To dungeon or not to dungeon

[EldritchCoomer]

Nwedo you all, so I'd like to get an idea of mine off the ground, but I'm stumped on the method I'd like to take with it.

So basically in this story that I'm cooking it takes in an apocalypse, with magic and monsters, but I have one small tiny problem, while after the magic came to this world I'd like disaster to follow not too longer after collapsing every government and people having to make settlements and rebuild society from what's left.

My roadblock as is the conflict that they'd have to face in the apocalypse, I at first wanted to make it a dungeon spawning world, but I didn't know how to create compelling stories with that type of setting.
Then I thought of disasters being caused by power hungry people, but that led to just 2 dimensional boring characters plus I wanted active threats that it'd be feasible for anyone to tackle.
THe last one I wanted was stuff I saw in some manga, manhwa and anime where spirits corrupts animals and some people making them rampaging monsters due to the spirits influence, but that idea sounded boring and not as personal as enemies in other series are

So I'd just like to know what you'd either write or want to read in terms of enemies and threats in this world??

Also I would just like to say you can suggest things that you might do that I didn't think about, or another approach to the problem from the examples I gave above, maybe one of you could give me something interesting that I would find interesting enough to use.

 

[HelloHound]

maybe the magic is like radiation and the places with higher levels have more corruption of the flora and fauna, effectively making them above ground dungeons

 

[TotallyHuman]

Just destroy communication lines and maybe the power grid. This will be enough to collapse most governements and most countries

 

[Cipiteca396]

Tbh, I hate apocalypse. The idea that you have to kill off 70-90% of your characters right from the beginning sucks. That little bias out of the way...

Dungeons, rampaging spirits, and power hungry mortals are all viable options. They work, and they can be made interesting if you want. But if they bore you, then you'll probably end up with a subpar result. That's just the nature of 'inspiration'.

Outside of that, the usual 'enemies' are the shifting state of the world. Current tools and technology may become less useful or even obsolete with the introduction of magic. Or maybe it would just explode. Every car, every bomb, every nuke, kaboom. Not my favorite, and I also wouldn't go so far as disabling technology entirely but- why would you spend a hundred thousand dollars making a super specialized tech when you can just magic something similar into existence? Contrarily, tech might still be better at some things than magic. It's up to you as an author.

Old jobs similarly might become outdated. Do you need to farm for food when you can Create Food and Water with a few levels under your belt? Do you need laborers when you can summon golems? Why does a government need to exist if the 'System' creates a set of rules that all 'Players' have to follow or be penalized? You don't need police if Crime is handled by the world itself. If it isn't handled by the world itself though- how do you handle a sudden horde of random people who can crush a continent with a flick of the wrist? Every government would be crushed by activists/revolutionaries, terrorists, and common criminals in a day.

Or you could go the old route and have extra dimensional invaders show up to conquer the newly terraformed world they just made. You could take advantage of the popularity of Baldur's Gate by making some knock-off Mind Flayers and whatever showed up to try and stop them.

I'll think of more eventually, maybe. Asking a question might kickstart my brain.

 

[Sleds]

Why don't have multiple dungeons spawning randomly and they grow with time, devoring the land on earth and in the same occassion the technology we need in everyday life

 

[TheMonotonePuppet]

Nwedo you all, so I'd like to get an idea of mine off the ground, but I'm stumped on the method I'd like to take with it.

So basically in this story that I'm cooking it takes in an apocalypse, with magic and monsters, but I have one small tiny problem, while after the magic came to this world I'd like disaster to follow not too longer after collapsing every government and people having to make settlements and rebuild society from what's left.

My roadblock as is the conflict that they'd have to face in the apocalypse, I at first wanted to make it a dungeon spawning world, but I didn't know how to create compelling stories with that type of setting.
Then I thought of disasters being caused by power hungry people, but that led to just 2 dimensional boring characters plus I wanted active threats that it'd be feasible for anyone to tackle.
THe last one I wanted was stuff I saw in some manga, manhwa and anime where spirits corrupts animals and some people making them rampaging monsters due to the spirits influence, but that idea sounded boring and not as personal as enemies in other series are

So I'd just like to know what you'd either write or want to read in terms of enemies and threats in this world??

Also I would just like to say you can suggest things that you might do that I didn't think about, or another approach to the problem from the examples I gave above, maybe one of you could give me something interesting that I would find interesting enough to use.

