Just a random thought while I was noodling around with my megadungeon.
I was thinking about one of the features of megadungeons - the faction.
Do you actually need factions?
I'm not saying they aren't useful or good. The question is, are they required? Can a dungeon be "mega" even without disparate and presumably competitive groups?
My line of thought is that no, you do not need them. They've helpful and make a dungeon a lot less boring, but I don't think they make a dungeon mega or not. They might be necessary for a sustained game. They make it more interesting. They keep it from either being:
- a random collection of monsters
- a fortress of a single, associated group
I suppose you could do a dungeon without them. Monsters in groups, say, as well as individuals, but without a lot of social interactions for PCs to discover and exploit. You pretty much get the Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord, with foes to fight and a boss at the end but no seperation of monsters into groups.
Just a thought.
You can certainly have a mega (or regular) dungeon without factions, but I'd say you can't have one without *politics*. Which is to say that even with homogeneous occupancy or a collection of many individuals - all of the individuals should have their own goals and interactions with each other.
ReplyDeleteThe natural outcome of this is that there will be, in effect, factions. Small gangs forming around powerful or charismatic, temporary and fickle alliances, grudges, incidental cooperation or mutual disregard. All of these things are emergent features of sticking a bunch of things in close proximity to each other, even unintelligent creatures will shake out into an ecosystem of sorts. Even if everyone is "on the same side" you'll still have disgruntled underlings, small cliques forming, and role based/departmental separations that form and create webs of connectivity that resemble and can be manipulated in the same way as faction play can.
So I think an interesting question is less "can a megadungeon function without factions?" and more "what faction granularity does any given megadungeon have?".
Coarsely granulated factions are a single group occupying the whole mega-dungeon with robust cohesion and a strong shared common goal, whilst finely grained factions are more like highly individualistic solo creatures with a fickle cohesion and vastly divergent goals. As such the degree's and means in which each coarseness responds to external manipulation changes, which produces very different play experiences.
Using this metric, instead of just "using factions vs not using factions" you can actually map regions of your mega dungeon to have different faction coarseness. Giving regions not only different feels due to *who* the factions are, but also *how* those factions interplay with each other.
I think that's a good way of looking at it. If one group holds a dungeon, but there are different sub-groups or individual goals within the members, it's more politics than factions. If the groups are sufficiently distinct, factions might be a better way to look at it.
DeleteIn this post and my previous one (linked above), I'm defining "need" pretty strictly, to be fair. If you have a unified group that holds a subterranean tunnel complex, with literally no divisions between them - say, a necromancer and his mindless created undead servitors - is it no longer a dungeon? I think it is, so you don't "need" factions. You might not want a dungeon without them very often, but it's still a dungeon.
> You might not want a dungeon without them very often, but it's still a dungeon.
DeleteTo raise the ante, then, does a dungeon "need" monsters? Automated defenses via traps and spells could still give a dynamic play environment. Throw in some stuff locked behind condition based triggers (doors that only open at certain times of day, corridors that slowly move and so connect and disconnect sections of the dungeon at different times and with different routes) and enough natural hazards (especially water and gas based ones that interlink with the aforementioned roaming corridors to shift the conditions of regions of the dungeon over time) and you could have a pretty interesting dungeon. Perhaps enough enough interesting stuff to sprawl it out into something mega-dungeon sized.
It wouldn't work for *every* dungeon. That would get old pretty quickly. However if we're using that strict definition of "need", then it does raise a good quandary of if this would still qualify as a dungeon.
Tomb of Horrors has very, very few monsters. Most of them qualify as repeated-use traps with HP and a "to hit" roll. You could remove them and it's still a dungeon. So you're in good company with that idea.
DeleteI think you can strip it down pretty far and still be a "dungeon." Until it's basically empty . . . and then it might just be a maze or labyrinth, but still a sub-type of a dungeon. Even a totally emptied dungeon is a dungeon, right? Just not necessary a fun one.
This is indeed what my own megadungeon factions are becoming. Instead of just the alien great-gnolls, the orcish mercenary company, the fanatical Dwarven resistance cult, and the various horrors living deeper in, there are a lot of politics within the first two groups, and a lot of potential dynamism... while Commander Thra'k-Mor'ton maintains tight discipline, he can't know every single thing that every soldier and probie does, and Yatayrar can't even claim to be the legitimate ruler of her faction, just someone you do not want to cross. And there's a lot of interplay with minor factions that ally with or against the great-gnolls and orcs. The time period makes a lot of difference: the goals and abilities of each group shift over time. There's also a certain "us vs. them" attitude that transcends faction. After all, there wouldn't have been a Victory Day Massacre if the whole dungeon hadn't agreed to hold a truce and fair on the second anniversary of Commander-Baron Therános's defeat.
DeleteAll in all, though, I think I have to rely on factions because my adventure design is heavily weighted towards narrative arcs and and alternatives to killing large numbers of creatures that are clearly people. It'd be quite possible to run raid after loot-based raid into the megadungeon, but you wouldn't make any progress toward stabilizing the massive non-state that sits like a gaping wound in the middle of the civilized world.
Megadungeons need factions. That's a truism, just like "no one wears armor in the desert wasteland of S'kbah".
ReplyDeleteMy thinking is that a Megadungeon is a setting that happens to be in a form of multiple levels of mazes with rooms.
ReplyDeleteSo can you have a setting full of characters and creatures without factions?
I say yes, although it might not be as entertaining or engaging as it could be.
DeleteFelltower has very little depth to its factions but has lasted going on 11 years, so it's possible to still be fun. The PCs do very little "Red Harvest" style interactions between them these days yet people still want to game.
The previous comment was mine. The us apparently changed when using my iPad.
ReplyDelete"My line of thought is that no, you do not need them."
ReplyDeleteExactly, but unlike you're next line of thought, I disagree that it's about "boring/engaging". For me it's about "will the PCs care or notice?"
If you've got Players who are in a complete "Back To The Dungeon/Orc and Pie" mode, they aren't even bothering to talk to the inhabitants that can talk, don't worry about using one group against another, and aren't particularly inquisitive about the 'ecology'.
At which point, //unless it means everything to you//, it's a waste of effort that the Players will never notice and can safely be skipped.
By now, y'all should know I'm all about skipping any work that won't even matter.
Excellent point. If it's not somehow player-facing, it's not really that important. It might not ever be important.
DeleteThat said, with the right game system - say, GURPS, with a lot of spells like History and Ancient History and Summon Spirit and mind-reading spells, you might need to know what's up with everything as players spam out information spells as they choose. Even if it's not player-facing, it's useful to at least have a stub end idea you can expand at a moment's notice.
I don't really use factions, though I guess technically I do maybe, but pretty much 'each room stands alone' is how I approach it and I will absolutely stick fire monsters next to ice monsters etc and very rarely think about how critters in room A think about rooms B or C. Ideally I could run the encounter for room B knowing absolutely nothing beyond room B
ReplyDelete