How to make dungeon exploration sound cool without having to rely on the various monsters that populate it?

A dungeons isn't a quirk, it's a typically underground facility meant to house enemies of the kingdom. The average fantasy dungeon is defined by being quirky.

If you don't understand then maybe you should leave the thread because clearly you're not the kind of guy who'd be able to help me.

Hey man, just saying that you shouldn't be afraid of quirk. Your dungeon will fail without it.

My goal isn't to make dungeon exploration fun at any cost.
It's to make the very act of exploring a dungeon sound cool.
If I make a cool dungeon that's only fun because of its quirks or because of what it contains, then I've also failed.

with that in mind, do you think you can provide useful insight?

So if I'm getting this right, what you're looking for is a fantasy dungeon that...isn't fantastical? You just want a regular dungeon and emphasize how the place is old and forgotten?

no it can be fantastical and contain cool shit, but I also want it to be cool by itself.

>emphasize how the place is old and forgotten
that's one way of going about it I guess.

alright, let's get some more clarity here, when you say the dungeon itself should be cool what do you mean, because a dungeon is the sum of it's parts and you keep saying you don't want to rely on interesting parts. Let's start simple, for you what constitutes 'cool'?

Exploring something, by itself, isn't fun. There has to be something cool to find. Hence the quirk. No player is going to go "Wow, remember when we went through that gray cobblestone hallway? So much history!" What they'll remember is the quirky bonkers fun shit that you don't want to put in for some goddamn reason.

a cool dungeon is a dungeon I'd want to go explore without necessarily knowing what's in it or being forced to by external circumstances.

That's why I asked for examples of fantasy universes with interesting dungeons, so I could at least take inspiration from them in case nobody can come up with ways to make any dungeon sound cool.

Noncombat challenges like crossing a rope bridge above a chasm.
Landmarks. Hall of statues, giant crystal on a cave wall, fluorescent water lake. Don't make every room bland and don't make them all special. (For bonus points, make the landmarks interesting terrain for combat, and be prepared for players looting them.)
Atmosphere.
Shortcuts, connected areas, mysterious places that clearly require a future ability to access, which players can come back to later as long as they note it down, or force their way in if they're clever.
And the most important: curious players.

We're not really clear on what you think is cool in the first place

I guess that's true, but you can't deny that the PROSPECT of exploring something like a dungeon without having a particular incentive to do so, can still sound really fun.
I'm at least trying to find how to make that prospect sound fun regardless of what can be gained from it.

You, as a GM, need to think about who built the dungeon and why, and what's happened to it since. This will determine what your player characters find in the dungeon. You can make it cool by slowly feeding them clues towards figuring this out.

you don't have to be

>you can't deny that the PROSPECT of exploring something like a dungeon without having a particular incentive to do so, can still sound really fun.
Yes you can, quite easily. Most people don't like to explore just for exploration's sake.

that seems important

so you're looking for external aesthetic I suppose, the history thing is dependent on the characters knowing as least: "some historic shit happened here" to appreciate so your only choice to attract interest is to make it look nice when viewed from the outside.

Since you've said it's a fantasy setting I'd therefore just let your imagination wander and design around whatever you come up with
>A complex of red stone jutting out the side of a mountain
>a collection of towers in the centre of the valley which tiny runic symbols carved into the sides
>a single normal looking house in the center of a massive body of water
stuff like that?

I can deny that prospect. Quite easily in fact. Players absolutely need motivation. Solid motivation. And the "thrill of exploration" is not much of a motivation, sadly. You can give them a hole in the ground and go "woooo how MYSTERIOUS!" but unless there's some guarantee of something interesting being down there, they won't fucking bother.

I didn't make the claim that this prospect will always sound fun

I said that it
>can
still sound really fun

and I don't think it has to do purely with subjective taste for exploration. I'd like to identify some of the conditions that would make people interested in exploring a dungeon, without referring to heterogenous motivations and elements.

OP is a passive-aggressive prick who doesn't know what he wants, apart from it being "coool".

Close and ignore.

That, or he fundamentally doesn't understand what makes exploration, or anything for that matter, fun.

Play Legend of Grimrock.

