Bringing the Town to the Dungeon

In recent posts, I’ve looked at orientating an RPG setting around a dominant social process, such as imperialist expansion or economic crisis. Something I want to avoid is repeating this exercise for the dungeon portion of a setting. I.e. I don’t want there being a separate and distinct set of “material conditions” applying to the underworld, in addition to those on the surface. 

In short, I want to bring the social conditions of the town to the dungeon.

Part of this is about efficiency. But it also undermines the whole idea of there being a dominant social process, if only a portion of the setting is influenced by it. If I’m exploring economic crisis as a driver of revolutionary upheaval, I don’t want a random clan of mushroom men skipping around oblivious to this.



Weird Writer has put out a helpful blog post along these lines. In their campaign, they are looking to eliminate faction play as something “naturalistic” to the dungeon environment. I take this to mean “natural” to the underworld, as something apart from the surface setting. Part of Weird Writer’s solution is to unify the social context of surface world and underworld, importing the former into the latter:

“The megadungeon factions are merely the factions of the external world, erasing distinction between modes of play and spaces”

As this approach seems a good fit for my campaign goals, I will look at Weird Writer’s advice on achieving this.

 

The Problem with Dwarves

A classic “naturalistic” faction in an underworld setting are dwarves, which are often the go to for a developed civilisation in a dungeon context. Dwarves in this respect serve as a stand in for the human civilisations that constitute the surface world. In fantasy, humans rarely establish settlements underground, creating a natural break between the two realms.

Dwarven society is typically divorced from human society. It can’t even be assumed that humans can gain free entrance to a dwarven city. Humans don’t normally own property in a dwarven city, and inheritance won’t occur via marriage. It’s not clear whether dwarf workers are exploited, in a way that enables human workers to find solidarity with their plight. Dwarves seem to enjoy smithery, apparently doing it as more of a hobby.

Of course, dwarves might be otherwise in your setting. But conventionally, I think they reflect a tendency to treat the fantasy underworld as apart from the social relations of the surface world. This approach often carries through to the treatment of other dungeon factions in published adventure modules.

A good example of this are the fungus goblins in the old school introductory module Tomb of the Serpent Kings. This faction is entirely self-contained within a dungeon level, divorced from even contact with the outside world. It is naturalistic, in their having a spawning pit, farm room and warren etc. The goblins also have a bizarre system of kingship, unrelatable to the context of a human society.

It can be fun to discover strange new civilisations in this way, in the model of a Star Trek episode. But when attempting to run such factions, I often find myself at a standing start. The momentum of the social forces established in the surface portion of the campaign doesn’t carry over. In the absence of a social context to work from, faction play can easily slip into “beef over territory”. Such a crude rendering then feels unsatisfying, in contrast to the more fleshed out social relations that characterise the surface world.

Rival Parties

Weird Writer’s main suggestion to import surface factional relationships into the dungeon is through rival adventuring parties. This goes beyond a basic interpretation of rival parties as simply another set of chancers, motivated similarly to the PCs by the acquisition of loot. Rival parties are instead:

…from other town factions, all trying to explore the place under the command of patrons.

I think Deep Carbon Observatory (DCO) is a good example of how this might be intended (spoilers follow). The main dungeon of DCO lacks any of its own “naturalistic” factions (though it is inhabited by a horrific giant). Dungeon encounters will mostly consist of representatives of factions from above ground, who race the PCs to explore its depths.

One of these factions are The Crows, a classic example of a rival adventuring party operating on their own agenda. But further parties are made up of concerned townsfolk, a cannibal cult and local newt people etc. There are members of pretty much every surface world group encountered in the first half of the adventure. “Rival party” here does not solely refer to PC-equivalent delvers, but representatives of factions with agendas derived from the surface world.

It's possible to go further with this. In DCO, we’re dealing with smallish localised factions. But a rival party could also be representatives of a dominant regional power, potentially a whole empire. In the context of a dungeon, they might figure as one small party amongst many. But in a setting-wide context, it seems wrong to think of an empire as a “faction”, in the same way you would a minor cult.

