The Dungeon Is Hell

While I was mowing the other day I had a realization: The Dungeon is Hell.

Now, not in the "war is hell" kind of sense,*** though many a player losing a PC in "Tomb of Horrors" will feel it in that sense, I think. But, as I was mowing some concentric circles (I mow oddly) I got to thinking about hell (I hate mowing) and Dante's conception of the afterlife and I realized that it was a 9 level dungeon...

It's, in fact, the classic dungeon. A very brief (almost handwaved by the DM...um...author) wilderness trek to the entrance of the dungeon. The characters enter and descend from layer to layer (levels anyone?) going past worse and worse sinners (stronger monsters) to the deepest level wherein dwells the BBEG (and, yeah, the ORIGINAL BBEG, right? Lucifer himself). And once they've beaten the "goal room"...there's more - a portal to another land (Purgatorio) and further adventures...

I mean, Divine Comedy could almost be the original adventure railroad, right? What choice does Dante have but to keep going thru Hell, Purgatory and finally Paradise... ascending levels...well, you get the picture.

I realize that Dante and Virgil didn't battle their way through Hell or anything. But from a design standpoint, it strikes me that this is really the way dungeons are designed - and maybe for good reason. Dante is part of our Western Cultural DNA. His concept of Hell has permeated our culture in a way that when I say that Walmart is the Third Circle of Hell, people who I know have never read Dante get it.*****

Now, this whole thing might be old hat to everybody else (heck, it's probably in Underworld and Wilderness Adventures in the 3LBB - or Holmes Basic or something) but it was a revelation to me. And it explains why having the dungeon structured this way (B4 "The Lost City" Zargon's Lair, as a prime example) "feels" right to me.

The Dungeon really is Hell....







*** One of my favorite exchanges from the series M*A*S*H goes something like this:
Someone: "War is hell."
Hawkeye: "War isn't hell. War is war and Hell is Hell. And of the two, war is a lot worse."
Fr. Mulcahy: "How do you figure, Hawkeye?"
Hawkeye: "Easy, Father. Tell me, who goes to Hell?"
Fr. Mulcahy: "Well, sinners, I suppose."
Hawkeye: "Exactly, Father. There are no innocent bystanders in Hell. War is chock full of them - little kids, cripples, old ladies. In fact, except for some of the brass, almost everybody involved is an innocent bystander."

*****The third circle is gluttony, after all - and doesn't Walmart represent, at least a little, our cultural obsession with more?

Stairs of the Lady - Stream of Consciousness First Draft

Because I've always been Mr. "Too Many Irons in the Fire" - I was thinking the other day about a megadungeon that I ponder off and on - the halls and caverns under the tower of an Archmage - not exactly a Mad Archmage (though he's got some artifacts that were created by mad mages...) and certainly not Elminster or Fizban or the like. Damoric started life as a cleric back in our old Monty Haul days - my goodness, I wish I could find that character sheet (or I should say sheets - since his equipment list almost certainly was multiple pages of magical junk hauled out of dungeons). Alas, the character sheet is gone - but the name lives on as a high level mage in the world of Daen Ral.

Damoric is a benevolent sort, though he rarely takes on apprentices these days. He spends a lot of his time down in the depths under his tower doing...well, archmage things. In the dungeons, should anyone have need to delve, are amazing constructs and elemental guardians, imprisoned demons and "deities" (see my post On the Nature of Worshiped Beings for a bit more on that or check out the cosmology of Daen Ral). By the way, the isometric map I posted last week was the very first "megadungeon" map I drew - and it was the dungeons under Damoric's tower...

Anyway, one area of the dungeon is the Stair of the Lady***:

The chamber with the stair is circular, 100' in diameter and rises 300' from floor to ceiling. The stair climbs the wall of the chamber. In the center of the chamber is statue of a robed woman, 120' tall.

