Everything you think about Game Mastering is probably wrong: Part XIX - Dungeons as a Campaign Concept
Author's note, I still have to figure out how to host the map needed for this post, until its here this might be of diminished use
I am breaking with my tradition of using the same header artwork for each post in this series to include a dungeon map I made because I think it will be useful to give a concrete example of some of my points.
Dungeons are the OG campaign setting. People have been writing for decades about the variations between different styles of dungeons and have done a better job than I could about most concepts, but I will give a rundown on some of the basics.
There is the concept of a megadungeon as a tentpole of the campaign. You have one giant multilevel dungeon full of ancient mysteries. The party goes full zero to hero until they reach the end of the dungeon and end the campaign as rich heroes (or die trying).
This goes on a scale of the size of the dungeon. A smaller version of this would be the "starter" dungeon that is a few levels deep and takes the group a few months to delve, taking their characters up a few levels until they head into the wider world. Smaller still you have mini-dungeons that take a couple sessions and maybe have a notable treasure or monster at the end. Even tinier you have five room dungeons for part of a single session, or lairs which are just a single encounter. I don't have much to add on this axis of classification.
The line between Gygaxian Naturalism and dungeons is the "Mythic Underworld", a place where the laws of physics and reality are different. The movie Labyrinth (and I guess now also the game adaptation of it, which is well regarded) is a good example of a "Mythic Underworld" dungeon while many classic adventures from the early days leaned into Gygaxian Naturalism. "Tower of Indomitable Circumstance" (yes that is a plug) is an example of this. Even with wizards and magic, it has ancient food storage and bathrooms within the dungeon. It is trying to off the verisimilitude of a real place. Even though it also has puzzles in the same general vein as Labyrinth, at no point in Labyrinth do you see signs of internal trade routes to supply adequate grain reserves to the Goblins.
The portion I want to talk about is one I haven't seen really described elsewhere that is a key axis on how I run dungeons. This is the line between siege and heist. This of course needs some definitions, history, and examples first.
To start with an obvious fact that has deeper implications. RPGs mechanically grew from wargames mechanically and fantasy literature in terms of subject matter (including what they want to emulate).
From the side of a wargame, the concept of dungeons as most old school players first encountered them emerged. It is why they are called "Dungeons" in the first place. A dungeon is the area under a castle. In wargames the sappers would dig under the walls to breach the castle. When the tactical infinity of proto-RPGs came around things quickly began to coalesce.
1.) The sappers digging under the castle would enter into the castle dungeon (the prison underneath). Hence the term.
2.) If you are the type of paranoid defender players tend to be, why not defend the dungeon in case of sappers? Just as gatehouses have guards, murder holes, and boiling pitch.. why not dungeons? This suddenly makes sense why a portcullis is a common element in early dungeons.
Thus we have the first style of dungeon, the siege. The player characters are breaking into a place against determined defenders who are trying to resist. But even if the initial assault is repelled, it is unlikely the denizens of the dungeon are going to do much more than a brief sortie outside the dungeon. The advantage is on the attackers.
In games this doesn't mean just formal sieges, but it does mean there is a pressure that there is always another wave of heroes. If the "dungeon" is a lost temple in the jungle, then rather than resisting a siege the denizens of the dungeon are resisting waves of treasure hunters out to loot the place. If it is a cursed tomb, they are remnants of the previous dark lord trying to make themselves more trouble to root out than its worth, slowly biding their time until they can complete their dark ritual. But they certainly can’' just march out and destroy the town outside the megadungeon. The king's knights would ride them down out on the open field. So they lurk.
This is the standard operating assumption of a lot of old school dungeons. It is a puzzle to be solved, a nut to crack, a race to be the first party to the bottom. And that is the crux that will separate a good "siege" dungeon from a bad, is there is a pressure on the parties to keep advancing rather than to slowly disassemble it piece by piece. Sure it's effective to do that, but it's unsatisfying as a game (more than once). It is like finding a "cheese" maneuver in a video game where you can beat the end boss by just standing on a bookshelf their hitbox can't strike you at and firing 6000 copper arrows at him over the next 3 hours till he keels over dead from a thousand (or six thousand) paper cuts.
The initial solution to this in west marches games was dirt simple. There are multiple parties, or even just multiple compositions of the same party members, and they don't share treasure with you. If you leave treasure on the table, another set of players may get it before you. Instant pressure. In non-west marches games you could also have simple things like a ticking clock. The necromancer at the bottom of the dungeon is going to open the portal to hell and you have 13 weeks to get to the bottom and stop him before its game over. Fail to set these conditions and you are just going to watch "15 minute dungeon delves" happen over and over again.
From the side of classic fantasy literature, there is the concept of dungeons many people envision when they hear the term "Dungeon" without realizing its mechanically opposite the previous example and often not only not supported by, but running counter to games set to run the above "Siege" type.
In the Mines of Moira, or in almost any classic Conan story, there is what I call "The Heist". This is an adventure where the party is not based on sappers attempting to breach the prepared defenders holed up in their last stand but upon thieves sneaking into a full stocked fortress.
