A Dungeon-centric Setting Idea: Help me flesh it out

[Philotomy Jurament]

1E: It's *is* D&D to me. AT the same time, though, it takes more effort to wrangle players for AD&D. I do think it fits the setting well enough and it can accommodate tacked on subsystems pretty well.

An excellent choice. I'll comment on the player issue at the end of this post.

Hackmaster: Like 1E, it's got a 1E feel with some modern design sensibilities. It can be a bear to run, though, if you use all the rules.

I'm meh on Hackmaster. I'd rather play AD&D. (I did find the MU spell price list in the HM DMG to be a nice complement to the cleric spell price list in the 1e DMG, though.)

3.x: The people I generally game with like it, it still "feels" like D&D to me, especially if it's core plus carefully chosen 3rd party and/or official supplments. The steeper level curve conserns me, though, as I want to incorporate a sandbox feel and a degree of randomness.

Definitely not my cup of tea, but everyone has their own preferences. If you do go with 3.X, you might want to change the way you do XP. One of the hallmarks of the megadungeon and exploration is making efficient use of your time, staying focused, et cetera. Wandering monsters are supposed to be a nuisance that drain your resources for no real reward (i.e. they don't have a lot of treasure). Since 3.X gives a lot more XP for monsters than earlier editions did, you lose this, and wandering monsters can become a reward, because of their XP, which alters the feel (and maybe the goal) of the game.

Pathfinder: I could be wrong but it seems to me that Pathfinder is to 3.x as Hackmaster is to 1E.

Yeah, that's my view, too.

C&C: I always want to try this game but every time I think about it I wonder what it offers that 1E doesn't.

Agree, again. I'd rather just play 1e.

A Retro-Clone: Could OD&D (Swords and Wizardry) or B/X (Labrynth Lord) handle this game? Would it be more fun?

Sure, they could handle it, although I'd probably still draw on the original sources, too. Both OD&D and B/X have excellent guidelines for developing a large dungeon and distributing monsters and treasure.

The RC/BECM: This is the game I "grew up on" and holds a lot of nostalgia for me. But is it a good fit? And, I think it would be even harder to "sell" to players for than 1E. On the upside, I own the RC.

Yeah, it would work, too. It's mostly the same as B/X. I like B/X better, though.

I wouldn't let worry about finding players deter me. Old-school D&D isn't an obscure system, and it's enjoying something of a resurgence right now, anyway. I'd decide what I am enthusiastic about and want to run. Then advertise that, as "Hey, I'm excited about this and I'm going to run it. Do you want to play?" If someone won't play because it's not the system of their choice, so be it. But I'll bet you'll find players.

In decades of gaming, there has only been one time I couldn't find players for what I wanted to run (and I've run some odd stuff, over the years) -- and that was when I was overseas in Japan.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Here's something a bit outside of the box: instead of the usual suspects for a "D&D" dungeon-making race- Drow, Dwarves, Duregar, etc.- use the Seshayans from D20 Future, p218-219 (translated from Alternaty: Star*Drive). With their alien forms (bat-wings, multiple eyes) and sonar-based blind-fighting, etc., they're perfect for a race that rose up out of the Underdark, dominated the world, and whose civilization then collapsed, so that they are now a "degenerate" race.

In case you don't have those handy, here's a picture (scroll down a bit):
http://www.warrensburgweb.net/alternity/races.html

For additional fun, 90% of the Seshayans that remain may not even be aware of their race's former greatness, and may have a worldview not unlike Ratmen, Kobolds or Tinker Gnomes.

Until somebody finds a statue of one of the early Seshayan emperors...

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Regardless of which race is picked to be "The Ancients," I thought this was a pretty good idea for a catacalysm:

One possible cataclysm is to use the idea of empowered psionics mixed with the themes of forbidden planet; the race, perhaps the Gith, that once lived here developed powerful artifacts that responded to their psionic powers and made them virtual gods. But by night, once they slept, these devices were still engaged by their unconscious minds and ended up destroying their whole civilisation in a single night. Once the Gith became afraid, all the terrors of their unconscious became real in their dreams and then came to kill them. But once they were gone, all the "monster" ceased to exist. Except that the artifacts still exist on the island, waiting for reactivation................

