Everyone loves tombs! Half of all action RPG adventures (especially dungeon-centered ones) involve tombs! If you're going to descend into an dark maze filled with monsters and traps in search of treasure, there's really only a few ways to do that without being excessively contrived. Those are:
- Ancient Tomb
- Hidden Vault
- Dank Cave
- Decrepit Palace
- Wicked Temple
- Funhouse Labyrinth Built by an Evil Wizard
No wonder tombs are so attractive. They're naturally isolated, walled off, confined locations. Most ancient societies buried their honored dead with the treasures they owned in life. There several real world examples, namely the pyramids, of such tombs being trapped. If the Ancient Egyptians had access to animated skeletons, you could bet your bottom dollar they'd have populated their tombs with them.
Flavoring your dungeon as a tomb, mausoleum, crypt or some such resting place of the dead is an effective, iconic and naturalistic approach. So no wonder it's overused thoughtlessly.
It's very easy to just say that the dungeon is in a tomb, and then completely fail to make that a part of the dungeon's identity. Sure, you'll see rooms keyed as crypts, decorated with coffins and altars, but that won't be reflected in the structure of the dungeon.
The worst failure mode is the kind seen in Bryce's review of this module, which sparked this little series of posts, in which a supposed tomb is filled with high-level undead without rhyme or reason, and the actual reason for the tomb's existence, to house a dead master assassin, is moot because the assassin isn't dead, and is hanging out in his crypt waiting to ambush whoever comes in. For some reason.
That's a very obvious and severe example, but I find it illustrative. The ecology and nature of a tomb is paid absolutely no heed. The fact that powerful undead haunt the halls of this crypt is taken as a given, a genre guarantee, and that just kills the intrigue out of the gate. If you have vampires, mummies and death lords in your resting place, it means (in terms of the in-game fiction) something has gone terribly wrong, let alone having all of them together.
The standard excuse, especially for mummies, skeletons and zombies, is that they're the guardians of the tomb. That's fine and dandy, but it has certain implications that very few dungeons follow up on. If these are meant to guard the valuables in the tomb, why do they almost exclusively attack mindlessly on sight? The actual reason is that 'this is a dungeon and they are monsters' but unless you're playing a self-aware satire of the action-RPG that doesn't cut it as a diegetic reason. Why are they totally uncoordinated? Why are they spread out across many rooms instead of being concentrated where they can actually do their best to protect valuables?
And don't get me started on other forms of undead and monsters. If vampires or ghouls are in your tomb, it's because they broke in. If you have those and supposed 'guardian' monsters, then those two factions should be at each others' throats, not living together is perfect harmony.
But while complaining endlessly about poor, thoughtless design is very cathartic (and better bloggers than I have built their whole readership off the same) it's not especially helpful. Here's a few options you can use to create tomb dungeons, hopefully with a little novelty.
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| Pickman's Model |
The Invaded Tomb
A classic setup. This tomb, burial ground, mausoluem, etc. is invaded and desecrated by any of a laundry list of common antagonists. Ghouls, vampires and necromancers are the most common, but they each have unique reasons to be there. The ghouls are eating the honored dead, the vampires are using the tomb as a hiding spot during the day and possibly raising the corpses as thralls, and the necromancer is using the tomb as a base of operations and raising the dead as an army.
All good, so long as you flesh out the original thread. If you want some variety, try making those invaders something unexpected. For example, perhaps the invaders are a pair of nobles and their coterie, escaping schemes or exile in the court. A crew of criminals involving the tomb in a heist, such as by digging tunnels from there into a nearby building.
Also, pay some attention to why the party is investigating the invasion, and who involved them, if applicable. There's a big difference between being involved by the descendants of the interred, being deputized by local law enforcement, asked to investigate by suspicious villagers or just going on their own initiative. Whatever is actually happening in the tomb, make sure it has some effect on the surrounding area.
The Awoken Dead/Haunting
The dead have risen! Or maybe the place has always been haunted, but it's just getting intolerable now. Like the above, this is a classic option that you need to put some more thought into to stand out. First off, why are the dead rising? What kind? Is this a recent phenomenon, or is it an old one which has been made acute by another recent change? You can get a great deal more variety with this prompt than you might think.
If this is recent, why are the dead waking now? Was it foretold in a prophecy? Has a necromancer popped into town? Was an item of significance stolen from the tomb? Were the descendants of the interred harmed, and the dead are rising to restore the honor of their line and bring the evil to justice? I quite like that one, actually.
For a subversion, make the whole haunting a farce concocted by one group to dupe the party. The whole town might be in on it, in a scheme to rob and dispose of wealthy adventurers, or it might just be a bandit crew using the haunting to scare people off their hideout.
The Recent Burial
Tomb dungeons are almost always ancient, long-forgotten affairs, which serves to explain why the PCs get first pick of the treasures. Instead, make the tomb a recent one. Maybe it's just been there for a few years, or maybe the mourners are still beating their chests. Either way, everything is brand-spanking new. If you take this option, you need to let the setting inform the size and scope of the dungeon. If your game takes place in the standard implied post-great dungeon building empire setting, then it's not going to be a sprawling
A twist on this one would be to have a new burial, but inside a previous ancient tomb. A would-be pharaoh reopened the old pyramid, cleared out a section of it, rearmed all the old traps and likely added new ones, and willed himself buried in it with the rulers of old. A double twist would be that the party are the ones clearing out the old tomb, careful not to permanently damage anything and taking measurements to see how large the sarcophagus can be.
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| What do you mean this is a real place? |
Surprise Tomb
This used to be a perfectly normal farm/town square/sewer main, until the earthquake/renovations/archaeological dig uncovered a tunnel into the old catacombs. This makes the most sense if your game is set in a city built on the ruins of a greater empire (see every other city in Europe). But even absent that, any ruin-making ancient civilization will do. You still get people in rural England discovering medieval mining shafts in sinkholes.
The classic example of this is the Paris catacombs. Ideally, a setup like this builds on previous hints of a dark and traumatic past for the location. Bonus points if it leads to other parts of the city, with potential for mischief and skulduggery and reward for whoever can best explore and document the catacombs.
It's a Trap!
You thought there was plunder in the tomb, but in reality, its only occupants will be you! An extension of the false haunting conspiracy above, the party was hired to investigate the tomb, but this was actually a trap set by their enemies. It's unexpected, but quite straightforward once the trap is sprung.
Note: The Ecosystem of a Tomb
The key thing about tombs is that they are artificial structures built to be sterile. If everything went right, there shouldn't be an ecosystem here at all. If animals or monsters have gotten inside, it's because the walls have been burrowed through, wayward spirits have been unable to rest, the dead weren't consecrated properly, or the tomb leads into the Veins.
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