A megadungeon idea and a question about its setting

[restless]

This is long, but I am looking for some discussion and advice.  I apologize in advance.


I've been mulling running a new campaign over for a long, long time (ever since I came back around to an interest in gaming), and one centered on a megadungeon and its local environs at that.  I like the megadungeon because while it is a sandbox it still manages to keep the choices of the players more limited so I can stay ahead of them in prep.  Also, I really want to run the games of my youth again and I was raised on dungeons.


Anyway, I've had this idea I've been mulling over in my head for some time; basically, the megadungeon isn't somewhere, it's everywhere.  The megadungeon is basically a series of crazy-quilt catacombs that exist as a sort of ever-shifting "service tunnels" to the myriad realities, inhabited by a Cthulhoid horror known as the "Skein-Mother" and her twisted, hungry offspring.  Anywhere that Chaos takes a foothold (such as dungeons), the veil of reality weakens and the Skein forms an attachment.  As you travel into the Skein your surroundings slowly transition from the architectural style of where you are to that of the Skein, and as you get closer to a new place of attachment the style transitions to what can be found at the attachment site (e.g., going to I1, "Dwellers of the Forbidden City"?  Perhaps the humidity goes up, and the walls become rough-hewn rock with carved art that resembles the dead-end hall it attaches to.  Maybe some insects and even a parrot flaps its wings clearing the mists of the Skein before it clears and you are actually there).

The side effect of this is that, in theory, you can travel from place to place very quickly through the Skein.  The negatives are several, but potentially manageable:

• If you draw attention of the Skein mother's offspring (or heaven forbid, the Skein-Mother herself) then it's a terror-filled run back to where you came from or where you're going before you become a snack.
  
  
• The Skein shifts from time to time, sometimes even when you are in the Skein itself, so getting to your destination is not always guaranteed if its attachment point has moved.  (In fact, return home isn't guaranteed for the same reasons...)
  
  
• While the Skein-Mother and her brood cannot emerge from the Skein, anything that wanders in from elsewhere can and does.
  
  
• Removing the source of the Chaos will ultimately tilt the balance to Law and close the attachment to the Skein.  Thus, there's the problem of managing the source of the Chaos that keeps the attachment open, but not letting it get out of hand.

So, the setting that I envision has a very hostile campaign world environment, such as vast yawning deserts, vast mountain ranges, and dense forests and jungles that make travel difficult.  Rather than face those dangers the civilizations of Law grew up facing the dangers of the Skein instead, and the far-flung populations were tied together by travel through the Skein rather than overland or oversea journey.  In fact, they became so good at it that even recreational travel was common, not just trade.

Despite that, the Skein's connections to the world of the campaign were broken by the Great Church several centuries before when magic use was outlawed and they mounted an effort to drive the Chaos back into the Skein; as a result, large-scale civilization collapsed.  Pockets of civilization that still exist are ruled largely by petty tyrants and warlords.  Significant magic use is still outlawed by the Great Church and is largely the domain of hedge wizards, independent scholars and sages who privately practice.  What little trade and travel happens is usually mounted by the Great Church, essentially taking the place of any larger governments.


So... here's my thing.  That's a perfectly fine setup for a megadungeon campaign.  In fact, it's a great setup for one because the Skein can connect to places within that world, or other worlds, or even just pockets of other dungeons wherever.  I imagine it can even cross the boundaries of time in certain circumstances.  I can drop in pretty much whatever strikes my fancy, and players get a sense of what they are traveling towards by the transitions once they enter the Skein.  Also, since the Skein shifts, things may change and it gives a sense of danger and wonder about what is happening, and why exactly do things change?  Is there a way to stabilize it somehow?  That sort of thing.

But... ever since I started reading the posts about the Black City project at Dreams in the Lich House years ago I've been in absolute love with the idea.  A science-fantasy megadungeon in a mythic version of the real world where Vikings are exploring a lost, ruined city of ancient sorcery-using, Lovecraftian-entity-worshipping grey aliens on the legendary island of Thule is just too awesome to pass up.  I've been waiting for Beedo to get it together for publication so he can take my money, but it appears it's not to be.


