History Main / DungeonMaintenance

* ''PlanescapeTorment'' has the Modron maze - a construction intentionally built to be a dungeon to crawl. It contains monsters that acknowledge they lack a motive for being there, and such items as "A Clue!". And there are [[StarfishAliens Modron]] who maintain the dungeon. Modrons are beings of pure Law, from a plane that is all mechanical. They are living robots and can't go outside their programming. The dungeon is an attempt to figure out why adventurers constantly risk their lives to explore dungeons, but they haven't quite figured it out.

* ''DungeonsAndDragons'':

** The dungeons' improbability became a subject of both serious study and parody by the game's makers. For example, {{Dragon magazine}}, 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.
* ''{{Paranoia}}'' adventure ''Orcbusters''. The wizard's dungeon has a "Wandering Monster Ready Room", where wandering monsters wait until it's time for them to go out and wander around the dungeon. This is a parody of the "wandering monster" tables in early editions of ''DungeonsAndDragons''.

* ''[[www.somethingawful.com/d/news/blue-stripe-life-2.php The Life and Times of a Power-Up Deliveryman]]'' from SomethingAwful is a foul example.

* ''Augmented Fourth'' has a hidden control room, and it's full of gnomes. Lenny the Head Gnome shouts orders, approves NPCs, oversees puzzle construction, and gets irritated at you for entering a restricted area. You can do so ten times and watch him get ever more disgusted.

* In ''[[TheElderScrolls The Shivering Isles]]'', there's a quest where you get to man a control booth for the dungeon Xedilian. A party of three adventurers enters, and for each one, you are given the choice of using a deadly trap or a sanity-destroying trick.

* In ''[[TheElderScrolls The Shivering Isles]]'', there's a mission where you get to man a control booth for a dungeon. A party of three adventurers enters, and for each one, you are given the choice of using a deadly trap or a sanity-destroying trick.

* Part of the main quest in the ''Shivering Isles'' expansion to ''TheElderScrollsIVOblivion'' is to get the dungeon Xedilian's traps working again. You then get to test it out on an adventuring party.

* ''EmbricOfWulfhammersCastle'': Our heroine can get to an empty treasure chest before the government official responsible for refilling them. She's outraged at this lapse in standards.

* ''PlanescapeTorment'' has the Modron maze - a construction intentionally built to be a dungeon to crawl. It contains monsters that acknowledge they lack a motive for being there, and such items as "A Clue!". And there are, ugh... [[StarfishAliens people?]] who maintain the dungeon.
** Modrons are beings of pure Law, from a plane that is all mechanical. They are living robots and can't go outside their programming. The dungeon is an attempt to figure out why adventurers constantly risk their lives to explore dungeons, but they haven't quite figured it out.

[[AC:WebOriginal]]
* Eario in ''BrawlInTheFamily'' has this job in relation to the ''SuperMarioBros'' series.

Oh yeah, the monsters. Your average dungeon is balanced, challenging, and themed. Nowhere in there is the word "ecosystem." We have to keep the place brimming with top predators - main diet: each other. All of them are pissed off, either to begin with, or from the things we have to do to [[MoneySpider stuff the treasure in them]]. Turn your back at the wrong moment, and a [[TheVirus chaos ooze]] gets into the landshark pens and you've got two hundred extra blobs of ooze on your hands. When they're not fighting, they're sick, hibernating, or otherwise being animals. Many's the time the chimeras all went into heat, and the guys in Procurement had to do an all-nighter to [[UndergroundMonkey paint spiders red]] and stick in some new spells.

* In the Killerman level of ''{{ILLBLEED}}'' the player goes "backstage" and sees all the props and costumes and stuff from earlier levels of the game. Which makes a certain amount of sense because the whole thing is supposed to be an amusement park (except that it really kills you? And Killerman is [[strike: [[MemeticMutation Killerman]]]] real? ... Okay, ''nothing'' in ''ILLBLEED'' makes sense).

Dungeons are the convenience food of adventuring: peril, riches, and a dusting of plot in one fun-sized package. There's even a type of gameplay, DungeonCrawling, which consists of little but rooting through them. If you play RolePlayingGames at all, you've certainly encountered them. Most likely you've never stopped to wonder why the [[InexplicableTreasureChests treasure chests]] are always full, or what the [[RandomEncounter wandering monsters]] eat when they can't get adventurers. Have you?

Oh yeah, the monsters. Your average dungeon is balanced, challenging, and themed. Nowhere in there is the word "ecosystem." We have to keep the place brimming with top predators - main diet: each other. All of them are pissed off, either to begin with, or from the things we have to do to [[MoneySpider stuff the treasure in them]]. Turn your back at the wrong moment, and a [[TheVirus chaos ooze]] gets into the landshark pens and you've got two hundred extra blobs of ooze on your hands. When they don't fight, they get sick, hibernate, or do other animal things. Many's the time the chimeras all went into heat, and the guys in Procurement had to do an all-nighter to [[UndergroundMonkey paint spiders red]] and stick in some new spells.

* In the FinalFantasy series, it was explained that the Bombs -monsters that look like balloons with mouths that explode when fire is used on them- were originally created as a counter to magic-using foes, but later escaped into the wild. Oh, and they reproduce from the fragments left over after they explode.

