How far should a dungeon be from civilization?

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Brock Savage

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On the surface this seems like a non-issue ("duh, as far as you want it to be") but for games that focus on horror, dungeons, and wilderness exploration it's an important consideration.

For purposes of this discussion dungeon means "enclosed space housing multiple encounters that cannot be conveniently entered and exited at whim." The City of the Elder Things in Beyond the Mountains of Madness is as much a dungeon as Castle Greyhawk. I would add that resource management of some kind is almost obligatory for a good dungeon.

My rule of thumb for D&D and derivatives are that low level dungeons should be within a day of civilization with increasingly longer distances of days, weeks, or even months as PCs grow more capable.

My players have developed a SOP of leaving civilization at dawn and leaving the dungeon by dusk because all the really fucked up and dangerous monsters are active at nighttime (wandering monster table changes). There's constant time and resource pressure. They hire plebs as porters and light bearers thanks to encumbrance rules. They offer shares of treasure to attract NPC adventurers as well. The dungeon is invariably surrounded by dangerous wilderness area so they gotta haul ass back to civilization to get that long rest. Things like local guides or characters with superior survival skills are important to cut down wilderness travel time, find interesting sites, and allow more time for dungeon exploration.

Anyway I am just looking to mix things up and fishing for ideas.
 
I should add that time + manpower renders most dungeon challenges trivial so locating them in remote and dangerous locations is important. Yes I've done the "dungeon in the city" thing but it's important to frame it in a way where the PCs can't just bring 20 day laborers to chip away at it with shovels and pickaxes. Obviously if it was that easy someone would already have done it ages ago.
 
I think it depends on what you want to be relevant in play, and how whatever system you're using supports that.

For resource management, are you more focused on delving? Like, the tension of having enough supplies to get to the loot versus enough space to actually retrieve the loot. Torches, rations, rope, and so on. Does the game you’re gonna play have meaningful rules for inventory and for the use of these items? Are there interesting and meaningful choices for players to make in these areas?

Do you want wilderness journeys to be relevant? Do the rules support that in a way that's different from delving? Certainly there are similarities, but I’d think some relevant differences, too.

How much priority do you want to place on each? If you’re more concerned with delving, for example, then having the dungeon close to civilization makes sense. If you want wilderness journeys to be meaningful, then place it further away. Find the balance you want in delving/journeying and then place the dungeon accordingly.

There are other factors to consider, I expect, but those are the immediate ones that come to mind.
 
I think it depends on what you want to be relevant in play, and how whatever system you're using supports that.

For resource management, are you more focused on delving? Like, the tension of having enough supplies to get to the loot versus enough space to actually retrieve the loot. Torches, rations, rope, and so on. Does the game you’re gonna play have meaningful rules for inventory and for the use of these items? Are there interesting and meaningful choices for players to make in these areas
All of the above. The entire point is forcing meaningful and interesting decisions. The more supplies they haul in the less loot they can carry out. Hiring porters adds the liability of bringing untrained civilians into a dark monster haunted dungeon. Using sorcery such as floating disc burns precious resources. Obviously as the characters grow more capable they have access to abilities that circumvent some of these limitations and allowing for greater challenges.

Even if the players were space adventurers exploring a decrepit starship hulk for valuable salvage the same principles can apply.
 
All of the above. The entire point is forcing meaningful and interesting decisions. The more supplies they haul in the less loot they can carry out. Hiring porters adds the liability of bringing untrained civilians into a dark monster haunted dungeon. Using sorcery such as floating disc burns precious resources. Obviously as the characters grow more capable they have access to abilities that circumvent some of these limitations and allowing for greater challenges.

Even if the players were space adventurers exploring a decrepit starship hulk for valuable salvage the same principles can apply.

Okay gotcha. Do you have a specific rules set in mind? I expect so, but that’ll have a big impact on how this plays at the table.

