Eternal Dungeon - A Story-Centered Hack-N-Slash Campaign Concept

[Paka]

Eternal Dungeon

There has always been the dungeon. You don't know anything else. The first level is the first thing you remember. Perhaps there was a story to your life, a family, a clan, a nation but that is lost in these tunnels.

There are three facts you know for sure:

Killing the dungeon's denizens gives you power.

Somewhere in this monster-filled death-trap are answers.

Never split up the party.


DM's Notes:

I think I'd run this so that as the players gained levels they would pick from a hat. The pieces of papers in the hat would say what the PC could remember. Slowly, as the party gained levels, they would remember who they were, where they came from and why they must get home.

Slowly but surely the PC's world would get created as the dungeon gained a backstory.

 

[Azure Trance]

Are you emulating Dungeon World?

 

[Paka]

Are you emulating Dungeon World?

Forgive my ignorance, I can guess from the name but, what is Dungeon World.

Odds are a friend mentioned it to me at some point and it just slipped my mind. Yes, I probably am on some level.

Truth is I was just trying to figure out how I could run a hack-n-slash non-stop dungeon crawl and make it work for me.

 

[Paka]

I just read some ENworld reviews of Dungeon World.

Seems pretty close to what I posted.

Thanks for the heads up.

 

[Anabstercorian]

Killing the dungeon's denizens gives you power.

Somewhere in this monster-filled death-trap are answers.

Never split up the party.

Oh my god! This is so awesome. I love it already.

 

[Paka]

Ritualistic Dungeon Crawling

Life is ritual and ritual is life.

You have just finished your training and it is time to enter the Dungeon. Your Dungeon was chosen carefully to compliment and challenge your Party.

Before the Rogue enters the Dungeon she must steal one of the city's treasures and be chased by the Law. If she is caught, the Rogue has no place entering the Dungeon.

The Fighter must destroy and enemy with her sword before entering the Dungeon.

The Paladin and the Cleric must spend a night on the Temple's cemetary. The evil that rises to face them there will be a reflection of the evils they will vanquish on their path.

The Wizard must summon an Outsider or Bind a Familiar before entering the Dungeon.

If we didn't have Adventurers, if they didn't trim away the Dungeons that infest the wilderness like a plague, eventually the world would be a crypt.

And so Adventures are annointed according to their place and their abilities, sent out into the Dungeons around the City. May the Gods guide them back to us so they might go forth and vanquish the evils under the earth again.

 

[Paka]

I am basically thinking to myself how I could run D&D without twinking it AT ALL. If I ran it straight out of the book with no variant rules or anything of the sort.

Just door-kickin' and treasure seekin' but with a soul.

Anyone else have any ideas?

 

[blackshirt5]

That's a cool idea, Paka, the one with the Dungeons needing to be beaten back; I have visions of them getting their weapons a la Demon Wars, where the ranger goes into a sacred grove and the ranger buried there rises from his burial mound, attacking and attacking, until the new ranger can get his sword from the mound and strike down the abomination of nature, proving that he is ready to venture into the dungeon and strike at the abomination that is the dungeon itself.

 

[Dirigible]

Greetings, fellow Midnighter..er...ist...er...ologist.

Re your peachy-keen Ritualistic Dungeon Delving idea...

Yesterday, I saw a promo video for Half-Life 2 (drooool...but that's for another site...). One of the levels featured a...thing called the Combine; it was essentially a living fortress that was gradually expanding through the city; you could see individual metal wall sections shifting and moving, towers sprouting, redoubts and bunkers shuffling across the buildings...

What if dungeons were like that?

If we didn't have Adventurers, if they didn't trim away the Dungeons that infest the wilderness like a plague, eventually the world would be a crypt.

What if they really would encroach on civilisation... tunnels and catacombs weaving with a dark will through the earth, caves and dhambers opening of their own accord, seeking like fungal filaments for sustenance... sustenance being the living flesh of the surface world.

Delving becomes a race against time, with the added aspect of choosing your targets in a strategic sense... a well timed expedition can sever a section of dungeon from the Whole, leaving it to wither... but meanwhile, a major incursion of crypts may be worming it's way under the homeland...

More later

 

[Azure Trance]

That big thing by the Combine in the HL2 video reminded me of a Retriever. Tall, spindly spidery looking beast.