I confess that I do a little bit of rock balancing from time to time. Not for any particularly hippyish reason, other than that it's nice to be outside somewhere peaceful in the natural world; more because it's a fun challenge, not all that different conceptually from a sudoku puzzle or jigsaw - how do I get this rock to balance on top of this one?
(It's also a lot easier than it looks - you'd be surprised how much the friction of the surface of two rocks combined with gravity will allow freakishly unbalanced looking combinations to, well, balance.)
The other day I was stacking some stones at the beach and it occurred to me that it would be a fun idea for a dungeon: perhaps a wizard's tower; perhaps an ancient monument built by an extinct race of giants. Each stone a boulder of epic size, riddle with tunnels and caverns, and each of them having a distinct physical character (as well as a distinct variety of inhabitants: its own types of rock golem; its own types of pech; its own types of earth elemental; its own types of dwarf; its own types of gem dragon, and so on). And, possibly, able to fall over... or be dismantled.
I am a fan of the idea of upwards dungeons. (As is probably evidence by my many posts about the giant tree dungeon, not to mention the Mountain to the Moon.) The descent into hell is fine, but the attempt to climb to heaven seems more human somehow: obviously it has a figuratively optimistic appeal, but it also feels more real - you can see an upwards dungeon, and so George Mallory's reasoning for climbing Everest becomes the perfect justification: why did you want to climb the wizard's tower full of rock golems and gem dragons? Because it's there.
My take: The massive cairn was constructed by giants as a memorial to the dead after some ancient war. The PCs play the undead forms of human casualties who were carelessly buried in the mass grave alongside their monstrous adversaries. Not content to spend eternity in a shrine to the giants' pagan traditions, their goal is to climb the cairn to Heaven (their "correct" afterlife).
ReplyDeleteI read the post, idly looked over the comments, clicked away, — then had to come back immediately to tell you that's a cool idea.
DeleteThat is a cool idea.
DeleteNoice.
ReplyDeleteDo you know the Fritz Leiber story Stardock? It's one of the Fafhrd and Grey Mouser ones. Anyway, it's a great example of an "upwards dungeon", even if the heroes don't explore all of its innards.
ReplyDeleteWhen we were on Lindisfarne, there was a much-heralded temporary art installation/exhibition in the castle. But all four of us thought that the aesthetic effect of all the rock balancing on the beach was much more pleasing. I gather that there are environmental concerns, but still ...
I think the environmental concerns are a bit miserable and even misanthropic like environmental concerns sometimes are. It mostly just seems to be people who are privileged enough to be able to afford to enjoy wild places complaining that the proles are coming along and spoiling them - one of the oldest bourgeois gripes in the book! (I read one article once, I think it was in the Guardian, in which somebody was saying that moving stones around on the beach can harm the invertebrates living among them - as if the incoming tide doesn't cause a million times as much disruption several times a day.) As long as you don't drop litter and behave with care, there's no problem with it at all.
DeleteI get that a lot of folks don't want to see names and profanity carved into rocks and trees, but there's a difference between graffiti and evidence that a human was ever here. The complainers should be happy that people are expressing themselves with physics puzzles and not just rearranging boulders to spell "COCK" in big letters for passing airplanes to read.
DeleteEveryone's dungeon should have some sort of graffiti in it that translates as "COCK."
DeleteCurse you! I introduced my players to this idea, and they immediately fell in love with the tree variant you came up with (one of them was even chanting "Tree! Tree! Tree!" as we were trying to select the next campaign).
ReplyDeleteSo now I have to create and run a whole campaign based around this idea, JUST BECAUSE it is undeniably fun and brilliant!
I dunno if this is kosher, but here's some of the nonsense I've got so far.
https://buvlo.home.blog/2019/08/30/the-great-tree-a-very-rough-sketch-of-a-vertical-megadungeon-based-on-the-excellent-work-at-monsters-and-manuals/
Thanks for sharing your brilliance with the world!