Underground Cities

      Once again, we are proposing an underground city.  Why?  Because they are an iconic fantasy setting.  Go out on the internet and there are a bunch of people who will tell you it cannot be done.  They have some valid points, so let’s address them.  (Warning!  We hate when people tell us we can’t do something.  It is simply a challenge to prove them wrong!)

     The first argument is that the air will go bad.  We have often used Mammoth Cave in Kentucky (USA) as an example that we can build our cavern system from.  Sure, it is the biggest in our world (probably), but it is real.  Mammoth Cave has visitors in it every day, and none of them have ever suffocated.  Why?  Because it has more than one entrance and the air moves through the cave.

     Sidetrack:  We love caves and have explored them, visited them, even slept in them.  Rarely has claustrophobia been an issue.  One time, one of our people was in a cave where the passage became pretty narrow.  A young boy got nervous and stopped, causing a bit of a “log jam”.  When the number of people in the tight tunnel caused the breeze to stop, that’s when others started getting nervous.  Did any of them feel the breeze before?  No.  But they felt when it stopped.

     OK, back to the main point.  Let’s assume that you did need to add ventilation.  One of our major magitech devices (check out All About Magitech) is the dwarven enchantment perpetual motion.  The most important usage of the perpetual motion devices is the exhaust fans from the dwarven mines.  There are multiple entrances to their underground city.  There are forges set up beneath one of the major shafts going up, and the heat of the forges (and the smoke) rise out of the shaft, creating motion in the air and drawing it in from other entrances.  Additionally, there are two main shafts that have perpetual motion fans blowing air out, creating these minor vacuums that then draw it in.  With or without magic, we think the air thing is not an issue.

     The skeptics then say that the people in the underground city would need drinking water.  These folks have probably not been to limestone caves, because the caves are carved by water, and the formations are formed by water.  Is this all the best drinking water?  Maybe, maybe not, but getting water in is not the problem!

     If there is a water problem, it is getting the water out!  Since many caves (at least limestone caves) have underground rivers, the problem is instead flooding.  Anyone who has done a cave tour has probably hit that spot in the tour when the guides point their flashlights at the wall and show you how the cave you are standing in was underwater during the latest flood.  Solving for that is an issue! but it is certainly possible to build your city in caves that have more caves beneath them to hopefully serve as a runoff.

      Related is the issue of waste.  Again, getting water in is not the problem, but instead getting stuff out.  Depending on the number of people and the number of underground rivers, this can be solved.  Take water from the river over there, and the downstream throw your waste into the river.  You might be polluting it for people in the next major dungeon over, but that’s not today’s problem.

     Depending on the strength of the river, all sorts of garbage might be disposed of in this manner, but as you will see soon, you might not actually want to dispose of the waste.

     How do you feed people in an underground city?  Mushroom gardens, right?  OK, here’s the problem.  Mushrooms need something to grow in - typically something like mulch or decaying plant material.  While mushrooms can grow out of the sun, they cannot grow where there is no food for them.

     What can you use?  Well, some of the waste might work.  Disgusting, yes, but it might be practical.  If you’re doing that you might not want to eat fresh mushrooms, but only mushroom soups, because you are going to want to boil those things after what they’ve been growing in.  Another means to explain the mushroom farms is to have someone on the surface shoveling “mulch” down a shaft.  This could be an easy way to supply the mushrooms with what they need to grow.  After the mulch has served its purpose, it is replaced with new mulch and the old stuff goes in the river or into the campfires.

     We think the actual answer is that you would only be living beneath the surface if there was something worthwhile down here.  Assuming that, there would need to be trade with the above ground world.  Food comes down and gold or gems go up.  This will usually work!  Coal or gravel won’t fund an underground city, but precious metals and precious stones will.

     Next issue - There’s no Vitamin D.  OK, assuming it is a fantasy city, dwarves and dark elves probably don’t need sunlight to get Vitamin D.  They also don’t suffer from any of the psychological impacts of never seeing the sun.  Maybe they need to eat a lot of fish or eggs to supply their vitamins, but this doesn’t seem unreasonable.  If there are some salmon who swim through the underground rivers to get to where they are going, then maybe they catch their own, but this is starting to feel a little far-fetched.  (More far-fetched than an underground city of dwarves?  OK, maybe not.)

     OK, that’s air to breath, water to drink, food to eat.  Those are some pretty major issues you need to plan for, but that doesn’t make the underground city all that different from an above ground one.

     Cost!  Why would anyone build an underground city when they could just live on the surface?  Well, we answered that one already - there is something down here they want badly enough.  They want it so bad that they were willing to go through the expense of building the city underground.  So, it must be valuable.

