Ok, now that we’ve looked at form and function, as well as some historical origins and gaming history, let’s look at the actual worldbuilding considerations of dungeons. What actually creates dungeons? How do dungeons actually make any sense in fantasy worlds to begin with?

Dungeons in Space and Time

Ever played an RPG? To start with, these types of fantasy worlds, dungeons seem to just magically and inexplicably appear out of nowhere…and unreasonably often. Maybe magic residue creates a living dungeon, a powerful mage gradually terraforms and carves out a landscape, or an otherworldly rift has momentarily spawned a pocket dimension.

Further, some dungeons seem to only reveal themselves or become accessible after natural disasters like great thaws or tremors or tornadoes — or else powerful earthmoving magics — alter local landscapes. Others may have powerful wards preventing them from appearing outside of rare windows of time, like seasonal solstices and equinoxes, or even rarer celestial conjunctions, oppositions, and eclipses. This all seems to have no rational basis, but it actually makes a little sense in terms of certain gaming logic and tropes. It makes sense when we ask ourselves, what does the ideal dungeon do, from the viewpoint of its occupants?

What Dungeons Must Do

Given any level of consistency, magic in fantasy worlds completely change modes of production, communications, and logistics. In essence, defensively, the ideal dungeon must manage successful strategies not just toward wandering wurms and warbound hordes of bloodthirsty orcs, but also enact material or magical defenses against the potent powers shaping the meta level of a magical world: Scrying, Locate, and Teleport magics, as well Portals and Gates. Specifically, Facilities and Storehouses must function as fortresses or hideouts, and artificial Caves must function as working infrastructure, or else a takeover can happen, or these become Ruins. In response, dungeon-strategists likely make clever use of Abjuration and Illusion magics as countermeasures. In any case, all this suggests very important, top-level social implications for worldbuilding.



Dungeon Social Implications: Weak States Settings

Now, if we want to add any level of verisimilitude into our worldbuilding, the actual existence of dungeons accessible to adventurers has several important implications. First, it seems likely that State-level organizations like kingdoms and empires must be weak enough to allow for adventurer expeditions in the first place, otherwise we’d see mainly the organized annexation of territories through armies, and the like. In a way, the sheer commonality of wandering bands of parties and bandits implies fewer professional soldiers, at least outside the urban core. (And more on that soon enough.)

So, who holds these States, who likely wield massive magical power, in check? Rival powers, factions, or creatures? Revolts? Deities? Resource scarcity? Perhaps “dungeons” as a category make the most sense in terms of post-collapse scenarios, where State power retreats and withdraws itself from territory it normally would conquer. Consider revolutions, plagues, and invasions culminating in the decentralization of power and population density. Perhaps disasters like crop failures have pushed desperate commoners to become adventurers, undertaking dangerous delves normally unthinkable. Perhaps rising tides of revolutionary expropriations, or organized crime, have fueled dungeon delving, as trespassing and looting by non-State actors normalizes.

Dungeon Social Implications: Steady States Settings

Now, we can also consider Steady State scenarios. Perhaps the States in question do have their might, but the prevalence of defensive arcane and divine magic, the intensity of druidic magic protecting wilderness areas, or the current nature of magical warfare, limits these States to regional influence, rather than hegemonic power. The arcane arms race has given no party ascendancy…for now, and so States cannot reach far to plumb the dungeon depths outside their locale.

Dungeon Social Implications: Strong State Settings

In contrast, we can also imagine Strong State backdrops. Various lords promoting dungeon delves as settler-colonial occupations, and the outright eradication of so-called “undesirables”. This can take place not just through militias, but also softer guises of cultural dominance, like combining dungeon delving with formally organized events like scavenger hunts and sports, pastimes like archaeology and tourism, or even land speculation.

Three Types of Dungeon Delvers

Ok, so what’s the takeaway here? Well, beyond just wandering monsters, we have essentially three main social forces delving dungeons and holding one another in check: Pirates (Stateless forces), Privateers (State-authorized forces), and Professional Soldiers (State forces). This forms a sort of continuum, with each approaching the concept of “the dungeon” differently. For worldbuilding, choosing which force dominates dungeon delving will significant shape your fantasy world’s social norms, modes of exploration, and power structures.

Dungeoneering Logic

If so many dungeons amount to little more than failed fortresses that couldn’t make the cut against sieges and invasions, why would any dungeons with valuables be left, anyway? Maybe more than just high risk and the very rational fear of monsters keeps dungeon delving in check. For starters, social stigmas and superstition. For example, Matt Colville mentioned before that to most townsfolk, adventurers come across as either pitiful ratcatchers chasing wealth in undignified ways on the one hand, or as honorless sellswords always bringing danger on the other. So why would most commoners associate with those adventuring folk anyway, particularly when they seem to always do things like use the work of the devil, and kill for coin?

And more than that, let’s also consider diseases and curses. We can easily envision setups where the adventuring party members have rare natural immunities to certain common wilderness and dungeon diseases, which others do not. This could create two interesting scenarios: party members with immunities experience high demand as adventurers, or party members face harsh stigmas for being seen as immune yet still infectious, causing them to become outcasts. (I explored this angle in more detail in the “Germs” section of Gritty Gaming For D&D 5e.)

When we add to risk and superstition and social stigmas the barriers to entry, like expensive supplies and specialized training and navigational requirements, it does actually begin to make sense why most people would not take up the adventuring life.

A Dungeoneering Cycle Model

We can examine the logic of dungeoneering even further. In fact, we can imagine a Dungeoneering Cycle, starting something like this: a dungeon Settling Phase, of reaching and constructing and occupying dungeonable spaces, and from there, as this inhabitation prospers or fails, phases of Succeeding or Struggling. Success follows the metrics for what, defensively, a dungeon must do, as I explained earlier. Still with me? Now, if the settlement fails, a Scavenging phase ensues, where the dungeon occupants must forage for resources and potentially abandon the dungeon long-term; other creatures may also come to scavenge the dungeon too. And once largely scrubbed of valuables, eventually a Squatting phase resets the cycle, as new occupants try their hand at settling in, perhaps short-term or seasonally at first.



Each phase has characteristic rhythms, which Dungeon Masters can clue the players in on with indirect exposition, little dungeon dressing hints mentioning, for example, buckets of shovels and hammers and seeds (Settling), well-stocked cellars (Succeeding) or withered stocks (Struggling), burnt door planks in the night watch’s fire (Scavenging), or mismatches of dwarven stonework with elven locks (Squatting).

Identifying which phase your dungeon denizens currently experience within this cycle, as well as the composition of your cultured occupants, in terms of the Pirate – Privateer – Professional Soldier Continuum, can help grant your dungeon some much-needed verisimilitude. It can bring your dungeon to life. It will help make your dungeons more internally consistent. More organic, more grounded, and more dynamic. And in Part 2, we’ll look at how to take this even further.