Fun fact: The word Lycanthropy contains the Greek _lykos,_ wolf. A Wereyak's curse should be called something like Tauranthropy from Greek _tauros._

As both a dungeon master and an ecologist, I felt my eye twitch when you said no one could care about the caloric intake of face worms. I care. haha, this is a great video and I really dig your creative frameworks. I'm getting super inspired watching through your videos

The "Dragon in a room without an entrance large enough for a dragon" example actually has a really simple answer. Though in 5e the stat blocks don't usually incorporate it, older editions and the fluff of 5e (I have no clue about pathfinder and other systems/games, but I know this is a relatively common trope) talks about how many dragons possess the capability to shapeshift/polymorph into a humanoid form, which would explain how they got into a room without any large entrances. Only works if the dragon has that capability though.

Fun fact: in Italian (Sardinian) folklore the is a sort of were-ox. It's called Boe Erchitu and it's a man that, with the full moon, becames a white ox with metal/silver horns. If I don't remember wrong it has devils/evil spirits around himself that torment him. To free him from the curse you have to cut away his horns. If he moo/bellows three times in front of your house you will have at maximum one year to live (in other versions I heard it will be a person you love to die; in others he simply brings misfortune)

"fearsome minotaur, we humbly beseech thee. you truly are the master of mazes, for no mortal mind could ever solve your labyrinth. we'll relinquish all stolen treasures at once, if you only release us from this dungeon. we beg you, have mercy on us!" wereyak who is also lost: oooh....about that...

One of my ongoing D&D projects has been the development of a massive megadungeon complex that used to be both an enormous, vertically integrated golem factory and a shrine to a fugitive god that gave the factory's creators the secrets of "True" (or "Noble" or "Greater" depending on the translation) Golemancy. It was abandoned eight centuries ago after a steady decline in functionality. Its four tiers ceased were decommissioned one-by-one as the knowledge necessary to maintain this staggering (and highly specialized) industrial marvel was lost, bit by bit, with each passing generation, until the complex outright had been rendered completely non-functional. It's been a really interesting challenge, insofar as each of the four sections of the dungeon (themselves split into four facilities, themselves split into four sub-facilities; the dungeon's creators utilized base four for their mathematics, don't ask) have these complex, interlocking thematic and mechanical functionalities that have also been warped and obscured by centuries of disuse. For instance, a tribe of troglodytes fled through the caves criss-crossing the mountain until they broke into the faunal golemcraft facility on the complex's first level. Over the course of three successive generations, they turned its underground tannery into a shrine for the Otyugh who followed them, proclaiming it their mighty god of Death. They began to pick over the facility's long-dormant workshops, learning primitive necromancy from its morgue and refining their scrimshaw to near-masterwork levels in its ossuary. Its dormitories, safely tucked away in what was, to them, the very back of the facility were converted into nurseries for their young. Its overgrown mushroom farms became an invaluable food source during lean years, and they cultivated a variety of unique hallucinogenic mushroom strains from its magically enhanced soil. Later, the party has the opportunity to visit the faunal resource extraction facility on the second level and see where all of the organic material used to supply the former facility came from: the massive underground livestock pens and their artificial soular (sic) lamps, the prison complex for storing "humanoid material," the sprawling catacombs, etc., and grapple with the actual moral cost entailed by helping reopen what was, essentially, the largest slaughterhouse ever built (in additiona to its many, many other functions).

Really cool episode! There's a Manga called "Delicious in Dungeon" (dungeon meshi in japanese) that absolutely nails dungeon ecology! Give it a read if you want inspiration for dungeon ecology, surviving in a dungeon and pretty original med-fan!

