History Main / DungeonMaintenance

* ''VideoGame/RecettearAnItemShopsTale'': [[spoiler:A race of golems is in charge of refilling treasure chests, distributing monsters and changing the pathways.]]

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

* ''{{Recettear}}'': [[spoiler:A race of golems is in charge of refilling treasure chests, distributing monsters and changing the pathways.]]
* ''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.

* ''{{Nodwick}}'' explored this several times. At one point the heroes explore a dungeon that's been revamped and put under new management, complete with brochures touting it like one would promote a beach resort. It turns out [[spoiler:the dungeon's "managers" are professional kidnappers who are hired to abduct embarrassing nobility and use transformation and enraging magics to turn their victims into monsters, then letting adventurers dispose of them]]. Later on, the heroes end up owning their own dungeon and end up facing foreclosure because they're not keeping it up to community standards of sufficient vileness, given their "community" consists of other dungeons with names like "AAAIIIEEE!" that [[IncorruptiblePurePureness Piffany]] describes as being worse than a kitten cannery.

** The ''TombOfHorrors'' has a host of fiends bound to it and forced to repair any damage done and clean up whatever is left of the latest adventurers.

** There is also a SpiritualSuccessor to DK known simply as ''Dungeons'' which plays with the same themes, while also having to ''satisfy'' the adventurers with their dungeoneering experience before you kill them and harvest their souls (which are richer for being more fulfilled by the experience).

* ''VideoGame/DragonFable'' has a starter level quest that lampshades this. You meet Robina, who takes you to distribute gold on wild animals for adventurer purposes. Of course, the animals don't see any reason to carry gold, so they need to be knocked unconscious first...

* ''DungeonsAndDragons'':

* ''TabletopGame/{{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''.

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* As one can hear in this ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXmMQJMFL_I video]]'' .

* The entire premise behind ''DungeonKeeper'' and ''HolyInvasionOfPrivacyBadman'' is spotlighting that being an evil overlord and having a dungeon created to slaughter hapless adventurers is hard work.

* In ''VideoGame/{{Fallout Tactics|BrotherhoodOfSteel}}'', there's a guy whose job it is to go around restocking all the Nuka Cola machines. In VideoGame/FalloutNewVegas, there's apparently a robot out there doing the same for the Sunset Sarsaparilla machines.

** Short story "Search for the Forbidden Chamber" in Dragon magazine #1. The protagonists encounter barricades labeled "Greyhawk Construction Co., Ltd.", a reference to GaryGygax's famous dungeon.

* The entire premise behind ''DungeonKeeper'' and ''HolyInvasionOfPrivacyBadman!'' is spotlighting that being an evil overlord and having a dungeon created to slaughter hapless adventurers is hard work.

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

* In ''DarkLordOfDerkholm'', a CorruptCorporateExecutive 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 -- and how disastrous the effects are for the world as a whole.

* In ''[[VideoGame/TheElderScrolls The Elder Scrolls IV: Shivering Isles Expansion]]'', 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.

* One of the playable characters in ''VideoGames/EternalDarkness'' is an architect who is forced into doing a little dungeon maintenance for the BigBad. That probably explains why this dungeon stays in relatively good state for over two millenia until another character finally blows it up.

* In ''LeisureSuitLarry'', many of our hero's deaths cause a sequence where his body is lowered into Sierra On-Line's underground workshop ("Where Adventurers Are Made, Not Born!") and dumped into a giant bit bucket. The machinery recycles it into several Larry bodies. The commander attaches a head from a rack to one of them, and raises Larry back to the game's starting position. Subordinates repair a Graham from ''KingsQuest'' and a droid from ''SpaceQuest'', and a dragon is down for maintenance.
* In ''LeisureSuitLarry 3'' [[spoiler:the characters visit Sierra studios. This involves damaging the props for ''PoliceQuest'' and being caught in the antigravity generator they use for ''SpaceQuest''. Larry is hired to make the ''LeisureSuitLarry'' series, and they all live happily ever after.]]

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 a rock mole makes when it chews through the walls and steps on the [[PressurePlate pressure plate]] that releases the boulder that you now have to [[DurableDeathtrap roll up the slope for the twenty-second time]].

* The entire premise behind ''DungeonKeeper'' and ''[[HolyInvasionOfPrivacyBadman Holy Invasion Of Privacy, Badman!]]'' is spotlighting that being an evil overlord and having a dungeon created to slaughter hapless adventurers is hard work.

* In ''[[TheElderScrolls The Elder Scrolls IV: Shivering Isles Expansion]]'', 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.

* A story in ''KnightsOfTheDinnerTable'' focused on the care and effort B.A. takes into making a dungeon not only challenging and fun, but self-sufficient as well. On that particular dungeon, of course, the players end up scoring a TotalPartyKill within five minutes [[OffTheRails down the dungeon's waste disposal system]].

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* ''[[http://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.

* In ''FalloutTactics'', there's a guy whose job it is to go around restocking all the Nuka Cola machines. In FalloutNewVegas, there's apparently a robot out there doing the same for the Sunset Sarsaparilla machines.

Dungeons are the convenience food of adventuring: all the necessary peril and treasure in one neat 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?

Dungeons are the convenience food of adventuring: peril, riches, and a dusting of plot in one neat 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?