Apart from Theseus and the Minotaur, are there any other real world examples of what would be a dungeon delve in D&D?
Trying to think how to deliver a mindless violence session for the troupe. Where spells can be unleashed without worrying about the code.
Perhaps a village child has an excessively vivid imagination that the local faeries mine to produce a "dungeon" in the local Fae regio?
This dungeon respawning monsters on a regular basis....
Of course there is always a Night on Bald Mountain where when the witches Sabbath begins everybody is dropped into an Internal aura with witches, werewolves and assorted demonic types - survive until dawn. They may need to get more powerful before trying that.
You have things like Derinkuyu, a vast underground city in Turkey, The city has several levels, and could be sealed from the inside. Plus, it was connected to another underground city with a 7-9 km long tunnel. And seems like they've been in use by refugees even onto the 14th century.
In period, there's a professional association selling people guides on how to defeat the traps and curses found in ancient tombs. The sidebar on page 24 of Lands of the Nile is even titled "Yes Really: A Guild of Adventurers"
Dungeon monsters will likely have might, so I envision a few outcomes.
The Flambeau may be able to get enough penetration with Pilum if the might is under 15 (number subject to change as this is based on memory).
The Rego Mentem guys sleeps them all if the might is under 20 (same number comment)
The might is too high, or the other non crowd control magi show up, and the magi hide behind grogs, while the archer companion gravely injures a monster every turn, while the mercenary grog wall slowly falls to attrition.
I feel it will either be terribly brutal with multiple grogs dying, or underwhelming as the monsters fall like chaff.
Ars Majica does not do mindless violence well. Many will argue that is a feature not a bug. Every attack there is a 1 in 10 chance of a doubling. The likely -3, or -5 wound one receives from that doubling attack tips that fight, meaning more wounds, and likely death. The 1 in a 100 chance of a quadrupling. Ultra Doom!
Ars Majica characters avoid balanced fights as they know with every attack, the doomed dice roll is closing in. (I know the previous roll does not effect the next, however, as a whole, if a character keeps getting in fights, the doomed dice is more likely to appear)
A 5th level D&D fighter has likely had hundreds of attacks thrown at them and does not care at all. A critical is rolled. That stings. Next round. There is not that same sense of doom.
You could get a dungeon crawl experience out of regio plus (depending on where you are): catacomb, caves, burial mound, abandoned monestary, sunken city of Ys.
Petra'zo nevez e kêr Is
What is new in the city of Ys,
Since the youth is so mad.
The monsters are individually weak and diminutive imps, gremlins, goblins, or kobolds who have cleverly equipped thier home with deadfalls, pit traps, gas traps, fire traps, cuts, loopholes, communicating tunnels impassible to humans, and all manner of other fortifications, and it's a TPK.
The Fallen Covenant of Calebais is a dungeon crawl Ars Magica style; the book’s intro discusses this topic a bit.
I consider Constantinople to be Mythic Europe’s mega dungeon. Entire sections of the city are ruins, auras of every type are everywhere, its packed with treasure and monsters, it’s so big that players will never be able to explore all of it, and the GM can create whatever they want in there.
This has possibilities that I should investigate. Thank you
With all the Western Crusaders with their preconceptions and stories of the orient, the local faeries would likely be playing into it for the vitality.
But most of the city can probably hear Church Bells, so finding the Faerie regios night be tricky, Either a local guide, or stumble into it by accident.
To carry on Constantinople: there is many underground cisterns and channels connecting them. Basilica Cistern - Wikipedia as one example.
With just a little bit of tweaking, it becomes a huge network.
Catacombs in several cities are also suitable for dungeon delving. The one from Paris are famous, but Rome also has several ones. Often, passages are narrow and rooms are rather small. One of their use, in Rome, was for funeral ceremonies, saints and relics were kept, so Divine aura can be quiet significant. However, by the 13th century, their usage has been completely forgotten, so auras have shrunk and who knows how they have been "repurposed": smugglers, tomb-robbers, necromancers...
I recently converted the 3rd Edition Mistridge book into a limited dungeon. This was fairly complex, as the material is internally inconsistent, much darker and grimmer than I want, and the material in the source material was contradicted by both 2nd and later editions.
It was an overall success, though.
Goal: Recover Oculo's maps.
Problem: The site was partially destroyed and records and memories of the site are extremely limited.
Obstacles: Local mundanes distrust magi; local supernatural entities; site is haunted; site is occupied by a survivor.
Roman Aqueducts. The claustrophobia and the sloshing of water could be fun ways to add flavor. It might be fairly linear, but there's enough shafts and drops and tanks their own "rooms" for the "dungeon." And that's exactly the sort of place that might get escalated into a faerie regio, feeding off all the people awed by the grandeur of the ruins, engineering far beyond what we can accomplish "today", which gives you lots of extra toys to play with. Add in the ruins at the end, maybe the underbelly of the colosseum, to vary up the vibe.
Oh and if you're not already familiar, for the sake of inspiration I'll pitch As Above, So Below (2014), a horror movie set in the Paris Catacombs. Sadly, the Paris Catacombs are centuries from being built, but the protagonist is down there looking for the Philosopher's Stone and other mystic secrets and bite off a Hell of a lot more than they can chew, so there's some dovetailing with the sort of tomfoolery someone from the Order of Hermes would get up to.
I would second Constantinople. Though it is set about 200 years later and written for a different system, such a GM would be wise to look at "Mythic Constantinople" published by The Design Mechanism for some detail.
