Where Did the Dungeons Come From?

Dungeons are a staple of most D&D campaign worlds. However, when it comes to world-building, why were the dungeons originally built? Why are there so many dungeons for the player characters to explore? It is a good idea to contemplate the idea of where the dungeons came from during world-building as the answers can add a level of “realism” to a campaign world and also provide adventure ideas down the road.

Here are some rationalizations for the existence and proliferation of dungeons. It is assumed these dungeons were initially created in ancient days.

Farstead Part Four: In Play & Change

In Play Mechanics
Now that the world is set up we can start playing. For the exploration, I will take a look at how many potential special items the characters can find. From there each member of the party will make a Nature roll with a DC20. For every success, the group will have found one of the special items from my list per day of exploring.

The understanding is that the group is making a diligent effort to explore the entire hex; this means they are traveling into dells, into hidden places, into every valley, behind every hill. I allow those who made the Nature roll to randomly roll to see which of the available special locations they discover in the hex. Eventually they will discover all the special features/items and the hex is then considered fully explored.

Farstead: Terrain

This is the list of Unique Terrain for my Farstead campaign. These are "naturally" occuring features such as vegetation, simple animals or geography. They are designed to be out of the ordinary or something easy to remember. These should be easy to add into any campaign setting, especially as most of these would be local occurances so it would make sense that only the local inhabitants would know about them. This helps to explain why they do not appear on any maps. Just be aware that some of these can potentially alter a setting and its economics.

Farstead: Mysteries

This is the list of Mysterious things the characters can find in my Farstead campaign. They are meant to be unexplained, perhaps for the entirety of the campaign. Perhaps someday they will be explained but nothing is set in stone right now and I can use them later to fill a void if needed. Until then they are meant to show the characters that they can not "know it all".
In your own campaign they can be used for something similar or maybe you have an idea of how they can fit into your world to add something unique and different.

Farstead: Snakes

This is the list of Snake Notes for my Farstead campaign. These are various things the characters can discover during their explorations. They are meant to be mysterious and set a tone. Each time the characters discover one of these it will reinforce the notion that the land they are exploring was once the home of intelligent snake people. Even if your own campaign does not have a snake motif, most of these ideas can be converted to your own campaign. For instance, if your own world was once ruled by dragons, the Bone Dome can house dragon bones instead of snake bones. The intent here is to reinforce knowledge of the ancient world in your campaign.

Farstead Part Three: Populating the Map

Now comes the fun part of world creation. I get to decide what is going into each of the hexes. One thing I do when populating areas is to give myself a list of things I want in each hex. For the purposes of this hexcrawl, I want each hex to contain the following: a Delve, Snake Note, Mystery and Unique Terrain.

Delve- I want at least one dungeon. Most of these will consist of 2-3 encounters. Dungeon Magazine from WotC and DnDInsider has been releasing a series of short adventures for their Chaos Scar sandbox that all fall within the 1-6 level range. I will be using a lot of these to populate my immediate area.

Farstead Part Two: The Map

Having determined what options I would allow for character generation, I next had to make the world/continent. For this I decided to use HexMapper (Arr-Kelaan Software-AKS) a program that came out over 13 years ago. I’m not even sure you can still find it online anymore. Here is a website that talks about this version of HexMapper (there are others with the same name but are not the same thing) with a link to a yahoo group that still uses it. I am not part of the group so I don’t know what you can download from there. http://www.welshpiper.com/arr-kelaan-hexmapper.

Farstead: An Adventurer's Charter

This is the adventuring charter that I gave the players on the day of character generation. The group will be acting as an Adventurers Group; ie professional adventurers. While I thought the idea of a charter for them to see and sign could be fun, it also will give the players a sense of bonding and reinforce the concept that this is a group instead of a band of individuals.

Official Charter of Membership

Be it known that on this day the Adventurers Group known as

is hereby established as a fully recognized Adventurers Group in accordance of Arkhan Law. As such it is entitled to privileges as set forth by Arkhan Ordinance as listed below.

A. Right to bear arms in a public place.

B. Right to wear armor in a public place.

C. Right to practice magic in a public place.

D. Abstention from special tariffs and taxes associated with Salvage of Forgotten, lost or otherwise unclaimed goods.

In order to maintain said privileges associated with this Charter this Organization must comply with the following stipulations.

