Thoughts on building a small setting around Henry Melton's short story "Catacomb"

[restless]

Well, I slept through Hurricane Nicholas last night and went out to see what happened around here.  Fortunately, it wasn't much (one of my wife's rosebushes tilted over across the walk, a trampoline out on the subdivision's main road, a couple strips of metal off a business roof near the Sonic and one shrub on the main road laying on the street... nothing big at all), so I guess I can go about posting this.

I mentioned here that I have an affinity for the story "Catacomb" by Henry Melton, which I have linked in a scan of the original from Dragon Magazine for reference in case you never read it.

In short, "Catacomb" is about a commercial multiplayer computer game, a precursor to MMORGs and even MUDs, but surely based off DnD on Plato, Bartle's MUD1 and text adventures like ADVENT (Adventure), Zork and the later expansion of Interactive Fiction on micros.  It was also contemporaneous with MUD2 and Island of Kesmai on CompuServe, and likely some early iterations of Proving Grounds BBSes and door games.  The protagonist plays it to earn money from finding treasures in the Catacombs, but she discovers how hard it is to be an adventurer and strikes up an unlikely friendship with a thief that stalks the halls.

However, the setting of the game is what interests me, at least insofar as this discussion.  The action in Catacomb takes place in a giant network of tunnels and rooms, essentially a megadungeon.  Access is via "The Wizard's Gate," controlled by a magic user who grants access and it is implied that a settlement has sprung up around the Wizard's Gate, offering goods, services and lodging for those exploring the Catacombs.  It appears that the Catacombs themselves have monsters traversing them, players may battle against one another, and they may even connect to other dimensions.

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To me, this setup is appealing because, well, it's simple:  a place to rest, sell your treasures and adventure is right on the other side of the gate.  The Wizard isn't necessarily friendly in the original text.  The whole place reeks of danger and intrigue.  A whole megadungeon is attached directly to this place.  Being a megadungeon, it keeps the prep simpler.

This would be a great open-table game to set up, but I keep thinking of the downsides.  Some players get tired of the dungeon.  If it's a megadungeon, having only one ingress would get old as people traverse the same initial corridors over and over unless you immediately get dumped into a room full of portals, teleporters or a big master staircase or something (plus, you'd naturally end up with absolute tons of bandits trying to pick off weakened parties returning from deeper delves).  Spells, items and monsters that are more suited for overland encounters get short shrift in such a setup.  Worldbuilding is sort of difficult when the entire adventure takes place in a small locale.

Have any of you read the story?  Would it even be an interesting setup?  How would you set up the Wizard's Gate and the Catacombs, or at least a similar setting with the starting town sort of... in the dungeon?  Perhaps the Wizard's Gate is actually a magical gate that varies with different conditions that have to be discerned by players over time (and could possibly be controlled with certain items or spells)?  Perhaps worldbuilding not being such a big deal is a secret plus if you just want to get your game on with kitchen-sink D&D-ism and not worry about the backstory?

[restless]

As an aside, when I say it's the setting of the story that interests me insofar as this discussion, the idea of the computer game was always intriguing to me, too; I spent way too much time playing MUDs in college, and to this day I still think about sitting down and working on an engine for something like the game in that story, although the level of abstraction that it provides is pretty high, insofar as player actions go.

But here, of course, I am talking about the fantasy setting for use on tabletop.

[The Perilous Dreamer]

restless, I don't know how I missed this thread, but I just read the story and loved it.  I think this is awesome. You should do it and run it as a play by post. You can play test your ideas. I think it is a very interesting setup and that you should go for it.