I am working on a MORPG project featuring essentially two major roles: adventurers and dungeon masters. My concern is about balancing the two roles.
For those who have heard of it, the principle is inspired from the French comics Dungeon. The business model of a dungeon, as stated in the comics, is the following: dungeon masters place treasures in heavily guarded dungeons, to lure in adventurers seeking fame and fortune. While some of them succeed, most die in the process, dropping valuable items which joins the pile of treasures of the dungeon, further attracting more adventurers. Dungeon master make a living by collecting the right amount from these drops to create new rooms, pay mercenaries, fetch new creatures, breed dragons and whatnot.
Adventurers are quite classic: they are combat oriented characters that can attack monsters or fellow players and earn XP, items and money in the process, gradually making them stronger.
Dungeon masters are trade oriented. Their difficulty is balancing budgets: treasures and dragons are expensive. Now, I already expect a sort of equilibrium among dungeon masters because dungeons that are either too hard or too easy are naturally penalized (low attempt rate or low kill rate, respectively). DM vs DM balancing: check.
Since PvP combat is enabled in dungeons, there is also a competition among adventurers pushing weak players to stick to easy dungeons that offer little reward to more advanced players. Adventurers vs advanturers balancing: check.
However there is one specific imbalance between the two roles that I am trying to solve: adventurers have a bias toward attempting dungeons above their league, because even if they die (dropping some items and respawning outside the dungeon), they will have gained some XP in the process. This is good because it rewards risk-takers. On the other hand, dungeon masters do not have any advantage of this kind: if an adventurer completes the dungeon and escapes with their share of the treasure, nothing is gained. This would be a pity if it lead dungeon master to be too cautious about their defenses, killing the probability of ever completing the dungeon. Adventurer vs DM balancing: problem.
Hence my question: what reward mechanism could I introduce that incitates dungeon masters to maintain a small but non-zero winning probability?