Another possibility:

The Ancients (whomever they are) created a race of living constructs (Warforged) to be their "stormtroopers" and impose their will upon the world...and then they rebelled and destroyed their makers- think of the classic Star Trek episode, "What are little girls made of" or the Stargate SG-1 Replicators.

After the annihilation of the Ancient's civilization, the Warforged systematically "forgot" what they had done, and now wander the world with a curious gap in their past.

 

[ProfessorPain]

Two words: Fraggle Rock

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

...thieves guilds, cults and religions, mercantile guilds, adventuring companies that have already staked big claims and the like...

Thieves' Guilds may:

1) be used by wealthier types to help them do some claim jumping, especially if they suspect something particularly valuable is in the area they're going after- kind of like how thugs were often hired to get ranchers to give rail barons favorable prices on land for the trains to be built.

2) operate certain legitimate businesses nearby better (read: richer) claims. Those might include supply shops (with gear of questionable quality), bars (with watered booze), gambling houses (with crooked dice), and, of course, "recreation centers."

3) have members stake a claim in a strategically located area in order to use as a staging ground for raids on other claims.

4) run protection rackets

5) relocate en-masse to a subterranean claim if its good enough.

6) use the tunnels for smuggling and storage.

7) use the tunnels for spying


Cults & Religions may:

1) revere the Ancients

2) know why the Ancients died out or whatever their fate was

3) protect surviving members of the Ancients

4) try to drive off claimholders (by force) if they are not respectful of the Ancients.


Mercantile Guilds may:

1) operate certain legitimate businesses nearby better (read: richer) claims. Those might include supply shops (with quality but high-priced gear), bars (with watered booze), gambling houses (with crooked dice), and, of course, "recreation centers."

2) try to drive off claimholders (by force) if they don't purchase at least part of their gear from local merchants.

3) hire the party to retrieve certain raw materials from the abandoned underground networks


Adventuring Companies may:

1) be used by wealthier types to help them do some claim jumping, especially if they suspect something particularly valuable is in the area they're going after- kind of like how thugs were often hired to get ranchers to give rail barons favorable prices on land for the trains to be built.

2) have members stake a claim in a strategically located area in order to use as a staging ground for raids on other claims.

3) run protection rackets

4) relocate en-masse to a subterranean claim if its good enough.

5) use the tunnels for smuggling and storage.

6) may use the tunnels for spying on foreign powers.

 

[MortalPlague]

I love this idea... If you're in Vancouver, send me a PM; I'd love to play in a game like this!

Failing that, I may steal the concept and run this with my group at some point. The thought of all the dungeon crawling, combined with exploration and political intrigue makes me smile; it sounds like it'll be a memorable campaign.

Also, I'll second the vote for 'Deadwood'... the show is a great resource for exploring life in a frontier town.

 

[Reynard]

snip

Thanks, DA. That's some good stuff there.

 

[Reynard]

To really get started with this project, I think I need to nail down the nature of the Ancients and their civilization and how those are reflected in the ruins they left behind (the dungeons the PCs will be seeking out, exploring and laying claim to) and the indigenous inhabitants of the Island (the "stock enemies" the PCs will be going up against).

First off, the Ancients disappeared about 500 years before the discovery of the Island by the Civilized Nations. This is enough time for the humanoids living on the island to have descended into archetypical savagery without being so long as to have seen the rise of a second great civilization on the island. I am not too worried about the state of the ruins, as they will have been constructed with both great craftsmanship and powerful magics to preserve them.

