Dungeon Maintenance: Difference between revisions

* In ''[[Dark Lord of Derkholm]]'', a [[Corrupt Corporate Executive]] takes people from our world to a fantasy world and forces the locals to stage typical high fantasy quests for them. The book's main focus is on what said locals have to do to prepare for the tourists -- andtourists—and how disastrous the effects are for the world as a whole.

** ''[[Forgotten Realms]]'' has Undermountain, the territory of ancient Halaster Blackcloak, also known as "the Mad Wizard" -- and it takes ''a lot'' to deserve such a nickname on Faerûn. So he set up the vast cave complex as a dungeon giving adventurers some good [[Mind Screw]], mostly just for fun. Start with a piece of art in [[Chaos Architecture|dynamic]] [[Malevolent Architecture]] genre, littered with refuse of his and his apprentices' experiments. Except for various unsavory beings he just allowed to live there, Undermountain was maintained in this shape by Halaster's spells, his pre-programmed spells, his own [[Portal Network|gate network]], his custom magic items, overlapping fields of his permanent enchantments -- you get the idea: Detect Magic discerns only the strongest auras [[Made of Magic|in all the statics]]. According to the [[Word of God|Word of Ed]], a mental experiment on "how those things fit together" [http://forum.candlekeep.com/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=5812&whichpage=44#139728 was one of the main reasons] for making it in the first place.

** The dungeons' improbability became a subject of both serious study and parody by the game's makers. For example, [[Dragon (magazine)|Dragon]], had a series of articles called "The Ecology of..." that explored the life cycle of a fictional creature and how it fit in with others. (The oddest monsters were explained as inventions of mad wizards created precisely to serve as living deathtraps). And of course it also made fun of the concept in its comic strips, with characters often lampshading the facts.