Dungeon Crawls...A Quick Look

Today we talk about something dark, something that few of us would ever be happy to find ourselves in; Today we're talking about monster filled holes in the ground, we're talking about Dungeons.

As a gamer of multiple platforms, both digital and pen and paper, I constantly seem to find myself in these monster and trap infested pits of despair. You kind of wonder sometimes when your wandering through these places.."Who makes these things? Really? Acme Instant Dungeons?" That's not to say that I wouldn't enjoy that job, but It just makes me wonder why so many places have these labyrinths just dug out beneath them. Can you imagine going over to a friends house, and he's like "Dude, you wanna go down stairs and check out our dungeon?" Now wait a minute. That might have been pretty cool, I'm sure I wasn't the only child that ran around outside with a stick or a plastic sword and pretended to slay all matter of monsters, ninja, robots, or bullies. 

 As you spend time adventuring and slaying your way through these countless dungeons, you run across some common foes, skeletons and all other measure of the undead, slimes and oozes, giant insects, and goblins...green skinned, cowardly, sneaky little goblins. Most of us have something we hate dealing with most in dungeons, for some its the traps and puzzles, for others its just the constant grind, for me...its Goblins. There is nothing more embarrassing to a would-be hero than being taken out by the most lowly and and weak creature to ever inhabit the realm of fantasy. Not only is it bad for a hero's ego, but it's bad for the dungeon unions, I mean, once the Goblins realize that they have the ability to be more than cannon fodder they're gonna want more pay, better equipment, and do you have any idea how much that's gonna cost evil overlords? I mean it's ok to pay a dragon the ridiculous fee because there is only one of those...but on average there are hundreds if not thousands of these tiny bastards in a dungeon, that's a lot of money...I ain't got time for that.

DC 30?! Push the Gnome into it, we can find another one.

Moving on...some other aspects of dungeon crawling include dodging traps like pitfalls, spike traps, falling rocks, zombified drag queens from beyond, the list goes on and on, but you should be able to navigate and handle these traps without out too much difficulty, and if a trap is too hard to handle you simply push the most useless or most annoying party member into the trap. Personally, I always choose the Gnome, as they are small and easy to throw, and the sounds they make are hilarious.

  

 Last, but not least in the dungeon crawling experience, haha experience..., yes...last but not least LOOT! Now we all expect to be rewarded in some way, shape, or form at the end of the dungeon. You could have been seeking a legendary weapon, or trying to rescue a princess, or just been on a genocidal quest to end the green menace. However you could arrive at the end and find out the princess is in another castle/dungeon, you could lose the roll on the +10 Sword of Flaming Unearthly Doom to the wizard who wants it cause it looks cool, or you could get taken out by a damn goblin...but none the less, we want that reward, so we're gonna keep crawling through the holes in the ground in search of that thing he jumped into the darkness for in the first place