I was wondering. Have you considered the nature of how the dungeons spawn? If you feel incredibly attached to how they spawn and how it connects to the magic system, then just ignore this idea!
But you could have the way they spawn, and where they decide to spawn, take on a metaphysical aspect to it.
Specifically, to solve your tiny problem, make the dungeons both attempt to replace the central focus of human society and draw on sources of societal stability (like governments) to spawn, which will make them physically supplant the various places important to stability. The dungeons will eliminate those pesky governments and give your story a unique flavor.
This metaphysical aspect can also color the creatures of the dungeons, to give special enemies that will set you apart from other dungeon-using stories. For example, instead of goblins, make snakes comprised of non-flammable oil like the scaly version of Hexxus, or floating golden jellyfish with golden chains for their tentacles. Use merchantile concepts, or however you view the core concepts of society, to inspire the dungeon creatures' looks.
But this monster creation is probably me jumping the gun a bit!
Super curious what you pick and how you figure things out! Good luck!

 

[J_Chemist]

Spicy space rocks fall down and make craters.

Craters collapse or become breeding grounds for spicy beasts.

Space rocks develop into dungeons when they burrow into the ground.

Space rocks turn out to be living creatures that followed the scent of magic and are trying to eat the Earth's juicy, dummythicc core. The monsters are just them making bodyguards to kill inhabitants of the planet.

 

[Plantorsomething]

Nwedo you all, so I'd like to get an idea of mine off the ground, but I'm stumped on the method I'd like to take with it.

So basically in this story that I'm cooking it takes in an apocalypse, with magic and monsters, but I have one small tiny problem, while after the magic came to this world I'd like disaster to follow not too longer after collapsing every government and people having to make settlements and rebuild society from what's left.

My roadblock as is the conflict that they'd have to face in the apocalypse, I at first wanted to make it a dungeon spawning world, but I didn't know how to create compelling stories with that type of setting.
Then I thought of disasters being caused by power hungry people, but that led to just 2 dimensional boring characters plus I wanted active threats that it'd be feasible for anyone to tackle.
THe last one I wanted was stuff I saw in some manga, manhwa and anime where spirits corrupts animals and some people making them rampaging monsters due to the spirits influence, but that idea sounded boring and not as personal as enemies in other series are

So I'd just like to know what you'd either write or want to read in terms of enemies and threats in this world??

Also I would just like to say you can suggest things that you might do that I didn't think about, or another approach to the problem from the examples I gave above, maybe one of you could give me something interesting that I would find interesting enough to use.

Well when times are desperate, dictators are more likely to come in and take over by force, so it wouldn’t be unrealistic. I like dungeons but I feel like the way they’re written sometimes takes the mystique out of it. I really liked the soft way they made it in Kidnapper Dragons with tears in reality, but dungeons aren’t the main focus. Then there’s SSS suicide hunter with one huge dungeon tower everyone can enter but not leave, it can supernaturally be seen in the distance in all areas of the world, and it’s connected to the multiverse at higher levels.

 

[Arkus86]

My roadblock as is the conflict that they'd have to face in the apocalypse, I at first wanted to make it a dungeon spawning world, but I didn't know how to create compelling stories with that type of setting.
Then I thought of disasters being caused by power hungry people, but that led to just 2 dimensional boring characters plus I wanted active threats that it'd be feasible for anyone to tackle.
THe last one I wanted was stuff I saw in some manga, manhwa and anime where spirits corrupts animals and some people making them rampaging monsters due to the spirits influence, but that idea sounded boring and not as personal as enemies in other series are

You could combine the first and third options too.

Dungeons spawn semi-regularly from concentrations of mana or other catalysts, and if left unchecked will eventually start releasing hordes of aggresive monsters that overrun the area and scour it clean in search of food, or just bloodlust. It's not that uncommon of a trope, come to think of it.

You could also have a sort of surface pseudo-dungeons, ever-growing areas twisted by magic and the dungeon's nature into labyrinths, enchanted forests or the like, and likewise giving rise to dangerous monsters or other effects on their surroundings until whatever serves as the core is destroyed.

 

[Cortavar]

To me, you have 2 ways to try to make this work: bottom up or top down. You can even use both.

Bottom-up is mostly what you've been doing with defining the nature of the threats that your protagonists will face at first: collapse of civilization, dungeons, mutated animals, etc... Those are all fine tropes that you can use to generate stories. And since you have a variety of threats and opportunities, you can mix and match stories focusing on one or the other aspect to keep things fresh for quite some time.

Now top-down would be answering the why to the what of bottom up. Why are there dungeons? Why do animals mutate? Why did civilisation collapse? That's probably where you're stumped right now. There are two answers, that again you can combine.
The first one is to let your characters discover it the further the story goes. The advantage of that method is that you can start writing right away and not worry about the setting's origin too much, making stuff up on the fly. The downside is that you'll probably run into stuff that you want to change further down the road and either risk continuity errors, need an asspull or a convoluted and convenient side story to implement.
If you start with defining the reasons (in your head, no need for your characters to know) of the various catastrophes, you'll have an easier time writing arcs, but you'll lose some flexibility for later developments or better ideas you'd come up with along the way.

