this post was submitted on 10 Dec 2025
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For starters, just ask your DM three questions (assuming enemies are sentient and civilized beings, not just "wildlife") and watch him sweat nervously:
In a lot of modern guides on dungeon design, they stress thinking this stuff out. Yeah you should definitely have some idea why the inhabitants are here and not elsewhere, where their supplies come from, and how they interact with whatever else calls this place home.
They should have a place to sleep, eat, maybe recreation even. While the PCs poke around, the dungeon denizens shouldn't just be waiting around in preset rooms, fully ready to fight like MMO mobs. They could be on patrol, raiding their neighbors, sleeping, arguing, partying, whatever.
There's even fun things you can do with this like inter-faction conflicts between floors or other regions. Do the Orcs fear the dragon at the bottom of the dungeon?
Do the bandits have an uneasy non-aggression pact with a lich? Or are they constantly embattled with seemingly limitless undead because they're struggling for a legendary artifact?
Somebody's gotta reset all those traps, too.
Players should definitely feel like trespassers in a living place. Few people enjoy that ancient style of dungeon delving anymore, where you slay a band of kobolds, answer a sphinx's riddle, then bust in on a vampire who's as confused about why they're there as you are!
Maybe the hallway but the local gelatinous cube roombas it up. (Eeeeeww) ... Or a room has holes dug dropping into an underground river. Or just a really deep pit, or a convenient portal to the Abyss LOL.
You can have fun with this stuff.
I really like this approach. I'd say few dungeons are really places of inner conflict though, since that usually either resolves itself quickly by one side winning or fleeing, because few people like to have a potential rival as a direct neighbor. But of course, there are exceptions and even dungeons belonging to a single faction should feel like the monsters are actually alive.
Or to the Underdark. The Drow must hate the dungeon occupants...
Now i have an itch to go reread Dungeon Meshi
I watched the Anime and I feel like it expands on the above concept very well.
Lots of fun.
My DM would burst out laughing at those questions and respond with:
YOU'RE the adventurers, aren't ya? So:
Generally yes, the DM doesn't need to answer all things (heoght be revealing some secrets after all, where you can ambush, poison food, whatever). BUT he better is prepared after the questions
I ran a bitd game with a civil engineer playing a leech. 'Where does the poop go' got a lot of people killed.
DM sweats profusely, starts searching for books on underground ecosystems.
Make the enemies coprophages and all the problems sort themselves out.