Dungeon Symbiosis

Note: This was suppose to be published last week, but I was laid low by a bad case of the flu. Please enjoy!

So, it’s the last Wednesday of February, which means that it’s our last chance to do our monthly I Live To Serve, Dungeon King!! blog post. These are probably going to bounce around a fair bit, but we’ll try our best to do one each month, just don’t expect them to be all on the second Wednesday or something.

So, last time, I introduced you to the basic ideas and concepts behind ILTSDK, and many of you correctly guessed one of the games which provided the primary influence for our new project- the 1997 PC strategy game Dungeon Keeper. Now, in Dungeon Keeper your minions and monsters live to get paid, and mining for gold and using casinos to cheat your monsters’ pay back is part of the core gameplay. In ILTSDK, the scenario is just a bit different….

Monsters need mana to live, and the primary way that they gain that mana is by absorbing it from human souls at the moment the soul is released from the body (ie, death). In ages past, monsters simply attacked and slaughtered humans, but humans eventually developed castles and wards and other kinds of fortifications to keep monsters out. As a result, monsters began creating their own fortresses, and gathered treasure, occult secrets, and kidnapped humans in order to lure more humans into the monster’s clutches. This is, in essence, what a dungeon is- a place where monsters conspire to lure humans so they can kill them for their sweet, sweet mana

To that end, most monsters (at least, the ones you meet in ILTSDK) are willing to work for free provided their need for mana is met.
That is your primary challenge as a Dungeon King- ensuring that your dungeon has a steady stream of adventurers to “feed” your monsters with, and good enough defenses to take down those adventurers before they kill all your minions and rob you blind.

How to get adventurers, though? Word of your dungeon isn’t going to travel on it’s own, so it’s important to stock enough potential rewards for plundering your dungeon in order to attract new adventurers, and that means having a good supply of treasure, beautiful maidens, and other potential lures. And often, adventurers themselves will be the prime source of much of this, bringing their own money (we all know a good murder hobo doesn’t use a bank or have a home to keep their cash), magic items, and occasional beautiful virgin in with them.

So there is the basic lifecycle of the dungeon. You gather treasure and such to lure adventurers, kill the adventurers, and then keep their stuff to lure more adventurers

Of course, it’s never really that easy… but that will have to be the topic of a future look into the world of ILTSDK.