I love the idea of doing the game in a mythic dark ages, because you can fall back on simple descriptions and players get an instant idea of what you are talking about.  History is your friend, you can use the richness of our world to make a lot of creation simple, and interactions of cultures, etc.  You get a lot of shorthand out of it.  Additionally, I could alter the City such that the Skein attaches to the city, so I could use some more far-out in-megadungeon creations I had in mind.

However, when you use the real world, you also take some limitations.  I wanted to do the local environment, which could be the island of Thule, but then I lose the ability to use a lot of the extended hex crawl locales I would like to use because they don't work with our history or mythology.  A lot of what makes a megadungeon campaign work is that other adventure locales outside the dungeon should refer back to the dungeon, and if I made a setting out of whole cloth I could make that work fine.

However, by definition, in a fantasy version of our history this lost city is the anomaly.  Our world never depended on the Skein, and that's a lot of the flavor of the game.  If the players tire of exploring it they either have to leave there and go raiding or exploring dark ages Europe, North Africa and the Middle East, or sail to North America and find... who knows what.  Atlantis?  But still, it's not really got the particular flavor of the setup of the Skein in a world made from whole cloth.

Add to that the fact that I am basically just lifting his setting makes it a little less appealing despite the fact that it sounds like so much fun.  I guess I could make Northmen in my own world who discover this lost city and still have the other hex crawl locales, but then I lose the history up to the point of the game start and get the cheap pastiche of our world painted onto the game.


So... what would you do?

[Vile Traveller]

Easy enough to create an alternate reality which includes the Skein but is otherwise built on real history. You can introduce as many anomalies, anachronisms & alterations (hey, sounds like an OSR game!) as you want, but still fall back on familiar cultures and tropes when you need to.

The idea of an everywhere-Underworld makes sense to me in OD&D, seeing as purple worms lurk everywhere under the ground. That would make most tunnels 10' in diameter rather than 10' square, though.

[tetramorph]

restless, this is a great interpretation of the "Dungeon as Mythic Underworld" trope (or archetype?) that is essential to 0e play.

I think I would want the connection points to be a bit more random and unpredictable myself. Like those tricky teleportation traps. That is part of the chaotic feel of the mythic underworld.

Are you familiar with Philotomy's Musings? He, I believe, is the originator of the term, "Dungeon as Mythic Underworld." So reading his Musings might really help you build your campaign setting.

Great stuff! Play test it and report to us!

Cheers!

[restless]

I suppose it's not so much the underworld bit that I'm having trouble with, it's the setting around it.  I could go full-on generic setting but that's bland.  That's why I was considering doing our own dark ages, but then the underworld bit loses some of its impact.

I think I am leaning towards doing a pastiche of our dark ages, because then I can do different things than what you would expect in our world.  Also, then I could mix some cultures and introduce additional ones (like, say, Amazons).  I think I was inspired by an old thread at Dragonsfoot about campaign settings and someone hit the nail on the head for me when they said that all the Gazetteers made Mystara too complicated, just give them the map from the Expert set and the descriptions from X1 and they were good to go.

[Admin Pete]

restless, where are you at on this? Have you gotten anywhere with it and do you have anything to share. Your idea is great and I would love to see it happen!

[Mighty Darci]

Ooh!! restless, please post about this, I want to know more!

[restless]

I still keep mulling this idea over. I go through bouts of "I'm not going to game" and "I should really get a group together," so it makes it slow-going.

[Admin Pete]

Sept 25, 2017 12:53:48 GMT -5 restless said:

I still keep mulling this idea over. I go through bouts of "I'm not going to game" and "I should really get a group together," so it makes it slow-going.

You could always just start posting and see where it takes you and then if you are moved to you can get a group together or publish or not.  For me a lot of fun is the creating, whether I get to use it or not.

[restless]

What's funny is I still mull this over.  All my potential players have given up on me as a flake, but that doesn't mean I still don't think about doing it.  I can find new ones and probably lure the old ones back in (although one of them I have washed my hands of).

I'm also still vacillating between the two ideas at times, but I have been writing some notes on the setting that is my own rather than lifting The Black City.  I was actually having a crisis of conscience about it again, and came back to read this thread to resolve my thoughts on the matter.  It's funny, reading my own words on it gives me resolve to do it again.

If I had a deadline I'd probably get in there and hunker down and do it.