Well I don't, so clearly your universal denial is wrong. At this point it sounds to me like you're just trying to convince me that I don't find dungeons cool and that nobody should.

Yeah it sounds like I'm gonna have to rely on historical context and aesthetics, but your examples don't sound like the archetypal dungeon.

>but your examples don't sound like the archetypal dungeon
what about them doesn't, they are old abandoned enclosed structures in the middle of nowhere, that's about as dungeony as you get

You're the ones who chose to come in this thread and convince me that I shouldn't want what I want and that my idea of cool was all wrong because it doesn't rely on monsters, treasures and traps.

I may be passive-agressive but you're self-important dicks.

Well I'm not sure if it's what you're looking for, but I found the mega dungeon of the Last Guardian to be very fascinating. I spent a good portion of the game pondering what exactly was done there, what the technological level of the people who built it was, how people (and griffons I guess?) were supposed to get around, what the functions of various rooms were before they all fell to ruin, what the function of some of the more bizarre elements was, etc. Certainly helps that the art direction was pretty damn impressive. Give that a look, though I don't know how well you could translate the allure to pen and paper.

We don't know what you want because you are not giving us good examples of what you think is cool. You're only saying what you don't like, and it's leaving little else

on a similar note the game Journey is pretty good at making an interesting place to explore without any exposition (also worth playing for the soundtrack)

You're putting the cart before the horse. Think about why the dungeon was built, by whom, how long ago, to what purpose and what it's been used for since before you start thinking about how cool it could be without the use of traps, monsters or treasure. Establish its backstory to establish why it's cool and then make appropriate use of the above to reveal that backstory to the players in a way that's fun and memorable.

Do you want to make it cool to explore a big fucking hole in the ground, or do you want to make it cool to explore a fallen dwarf-fort, an ancient imperial prison, a pagan king's tomb?

No stupid, I'm trying to convince you to put cool shit in your dungeon so it's not another boring cobblestone corridor. Yank the stick out of your ass, clean the wax out of your ears, and fucking listen. Dungeons aren't cool because they're dungeons, they're cool because of what's in them. Exploration isn't fun solely because it's exploration, it's fun because of the cool shit you find. If there's nothing to find in your dungeon, then there's no goddamn point in exploring it.

Exploring a place only to find nothing is pointless, tedious, and unfun. Do you understand?

I don't think the archetypal dungeon is something that looks like it was teleported from somewhere else, or could serve as a magical superweapon for a wizard (which is what your examples seem to be hinting at)
and the archetypal dungeon definitely isn't a normal-looking house.
gonna check that out

I'm the one who asked YOU for examples of dungeons you thought were cool. If I dismiss some of your suggestions then you're free to provide more, or to leave the thread.

see these guys are playing ball, they're giving me shit to take inspiration from instead of complaining that I didn't input enough data for them to compute.

>I don't think the archetypal dungeon is something that looks like it was teleported from somewhere else, or could serve as a magical superweapon for a wizard (which is what your examples seem to be hinting at)
>and the archetypal dungeon definitely isn't a normal-looking house
you said you needed it to attract attention, you do that by making something weird about or by making it out of place, if it's just another part of the landscape there's no reason for players to focus on it

The first poster gave you one and you dismissed it, along with the very thing most people find interesting about dungeons

I understand what you mean, but it fails to convince me.

Do you understand that your repeated failures to convince me, only indicate that you may be in the wrong?

Or are you just trying to stir shit up.

Yeah I dismissed it.
I never said that can't happen.

He's free to provide other ideas. He's also free to leave the thread instead of engaging in a pointless argument.

>I want cool shit without cool shit
>No I won't elaborate
>No I can't be more specific besides cool = good and quirky = bad
>pls get out my thread

Kek what the fuck

AT this point I don't know what the fuck I'm trying to do. The only conclusions I can make are that you hate and/or don't understand fun and that you might be a robot. An autistic robot.

But user, I am giving you shit. I'm only trying to understand what shit you want

Hey that gives me an idea:
We said earlier they're supposed to be forgotten right?

What if it's just been discovered by a member of the party?

This guy is too busy arguing with the people who called him out for his lack of logic to actually listen to any motherfucker trying to help him

Not OP but a dungeon can be a half-sunken shipwreck or a giant hollow tree.