My advice would be to have a general idea of the why in your head that can direct the general direction of the first chapters, but to keep your characters in the dark until they figure it out by themselves.

 

[Succubiome]

Nwedo you all, so I'd like to get an idea of mine off the ground, but I'm stumped on the method I'd like to take with it.

So basically in this story that I'm cooking it takes in an apocalypse, with magic and monsters, but I have one small tiny problem, while after the magic came to this world I'd like disaster to follow not too longer after collapsing every government and people having to make settlements and rebuild society from what's left.

My roadblock as is the conflict that they'd have to face in the apocalypse, I at first wanted to make it a dungeon spawning world, but I didn't know how to create compelling stories with that type of setting.
Then I thought of disasters being caused by power hungry people, but that led to just 2 dimensional boring characters plus I wanted active threats that it'd be feasible for anyone to tackle.
THe last one I wanted was stuff I saw in some manga, manhwa and anime where spirits corrupts animals and some people making them rampaging monsters due to the spirits influence, but that idea sounded boring and not as personal as enemies in other series are

So I'd just like to know what you'd either write or want to read in terms of enemies and threats in this world??

Also I would just like to say you can suggest things that you might do that I didn't think about, or another approach to the problem from the examples I gave above, maybe one of you could give me something interesting that I would find interesting enough to use.

From what I understand, governmental control over societies is somewhat powered by a self-sustaining illusion-- it's said that if 5% of a population is actively acting against the government, they lose the ability to control the society.

The combination of monsters and magic would naturally lead to societies splintering and breaking down, just because they don't have the resources to do everything everywhere. They aren't built to solve the problems of monsters or magic, nor do they have the tools for it. They'd try to respond and adapt as best as they can, but things would break down to some extent.

With the new and flexible tool of magic, people who have trouble with the current governments can much more easily destabilize them, and the governments won't have countermeasures at first, and they're already dealing with monsters... a lot of them will crumble entirely, or collapse inwards as they try to hang onto some of their current land and power.

Supply chains will crumble, and sometimes desperate people will turn against each other-- but sometimes desperate people will band together and take care of each other, too. Or band together and turn against outsiders....

Some people would probably use nuclear bombs against monsters in an attempt to survive, assuming they still work-- and if there's too much of that going on, you get into a nuclear winter scenario.

Monsters and magic are already destabilizing enough in large enough numbers and powerful enough magic... you don't really have to add more to have an apocalypse.

Of course, if you have a massive population die-off, I'd expect things would actually become more peaceful between different groups from that point on, unless it's hard to procure food and resources.

If you want to have every government collapse utterly... well, someone probably has to be doing that intentionally? Off-hand, they could either be a group that is anti-government in general, a group who wants to collapse everything so they can build up control over it, or magical creatures (or people) who believe that leaving governments alone means they'll likely be hunted and killed and/or domesticated.

Actually, people could have various different motivations and still agree on the core "current governments in the world all need to go"? But without that, I'd imagine you probably get quite a bit of city-states rather than full societal collapse.

 

[EldritchCoomer]

From what I understand, governmental control over societies is somewhat powered by a self-sustaining illusion-- it's said that if 5% of a population is actively acting against the government, they lose the ability to control the society.

The combination of monsters and magic would naturally lead to societies splintering and breaking down, just because they don't have the resources to do everything everywhere. They aren't built to solve the problems of monsters or magic, nor do they have the tools for it. They'd try to respond and adapt as best as they can, but things would break down to some extent.

With the new and flexible tool of magic, people who have trouble with the current governments can much more easily destabilize them, and the governments won't have countermeasures at first, and they're already dealing with monsters... a lot of them will crumble entirely, or collapse inwards as they try to hang onto some of their current land and power.

Supply chains will crumble, and sometimes desperate people will turn against each other-- but sometimes desperate people will band together and take care of each other, too. Or band together and turn against outsiders....

Some people would probably use nuclear bombs against monsters in an attempt to survive, assuming they still work-- and if there's too much of that going on, you get into a nuclear winter scenario.

Monsters and magic are already destabilizing enough in large enough numbers and powerful enough magic... you don't really have to add more to have an apocalypse.

Of course, if you have a massive population die-off, I'd expect things would actually become more peaceful between different groups from that point on, unless it's hard to procure food and resources.

If you want to have every government collapse utterly... well, someone probably has to be doing that intentionally? Off-hand, they could either be a group that is anti-government in general, a group who wants to collapse everything so they can build up control over it, or magical creatures (or people) who believe that leaving governments alone means they'll likely be hunted and killed and/or domesticated.