[El Borak]

First have an exalt! I love this, I haven't seen it before. The Admin above this point in the thread was TPD and not El Borak.

Question: did you come up with the Skein before reading about the Black City?

If you want to use the Black City just give it a new name and a new twist. But the Skein, the Skein-Mother and her brood is just awesome.

Idea, since the time when the connection were broken, the actions of the Great Church have increased the Chaos in the world and the connections are slowly being re-established and the GC has forgotten how they broke the connections.

Instead of Vikings maybe in this world Ireland and Scotland are both separate islands from Britain (but very close to each other) and from each other. They have allied and are the Vikings of this alternate world.

The British Isles of this alternate world are a collection of over a dozen islands with four times the land area of our world. The semi-forgotten riches of the world beckon.

Dec 29, 2015 14:32:37 GMT -5 restless said:

However, when you use the real world, you also take some limitations. I wanted to do the local environment, which could be the island of Thule, but then I lose the ability to use a lot of the extended hex crawl locales I would like to use because they don't work with our history or mythology. A lot of what makes a megadungeon campaign work is that other adventure locales outside the dungeon should refer back to the dungeon, and if I made a setting out of whole cloth I could make that work fine.

However, by definition, in a fantasy version of our history this lost city is the anomaly. Our world never depended on the Skein, and that's a lot of the flavor of the game. If the players tire of exploring it they either have to leave there and go raiding or exploring dark ages Europe, North Africa and the Middle East, or sail to North America and find... who knows what. Atlantis? But still, it's not really got the particular flavor of the setup of the Skein in a world made from whole cloth.

Add to that the fact that I am basically just lifting his setting makes it a little less appealing despite the fact that it sounds like so much fun. I guess I could make Northmen in my own world who discover this lost city and still have the other hex crawl locales, but then I lose the history up to the point of the game start and get the cheap pastiche of our world painted onto the game.

So... what would you do?

Use the extended hex crawl locales that you want to and twist the history and mythology anyway you want. You can adjust and re-write out history into a world that did depend on the Skein.

Please go ahead and complete this project.  What don't you spend a week making a vague outline of the sections you want to do and then we can help you arrive at a deadline for parts of that and we can always adjust time frames and add things to the outline or alter it anyway that needs to be done.

[restless]

Aug 3, 2019 20:54:10 GMT -5 El Borak said:

Question: did you come up with the Skein before reading about the Black City?

Yes, I've had the idea in some form or another for a decade or more now, at least in some form or another. It started out simply as "the megadungeon that is everywhere, even though it's not infinite" and it has had elaborations on the why, whens and hows of everything. I keep thinking up ideas for nodes and attachment areas and what is responsible for the formation, but only recently have I again started sending myself notes on the ideas so I don't forget them like I have so many others.

Aug 3, 2019 20:54:10 GMT -5 El Borak said:

Idea, since the time when the connection were broken, the actions of the Great Church have increased the Chaos in the world and the connections are slowly being re-established and the GC has forgotten how they broke the connections.

My take has been that while the Great Church did make a concerted push and succeeded in closing many of the nodes and forestalling the creation of more by suppressing the practice of the (now-called) Forbidden Arts, that allowed for the peoples in far-flung locations away from the cities who were cut off and needed a way to survive to turn more to the Arts, and also others that weren't under the sway of the Church (such as humanoid tribes and nonhumans) still did what they always had done.

In effect, the Great Church took care of the symptoms insofar as they could see them, but the disease was still there and kept on growing like a slowly-spreading infection. Now, while politically powerful in human lands, the Church is too weak and spread thin to fight it as it begins reasserting itself.

Aug 3, 2019 20:54:10 GMT -5 El Borak said:

Please go ahead and complete this project. What don't you spend a week making a vague outline of the sections you want to do and then we can help you arrive at a deadline for parts of that and we can always adjust time frames and add things to the outline or alter it anyway that needs to be done.

Yes, I should set about working on it. I think what I really need to do is get some stuff together that sees play at the table.  Basic outlines, basic information and I can cobble more information together as I go and I find areas that need fleshing out.

[El Borak]

I really like this and hope to read more about it as you are able to work on it.

[mao]

restless, my Stolen World game has a lot of  similarities to what you are proposing. Check out this link

[The Perilous Dreamer]

Hey restless, how is this project coming along? It sounds like a lot of fun and I too would like to see more.