     Why couldn’t they live above ground and work below?  Well, we don’t know.  That is something you may need to answer for yourself.  We believe that it is too far to travel.  Depending on how long it takes to get to the work site, it may not be feasible to spend hours getting to the digging site only to work an hour and then spend hours going home.

     Let’s ignore “culture” as a question and mention why else:  Maybe it’s dangerous out there.  Maybe dragons fly overhead and breath fire on above ground villages.  This will have an impact on those friendly farmers above ground who were trading with the underground city, but that might still be surmountable.

     What if the above ground world is dangerous to you?  What if you’re a vampire?  What if simply stepping out into the sun could kill you?  Now, you have to go below.  OK, maybe you could live in a stone house, but that isn’t as safe to you as living below ground where the sun cannot accidentally get to you.  Nothing else changes.  You still need to trade in order to receive your food, but your reasoning for being below ground is different.  But not fully.  If you know you must live below ground - why not live below ground where there is a valuable resource?

     There is more to this concept of the cost of building underground.  What do you do with all the rubble?  This isn’t really an issue, because we know from Earth that major mines will often need to dump huge amounts of unwanted stone outside of the mine.  This might be an argument against hugely long tunnels linking continents, because then it takes far too long to transport the stone out of the tunnel, but for “mines” this is not a new problem, but instead one that has been solved by man long ago.  Still, you might want to have a massive gravel pile outside the mine to tell folks you thought about this.  It might even look like an ant hill, depending on who’s doing the digging.

      Last one - Light.  How do you see?  OK, of all the FRPG reasons not to have an underground city, this is the lamest!  Doesn’t every race but humans have some manner of see in the dark ability, at least they seem to in that main die-20 game with all the editions!  There are many ways to address lighting an underground city.  There could be luminescent fungi, only slightly science fiction.  Use of torches, candles, and lamps can be done.  It might require a bit more discussion of exhausting the bad air, but not much.  It also requires more trade than just the food.  Magical illuminations are expensive, but they assumedly last forever.  A couple of generations underground and the city could easily be lit by these.  Does your game have a continuous light spell?  Maybe in addition to the other civil servants, there is a spell caster (or several) who wander the city putting up these eternal light spells.

     We think all of this is pretty “low magic” for such a fantastical setting.  We haven’t even suggested using purple worms to dig the tunnels or elemental gnomes yet.  While it is true that living underground has its costs, it only seems like you have to put a short period of thought into handling the logistical issues and then get started.  But in explaining away these logistical issues, you are not only developing the city and its culture, but you might be figuring out what the next mission is, as the city might need some adventurers for help!

 

     Does this kind of content interest you?  If so, we hope you will consider joining us in our Small Bites project or the full title of How to Build Your Fantasy World in Small Bites!  We continue to build our community of game masters and world builders, and we would love to have you join us!

     This post was written as part of The Depths of the World aka All About A Highest FantasyCampaign, the latest in our Small Bites editions.  Each Small Bites book looks deeply at one subject, a character archetype, a race/monster, a style of questing, or some other role-playing/world building subject.  This one is a fully detailed campaign including extensive exploration of the “tunnel world” far below the surface.  But it is never “just” a campaign!  It contains world building, game mastering, and a host of other stuff!

     We hope we’re getting you interested.  If you want to see the World Walker edition for FREE!! click the link above.  The free World Walker edition contains 33 pages of content, while the full Game Masters’ edition has 100 pages of content.  Yeah, that's how we do things - promise 40 pages and deliver 100.  If you want to be efficient, just click here and join us through Patreon to keep getting the full GMs’ editions every month!

 

World Building 330 - Repercussions

Maybe you don’t get the reference in the title.  This ain’t World Building 101!  If that’s what you’re looking for, there are countless guides out there on the internet.

But if you’re ready to move on to things that are more difficult to do than draw a map, name and place cities, and possibly figure out where the elves live, you are in the right place.  We don’t focus on the most beginner stuff, because both the folks at Board Enterprises and our customers have been at this for some time.  Most of us have been at this for decades.  World Building 101 isn’t for us.

Publisher’s Note:  If WB 101 is for you, then please go find several of them, experiment, learn, and then come back.  Everybody needs to start somewhere, but this article isn’t going to help you unless you have a world that has already established the beginning pieces.

So, what is it we wanted to talk about, now that we’ve scared all the youngsters off?  Repercussions!  Everything in life has repercussions.  This is also true of your game world.  Every decision you make, every city you place, every cultural note you jot down - they all have repercussions.  But here’s the trick:  That’s wonderful!