Actually, people could have various different motivations and still agree on the core "current governments in the world all need to go"? But without that, I'd imagine you probably get quite a bit of city-states rather than full societal collapse.

What I'm referring to full government collapse is that the government that used the rule the world all effectively were destroyed beyond repair and a disaster strikes so big that a lot of people die.
The story takes place after the apocalypse happens not during it so readers won't see what the downfall is all I'll give is that it happened.
I'm not going to put people thinking that getting rid of the government through magic is a smart decision as if you have no backup plan that's just self destructive, I was planning to have the government be overwhelmed world wide and no longer exist

 

[Succubiome]

What I'm referring to full government collapse is that the government that used the rule the world all effectively were destroyed beyond repair and a disaster strikes so big that a lot of people die.
The story takes place after the apocalypse happens not during it so readers won't see what the downfall is all I'll give is that it happened.
I'm not going to put people thinking that getting rid of the government through magic is a smart decision as if you have no backup plan that's just self destructive, I was planning to have the government be overwhelmed world wide and no longer exist

I was just saying I'd expect fragments of governments and other organizations to survive in some places if organization helped people survive, unless they were systematically destroyed.

I suppose if there was an extremely high non-focused death rate-- if say, 99% of the population just dies off from "magic poisoning" in that their bodies can't live in a world with magic, it'd be non-focused enough that most structures would collapse. People would react as/right after the apocalypse happened, unless they were so scattered and isolated in the first place, so there wouldn't be a "pure" rebuilding scenario except in utterly catastrophic apocalypses. If people are just dying from monsters, then groups would have stronger survival chances, usually, and they'd form along existing lines in the case of an outside emergency.

But hey, like everything else I wrote, that's just my take? Totally not something I expect you to go with.

 

[EldritchCoomer]

I was just saying I'd expect fragments of governments and other organizations to survive in some places if organization helped people survive, unless they were systematically destroyed.

I suppose if there was an extremely high non-focused death rate-- if say, 99% of the population just dies off from "magic poisoning" in that their bodies can't live in a world with magic, it'd be non-focused enough that most structures would collapse. People would react as/right after the apocalypse happened, unless they were so scattered and isolated in the first place, so there wouldn't be a "pure" rebuilding scenario except in utterly catastrophic apocalypses. If people are just dying from monsters, then groups would have stronger survival chances, usually, and they'd form along existing lines in the case of an outside emergency.

But hey, like everything else I wrote, that's just my take? Totally not something I expect you to go with.

Yeah, I plan to do 'most of us got wiped out and the ones that lived are knocking on death's door constantly' type of situation.
There is no magic poisoning, I would like to use the monsters as a plot device for enemies that cause the apocalypse and keeping people's lives on edge, but I'd also like to use it in another where normal ningen transform into said monsters it they wish to survive in the world as the more you use your innate magical abilities the more you transform and the more you have at a chance of survival.
This information is not known to the public as it's something you'd have to actively seek out and most mistrust or bigoted against these people cause they aren't human anymore and are more akin the things that are killing them.

I would like to focus on some semblance of civilization building after the apocalypse is being managed properly and introduce megacities and corpos controlling everything that people need to live as the people that don't trust or want anything to do with would eventually have to come back or work with them in some way to live.

To me, you have 2 ways to try to make this work: bottom up or top down. You can even use both.

Bottom-up is mostly what you've been doing with defining the nature of the threats that your protagonists will face at first: collapse of civilization, dungeons, mutated animals, etc... Those are all fine tropes that you can use to generate stories. And since you have a variety of threats and opportunities, you can mix and match stories focusing on one or the other aspect to keep things fresh for quite some time.

Now top-down would be answering the why to the what of bottom up. Why are there dungeons? Why do animals mutate? Why did civilisation collapse? That's probably where you're stumped right now. There are two answers, that again you can combine.
The first one is to let your characters discover it the further the story goes. The advantage of that method is that you can start writing right away and not worry about the setting's origin too much, making stuff up on the fly. The downside is that you'll probably run into stuff that you want to change further down the road and either risk continuity errors, need an asspull or a convoluted and convenient side story to implement.
If you start with defining the reasons (in your head, no need for your characters to know) of the various catastrophes, you'll have an easier time writing arcs, but you'll lose some flexibility for later developments or better ideas you'd come up with along the way.

My advice would be to have a general idea of the why in your head that can direct the general direction of the first chapters, but to keep your characters in the dark until they figure it out by themselves.

Hmm, I don't think the why or the origin is the problem, anyone can peace together what that's all about. I'm not going to do any special mystery thing that would explain how or why the world is the way it is, the world is basically It is what it is type deal where there is no systemic reason for it turning that way, it just is that way due to chaotic circumstances.