(TFT) Why random dungeons...

["Craig W. Barber" <craigwbar@comcast.net>]

Hi, sorry to be quiet so long, life has been crazy, will be for a while more.

Logical dungeons are good, I argue that we should try and use them... but...

Random dungeons: I like random dungeons, the biggest part of the fun is not
knowing what is behind each door. Is this the door of the insane and
diabolical trap maker?  The door to the dragon's lair?  Stairs leading further
down?  Or... you open the door and a winged scorpion comes flying out, with
her dozen baby winged scorpions, and an alarm goes off somewhere behind you,
and you catch a glimpse of a mindnumbing statue inside the room just before
the troll and the goblins AND the magic user all come running up behind you.

Logically... well, what would an apex predator like a dragon be doing lurking
in a hole anyway?  Is the diabolical trap maker really going to enjoy sitting
around for years waiting for someone to spring his latest insanity on
themselves?  And do you have any idea how painful hard-rock mining is with
hand power tools???

A long time ago, I started one of those "from the dungeon dwellers'
perspective" books.  I decided that there has to be some (unexplained)
rationale why living in the ground makes a lot of sense.  Like, the earth is
honeycombed with cracks and crevasses anyway and inevitably the blind cave
elephants evolved to fill the niche.  (Doubtless feasting off of all that
mysteriously glowing fungus.)  Or maybe mining is mysteriously easy, and
numerous species evolved able to construct larger and larger tunnel systems.
Or...???  Anyway, we're forced to talk ecosystem here, and a cooperative
lifestyle built around symbiosis of MANY different species.  One odd result
was that the dungeon dwellers end up being very pacifistic (they have to be,
in order to get along together).

Under that rationale, there are "deep downers", species who are functionally
aliens: not even the known types of monsters, really aliens.  Then there are
the burrowers and molers: the dwarves and prairie dogs and others like them,
species who actually make more holes through the earth.  Mineral eaters?  And
there are Opportunists: move into niches in this large ecosystem, have become
part of it through the eons.  Dead enders: surface dweller species forced into
the topmost layer of dungeons.   I guessed that there might be "agricultural"
dungeons, both surface (sunlight) agriculture (a normal rustic village, but
shallowly underground and with wildly variable inhabs) and "down there"
agriculture (fungi?  These days we could add heat based organisms to the
bottom end of the food chain, like the deep sea vents.)   There cannot be that
many true predators!

Yeah, yeah, I know, it's thin, and that was as far as I got with it.  But I
like random dungeons, and just have to assume that they are the tip of an
iceberg of an ecosystem.
=====
Post to the entire list by writing to tft@brainiac.com.
Unsubscribe by mailing to majordomo@brainiac.com with the message body
"unsubscribe tft"