An explanation I thought of for a large creature being inside a room with too small an exit for it to get through could be that it wasn't always this large, but the other creatures inside the dungeon revere this monster as a god, and so they kept feeding this monster offerings of meat. The monster being engorged to such an extent that it can no longer leave the room. This may also mean that this monster being overweight may make it slow, but a heavy hitter when they slam their limbs into the ground, while also having protective fat layers as natural defence. An alternative explanation is that the boss monster in question was never meant to leave the dungeon, let alone this room. The boss is a prisoner of this dungeon, whether this means they have other restraints as well making it possible for the players to see what they're going up against before they free it to fight it for the loot inside it.

Demons in the mortal realm without a reason for them being there is something that always gets me ruffled.

I am ready to run the Lair of the Weryak for my players, as an Intro to the Old Road Zine. You literally came at the most needed point in my GM life, I stand before a fresh campaign start and had absolutely nothing, your map and Zine sparked my thoughts again

I love that example of how did the dragon fit in this dungeon because I came across this same dilemma when I was constructing a dungeon. The lore I came up with I instantly fell in love with. It’s simple but effective to suspend the disbelief and build more lore into it. A specialized faction hunter and seized any dragon wyrmlings they could find and transported them into claustrophobic caves so they could only grow as large as the room could be. This solved the issue of adult dragons causing too much havoc in the civilizations and also gave me an excuse to throw two dragons at my party in a fairly confined space!

"Oh that's because this place was constructed during a time when magic was stronger and less limited. So one use was transmutation and conjuration magics to basically fold rooms around each other to save physical space." Bing bang boom now roll initiative because you walked into the Beholder harem.

And just like that, I think you have solved the eternal difficulty of playing a maze at the table. Your maps are wonderfully tactile play props. I can literally SEE how they would improve player agency by letting them pore over the map and make choices based on what catches their fancy. And a maze? Why not let them see the whole thing? With visible features like the ones you include here, the maze itself is no longer the puzzle--and seriously, after running (and playing!) just a few mazes at the table, I have shied away from using them at all for 20 years because mazes you can't see are simply the worst sort of puzzle--your focus turns to what is IN the maze. Yeah, you are definitely one of very few channels where I have actually "hit the bell icon." Just fantastic stuff.

White dragons are known to make their lair in Ice caverns where the ice will shut them inside during their long naps

Yes! This is what I've been advocating for for years. So many people just design dungeons as nothing more than a challenge for the player, but forget that in universe, it needs to serve some actual functions and not just be place for adventurers to run in, kill monsters, and collect treasure.

Ben's newsletter is what brought me here!

"Will the Wereyak ever forgive me..." NEVER!!! :D

Ooohhh! A WereYak vs WereLlama throwdown. That’s gold! 😶

Letting the days go by, water flowing under!

When talking about Trophy Dark, I assumes you were meaning to mention designer Jesse Ross? Because you did in fact name Video game producer and content creator Jesse Cox. At least that's what it sounded like which made me think the aforementioned Mr. Cox had broken into table top game design. XD

another theme is the Moon for lycanthropes, specifically the crescent moon, often pictured horizontally as horns. All sorts of female goddesses are pictured with the moon, for feminine reasons (!) and often the crescent form.

I got excited when I noticed the monster sheet was Zwiehander.

What a perfect video to introduce me to your channel. I've been looking for more d&d content for some time, and now I've found it! We will watch your career with great interest.

A warmed over, cold, dead heart is a great thing. Ben's channel is where I found your channel.

I always appreciated the idea, though I fail to remember the source I first saw it in, but the idea that a Were-creature while transformed take on said creature alignment... The most recalled relation was calling Smokey the Bear a Werebear because they are "good" aligned thus his fight against forest fires XD

I love your channel man, you are easy to listen to and your art is wonderful. I’m using your knowledge, opinion and skills to inspire and do a tiny bit of thievery with your concepts in your “build a better beast” series. Love

As someone who played "No Heroes Allowed" (or the Badman series), I know the importance of a Dungeon's Ecology

Rather than using ecology to prevent dragons from appearing in cramped dungeons, I like the idea that the DM uses world-building to explain stuff like "how did a red dragon get into this room?" Maybe Dragons can change their shape or size. The Dragon got into this room by turning into a human, and walking in. It turned back into a Dragon perfectly sized to fight in this room just for the occasion of fighting the party. The coolest part about thinking this way is that it actually encourages the players to deal with the dragon right now. If the dragon can end up here, in this dungeon, then the dragon could conceivably turn up ANYWHERE... apparently we find ourselves living in a world where a dragon can walk into a heavily fortified castle, totally undetected, and then transform into a dragon just large enough to fit in the throne room and eat the king. Suddenly dragons are more dangerous, and retreating from this fight becomes a worse long term solution.

