There’s certainly a pay-off between these factors. Amoral rogue-types just don’t have the personal stakes to sustain more than a chapter of dungeoneering on their own they need other people to provide the human drama. Oddly, all this means that the likes of Conan and Cugel need not apply… or at least not if they want to go solo. So high personal stakes, dungeoneer factions, and significant mystery… Working that out could be vital not just to the bigger story, but also to the survival chances of the dungeoneering party when they finally locate the sarcophagus. In reality, it’s a containment unit for an undead oracle to whom the builders wanted occasional access. It’s got it all - high personal stakes, divided party and central, sinister, significant mystery.įor example, the dungeon appears to be a tomb but there’s something not quite right about it. However, the best literary examples also present a mystery, ideally one that’s important to the story but also vital to surviving the dungeon. Yes of course it has to make sense within the logic of the story world - that goes without saying. Central Significant Mystery Egil and Nix have pressing personal stakes.įinally, the dungeon itself has to be more than just a series of cool traps and challenges with a prize at the end. Meanwhile the local guide is scheming to do a runner with the party’s funds and has no intention of getting any deeper into the complex of tunnels.įor added points, throw in a murderously rival party so as to add a ticking clock and perhaps enable the good guys to use what they’ve discovered so far in order to play cat and mouse. The sorceress wants to explore and learn. So perhaps the protagonist and his best friend just want to grab some loot and go home. The characters need conflicting practical objectives, perhaps with the protagonist pulled between them. Wealth or knowledge isn’t enough unless each is a means to ends with which we can empathize.įor example, say the protagonist wants money to buy his mother out of serfdom ( Did you hear that, Anakin?), the best friend wants to be able to afford an inn back home so she can marry the girl of her dreams, and the sorceress wants to gain hidden knowledge so she can prove herself as good as all the male sorcerers that have barred her entry into their patriarchal guilds. Like in all adventure stories, you need high enough stakes, and these need to be personal to the characters and engaging to the reader. Kenneth Oppel’s wonderful Steampunk YA 1. Taking them and others together, and without spoilers, here’s what makes a literary dungeon adventure work. And Kenneth Oppel’s wonderful Steampunk YA Skybreaker takes us exploring a drifting mega-zeppelin. The climax to Michael J Sullivan’s wonderful Riyria Chronicles entails an underground adventure. Just to name a few random examples: Paul S Kemp’s exquisite Egil and Nix stories are actually about professional dungeoneers in a Sword and Sorcery world. Several modern writers have pulled off extended dungeons crawls or similar. And the physical drama that works on screen - Indiana Jones stuff with narrow escapes and trundling rocks - doesn’t generate enough wordcount, and can only be visceral for so long.Įven so, it can be done, and modern writers do it and - of course - I’ve been pulling apart good examples to see how and why they work… What makes a dungeon fun to play through - a series of puzzles and tactical or diplomatic challenges - just doesn’t automatically make it fun to read about, or easy to write. What makes a dungeon fun to play through doesn’t automatically make it fun to read about. Clark Ashton Smith’s Seven Geases is close to a dungeon in setting, but in form is a quest story that happens to be underground. Howard’s classic tale “God in the Bowl.” Tolkien uses mega dungeons, but with narrative summary and - unless they are really just an underground battlefield - only limited denizens. It’s still a goto for roleplayers, you see the equivalent in movies, but extended dungeon crawls are rare in genre fiction.Įven when you go back to Dungeon and Dragons‘ literary roots, you don’t really find proper dungeon stories!Ĭonan generally offers up 1-2 room complexes, e.g. Extended dungeon crawls are rare in genre fiction.
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