What matters is you need to set up an interesting story for the dungeon. Then you need to make that into a mystery and provide answers.
Play the "what's cool stuff I like game" and figure out what you want to include. Then play "how is this true" and stitch it all together in a story.

The giant tree is a fortress because Elves that used to live there were smitten by its beauty. It stands above a network of underground gardens because they let dwarves dig there and the dwarves filled the place with statues, fountains and stone murals in return. There's a glowy crystal cavern below because that's why the dwarves dug there. The elves and dwarves were close because they joined forces against an army of giants: the murals depict the battle and the statues are of warriors who fell back then. Etc, etc.
Then turn it all into questions like "who the fuck is this guy and why does he show up on like 4 statues so far" or "what's making that soft light glow far below".

I got a pretty clear idea of what you're trying to do:
convince me that I should DM just like you even though we don't have the interests.

Then stop asking me dumb questions and just churn out inspo and suggestions, and figure out whether they're relevant or not based on my feedback if I provide some.

Or just leave I guess. I'm not keeping your dog hostage.

>What if it's just been discovered by a member of the party?
wouldn't that constitute an external motivation which you said here you didn't want? You wanted the dungeon to be worth exploring for the sake of it, telling the players 'you're character discovered an old tomb, now you should explore it' defeats that purpose surely

Trying to help may not warrant my full attention.
Logic is irrelevant.

Hey, I just wanted to help you run a cool dungeon, but you seem to want to sabotage yourself at every turn before you've even begun. Now we get to make fun of you for being an idiot.

You'll catch for flies with honey than vinegar user

what if I don't say "now you should explore it"?

If an adventuring party with a decent equipment just comes across a dungeon, I assume they will at least be intrigued by it, and if I make it sound interesting, they might come up with excuses to go explore it on their own, maybe not immediately but later on, right?

I mean that's just my assumption.

Why does it sound like this was your goal all along?

That's none of your concern.

yeah historical significance is a good adventure hook

Because you're a twat with a victim complex?

They probably won't though. As a player I try to stick to whatever the objective of the moment is. If the dungeon does not somehow aid in that, I'll ignore it. The only variation I've seen in other PCs is them running off to fulfill personal their goals or just obtain rewards

Or, more likely, because you fuck around Veeky Forums waiting for opportunities to show off and feel superior, and I denied you that opportunity so now you're pissed off.

>If an adventuring party with a decent equipment just comes across a dungeon, I assume they will at least be intrigued by it, and if I make it sound interesting, they might come up with excuses to go explore it on their own, maybe not immediately but later on, right?

It's a little more complicated than that (as most things are), firstly is the matter of whether or not you explicitly say 'you find a dungeon' because calling something a dungeon, in a game about exploring dungeons, is pretty much the same as saying 'now you should explore it'. If you don't explicitly state it's a dungeon then you're reliant on giving them a motivation, this could be the place itself creates a sense of mystery (likely by being strange or out of place as suggested in ), by the promise of an interesting history (which is still reliant on your players being interested in your world lore) or the promise of rewards inside it (although you've already ruled that out).

Yeah that'd only work in a sandbox type of game and those rarely end well.

In that case a good way to generate curiosity would be to give out pretty obvious clues that this is an important place that they've heard about in previous sessions and let them go "oh shit, this is that tower everybody keeps ranting about".

Hey, I legit tried to help. I'm only pissed off because you are a passive aggressive fucktard that refuses to explain what they want and won't fucking listen to advice. You're being deliberately obtuse and acting smug about thwarting non-existent trolls.

once again this is reliant on players either having an interest in the world's lore or expecting a reward of some kind, but yes, establishing important things in the game world before their actual appearance is a good technique for making a world seem cohesive.

Mechanical rewards for exploration.
You know the way B/X (?) uses gold found=xp? That encourages the "minimise conflict, maximise treasure" mindset.

You could apply this in a diagetic or non-diagetic way, with the former taking the form of some sort of Archaeologists/Explorers Journal which would pay the party for writing accounts of ancient tombs and the like.
The latter could be XP rewards for uncovering mysteries and secrets in the dungeon. Think Dark Souls, but you get XP for every lore piece you figure out.
Or maybe just have that as the goal going in, if you think you can write interesting enough lore that's not too vague

In fact, now that I think about it, the Explorer's Journal/Gazette idea could make for an interesting game, especially if you played up the "gentleman explorer" element.