The Ancients were (or at least became) a decadent and immoral society composed of powerful wizard-nobles who distrusted one another enough to keep themselves isolated in small, remote villas and fortresses. They were either subterranean or nocturnal, as these locations are almost invariably underground, with some structures above ground (probably night time gardens or perhaps the domiciles, workshops and/or barracks of their thrall races). They coveted wealth, particularly in the form of gold and jewels (and those in the form of beautiful, if decadent, artistry) as well as magical power (both as arcane knowledge and magical items).

I wonder -- what if they were or were the progenitors of Mercanes?

The Ancients kept slaves in the form of goblinoids. Perhaps the goblins were the original inhabitants of the island and when the Ancients arrived -- are the from this world? this plane? -- they enslaved the goblins. "Normal" goblins would have been their labor force and their craftsmen. Hobgoblins might have been created or bred as their soldiers, with which they fought amongst one another for resources and supremacy. In thinking about what to do with bugbears, it occurs to me: goblins are often described as easily mutated in D&D. Perhaps bugbears are a strain of goblin turned up to 11. Perhaps there's need for a "One Million Goblin Mutants" chart to accompany this setting idea.

But it hardly seems fitting to limit the scope of potential enemies to goblins. I imagine giant races as also being indigenous, living in the high mountain regions where even the Ancients found it too bothersome to live. The giants may have warred with the Ancients at some point, using ogres and trolls as shock troops.

Orcs I see as recent arrivals -- not as recent as the men, elves and dwarves, but nonetheless having arrived after the Ancients left. Perhaps they were viking like raiders, their Lief Erikson discovering this New World three centuries before the rest of the world. Orcs, then, would be established and invested in plundering the ancient tombs, fighting amongst one another until the arrival of humans and their kin, perhaps on the verge of an alliance that could spell doom for the civilized races' efforts to colonize the island.

Various monstrosities are easy to explain as either native flora and fauna or the remnants of Ancient experiments. Some creatures from the Underdark -- illithids and beholders and the like -- may have "discovered" the island by exploring upward and finding the Ancients subterranean ruins. But what of dragons?

Dragons are always an important factor in setting design, IMO, being so iconic to both fantasy in general and the game in particular. They would certainly be attracted to the island by the wealth and magic left by the Ancients, but how many? How influential? What of dragons' relationship to natives and new arrival alike?

The question remains what happened to the Ancients. Why did they seal up their treasures and magic in vaults and tombs and the leave their civilization? I'm not sure why, but I feel like it is better served if the Ancients actively left, rather than being destroyed or dying out. At the same time, the Ancients also present an opportunity for use of powerful undead -- wraiths, specters, ghosts, banshees and liches can be Ancients who never "left"? Perhaps there was a schism -- those that worshiped wealth and power and those that worshiped Death? (There's something vaguely "Egyptian" about this marriage of death and amassed wealth.)

Thoughts?

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I think a lot of your questions will be answered- or at least, solutions will be strongly hinted at- once you decide exactly who your "Ancients" actually are.

The Gith idea was cool, and I gave you Seshayans- but they could just as easily have been Drow (who, in your world, could have been the original Elves, and more strongly connected to magic because they were actual Fey...), Ogre Mages*, Beholders, or any of a host of creatures.

Live dragons, for instance, might not exist in your world if they were the only creatures powerful enough to destroy the Ancient Beholder Empire...though Dracolitches might be more common than usual.

OTOH, perhaps the dragons were the only threat the Ancients perceived to their empire, systematically hunted them down to extinction...but at a cost so great that the OTHER races (or perhaps 1 or 2 in particular) of the world rose up to take them down. Who knows, perhaps one of those races even made a "deal with the devil" in order to gain the power to throw off the shackles of the Ancients after their dragon-hunt...enter Tieflings.

* If you have Dragon #349, it rounds out the Ogre Mage "family" into various Oni- a lost ancient empire based on those creatures could be a LOT of fun.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Actually, it would also be helpful to us if we knew which races you intend to use for the PCs- PHB standard? Some monster races? Many monster races? Homebrew?