Like I have been dying to run Gradient Descent for Mothership. It’s a total dungeon delve and has some really cool elements about the toll the delving takes on those who go into the facility (it’s like a replicant production facility run by a dysfunctional AI, and the characters can actually start to think they’re artificial beings… I dig the paranoia angle of this).

But I’m waiting for the official Mothership 1E rules to come out to run it because I expect there will be some improvements to how the game handles inventory and related rules. The basic edition has such rules, but I’m hoping for improvements so that managing that stuff is fun more than tedious.
 
From civilization? Civilization should have to build a gatehouse around its entrance, and hire men to keep it contained, while it hires your men to scrub it out.

Oh, the other end should open in the ass-end of nowhere, in trackless wilderness an unknown number of days in an unknown direction away from a different civilization.
 
Okay gotcha. Do you have a specific rules set in mind? I expect so, but that’ll have a big impact on how this plays at the table.

Like I have been dying to run Gradient Descent for Mothership. It’s a total dungeon delve and has some really cool elements about the toll the delving takes on those who go into the facility (it’s like a replicant production facility run by a dysfunctional AI, and the characters can actually start to think they’re artificial beings… I dig the paranoia angle of this).
I am speaking in general terms so everyone can participate in the conversation but I happen to be working with Into the Unknown, which is a stripped-to-the-bone version of the 5e SRD deigned to emulate B/X to focus on dungeon delving and wilderness exploration.

I own Gradient Descent which is awesome and considered running it as a dungeon crawl in space but it needs a lot of work to put meat on its bones.
 
Of the last four 'dungeons' my players have visited, one has been 2 days from civilization, one few hours, one right in the middle of the city and one in another dimension. In the latest adventure I'm working on, the dungeon is 10 minutes outside the town.
 
It depends on the dungeon. An enemy outpost like the Caves of Chaos should be across the border or in noman's land. A house and home dungeon is really a civilized location that is populated by the enemy. Such dungeons generally have the same needs and requirements in terms of food and water as others if perhaps different food sources. Ancient ruins and necropolises full of undead and animate statues are generally built a few days away from a major center when they are constructed possibly for concealment but generally because such public works aren't really functional land use. They aren't built on prime crop land either for obvious reasons. Skaven and Wererat tunnnels are generally found under major population centers. Wizard's towers are usually in remote areas but close enough to a village or some other source of fresh food. In OD&D wizards are often dungeon landlords, keeping monsters to protect their privacy and give them access to spell components. Then there's the magical dungeon. These things tend to defy rhyme and reason and the doors might appear anywhere.
 
I am speaking in general terms so everyone can participate in the conversation but I happen to be working with Into the Unknown, which is a stripped-to-the-bone version of the 5e SRD deigned to emulate B/X to focus on dungeon delving and wilderness exploration.

Gotcha. Okay so pretty classic wilderness journey to get to the dungeon and delve kind of situation.

I think then the next thing to consider is the nature of the dungeon and any inhabitants, as David Johansen David Johansen suggests.

Who’s there? Why? What impact would that have on civili


I own Gradient Descent which is awesome and considered running it as a dungeon crawl in space but it needs a lot of work to put meat on its bones.

Yeah I really like it. I want to run a Mothership campaign with Prospero’s Dream (from Pound of Flesh) as the home base, and Gradient Descent as the dungeon. But I want to wait till the rules tweaks they’re making for 1E are final.
 
Naturally some dungeons are more threatening and some are more passive. Dungeons that actively threaten civilization need to be neutralized or contained. Gradient Descent for Mothership is surrounded by a fleet of space marines who ostensibly keep things from going in and out. The Caves of Chaos is home to monsters that raid civilization; it's very much like a hidden guerilla stronghold threatening an isolated firebase.

I think for this time around my tentpole dungeon is going to be more passive like the alien city in Mountains of Madness. It's been around for literally millions of years. It's insanely dangerous to be sure but the threat is localized until adventurers start to fuck around with it.