The entrance to the chamber is at eye level to the statue, about 100' up. When any living being enters the chamber, the statue's eyes glow. I haven't decided on the effect yet (perhaps it is a "know alignment" spell - red for evil, blue for good, purple for neutral - they would glow with greater intensity the greater the balance of good/neutral/evil in the area of effect - say a 10' square area at the entrance - or it could be a type of charm person - or a bless, curse, cure, hmmm, dunno yet). The point is, this is the entrance to the chamber, PCs cannot avoid the eyes so I don't want to completely hose them, but I do want something cool to happen.

The stairs climb up - with many landings and side chambers radiating off the staircase - leading to an observatory - kind of a strange, magical "you can see almost any place in the world if you know how to look" place - tended by Grey Watchers (new creatures native to Daen Ral - they'll be part of a later post).

Going down the steps leads to other landings and chambers radiating off the staircase as well - eventually coming to the main floor - the statue (which maybe could actually animate if the right circumstances occur) and the Great Bronze Doors (they're always bronze, aren't they?) which lead to the deeper parts of the dungeon.

Damoric would have this area in place as a safeguard - perhaps only certain alignments could pass or only those with certain magical symbols - or even those of sufficient power (read: level) can pass. Maybe even only those with the Mark of Damoric (how about magical tattoos?) can pass - and that might then affect what the Lady's eyes do - and whether or not the statue will animate...

*** So this little area was inspired by an entry in last year's One Page Dungeon Contest - The Dawn Haven:

I was just looking over THIS YEAR'S entries (because I thought it came from this bunch - but it was last year's) and, wow, what a bunch of really great maps - maybe someday I'll actually read the adventures :)

Dungeon Mapping

I started gaming in either late 80 or early 81, can't remember (I know that I was in Junior High - yes, not Middle School dagnabbit - Junior High). Anyway, I'm a grognard, I guess... I've been playing this game for...shoot, 2/3rds of my life...

But I came to a realization the other day - it's mostly about maps. Now, I love maps. Maps of anything. But what I realized is that in rpg stuff - what I want is a map that is interesting. So from the classic B2 - I've never been too entranced by the keep itself, but I love the caves of chaos - the map itself just suggests so much.

And I also realize that I will put up with big, steaming piles of really bad module - if the map is interesting - at least a little bit. Case in point, I was looking over a 3.5 ed module, DCC #28 Into the Wilds which has some okay points - but has great maps - the maps were what caught me - then I read the adventure - there's bits in it I could use, of course, but the maps are great.

So - I know that for some the release of DL1: Dragons of Despair spelled the beginning of the end for AD&D (the dawning of the "silver age" or whatever) but that module breathed new life into my gaming. But maybe not for the reasons you might think.

The adventure? Yeah, it was okay. But the maps. That 3D perspective map? It was great. What I really liked about it (and still do today) is that the dungeon is finally in a 3 dimensional space - not just rectangles on a flat paper - but a cavern - with stuff at the top AND at the bottom. And the outdoor maps were just as evocative for me.

So I have a special place in my heart for these, whachacallit, isometric maps. I've poured over what is allegedly one of the worst adventures ever published - XL1: The Quest for the Heartstone - but again, not for the adventure itself (it's of middling quality - not the worst, by far - but won't make anybody's top 50 list...) but the map of the dungeon - working out all the interrelations between the levels. I think it's great (published the same year as DL1 - TSR was obviously moving in a new direction).

So - here's a low res (don't want to violate copyright - I'm pretty sure this is unusable) scan of XL1's dungeon map:

I was so smitten by the map style that I tried my own hand at this isometric stuff - but, of course, I didn't have any of that fancy graph paper - so I made my own. I still remember using a yardstick and drawing all the horizontal and then diagonal lines to make my own isometric graph paper (I was like 15 at the time - so, yeah, I had no life). I've reproduced the 25 year old pencil drawing below - original is on 12x18 inch paper. It was my first attempt at a pseudo-megadungeon. Kind of small, considering, but it has portals to other planes and ridiculously powerful creatures in there - and some as yet uncreated monsters - like the Great Greybat. I think the PCs would have even encountered a demigod or something by the end... I learned to write megadungeons from EX1&2 - so that should tell you something about what my early attempts were like (yes, I know they weren't even dungeons - but I was a kid, okay?).