* In ''Adventure'', the progenitor of the AdventureGame ''and'' InteractiveFiction genres, completing the game's nominal objective causes the cave system to close for the evening. The player is stranded behind the scenes.

You sheltered sod. Some of us have to work our butts off to keep those places in shape. Did you think that dungeons just grow out of the ground, like plants or dwarfs? Fantasy economies may be [[AdamSmithHatesYourGuts royally]] [[KarlMarxHatesYourGuts screwed up]], but they could never handle a constant influx of high-powered magical artifacts. Or being eaten by the endless streams of monsters!

Oh yeah, the monsters. Your average dungeon is balanced, challenging, and themed. Nowhere in there is the word "ecosystem." We have to keep the place brimming with homicidal predators - main diet: each other. All of them are pissed off, either to begin with, or from the things we have to do to [[MoneySpider stuff the treasure in them]]. Turn your back at the wrong moment, and a [[TheVirus chaos ooze]] gets into the landshark pens and you've got two hundred extra blobs of ooze on your hands. Many's the time the chimeras all went into heat, and the guys in Procurement had to do an all-nighter to [[UndergroundMonkey paint spiders red]] and stick in some new spells.

The dungeon is the convenience food of adventuring: peril, riches, and a dusting of plot in one fun-sized package. There's even a type of gameplay, DungeonCrawling, which consists of little but rooting through them. If you play RolePlayingGames at all, you've certainly encountered them. Most likely you've never stopped to wonder why the [[InexplicableTreasureChests treasure chests]] are always full, or what the [[RandomEncounter wandering monsters]] eat when they can't get adventurers. Have you?

The dungeon is the convenience food of adventuring: peril, riches, and a dusting of plot, all in a fun-sized package. There's even a type of gameplay, DungeonCrawling, which consists of little but rooting through them. If you play RolePlayingGames at all, you've certainly encountered them. Most likely you've never stopped to wonder why the [[InexplicableTreasureChests treasure chests]] are always full, or what the [[RandomEncounter wandering monsters]] eat when they can't get adventurers. Have you?

The dungeon is the convenience food of adventuring: peril, riches, and a dusting of plot, all in a convenient package. There's even a type of gameplay, DungeonCrawling, which consists of little but rooting through them. If you play RolePlayingGames at all, you've certainly encountered them. Most likely you've never stopped to wonder why the [[InexplicableTreasureChests treasure chests]] are always full, or what the [[RandomEncounter wandering monsters]] eat when they can't get adventurers. Have you?

The base unit of adventuring is either TheQuest or the dungeon. There's even a term, DungeonCrawling, for gameplay that consists of romping through a dungeon, killing the nasties, and looting everything. If you play RolePlayingGames at all, you've certainly encountered it. Most likely you've never stopped to wonder why the [[InexplicableTreasureChests treasure chests]] are always full, or what the [[RandomEncounter wandering monsters]] eat when they can't get adventurers. Have you?

You sheltered sod. Some of us work our butts off to keep those places in shape. Did you think that dungeons just grow out of the ground, like plants or dwarfs? Fantasy economies may be [[AdamSmithHatesYourGuts royally]] [[KarlMarxHatesYourGuts screwed up]], but they could never handle a constant influx of high-powered magical artifacts. Or being eaten by the endless streams of monsters!

* In {{Recettear}} ancient golems work during the night to repair and [[RandomlyGeneratedLevels rearrange]] the dungeons.

You sheltered sod. Did you think that dungeons just grow out of the ground, like plants or dwarfs? Fantasy economies may be [[AdamSmithHatesYourGuts royally]] [[KarlMarxHatesYourGuts screwed up]], but they could never handle a constant influx of high-powered magical artifacts. Or being eaten by the endless streams of monsters!

* In {{Recettear}} ancient golems work during the night to repair and {{RandomlyGeneratedLevels rearrange}} the dungeons.

* In {{Recettear}} ancient golems work during the night to repair and {{RandomlyGenerated rearrange}} the dungeons.

* In {{Recettear}} ancient golems work during the night to repair and reset the dungeons.

* ''{{Hellboy}}'': One strip has a bunch of animated skeletons setting themselves up to provide the appropriate dungeon atmosphere before Hellboy shows up fighting some forgotten thing from beyond the stars. After the fight, they pick themselves and start leaving like actors after a show (a skull mentions he might be picked to [[AlasPoorYorick play a part]] in {{Hamlet}}).

The worst part is the clean-up. [[LowestCosmicDenominator Light]] forbid that the heroes miss the Key to Eternity because it's covered in moulted gryphon feathers, right? Some of these beasts crap things that catch fire and try to kill you, so just try to imagine our mops. Go on. And the big chest at the end needs another Guthbrand, the Sword That Smites All That is Impure, so you find yourself carrying the thing through the corridors trying desperately not to think of tits, so that it's actually a relief if you can focus on the sounds that a rock mole chewed through the walls and stepped on the [[PressurePlate pressure plate]] that released the boulder that you now have to [[DurableDeathtrap roll up the slope for the twenty-second time]].

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