I found your channel from the newsletter too! Hope your channel grows. Great content!

This is really cool. Very well done video! I am glad that I found it.

Love your storytelling!

Woah! I write my A's the same way! Great examples of well thought out 'dungeon ecology' is in darksouls series

This is really high quality content. I can already tell your channel will get some good traction given some time. Lots of fresh ideas being presented here. Very helpful stuff!

THIS IS GENIUS

I've enjoyed your videos for a while and this is one of my favorite dungeon topics!! Thanks for bringing it to the table and helping other folks work through an occasionally mystical process. Just to clarify, I SWEAR you said that Jesse Cox designed Trophy Dark, but I looked it up and it was written by Jesse Ross. I don't know if this was a pseudonym or a Freudian slip, but as a JC fan I totally get it

HahaH so glad to have discovered your channel 👍🤝 love your artwork too btw!

Love this video. Been getting into your monster design videos too. Very inspired. Also as someone who has a diet consisting of nothing but Faceworms it is annoying that no one knows how many calories they have.

Haven't even started the video and the thumbnail has a Talking Heads reference. I like this channel already

that bit at 9 minutes in is super important to know. DM worldbuilding is done for the DM and really no one else. The players will feel like the world is real if the DM thinks it is real. the worldbuilding help the DM believe in their own world, but so much of that information is functionally useless to the players.

Have working toilets and the final boss lives in the dungeon poop room, but before that make a red herring boss that the players think are the real boss, so then they can miss it

and you may say to yourself: this is not my beautiful dungeon!

Just came across your channel.. Why is everything here so good?

How the hell does this Video only have clos to 7k Views? Feels Like i found a tresure only a few Humans have discovered so far😅. I really like your sense of telling a story combined with the educational aspect of the Video. And as a normi human without Art experience my compliment might not have much weight, but your drawings look increadible!

For those who follow manga, Dungeon Meshi is a good example of how a dungeon's ecology could be, and the author's art is hilarious.

I'm in love with the presentation and content of your channel. One question I have is, how do you roll a maze in DnD? Isn't it going to be boring for the players to just go "I go left, turn 2 times, walk past the entrance", all that. I'd love to write a maze, but I just can't imagine how to make it interesting

Yes, realism, immersion, etc, but for me as a DM I firmly believe in dungeon ecology design theory because I find it makes it SOOOOO much easier to populate adventures with good encounters, rather than monster salad dungeons.

Theres no need to play. The Wereyak never forgets. The Wereyak never forgives.

I hope you were making this reference but it took me seeing the thumbnail for the 3rd time to wanna say this. *Sees thumbnail* "And the days go by, water flowing underground."

