dungeon inhabitants don't seem interested in leaving the dungeon and invading the "real world," and while that could change at any time, the political Powers That Be don't think now is the right time to spend "blood and treasure" in clearing these potential threats. Thus. "Adventurers" are commissioned with letters of marque to clear these threats out, if they can.

By acknowledging the basic craziness of dungeoneering, you can fit it into the real world while explaining why the Powers That Be don't give you a *real* army for the job, and without ruling out sinister invasion plots that might indeed make calling up real armies worthwhile at some point.

-Max