Here’s why:  Everything that you have figured out for your world is going to naturally lead to other things.  Let’s take what seems to be a reasonably common FRPG world building decision:  There are magical universities.  Seems fairly normal in a game world, right?  OK, but what are the ramifications?  Let’s list out some of them:

• There needs to be support industries for the school(s).  How do they get their books?  Do they need paper of some kind, and how is that done?  Where do the students live while attending school?
• What magic do they teach?  Are their individual schools for different types of magic, or is there just one big school?  If big, is it sub-divided into different colleges or departments?
• Are there magics they don’t teach?  If so, why not?  Are they banned?  Are they so rare that there aren’t enough teachers?  Are they simply not popular in this culture?
• What happens to the dropouts?  Some students won’t be smart enough to cut it.  What happens to them?  Some students cannot afford it.  What happens to them?  These should be two completely different types of people.  The flunkies probably cannot use magic but are not complete idiots (one would assume).  Meanwhile those without the money to continue probably can use magic, but only know the basics.  Are these your adventuring wizards?
• What do the graduates do?  Is there so much work for battle mages that they can all go into the army or navy?  Are they only learning battle magics?  This typically is a game rules issue.  If 95% of the spells in the rule book are there to harm others (OK, 90% cause damage and 5% heal it), then wizards are only good for killing other folks.  That has repercussions as well!

This is just the start, but this is how we think you should be thinking.  You put the dwarves there, why?  Probably because there were mountains.  And the elves went there because of the forests.  OK, that’s actually fine, but there are going to be these repercussions.  Who are the dwarves near?  Do they have good relations or are they typically at war?  Whichever it is will have consequences.

You may have placed a city on a major river because that makes good sense.  Who is upriver and who is downriver?  What consequences do these placements have?  Trade probably goes in both directions, but it is much easier when it flows downriver.  What are these places trading with each other?  If the cattle ranches are upriver, their tanneries are going to cause problems for those downriver.  Or did you think of that, and they drive the cattle downriver to where you placed the tanneries?  That has consequences too, because now the cattle are roaming across certain areas.  Has that caused issues with the local farmers?

Hopefully you see what we’re doing.  It is the seemingly simple “take a step back” method.  But this is incredibly difficult to do with something that you created basically from nothing.  It’s why even seasoned authors leave plot holes.  Looking at something you have created and thinking about it critically is tough!  But this isn’t bad criticism.

We really want you to go into this with the thought of, “This is really cool, and it is really shaping up.  What can I do next?”  If you just go at it working to create more, you will eventually burn out and get writer’s block.  If you look at it from the angle of thinking about certain aspects of what is already there and what is the next logical step, it can be so much easier to continually grow your world.

But we also want to warn you.  This style of looking at what you have created and then determining the logical repercussions of those creations brings the risk of the mundane.  When you think logically, you tend to come up with non-fantastic, non-epic things.  Too many normal things in your fantasy world and it risks not seeming like a fantasy world anymore.

When you are thinking through the logic of it all, remember to focus on the magical consequences too.  If you have a major city and they have therefore required the building of sewers, don’t just put in sewers.  Put in sewers filled with giant rats and mutant alligators.  Have the sewers hide the entrance to a dungeon (OK, we really hate that trope, but ...) or the temple of some death cult.  Maybe that’s the thing - They built the sewers (or more likely paved over something to put the sewers underground) and it caused flooding beneath the city, right into an old crypt where some vampires had lay dormant for centuries.

TheWorld of Fletnern has often escaped being called mundane because it is seen as being “gritty”.  In too many ways it might be a bit mundane because there has always been a focus on reasonableness and economics.  But when thinking of reasonable things, we include plagues and war caused starvation.  When thinking of economics, we make sure that we also figure out the price of unicorn horns and magic swords.

It is natural to look at our world and think of how items lead to each other based on those aspects.  What you need to do is both - if this, then what, both in the mundane society and in the magical.  The player characters live in both of those worlds contained within your game world.  They blend, and it’s up to you to make sure that it is both reasonable and supernatural.  That’s why this is WB 330 and not WB 101. 

 

Does this kind of content interest you?  If so, we hope you will consider joining us in our Small Bites project or the full title of How to Build Your Fantasy World in Small Bites!  We continue to build our community of game masters and world builders, and we would love to have you join us!

This post was written as part of The 50^th Edition aka All About More Miscellaneous FRPG Stuff, the latest in our Small Bites editions.  Each Small Bites book looks deeply at one subject, a character archetype, a race/monster, a style of questing, or some other role-playing/world building subject.  However, as an “anniversary” edition, this one is more of a mishmash of items that didn’t quite fit one of our previous themes closely enough and therefore didn’t get published in that book.  This isn’t a “best of” edition!  It’s a kitchen sink edition!

We hope we’re getting you interested.  If you want to see the World Walker edition for FREE!! click the link above.  This is a celebration issue, so this is effectively the full Game Masters’ edition of 76 pages of content.  If you want to be efficient, just click here and join us through Patreon to keep getting the full GMs’ editions every month!