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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Gus L" data-source="post: 9510082" data-attributes="member: 7045072">What I'd note here is that the "Mythic Underworld" is more then just a big, singular dungeon (as suggested in OD&D and adopted by most early cultures of play) -- it's a specific sensibility about dungeon design.  Philotomy, when he wrote about it is often seen as reaching back to the early hobby (a claim made by lots of OSR stuff), and he did, but his interpretation is I think new.The Mythic Underworld is the conception of the dungeon as a potentially endless space, largely generated quickly and sparsely, without little concern for ecology or coherency - instead it's "mythic",  a space where things don't make sense because they are beyond mortal ken, the project of a hostile god, a living dungeon that hates surface life, or whatever.  Mechanically it's a design technique and in game it's a justification for a dungeon that doesn't have to make any sense. It's not mythic in the sense that its tied to a mythological construct or secret history - because that's hard to do in a mostly procedurally generated space without a lot of work (See Miranda Elkin's Nightwick Abbey - one of the real new design idea of the G+ era of the OSR).I see Barker (and really most early designers - Gygax and even Arneson) as going very much the other direction, wanting their dungeons to increasingly make sense.  Gygaxian Naturalism, faction conflict, Jaquays secrets and history. My guess is that Barker is also in this group, though I am unfamiliar with the specifics of his dungeons.  It all of it moves away from the Mythic Underworld as Philotomy describes it. At least that's my impression - if there were folks in the 1970's intentionally building that sort of megadungeon on the quick I'd love to see what they came up with?Yeah there is certainly a break in fantasy around Tolkien with more complex and coherent fantasy worlds.  Again I think this moves away from the "Mythic Underworld" as a dungeon design concept, but that's just my immediate impression?</blockquote>

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