TTRPGs and the state, redux: Looting the dungeon

When I was talking about states recently (one, two), someone said they thought there was a more fundamental question.

In a classic fantasy tabletop role-playing game (TTRPG), why are there reasonably nearby zones of adventure (shorthand: dungeons) filled with hoards of treasure and magic items (shorthand: loot)?

Why hasn't the local viscount sent an expeditionary force of, say, a hundred men-at-arms and a dozen court wizards to burn down the goblin lair and snaffle up the coin and artefacts?

Now in this case, there are only weak parallels to draw from our world history: in our world, people are the apex predator and are easily capable of using basic technology to survive most naturally-occurring terrain challenges, meaning there haven't been 'zones of adventure' since the stone age, and when treasures lie buried or forgotten for ages, they're essentially never guarded by traps or environmental hazards. The closest parallel might be local raids against individuals or small groups (of citizens, outsiders, or neighbouring states) to seize their wealth, or larger-scale colonial or pseudo-colonial expeditions, like Hernán Cortés using military and technological advances to loot the Americas for silver and gold.

Still, given a reasonable chance of a large resource payout by directing military action against a somewhat nearby stronghold of non-citizens, especially a stronghold which the TTRPG's nature demands can be overcome by a small group of risk-taking specialists, it's clearly sensible for the state to do exactly that. Directing military action is one of the things a state is good at, almost by definition. If it's more of a 'crumbling trap-filled but otherwise undefended ruin' situation, then all the more reason for the state to use its unique advantages (centralised wealth, coordination of groups, compulsion of individuals) to get some specialists in there and extract the wealth.

I'm not going to go for thousands of words about the world-building problem this time, but I can think of some solutions of various quality.

Poor solutions:

• The world doesn't make sense, so what. Abandon verisimilitude, embrace gameplay. I think this unambiguously makes for a weaker game, but that may not actually matter for e.g. beer-and-pretzels one-shots.
• People work differently here. People in this world act differently, make different decisions, and in the role of the state, do different things. This essentially turns people into aliens and makes role-playing much harder.
• There are naturally-occurring weak states. States in this world just have little collective power and low reach, so non-looted dungeons exist. It's really a non-answer, raising questions about why other states haven't taken over, and why the individuals capable of looting dungeons haven't risen to become state powers.
• Present it as a mystery that the player characters can't solve. By positioning the issue front-and-centre, diegetically, it turns the players' asking "but why doesn't X?" from a complaint into a question. However, it's going to be extremely unsatisfying to then never give an answer. The GM would also have to be careful about things within the world accidentally becoming false "clues".

Unusual solutions:

• States here are extremely wealthy and have low populations. The expected value of running a dungeon is high to an individual PC, but low or negative to a state (the cost of losing manpower is high and the wealth within is low compared to the state's existing resources). This can work in some settings. The state needs to have hoarded a lot of wealth, rather than this just being a rich society: otherwise the implication is that the gold pieces and magic wands you're looting are as common as pennies and screwdrivers.
• The PCs are the agents of the state. I seldom see this as an integral assumption of the game itself, but it can naturally emerge in a campaign. If the PCs are strong enough, then they can be tempted or compelled to act as an arm of the state. Maybe there's a gold rush on dungeons at the moment, and the PCs are one of many small groups being sent to some of the smaller zones of adventure, while the knights and court wizards and levy archers and such are sent to the big ones.
• It's a mystic underworld, innit. In this world, dungeons are haunting netherworlds that can only be broached by true archetypal heroes. The state has no way of acquiring those without removing their 'archetypal hero' status in the process, and this is all part of the setting metaphysics. Of course, it's still in the state's interest to encourage the existence of these heroic types and then tax them enormously when they come out of the dungeon, an angle that's almost implicit in OD&D but which I haven't seen much in games since then.
• Dungeons grow faster than states can keep up with. A few settings, especially I think those influenced by computer RPGs, have organic/magical dungeons as entities which rapidly appear (maybe propagate themselves), grow, etc. The danger/reward can therefore be higher than, and move around faster than, people can collectively deal with. I would expect states to still do what they can, but 'roaming adventurers' and 'professional dungeon delvers' can become a plausible part of the setting.

Neat solutions:

• The game is set after a massive cataclysm. Some disaster or combination thereof (war, plague, ice age, undead legions, minor apocalypse) has resulted in weak and disorganised states, low manpower, recent ruins, un-exploited situations, and maybe a dungeon 'gold rush' as civilisation bounces back.
• The game is set after an apocalypse.  The same thing writ large; the PCs have emerged from a bunker into a post-apocalyptic world. The neat thing is that this not only provides a reason for weak or non-existent state powers, but the remaining bunkers can be natural zones of adventure, as can the post-apocalyptic wastes. Other bunkers can be safe cities to return to.
  
• The state has bad information. The state is wrong about how dangerous the dungeon is, how lucrative the dungeon is, how close by the dungeon is, whether the dungeon exists, etc. It's easy for us in the information age to overlook just how slow it can be for accurate knowledge about the world to be discovered and propagated in pre-industrial times (although you'll need to scrutinise whether communication and divination magic are enough to overcome this). This solution works best when there's little to no history of dungeon discoveries. It's perfectly reasonable for a short dungeon-delving campaign to be propped up by, say, the PCs just happening on a collection of treasure maps.
• We entertain the gods. All-powerful interventionist forces enjoy the world being a certain way, which happens to align with the GM's aims, and the result is a setting that's good for the TTRPG. Very easy to implement, and a conscientious GM will make it a discoverable premise within the world. The only question left is "why do the omnipotent forces have these preferences?" and there are lots of answers if they are remotely person-like in nature.

 

 

Are there games that have lit upon other notable solutions?