[restless]

Sorry, I haven't been around lately...

I lost my players (two decided to ditch and play 5e instead, and one said he's not interested anymore) so I let the project die on the vine.

[The Perilous Dreamer]

Oct 23, 2019 15:05:33 GMT -5 restless said:

Sorry, I haven't been around lately...

I lost my players (two decided to ditch and play 5e instead, and one said he's not interested anymore) so I let the project die on the vine.

I think you should consider fleshing it out, I would like to see more of it and I am sure others would too.  There are several works in progress here that when they are more fleshed out I would like to blog about and this is one of them.

[restless]

Nov 6, 2019 18:06:58 GMT -5 The Perilous Dreamer said:

I think you should consider fleshing it out, I would like to see more of it and I am sure others would too.  There are several works in progress here that when they are more fleshed out I would like to blog about and this is one of them.

Thanks for the vote of confidence!  If I do more with it, I will post more.

Right now I am looking at adapting my gaming ideas to a roguelike computer game.  It's definitely easier than trying to get a group together, it seems.

[The Perilous Dreamer]

Hey restless, I was looking at this again and your OP and the world of the Skein is perfectly compatible with having many lost cities from before the time that civilization collapsed and some of them rejected the Great Church. Consequently they have progressed in magic and have deliberately remained out of contact with any where that remains under the sway of the Great Church. 

Also have you considered doing a play by post game here on the forum to try some of your ideas out?

[Death Even XIII]

restless I would almost move just to live close enough to play in the Skein. My wife would not go for that, no way we are moving away from the grandkids, but man I like this setting.

[hengest]

restless, I'm sorry to see that there haven't been updates to this in some time. If you read this: I liked the post (I bet a lot of people did) and also wish I could play in it. Or even just read more about it. Make a PDF, release it in some form!

[The Perilous Dreamer]

Mar 2, 2021 18:32:17 GMT -5 hengest said:

restless , I'm sorry to see that there haven't been updates to this in some time. If you read this: I liked the post (I bet a lot of people did) and also wish I could play in it. Or even just read more about it. Make a PDF, release it in some form!

restless, I agree, I think this should be published PDF would be great and if it is on Drive thru you could make it POD pretty easily if you wanted. I would love to play in this world.

[restless]

As I am wont to do, I am coming back around to this again.  Last Friday my wife and I went to dinner with friends, one of whom is a friend who was an old-school gamer.  He and I discussed his current 5e game he's playing and his dissatisfaction with it being all wuxia-superhero-videogamey, so I know he's game.

In addition, something else that has helped is I've been catching up on the Roleplay Rescue podcast so I'm feeling a little fire lit under me.  One of the things that Che talks about on his podcast is taking time to create your world as an exercise in creativity and a form of solo play, and it makes sense!

Another one that he's been talking about is that one doesn't need to know the whole world to begin play, they just need enough for the next session.  I know this in practice and experience, but I definitely needed the reminder.

While I like the idea of doing this in a fantastical version of our own dark ages on the lost island of Thule... well, yeah... I just can't see making it work out the way I'd like.  I do like the idea of using the common cultural understanding to give realism to play, but that's what "kitchen-sinkism D&D" is about, too.  Everyone knows the tropes, so you can pretty much lean on that and then sketch in the differences while demonstrating the similarities.  Players may get upset because of differences, but at the same time people in our own dark ages rarely traveled far and had many misconceptions about their world, so hey, that works out like gangbusters, especially in a game that starts from level 1.


So... my thoughts?  Well, I have two potential setting ideas:


Idea #1:  Set up play in a region called The Hinterlands, which is an area being reclaimed by a wealthy upstart claiming a title of nobility on the region from before the Sundering, the name given to the collapse brought about by the Great Church (think a medieval version of Elon Musk, along with all the personality foibles).  He's putting out lots of coin to establish a presence and get adventurers to come in and explore, clear out problems and help find something (...anything...) to support his claim on The Hinterlands.  Little does he know that this is just giong to bring about new problems...

This is effectively your typical fantasy RPG backdrop of a frontier occupied and bordered by several factions, set up ruins, lost cities and dungeons, etc.  It uses that kitchen-sinkiness to the extreme, but you can get a lot of mileage out of it and it makes it easy to prep.