A. A fee of 100 Gold pieces must be paid each year to the office of the Registrar at the local city.

    1. This fee must be paid before the 1 year anniversary of the organizations founding.

    2. If this fee is not paid in the time allotted then a 10 GP fine will be levied for each week of tardiness.

    3. If an entire year passes without payment of fees owed the contract/charter is canceled and all outstanding fees owed may be garnished.

    4. If no funds are available the city may petition a local magistrate for Justice.

B. The local magistrate may call upon the members of the Adventurers Group for purposes of civil defense as deemed warranted.

C. Any time the membership, constitution, or by-laws are changed a copy of those changes must be forwarded to the office of the Registrar at the nearest city.

Member Signatures

Farstead: A Campaign Letter

This is a letter I gave to my players on the first day of play, the day we generated characters. It is a general overview of the campaign; ie what to expect as to style. It also provides some very basic background information; ie things their characters would know going in.



Farstead Campaign

Welcome to the Farstead campaign! This will be a 4th Edition D&D game.

You are all from Arkha. Arkha is a progressive kingdom covering a wide swath of land on the continent of Epeiros. There is a diversity of races and customs within the kingdom. Two years ago a new continent was discovered, Kainon. There was an initial settlement named Kingston, but when the second set of boats arrived the settlement was abandoned and the settlers missing. The new batch of settlers moved a bit to the north and founded Farstead. Arkha wants to see the settlement grow and the new continent explored. They have put forth a call looking for more settlers and for adventurers to explore the new land. You are some of those adventurers seeking to make a name for themselves in a new world.

The campaign will be run sandbox style. There will be a complete new world to explore and lots of places to venture into, but not all will be tuned to your level. Where you go and what you do are completely up to you. It is very conceivable that some or all of you will die during your adventures. If this happens you will roll up new characters (assuming it is impossible to raise them from the dead) at the start of the level of the lowest character level still surviving.

All races and classes are available (see attached race/class list).
Abilities will be done with Method 2 (page 17).

The attached list of races and classes basically listed all those available and a very brief description. Players usually have a concept in mind before they sit down to make characters and rather than hand them a pile of books and say 'go' a brief description can help narrow their search. Here is the list I gave the players. It only had the races and classes up through PH2:

Classes:
Striker = Single target DPS, usually melee
Defender = Tank
Controller = AoE DPS, usually ranged
Leader = Healer/Buffer

Cleric-Leader/Striker-divine
Fighter-Defender/Striker-martial
Paladin-Defender/Striker-martial/divine
Ranger-Striker-martial
Rogue-Striker-martial
Warlock-Striker/Controller-magic-make pacts for power
Warlord-Leader/Defender-martial
Wizard-Controller/Striker-magic

Avenger-Striker/Controller-divine melee
Barbarian-Striker/Defender-martial-rage user
Bard-Leader/Controller-magic
Druid-Controller/Striker-nature-change into beast forms
Invoker-Controller/Striker-divine ranged
Shaman-Leader/Striker-nature-get a spirit pet
Sorcerer-Striker/Controller-wild magic
Warden-Defender/Striker-nature-change into spirit forms

Ardent-Leader/Striker-psionic
Battlemind-Defender/Controller-psionic
Monk-Striker/Controller-martial
Psion-Controller-psionic
Runepriest-Leader/Defender-divine-enter rune states
Seeker-Controller/Striker-martial-bows

Swordmage-Defender/Controller-magic and swords together

Soul Siphon-Striker/Controller-magic-DoTs (a new class I designed)

Hybrid-Combine two classes

Farstead Part One: A 4E Hexcrawl

Welcome to Farstead. This is the name of my hexcrawl campaign for 4E. I’ll be posting how I wrote up this campaign with the intent of maybe giving someone else some ideas they can use. It will be a series of articles over the next few weeks.

The Start
This campaign came about as my wife’s Gamma World (she ran an awesome serious version using the 3rd edition rules-science over fantasy) was wrapping up. The players were asking for a fantasy game as the next campaign. This meant it fell to me, as my wife is only comfortable with two systems (Gamma World and 7th Sea).

Farstead Part 1

I am starting a new 4E campaign and will be building a fresh world from scratch. These Farstead posts will be about the process of building that world. Its intent is to show a practical form of world-building as it happens. When all done (over many articles) I am hoping people can gain some more insight into the development of a world and there will be a ready made world setting to be used for those so inclined.

The first thing to consider when building a world is the overall concept. This is not about what makes the world different from all the others out there, but rather what the goal of the world design is. This hinges on the concept of the campaign itself. A world is meant to push the campaign concept. How will the world being designed facilitate the campaign that is going to be run there?

[More]