Multiple outside intelligent factions crave the dungeon's great prize. There are several native factions that occupy the surface and dungeon proper, mostly unaware of the dungeon's purpose, history, or treasure. Ape men, morlocks, undead, troglodytes, lizard men, that sort of thing.
 
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I typically consider Time rather than Distance. Greater distance merely increases the time so a close distance means the ability to reach it can be made harder to increase the time. Extreme terrain can explain why the danger doesn't immediately threaten civilization. I always like a dungeon right under a major city that was uncovered by accident. Having to climb down and then back up can be so difficult that the time it takes can be measured in days while keeping the city relatively safe from any danger below (unless the players solve that issue).
 
There are a couple of early dungeons located under the town/city - Blackmoor, City State Invincible Overlord - and Thumderhold has its dungeon directly outside the walls. This works well with a horror vibe (no one dares enter) or monsters-as-vermin that keep returning when driven out, or perhaps no-one will believe the PC's tales of what lies beneath.
 
I typically consider Time rather than Distance. Greater distance merely increases the time so a close distance means the ability to reach it can be made harder to increase the time. Extreme terrain can explain why the danger doesn't immediately threaten civilization. I always like a dungeon right under a major city that was uncovered by accident. Having to climb down and then back up can be so difficult that the time it takes can be measured in days while keeping the city relatively safe from any danger below (unless the players solve that issue).
Yeah. You can go even more abstract and think in terms of access: a dungeon simply needs to difficult enough to get to/from that neither the city nor the dungeon inhabitants find it worth it to conquer the other outright.
 
I’ve always wanted to run a megadungeon sort of like Undermountain, in the sense of a huge underground labyrinth right underneath a city.

It can only be reached by travelling through the sewers and old tunnels. Kind of creepy, if you think about it (sleeping at night in the inn knowing that about 50 feet beneath you are dangerous slimes, traps and undead horrors)…
 
Even if the players were space adventurers exploring a decrepit starship hulk for valuable salvage the same principles can apply.
In this situation, the adventurers can - in fact, must - simply bring their own ship to whatever distance from the hulk is convenient. The more traditional version of this, then, would be to establish a sort of base camp nearby the entrance to the dungeon. This adds a tactical element where the camp has to be defended and maintained alongside the dungeon delving, but with the right group I think it could be quite fun.

As an expansion of this, if the conceit is that the dungeon was recently discovered, you could go full "dungeon rush" and have a "boom town" spring up right at the dungeon entrance, with all the overpriced supplies and dubious law enforcement that term implies. You'd have to lean into the Western tropes a little harder than usual, but that's not a bad thing.
 
As an expansion of this, if the conceit is that the dungeon was recently discovered, you could go full "dungeon rush" and have a "boom town" spring up right at the dungeon entrance, with all the overpriced supplies and dubious law enforcement that term implies. You'd have to lean into the Western tropes a little harder than usual, but that's not a bad thing.
I have done this setup twice around a tentpole megadungeon and it works really well! In fact I might even say this is my default scenarior. I was originally going to make my open table project revolve around a recently uncovered Elder Thing city in a remote part of Hyperborea complete with a lawless boomtown but I want to do something different this time around. Taking a cue from Keep on the Borderlands, town marks the limits of the Realm of Man beyond which lay only howling wilderness and spawn of the Old Ones.
 
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Anyway I am just looking to mix things up and fishing for ideas.

Here my take on the City-State of the Invincible Overlord

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So to answer this
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I would say 10 feet down i.e. the infamous, at least among my players, sewers of City-State.
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In the northeast corner are the entrances to the Dwarven Mine. Which was an excellent adventure put out by Judges Guild with a now very very unfortunate name.

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The Dwarven Mine lies a couple of hundred feet away from the city gates.
 