Even where an empire’s representatives are one party amongst many, there seems good reason to treat them differently to other groups. An empire can draw upon support to invoke “shock and awe”, meaning its agents are not to be trifled with. Other groups may also derive benefit from aligning with an empire, to the point their prosperity depends on remaining in its favour. Even without any of its agents present, a surface empire might exert its influence deep into the underworld.

Underworld Outposts

Weird Writer is envisaging a megadungeon environment made up of rival of adventuring parties and solitary horrors, with “naturalistic factions” excluded. DCO shows a dungeon can work very effectively on this basis. It is though quite a sparce environment, playing to a certain aesthetic.

There seems however, a further way to introduce factions to the underworld, without breaking its unity with social relations in the surface realm. If rival parties are treated as under the patronage of surface factions, it seems easy enough to extend this form of patronage to settlements in the underworld. I.e. increase the party’s number and make them fixed instead of transient.

This is a roundabout way of extending a surface empire’s boundaries into the underworld, making them a fixed presence in both realms. There is no reason this couldn’t be an entire underworld city of an empire, populated by humans residing beneath the ground. But it could equally be just a mine, fort, or archaeological site etc.

A faction need not be literal agents of an empire to be under its sway and be swept up in the same widespread social processes. A faction may be subjugated or aligned with an empire, with only an elite portion of its members benefiting from this relationship. The majority of a faction may not even know it is being influenced, yet still be fundamentally acting in an empire’s interest.

As a counterpoint to this, those opposed to the empire might also have fixed residence in the underworld. Groups native to the underworld might be actively engaged in repelling the empire’s encroach. Oppressed surface groups might retreat to dungeons as defensible locations (naturally making them drawn to sites with existing traps). This includes groups opposed to the dominant economic system, seeking to live on a more communal basis.

Bring the Town to the Dungeon

I’ve been play testing a mine-based adventure Blood in the Cracks, where I’ve sought to keep to a unified mode of play between spaces. Something I’ve tried is simply importing the “town portion” of an adventure into the dungeon. You meet the major NPCs and begin to understand the social context of the setting within the dungeon. You don’t then journey to the adventure site - shit is literally going down in the next room.

A big inspiration for this has been reading Emile Zola’s Germinal, a fictional (non-fantasy) account of a nineteenth century coal mining strike. The story focuses on a particular pit and its adjacent worker settlement, but there is only a blurred distinction between the two. The same family unit living together also enters the mine as part of the same gang, father working with daughter. The material conditions of the workplace are not left behind in the pit, but determine the class positions outside of it.

In my adventure, there is no distinction between “NPC relationships” in the town and “faction play” in the dungeon. NPCs might as easily appear on a random dungeon encounter table, rather than being a prescribed social interaction. I’ve found no need to consider faction play in different terms to the inherent social conflicts that shape the setting.

Concluding Thoughts

Weird Writer’s post talks about the megadungeon having “a naturalistic context inside the game’s purposes without it being a naturalistic space in itself”. At the same time, he wants to retain the dungeon as an embodiment of the “mythic underworld”. I think I want to keep an element of this too, as I’m not looking to run a realist campaign. It’s still meant to be fantasy – even if based on a real-world analysis of social forces.

I’m a little wary of the symbolic connotation of the mythic. I don’t want the characters entering a realm of dream logic, with a sense of freedom that overrides the material conditions I’ve set up. Perhaps a symbolic representation of material conditions is possible (if not contradictory)?

Weird Writer’s vision of the megadungeon contains a singular horror, standing apart from the social context of delving factions from the surface. Like DCO’s giant, it isn’t the type of thing you engage with in faction play – it just wants to eat you. In my campaigns, I think there is room for this too, as something symbolic of the horrors and dangers of the workplace. If this seems a bit of a stretch, I’d suggest checking out real world conditions faced by 19th century miners as depicted in Germinal.