When they are moving through Moira the fellowship is not kicking ass and taking names, they are sneaking. They are trying to avoid being detected by the overwhelming forces present. Once they start making noise things start getting worse in an escalating spiral of danger while trying to escape. The Balrog finds them. They don't go to the depths looking for the Balrog to kill it and take its treasure. Conan is more than willing to fight anything he meets in his escape in "Hour of the Dragon" but he is not the superior force (even if he does win), he relies heavily on stealth.
For this to work the dungeon needs to be overwhelmingly powerful compared to the party. It is the sort of thing that COULD follow the party back (at least partially) to town if not eluded or in some way prevented from following (potentially by resealing the dungeon between delves). In addition to classic heists (for example, rescuing a captive from the king's dungeon) you can also throw survival horror in here, or even treasure hunting where you are playing with fire (such as trying to steal from Smaug or a very much awake Imhotep). Do not confuse this with the unrelated (or at least on a different axis) term "Negadungeon" , which is about the reward structure (I guess on that level it would be opposite the "Monty Haul" dungeon on its own axis). A dungeon with no benefit and much misery to delving can still be a "Siege Style" dungeon (the equivalent of being one of the "Tunnel Rats" in Vietnam) and a light hearted romp could still be "Heist Style" such as breaking into the palace to help a Prince or Princess escape to elope.
The Heist is the default assumption for the style of dungeon in Neoclassical Geek Revival and "City of Tears" (yet another plug) is literally the textbook example of it. There is no way a group of 3-7 characters of levels 1-2 who first enter the dungeon could fight their way through the denizens of even one of the monster lairs if they all swarmed out at once from that lair. If you dove deeper in you can get even more treasure but the risk is greater since if you cause too much commotion you will quickly find your exit cut off.
So let's look at the dungeon above, originally made as the lair of bandits who marauded the desert caravan routes. A fortified outpost built into the long abandoned temple of Naramaste the All Seeing, secretly nestled into a cliffside cave.
In a siege style game the obvious entrance in the south is the assumed entrance. The players might get lucky or smart and find the secret northern back entrance if they find and navigate there from another cave, but that is a reward for clever play rather than the assumption. The first room will be a doozy, a dozen fortified bandits with spears and bows, but will be overcome if the warrior with the gauntlets of ogre strength smashes the door or a wizard puts them all to sleep with a few big spells out of the gate. From there its finding the secret door to the temple portion of the dungeon, clearing rooms, avoiding traps, and locating the hidden Eye monster to defeat it and claim the greater treasure it guards (the rooms in the south east) In a heist style game its assumed its a suicide run to assault the known southern entrance. Good luck getting past a barred door of heavy timbers guarded with arrow slits manned by bandits with a large stockpile of arrows.
The dungeon can only realistically be attempted once the players find (perhaps through a guide, treasure map, or dumb luck) the secret entrance to the north in the caves. From there they will cautiously poke around trying to find their way to the secret door leading to the locked room that the bandits are using as a prison to hold prisoners for ransom (maybe a party member or patron NPC). If the party makes too much light or noise in the temple that Eye monster isn't going to remain hidden, it's going to go seek out and destroy the party. If it doesn't, then they may alert the bandits that there is a secret half of the temple they need to find (causing them to either locate the secret door or at least be on high alert). If the party screws up too badly they will be chased through the winding caves by an Eye monster only to be run down on the open desert by bandits.
It's also obvious that yes, the difference between if a dungeon functions as a heist or siege is the power level of the party relative to the dungeon. As the party increases in power every heist turns into a siege (and eventually every siege into a cakewalk). This is fine, but if the supporting mechanisms (either rules of the system or local setting note) don't support the change then it will go from a fun to a boring play experience.
A heist dungeon at low levels where the party is hiding from Barrow Knight, who rules it with his horde of 99 skeletal archers, while trying to recover the lost gold of the late Mad King is self-contained. When the party hits 5th level and comes back, now the Barrow Knight is the one hiding. Traps and monsters in the dungeon are no longer alarms to summon the Barrow Knight but means for him to attrit the party and give him the chance to best them in an encounter. So why shouldn't the party just slowly dig up the entire complex using peasants with shovels while they crush anything that tries to strike back? Now you either need a reason or you should waive away the encounters. Have rival adventurers also come to seek his treasure? Is the Vampire King and his legion of the damned coming to relieve the besieged Barrow Knight in three months? Is the dungeon only accessible on Halloween and so the Knight only has to hold out for the night?
This goes the other way too, a party approaching a "Siege Style" dungeon while horribly under leveled can still work if there are mechanisms to allow better stealth. These can be mechanics (such as the Suspicion mechanics in NGR) or situational events that allow for stealth beyond what is normally around. In an OSR game you might have wandering encounters be off on the first level and 1/20 on the second level for a single delve because a party of higher level characters are drawing all the flunkies to fight them (and they are already on the 3rd or 4th level causing havoc).
Anyway, I hope this is another useful way to talk about the intended play experience of a dungeon so that GMs can quickly get a sense of how an adventure is intended to be used.