Go off to strange and distant lands and write about your experiences to grow your reputation, but beware: if you embellish the truth too much you'll risk being discredited by another expedition.
Are you an upstanding enough gentleman to explore the Dark Continent?

This is why Fallout "dungeons" are so much better than Elder Scrolls dungeons. When you go into an abandoned factory, office building, laboratory, mansion, subway station etc. you actually get a sense of the people that lived there. You get to see where they slept, where they worked, where they socialized. You see all the random stuff that they left behind. Compared to a tomb or temple in a TES game, where everything seems more "level designed".

To use real-world examples, you want your dungeons to be like Pompeii, not like the Pyramids at Giza. The pyramid is huge and imposing, but it's basically just a hallway with some mummies and loot at the end. Pompeii is sprawling and diverse. There's bakeries, restaurants, taverns, brothels, homes, baths, markets, amphitheaters, government buildings, tombs, etc. You see cart tracks worn into the stone roads, and stepping stones to cross roads when they would flood. There's paintings and graffiti on walls. There's bodies of adults and children, men and women, nobles and slaves. Yes, you'll find loot: gems, coins, jewlery, amulets, weapons, holy sculptures of ancient gods, etc. You'll also find a lot of useless but interesting stuff: pots, jars, plates, fossilized food, animal bones, tools, furniture, oil lamps, toys, etc.

Take a page from dungeon meshi, make the dungeon a living breathing thing, give it a ballance and ecosystem.

If you want your players to seek out dungeons for the sake of dungeons, tell them. They can create treasure hunters, grave robbers, and achedemics, all who would have a vested interest in dungeoneering.

Also make dungeons central to a worlds culture. Maybe it gives you a legendary artifact or scrap of information central to some cosmological plot. Searching out dungeons is now of utmost interest.

I'm currently planning a game about a group of amateur paranormal researchers who are investigating an (supposedly haunted) abandoned hospital.
The focus of the game is exploration and investigation. The party's main objective is to find clues to decipher the history of the building and discover if the place is legitimately haunted or not. To make up for the lack of combat and to keep things from getting monotonous, I'm also creating many puzzles for them to solve.

Not sure how it's going to go, but my idea was also born out of a desire to have dungeon exploring in itself be the main drive for the party.

What system is it for? I've been having trouble making my 5e game suitably survival-oriented.

It's made for Dungeon World, although only the new prestige classes and alternate travel moves rely on its existing mechanics, everything else is easy enough to use elsewhere

I once ran a game similar to that where the PCs were members of the Ghost Club in Victorian London (interestingly that society still exists and their official website contains fairly detailed accounts of the stuff they do, good game inspiration)

make a literal dungeon on the plane of carceri

its interesting because its a dungeon for monsters so bad they had to be banished to an offplane dungeon

I get what you're trying to do, but you're shit at articulating your thoughts and it doesn't bode well for your DMing. At the very least don't be rude to people who are trying to help.

>website contains fairly detailed accounts of the stuff they do, good game inspiration
sweet, that will come in handy. thanks.

I honestly feel bad for your players.

arsludi.lamemage.com/index.php/78/grand-experiments-west-marches/

this is how

What a silly statement, plenty of people explore things just for the act of exploring it.

read more. get a thesaurus and a dictionary and flip through them regularly. practice the words you learn. use them to describe things, paying attention to what you think 'sounds cool' when an author you like describes a scene in his novel.

jesus christ, dude. i'm assuming you think the album art is a good example..... so practice describing that until you stop sounding like a doofus "you see a tower in a big cave with mist and stuff. its pretty spocky"

bait/10 thread OP.

Well this thread is a fucking pit, Veeky Forums. I hope you're happy. There could have been some decent stuff here.

There was though, despite it all

Remember the scene in the Fellowship of the Ring where Gandalf shows the party the main hall of Khazad-Dum?

I've never had a DM convey that sense of majesty for a dungeon

I'm not entirely certain that's possible in the pnp medium

Totally possible. Just gotta get good with descriptions.