I just ran this for my friends in DungeonWorld and we had a blast! I took the labyrinth rules done by Dungeon Craft (kzfaq.info/get/bejne/jpygldmpp7CVfas.html) and some of the behavior for the wereyak (pulling the players apart and through the labyrinth to separate them). Things were looking dire when one player was brought to the Skinless Skull by the wereyak as a new servant and another was being put onto the embalming chamber's table by the horde of skeletons. Our star mage saved saved the shaman player on the table, then they two got in to rescue the paladin set before the Skinless Skull. The shaman entered the astral plane to try to talk to the ancient yak spirit, failed, and then summoned the souls of those who were killed by the Skinless Skull to fight back. Our paladin was keeping the Wereyak busy as his own body was trying to form into another wereyak. Our star mage tried to bend destiny and fate itself to bring the Skinless Skull's spirit back into the proper cycle of life and death, but in doing so tied his own fate to the spirit's. The shaman's spirit army was trying and failing to stop the spirit of the Skinless Skull and the shaman themself was on their last legs. The paladin was consumed by corruption, and became a prisoner in their own body as their flesh twisted into another wereyak. The star mage looked at both of them, and made a black hole in their own heart, sacrificing themself to stop the Skinless Skull. The shaman, still in the astral plane, saw the Skinless Skull's soul sucked through a tear in the plane, their friend, the star mage, beyond it as well. This was meant to be a one-shot but it sounds like they want a go at saving the star mage. Thanks for a wonderful night Kyle!

ICRPG discord got me here, love it, already want to run that adventure

Trophy is a great game and has lots of useful ideas even if you’re running another game.

Great video! One question: What are the horned weasels feeding on in this ecology?

I would hate to get bite by a wereyak or a werellama. Loving your art work great vid!

Same as it ever was, same as it ever was

Veins of the Earth is a good book for this kind of thing.

HOW do you scan your drawings on grid paper into your computer without the grid?

awnser to 'why is this massive dragon in this room with a single human sized exit?' someone stole dragon egg, hid it here, dragon hatched, ate them, aannnd kinda just eats humans that, like you, wandered in.

I know this is an older video, but the link to the wereyak stats doesnt wor, would anyone have them?

for some reason this reminds me of pathologic, no idea why

While conceptually awesome, so many dungeons(especially in adventure modules) have this frustrating tendency for everything in a dungeon's ecology to be a story the players never learn unless they get literally every single piece of information. Like someone might ask, "Why, if the ecology is causing creatures to turn half human and half yak, would someone need to manually kill both humanoid and yak creatures so they can make yak-headed constructs?" or "Why if they like to draw cool murals of yaks would they kill yaks and desecrate their corpses?" Sure, with all the notes perfectly organized and all the timelines and creature interactions laid out it makes sense, but even with one piece of info unclear you get "The dungeon of someone cursed by a yak skull, so they made more yak skulls so they could give the big yak skull fur because they...love/hate yaks?"

Holy Shit! Is that a pencil?? I haven't seen one of them in over a decade! What system are you using? That stat block made no sense to me.

have you ever heard of dungeon meshi? it's a Manga all about dungeon ecology and cooking

Read Dungeon Meshi, it’s particularly excellent at this.

How do I work this? This is not my large automobile.

Trying to make more plausible dungeons seems to be a weird concept for me to begin with since dungeons themselves are incredibly implausible. I've eliminated them completely for myself in my pen and paper games because I play semi-realistic games and dungeons just make no sense at all. (They can still be very fun if you ignore their absurdity. Trying to make them less absurd is a bit weird though.)

Can't D&D dragons take on human form?

i would have to disagree with 9:07 but thats just because my personal preference is to add set dressing

dungeon fun > dungeon ecology Ecology is for worldbuilders, not game-masters. This kind of thinking will paralyze you as a GM. The 2 hours you spend on your dungeon's food chain is 2 hours you didn't spend populating the place with interest things, ensuring there are different choices and routes and agency. If you enjoy this stuff, great, go for it. But do not listen to people in the comments saying this is vitally necessary. If your geologist player is put off by inaccurate mineral content of the cave walls, you aren't ever going to satisfy them no matter how much time you put into. Just say "I don''t know Steve, why doesn't Gorthak tell us about the mineral content of the walls here."

2:15 *their lol

For some reason "The Wereyak Maze!" doesn't have the same ring to it as, "The Minotaur's Labrynth!"

ive never seen a toilet in a battle map. like does no-one go to the toilet in rpg's

*their

Oh I thought "Gygaxian Naturalism" referred to his *interesting* views on certain topics.

This is not my beautiful dungeon

In other words, your monsters should ask "Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?"