It's also pretty vanilla.  Everyone likes vanilla, but people also get tired of vanilla.¹


Idea #2:  Taking a page out of my favorite story from Dragon magazine back in the day, "Catacomb" by Henry Melton combined a bit with the ideas of SCP-3008 (the infinite IKEA), all play takes place around the Skein.  Players start play in a fortress-town carved out within a relatively safe area attached to the Skein akin to the underground settlement of Wizard's Gate in "Catacomb" crossed with the town "Exchange" from the journal in SCP-3008 that is built at the exchange and returns desk area in the IKEA.  From there players strike out to explore, forage and trade with other towns attached to the Skein and keep the predations of the world at bay.

With a setup like this play could start out with only human and humanoid characters, but as other groups are encountered I could add more races and classes for play.  The idea could almost be to find an escape from the Skein, but this comes up with a few problems that are really all just facets of the same problem of keeping the players motivated:

1. Once you escape, well, you escape.  I guess technically even the starting settlement of Wizard's Gate/Exchange is an "escape" because it's at an attachment to the Skein, not in the Skein, but if it seems that finding a new place to settle is the goal then there's a theoretical upper bound on exploration that players will do.
   
   
2. It's an interesting idea for a short series of adventures, and yes, there's variety, but it seems everything has to be in the dungeon because if they find a passably acceptable world they may take that local maxima as a place to stay and... well, that defeats the trope of the game unless I come up with a big M. Night Shamalan-style twist to go after that.
   
   
3. Suppose I want to have something like Isle of Dread or Dwellers of the Forbidden City as a locale attached to the Skein but it's topside.  What stops players from ditching it entirely and just settling there?  I can't think of anything offhand that isn't just a DM equivalent of "if you do this then rocks fall and you all die."²  In fact, it might be preferable, because a way of life in a sunless dungeon is much more harsh than living in a jungle or tropical island in many ways.

So, truthfully, I am leaning towards idea #1.  Actually, I suspect stuff like that is why the generic fantasy setup is so popular:  it gives maximum variety in a place where everyone is familiar with the tropes, and I do have my own twist on it that gives it a (somewhat) fresh change.

It's still percolating.  For rules I suspect I'll use Basic Fantasy RPG.  I really like the ruleset and it's easily hackable, plus things like ascending armor class makes it more palatable to people who started after the age of THAC0.

---

¹ Then again, if everything is double-fudge raspberry swirl, you'll get tired of that too and really want some vanilla.
² I mean, if you are in Isle of Dread that's semi-lost world and you say a meteor that wiped out the dinosaurs is coming so they can't settle there permanently... well, that is just sort of crappy as a DM, period.

[hengest]

Have an exalt, restless, for the whole thread and for continuing to follow up and share your thoughts. Also, I like your use of footnotes.

[restless]

Thanks! I'll definitely be working on it more.

I think the footnoting is because when I write about gaming I tend to write in a wiki, so I'll just come out with a lot of ideas and drop them into the page and then edit them all together at the end, often on their own pages. Of course that doesn't work as well for a forum so what I end up doing is dropping a footnote for the side thought because if I leave it inline it makes what I write seem even more rambly than it usually does!

[hengest]

You use wiki notetaking software, restless?

[The Perilous Dreamer]

Jul 24, 2021 15:44:21 GMT -5 hengest said:

You use wiki notetaking software, restless ?

How does that work, how much does that cost?

Also I thought wiki's were set up so anyone could edit, do you ever have a problem with someone messing with it?

[restless]

Jul 24, 2021 15:44:21 GMT -5 hengest said:

You use wiki notetaking software, restless ?

I actually just stand up a DokuWiki.  I've used it for years, run one at work and even wrote and maintain a plugin for it.  Right now it's running on an HP thin client repurposed as a small Linux server under the living room TV.

Once I get something for public consumption I'll post a link.

[The Perilous Dreamer]

Jul 24, 2021 17:48:07 GMT -5 restless said:

Jul 24, 2021 15:44:21 GMT -5 hengest said:

You use wiki notetaking software, restless ?

I actually just stand up a DokuWiki.  I've used it for years, run one at work and even wrote and maintain a plugin for it.  Right now it's running on an HP thin client repurposed as a small Linux server under the living room TV.