It first surfaced deep in the wilderness where the monsters dwell, its gates yawning wide, the porculus glistening like teeth in the moonlight but slowly it crept on to the fringes and outlying farms where goblin bands would raid and burn. And slowly, oh so slowly it drifted towards the outlying towns where orc legions would lay siege to the walled towns and goblins would burn and pillage the undefended hamlets and farms. And time wore on, and soon it would pass beneath the walls of great cities and creatures would creep up to harrow the streets and ghettos and philosophers in their sheltered halls spoke of the spread of civilization and the absorption of the wilderness but in truth the world was unravelling and the wilderness was long gone and the dungeon and its inhabitants were only refugees from the gnawing hunger of the eternal void.

Good luck wandering off the map this time.
 
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I spent a little time (just a little), and while I think the OPs question is not necessarily the right question to ask, the kneejerk "duh" answer wasn't quite right either.

It's not a matter of distance, but of purpose, consequences and the emergent behavior you imagine for your dungeon. Of course you can do whatever you want.

But you could absolutely have a dungeon under a town or city. If the society is advanced enough to manage sewage, that's prime breeding ground for adventures, and the rogues guild might double as guides. If there was a cataclysm before a city was rebuilt, the older city may remain beneath the newer construction.

In Erith, Lemenis was a collection of prison cells below a gladiatorial arena with a keep for the gaoler not far away. There was a small town nearby. After the regime was overthrown, the prison evolved into a dungeon, with a limited population of crazies that decided that dungeoneering (or posing as adventurers) was their thing. Resources above ground (including food) came at a premium, but hey, it was the life you chose, for as long as you could afford it. In other words, this particular town and its economy was built around the dungeon.

If the dungeon is a proving ground of sorts, with a reward at the end (some fantastic treasure, status, title, or other reward), that would be another reason to build a society around it. Risk vs. reward means some would try their hand inside, and some would take the "safer" route and make their living on the outside.

I find it always helps to know the WHY of a dungeon before deciding anything else. Why does it exist? Why is a dungeon rather than something else? Why is it in it's current state? And why would people ever want to go there?

And then you can figure out distance.

Examples:
Consider a base of operations for <some obvious baddies>. They need something they can conceal and secure. It's well-maintained, with minimal storage and modest upkeep required. They've left clues as to their nefarious goals, but they're not an earth-shattering threat.
Given all that, it's likely they'll need to be in or near a population center, to be able to acquire upkeep resources (or return home if they can blend into the population).

A larger dungeon, perhaps with exotic population and upkeep demands may be in a more isolated, uncivilized area. It may have a self-contained ecosystem, or a "danger zone" making the surrounding area in hospitable. The dungeon inhabitants are incompatible with society.
You could certainly put access to a dungeon like this in a population center, with a "seal" of sorts. Breaking the seal would wreak havoc on day-to-day existence of the populace. But the typical approach is to set it apart from society and then offer a reason for adventurers to go there. The danger zone creates a buffer that foreshadows the difficulty of the eventual goal, or preps smart survivors for what they will ultimately face.
 
I should add that time + manpower renders most dungeon challenges trivial so locating them in remote and dangerous locations is important. Yes I've done the "dungeon in the city" thing but it's important to frame it in a way where the PCs can't just bring 20 day laborers to chip away at it with shovels and pickaxes. Obviously if it was that easy someone would already have done it ages ago.
Some, maybe, I'm not sure about most.

For a start, many large dungeons can replenish, rearm and reinforce over time, possibly more efficiently than the PCs.

When thinking about Stonehell, I contemplated the feasibility of clearing it with an army. I concluded that, with excellent planning, logistics and command and control, you could make it down a few levels. However, at some point you would
rouse the dark, evil power the resides far below, it would start to exert itself, many of your soldiers would go mad (it only has be enough to create chaos and infighting) and, the next thing you know, what's left of your occupying force is just the new evil residents.

Dwimmermount, on the other hand, is definitely a dungeon that can be cleared and controlled with sufficient resources. However,
it's already set up so that there are potentially multiple factions already endeavouring to do do so, some of which can just gate in reinforcements to lower levels -- not to mention all the access points to the wider underdark in the deepest levels..

