Dante's Dungeon

I am not a Zak S fanboy, really I'm not. It's just that everything he says on his blogs these days seems to go right into the D&D place in my brain and resonate with every single thing in there.

His post on the G monsters is pretty awesome.

"When Dante wrote the The Divine Comedy he wasn't thinking "Hey I'm making up a bunch of stuff about Heaven and Hell so I guess I'm risking blasphemy, but whatever, the Church is pretty laid back about these things, especially these days," he was thinking "I guess I want to write about the details of Heaven and Hell because God is telling me through the medium of my imagination what all is in there," only he was thinking it in Italian and in terza rima."

This is right where I'm at about dungeons. Maybe a given dungeon has a naturalistic explanation and maybe it doesn't. But all the dungeons in my world have a connection with something alien and weird and not at all friendly. If they don't they're just caves.

Also, Zak makes a defense of the Gas Spore that wholly makes up for his defamation of giant beetles.

Journey to the Membranous Labyrinth

I find that a good dungeon comes from an act of inspiration, drawn from the persistent ideas that I just can't otherwise get out of my head. I never expected to find a literal expression of this idea, but I have.

Squidman's Membranous Parasitic Dungeon is a micro dungeon literally inspired by an infection of the membranous labyrinth the Squidman carries in his own head (don't worry, I think that's just health-mage speak for an ear infection). I am terribly jealous.

The Labyrinth is a very serviceable little dungeon with a good hook to fit it into your campaign and the potential to bring an interesting change to that campaign in the future. It has a mix of encounters which can be approached in a number of different ways. There's also lots of scope for creepy mystery and suspense.

Alienation

Some dungeons weren't built by anybody. They weren't formed by natural or arcane processes. They grew. When enough people think some idea, there's a dungeon for it somewhere. When enough people feel one way, their feelings creep together and coalesce like a cyst underground, to give those feelings shape. Woe be to the adventurer that enters this sort of dungeon--unless, by chance, they recognize the feeling that gave it birth, and recognizing it, know how it may be slain.