Dungeon Contractor: Eco-Yucky
A term like "ecology" means specific things in gaming context. So many things in games come about on fiat. Why do trolls regenerate? Regenerating monsters are interesting foes. But being a proto-intelligent humanoid with regenerative powers is strange. How does it work? How do they work? What is their culture like? How do they go about living? These questions are unanswered.
The whole notion of dungeon ecology has some serious flaws. Then how is it that a series of essays on it be justifiable?
A term like "ecology" means specific things in this gaming context. So many things in games come about on fiat. Why do trolls regenerate? Regenerating monsters are interesting foes. But being a proto-intelligent humanoid with regenerative powers is strange. How does it work? How do they work? What is their culture like? How do they go about living? These questions are unanswered. Game balance or game design dictates things, and afterward it is necessary to make sense of those things. There are as many possible examples as there are games.
So game ecology seeks to explain the strangeness. It s a necessary touch of realism, which can then be exploited by crafty Referees. Dungeon ecology is an attempt to make sense of dungeons, rationalizing their existence and prevalence.
What is so wrong with this goal when it comes to dungeons? Nothing is wrong with it, but it shows the myopia of gaming. I have seen articles dedicated to impassioned pleas for realism in dungeon design. The arguments generally go as follow:
- First, all dungeons should have their own internal logic. Caves should be built - formed actually - like caves. A crashed starship infested with Qullizzim should be first designed as a functional starship. A dungeon has to be built by someone, and that builder will have a purpose in mind. Form follows function.
- Second, the dungeon should be ecologically sound, and I don't mean non-polluting. Ecology is both the engineering questions (drainage? ventilation?), biological questions (what do they eat? drink?) and sociological (why are the monsters there? how do they interrelate?).
Perhaps "ecology" is the wrong term for these sorts of questions. I would prefer "economics," in a stricter sense of economics than is commonly used. Economics is really just the question "how do people get what they need to live?" It just happens that varying utilizations of capital and currency tend to be the most common answers from a human perspective.
So why is dungeon economics a silly thing? Terry Prattchet, when asked about how to design a fantasy world, made a comment along the lines of, "first, figure out the sewage system for the city." Such a taste of realism is one of the qualities that makes Prattchet distinctive. Such a stand, I believe, is correct in practice but not in principle.
Look, people, it's fantasy. It is not supposed to make sense. Not a few people find the Mitochlorian issue the most objectionable quality of The Phantom Menace. Suddenly The Force, which previously had been a metaphysical expression, now has a funky pseudo-scientific explanation. No explanation was necessary. Magic is magic because it bends reality. It may have its own mystaphysics, but grounding it in actual reality is not only ugly, but self-defeating. It misses the point of magic.
Besides, what is the utility of the dungeon? It serves to be a challenge of one sort or another that must be overcome to further an altogether greater plot. Dungeons exists so that heroes may enter them, kill things, solve riddles, outwit traps and return with treasure. It is a zone things happen in, not important in and of itself. It is not Mead in Samoa, it's a carnival fun house.
The most damning issue in my mind is the imbalanced application of ecological and economic studies. Making things realistic is a slippery slope, because "the action," not so much the literal action but the meat of the story, takes place in dungeons, there is a greater impetuous to make them realistic. But a Referee only has a certain amount of energy and space for designing parts of the game, not to mention a limited, or at least differing, level of sociological or geographical know-how. I have read adventures where the make up of the dungeon made ten times the sense of the make up of the town visited prior to it. I have seen dungeons that detailed out the personalities of each and every tribal leader, when not only was their point to get killed off, but then placed upon a map that made as much sense, geologically speaking, as petuna flavored ice cream.
Now, allow me a qualification. A realistic game is not a bad thing. However, it does have baggage. Once a commitment to realism has been made it needs to be followed through. It should never exist for its own sake.
On a practical level, if you make a point of the realism you will be tempted to make a show of it as well. If you expend the effort to create and work out underground fungi farms you will want to show them off, even if such an action is not fitting within the context of the plot. Such facts will then come off as showy and extraneous.
In short, know the pace of your own internal logic. Hard fantasy is acceptable, but it takes commitment and tells a much different story than the normal kind. Do not worry about environmental consistency issues if the deviations make for a better story.
Next time - pit traps: are the spikes worth the money?
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I really loved the first article of this series.
This one though, I don't like that much.
"The whole notion of dungeon ecology has some serious flaws. Then how is it that a series of essays on it be justifiable?" Of course it is justifiable. So we can avoid brainless dungeons like the first ones that were written. But we must also be carefull not to fall into the too descriptive. Just like story telling needs a ballance between lack of details and tedious detailing of every door of a dungeon.
"On a practical level, if you make a point of the realism you will be tempted to make a show of it as well." Hence the need to know where to put your efforts
"I have read adventures where the make up of the dungeon made ten times the sense of the make up of the town visited prior to it. " And where was the action happening? In the Dungeon. You have to focus on what you think the players will spend the most time on. Why bother with engeneering details if no player gives a damn? I'm a trained psychologist, it bugs me when NPC's personalities and motivations make no sense at all (even psychotics make sense in their own way). I give personnality to my NPC's but not to the point that I feel I must give the PC's a CPA diagnostic about each one of them.
"Look, people, it's fantasy. It is not supposed to make sense. Not a few people find the Mitochlorian issue the most objectionable quality of The Phantom Menace." You hit it right there! Of course the Mitochlorian issue is a perfect example of details one did not need to add to the story because it doesn't explain anything really. How do the Mitochlorians interact with the Force? How do the jedi tell them what to do? Why would there be a dark and a bright side of the Force? And so on.