Once I get something for public consumption I'll post a link.

Is it complicated to set something like that up?

[restless]

Jul 24, 2021 16:51:36 GMT -5 The Perilous Dreamer said:

How does that work, how much does that cost?

I have many computers around here running Ubuntu Linux. I just install it on one of those. I guess it doesn't cost me anything except electricity, the cost for the computers (which are mostly used or refurbs) and the internet connection (which is the most expensive, because I have symmetric gigabit fiber), because the software is all free.  Well, and the domain name.  Right now I have it set up in the domain I have pointed at the IP address at my house for external use, but for gaming I'll probably host from a subdomain of megadungeon.{com, net, org}.

Jul 24, 2021 16:51:36 GMT -5 The Perilous Dreamer said:

Also I thought wiki's were set up so anyone could edit, do you ever have a problem with someone messing with it?

Typically that's the case, yes. DokuWiki allows for access control lists so you can set up private areas, read-only areas, put each user (or guest viewers) in groups that have different access, etc. You just set up the permissions and have areas they can read, areas for game content, areas for notes and ideas, your DM gazetteer, your player gazetteer, maybe a place for players to build their own pages, etc.

Jul 24, 2021 20:06:58 GMT -5 The Perilous Dreamer said:

Is it complicated to set something like that up?

Not really, but unless you know what you're doing I wouldn't put a publicly-accessible server on the internet for anyone and everyone to access. DokuWiki is an easy choice though, because it uses flat files instead of a database for its backend but it's still very performant. I'm pretty happy with it. I also like that it uses flat files for pages because then at work I can have various scripts that edit certain pages (in DokuWiki parlance, an "external edit") that keeps information up to date on status of various things within the pages themselves, and sometimes as a bit of a log, time series or changelog in a running page or namespace.


Back to gaming, I originally envisioned putting everything in a wiki for regular play. That way I could run a game from my Surface Pro or a laptop, and make notes and keep everything organized in one place that I could access from anywhere from one of my servers.

The play machine would be a little Raspberry Pi or similar; I typically take single-board computers (SBCs) and boot them from the SD card but then the root OS filesystem is on an SSD for reliability and speed. It would run a web server with the wiki content on it and the onboard Wi-Fi enabled as an access point for access by everyone around the table, and wouldn't require internet access. I could get to the game notes and make my notes and SSH in to run the thing, and players could get to old session write-ups and lore, the game rules and other documents could be accessible from the web server, and we could all access some custom tools I could build for initiative and time tracking, an IM server for passing notes, etc.

To make it less unsightly I could put it in a craft box that looks like a treasure chest or mimic, or maybe a faux book, but extend several ports outside to a hidden area, especially power, ethernet, audio and video. In theory I could also connect a screen to display "what you see" from time to time if I wanted, and could play audio either via cable or Bluetooth from it, all stored on the drive. It'd be a sweet setup.


Then again... is setting all that up for play at the table, and writing all that code to get trackers done, etc., a distraction from actually playing? Probably. I think it might just be better for me to set things up in the wiki and then run the stuff on my tablet or laptop and run from there directly without doing all the other stuff for the players.  (I figure it beats carrying around a bunch of books; I remember carrying two boxes and a gigantic duffel to every game when I ran 1e back in the day.)

[moose]

Dec 29, 2015 14:32:37 GMT -5 restless said:

This is long, but I am looking for some discussion and advice.  I apologize in advance.


I've been mulling running a new campaign over for a long, long time (ever since I came back around to an interest in gaming), and one centered on a megadungeon and its local environs at that.  I like the megadungeon because while it is a sandbox it still manages to keep the choices of the players more limited so I can stay ahead of them in prep.  Also, I really want to run the games of my youth again and I was raised on dungeons.


Anyway, I've had this idea I've been mulling over in my head for some time; basically, the megadungeon isn't somewhere, it's everywhere.  The megadungeon is basically a series of crazy-quilt catacombs that exist as a sort of ever-shifting "service tunnels" to the myriad realities, inhabited by a Cthulhoid horror known as the "Skein-Mother" and her twisted, hungry offspring. 

Wow, this is incredible, I mean really amazing. Better than any setting that TSR/WotC ever published.