I agree it is more of a concern for smaller dungeons, without easy means of replenishing or reinforcing themselves.
 
I find it always helps to know the WHY of a dungeon before deciding anything else. Why does it exist? Why is a dungeon rather than something else? Why is it in it's current state? And why would people ever want to go there?

And then you can figure out distance.
I try to keep my exposition short and punchy. I've read way too many dungeons brimming with trivia that is of no relevance to running the game. In fact I have strong suspicions that a lot of dungeons are written to be enjoyable reading material and not with utility in mind.

Why does it exist? Millions of years ago, the ruined city of the snake-men was built within a primordial jungle as a way station for interstellar travelers. Man was brought to the planet when he was little more than an evolved ape as a lab rat, food source, and slave. The snake man empire collapsed hundreds of thousands of years ago, releasing naked puny man into a harsh world fraught with the Old Ones and their spawn.

Why is a dungeon rather than something else? Man's atavistic fear of the snake-men and their works persists despite their extinction. Man survives mostly thanks to being too insignificant to factor into the plans of all the dangerous beings on Carcosa. Adventurers are a rare breed.

Why is it in it's current state? Over the millennia, creatures have been drawn to the abandoned city for food, water and shelter. Unique facilities of the city are especially attractive to those with reptilian physiology. Energy-holding crystals and faltering otherworldly portals draws the attention of powerful supernatural beings.

And why would people ever want to go there? Treasure. Sorcerous knowledge. Artifacts beyond the understanding of man.
 
Well, just riffing off your input, and assuming real-world consistency and logic apply, here are my thoughts on distance.

If "creatures" (assuming unfriendly) are drawn to the city for basic needs, and it's a magnet for reptiles AND humans generally dislike those things, I'd put it at least a week's foot travel from any civilized area. Probably a bit further. This allows your human civilizations to have the agrarian buffer they need for basic food needs.
Plus, people REALLY don't want monsters stopping off at the town for a bite to eat before heading to the dungeon. :smile: And if someone ends up poking a reptile-bear, you sure don't want them hightailing it back to a nearby town and bringing said bear with them.
There might be some minor outposts for travelers (and signal sites to warn of danger to the nearest towns) between civ proper and the dungeon site, and a modest campsite (with associated factional tensions) at the dungeon site itself.

Are people going to move/leave their homes because it turns out (access to) the snake dungeon is nearby or otherwise poses an immediate threat? Temperament, culture and level of danger will all play a part. But if they stay, those who survive will likely become much hardier folk than they were before. And likely less reliant on agriculture if they spend most of their time hunting/protecting themselves.

Side thought: It's likely that the snake civilization is long buried under layers of overgrowth or earth. Unless the snake civ was made of pretty stern stuff, it's likely a lot of their structures would be fossilized and fragile. Could be that it's recently exposed through some recent natural phenomenon, such as an earthquake. More fantastically, some device in the dungeon might have been slowly working to unearth itself and is trying to "call home". It's been at least partly successful, which is why travelers can reach it.

Neat backstory.
 
Well, just riffing off your input, and assuming real-world consistency and logic apply, here are my thoughts on distance.

If "creatures" (assuming unfriendly) are drawn to the city for basic needs, and it's a magnet for reptiles AND humans generally dislike those things, I'd put it at least a week's foot travel from any civilized area. Probably a bit further. This allows your human civilizations to have the agrarian buffer they need for basic food needs.
All kinds of crazy shit is attracted to the city and the dungeons beneath. Reptiles up to and including dinosaurs. Giant insects and dungeon vermin. Oozes, jellies, and slimes. Ape men, lizard men, troglodytes, and grimlocks. Powerful alien beings are drawn to the strange energies of snake man crystals and their faltering magical portals. Thankfully, the creatures of the city do not issue forth to raid the Realm of Man.