But a nice twist can be added to any dungeon when one considers the creatures that live in it and how they take advantage of the dungeon's features. Having trolls live in a cave filled with 3' of water makes sense but makes them nearly impossible to kill. Having them ligth a bonfire in their lair makes no sense but allows lower level characters to have a chance against them.
"Dungeons exists so that heroes may enter them, kill things, SOLVE RIDDLES, OUTWIT TRAPS and return with treasure. It is a zone things happen in, not important in and of itself. " Solving riddles and outwitting traps is much more fun when the riddle isn't spelled out on a magical door or when the trap requires more than a rogue making good disarm rolls. Some of the fun in a dungeon is figuring how it works.
When we played MERP a dwarf character wanted to liberate Moria from the Orcs and Goblins. Let's just say that when we made the GM realize that the average dwarf's dwellings were too small for a troll to stand up in, our combats got a bit easier.
When a setting makes sense, it gives both the players and the DM more options. It can make things more challenging, or it can make them easier depending on who has the best ideas (usually the players do being more numerous then the poor game master).
Of course there is magic and it defies our logic. But there is a certain logic to sci-fi and fantasy. Example: Superman can lift a bus by one end without having it bend in two. It made no physical sense (until Byrne came up with the PK aura explaination) but there was a consistency with it. Most technology in Star Trek makes no sense either, but they do tend to follow a certain albeit quinky logic.
Does anyone remember "I Tyrant"? The beholder encyclopedia. I thought that book was excellent. Why? It made sense. Beholder art, entertainment, society, architecture, the book had an internal logic to it which enhanced the quality of the beholder as a major monster race.
Does it make sense that D&D trolls regenerate? Not in our world. But it does in D&D. Now what do we do with it? Trolls are large, can regenerate and see in the dark.
Logically, their lairs would tend to be dark and dangerous places with sharp rocks, large stairs and high ceilings. They would also be damp or wet so as to avoid fire (accidental or otherwise). Trolls don't care about breaking a leg or cutting themselves since they can regenerate, safety isn't an issue for them, so their caves could be filled with safety hazards like slipery stairs, low hanging stalagtites and whatever strikes your fancy. Trolls would not spend the time to build a bridge over a ten feet pit, especially one that is only 60' deep and could easily be climbed out of.
That makes some level of sense. Does the DM need to detail the effect of troll dung on the reproduction cycle of cave crickets and how that will affect the bat population… I think not.
Does the DM have to decide if that troll dung makes the cave's water undrikable to humans, maybe. Does the DM have to detail the odour and level of uncleanliness of the trolls' lair to the players. I definitely think so, since it can help create the ambiance.
But then, some people don't care and just want to get to the place where the hack and slash happens and XP gets collected. And that is just as valid a position. The DM and the Players should decide how much detail and what kind of details they want for their game.
Cthulhu Matata.
Every once in a while on the mini-painter list, someone posits that the paint scheme of a particular orc (it usually seems to be orcs, for some reason) doesn't look realistic. When I see one of those, I write a long message about how orcs look in different parts of the world. (Example: in the southeast US, orc run sort of a yellow-green color, possibly to fit in well with the thick foliage.) At the end of the message, I suggest the term _plausible_ instead of the term _realistic_. It's more nebulous and more useful, and I still get in my smartass time. :)
J.S.
"Dungeons exists so that heroes may enter them, kill things, SOLVE RIDDLES, OUTWIT TRAPS and return with treasure. It is a zone things happen in, not important in and of itself. "
The greater question is not why do dungeons exist, but why do players wish to SOLVE RIDDLES, OUTWIT TRAPS and return with treasure. Indeed, I can get a similar gaming experience by picking up a crossword puzzle book from the airport bookstore.
In a good game, the treasure reward is a side benefit, something that helps the character perform better. It's a power-up: fun, but fairly located within the context of the story. The PLAYER's reward is insight into the story that is located on the dungeon. Sometimes knowledge, sometimes discovery.
I've got to go with Sarn on this one. Take the middle road and build a dungeon that has sense to it, but that isn't so obsessive in detail that it slows the pace of your fun. The setting serves the game AND the story, not the other way around.
Both game and story matter in an RPG. Roger Ebert says of horror and SF movies, "Early on, they must tell their rules. It is difficult to care about a story in which literally anything can happen. Rules of the dungeon must make as much sense for its inhabitants as they would for the players. If toxic gas fills a hall, but a live creature is sealed in a room at the end of that hall, then my players should expect that my creature is immune, or that there is some other way out of that room.
Hmmm... Realism vs. Playability, eh?
A complicated issue, not least because if you play realistically, a lot of the monsters your PCs come up against are simple too ridiculous to be believed. Take the hydra, for instance.
The hydra has the unique species trait of growing two extra heads for every one head it loses. This means that if one kept hacking and slashing at the hydra's heads for long enough, the inevitable shift in weight from it's hind quarters to its front would just topple the beast over, onto it's stomach, rendering it helpless. Not only that, should the beast ever get hungry, I imagine it would only be a matter of time before head #1 thinks head #2 would be a tasty snack, and thus attacks head #2, biting it off. Then, as head #1 is enjoying it's meal, head #3 and head #4 rise from the stump that was head #2 and gang up on head #1 for what it did to head #2. And then heads #5 and #6 get involved, and the hydra is stuck in an internal kind of Byzantine politics, whereby all the heads want to kill the other heads, or get revenge on a certain head for killing another head. Ridiculous.
And as for gelatinous cubes, that's just silly. There's no need for a Darwin-esque explanation. It just is.