Unfortunately my desire to have the dungeon within a half a day's march of civilization is largely due to game structure. If I'm running an open table each session needs to wrap up with the surviving PCs in the relative safety of a settlement.

A massive steep sided badlands plateau rises from the jungle, marking the edge of the Realm of Man. There are two means of reaching the plateau top from this section of the jungle:
  • Thousands of slippery mangrove steps embedded into the cliff face at a lung bursting 65 degree gradient that will take a fit unencumbered humanoid 6 hours to ascend. A human in peak physical condition (CON 16+) and completely unencumbered could probably run it in 90 minutes.
  • The Lift, an ancient piece of alien technology that can ferry 30 people up or down in about an hour.
The nearest human settlement harvests a great deal of its food from ancient alien technology scarcely understood ("food machines"). This is supplemented by trade with hunter-gatherer tribes that somehow manage to survive in the badlands.

Side thought: It's likely that the snake civilization is long buried under layers of overgrowth or earth. Unless the snake civ was made of pretty stern stuff, it's likely a lot of their structures would be fossilized and fragile. Could be that it's recently exposed through some recent natural phenomenon, such as an earthquake. More fantastically, some device in the dungeon might have been slowly working to unearth itself and is trying to "call home". It's been at least partly successful, which is why travelers can reach it.

While not immortal, the snake men were incredibly long-lived and built things to last. Their mastery of sorcery and science was profound. Even the most precocious human prodigy or genius would be impossibly stupid to an average snake-man. Thus, the snake man city defies conventional logic by being neither buried in earth nor swallowed by the jungle. Despite being abandoned in the jungle for hundreds of thousands of years the strange black stone used in snake-man construction is largely intact as are many of their devices.

Neat backstory.

Thank you. I appreciate the questions, They are forcing me to critically evaluate the campaign set up.
 
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My players have developed a SOP of leaving civilization at dawn and leaving the dungeon by dusk because all the really fucked up and dangerous monsters are active at nighttime (wandering monster table changes). There's constant time and resource pressure. They hire plebs as porters and light bearers thanks to encumbrance rules. They offer shares of treasure to attract NPC adventurers as well. The dungeon is invariably surrounded by dangerous wilderness area so they gotta haul ass back to civilization to get that long rest.
That was the foundation of my Barrowmaze campaign and my scheduled Dwarrowdeep campaign.
 
That was the foundation of my Barrowmaze campaign and my scheduled Dwarrowdeep campaign.
Barrowmaze inspired me to make wandering monster tables more dangerous at night. The nighttime encounter tables in Barrowmaze heavily impacted player decision making. I liked it so much I decided to carry it forward to other campaigns.
 
And why would people ever want to go there? Treasure. Sorcerous knowledge. Artifacts beyond the understanding of man.
“Bones heal, chicks dig scars, pain is temporary, glory is forever.
 
In this case, the PCs didn't actually figure out they were in another dimension right away. They found themselves in a ruined city that had collapsed into a lost city that had always been under it. The twist of the adventure was once the PCs realized they were in another dimension*, they only had so long to get out before they became trapped, as many before them had. It became a race against time - sure they could continue to delve and find treasure, but they didn't know what they might encounter. They might end up injured, trapped, lost, etc. In the end, two of the PCs made it back intact with a small amount of treasure and one ended up trapped there.

*We were playing Dragon Age, so the PCs were actually in the Fade.
 
My current campaign takes place in early modern Italy, so there really isn't anything more than a few hours travel from civilization, at most. And even that's iffy. This will change if/when they start traveling further afield, out in the Sahara you can have buried ancient ruins days of travel away from anywhere. But yeah, for me, the setting comes first and then dungeons fit into that.
 
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I generally decide "What was once here.." Based on climate, geography, etc. Though my definition of dungeon is broader than some--I generally refer to it as "any hidden locale where adventure can occur.."
I've had 'dungeons' inside a city. I've had them three to five days away by horse, and some either on distant continents, based on where it makes the most sense to be placed.
 
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