The Dungeon That Always Was...

[Mycanid]

No - not myself. I tend to stick to above-ground places in my campaigns with an occasional venturing underground. I never really was an "Underdark" fan on the scale it has become.

I have always thought it would be stunning for someone to design a really detailed version of Tolkien's Khazad-Dum mountain interior. I remember I.C.E. made a stab at it with their M.E.R.P. modules back in the 80's, but I also remember being REALLY disappointed with it.

Maybe some day I'll try to do something like this myself ... but not now. I'm sure there are others out there with WAY more talent, creativity and time who could do something like this.

 

[JVisgaitis]

Violet Dawn started with just a place named the Dominicon. Of course all of our supplements and everything detail the world outside, but it all started with the world inside around 10 years ago.

 

[Arrgh! Mark!]

There was a console game - Dragon Quest something I think on the PS2 that had this sort of theme. It's in a fantasypunk/modern sort of world where most people are rigidly ordered members of this underground society with a name and number which is determined at birth. This number determines their overall and eventual status in society.

Now, imagine endless tunnels filled with monsters, secret laboritories, small isolated and desperate underground towns fighting against the hordes of the Deep. Theres a group of Scouts or something that go around hunting monsters and what not for whatever reason - but of course the government is evil.

It was cool. The endless monster battles had me bored pretty quick though. I always wanted to set a game in a world like that - a few small towns linked by safe passages, patrolled by scouts and slowly dying because of the fact no-one knows how to fix the air ventilators or what not. And those things are often far underground or far away.

 

[pogre]

Slightly off-topic, but when I first started playing D&D most campaigns around here had one dungeon. You only came up for rations, depositing loot, and replacing torch bearers.

 

[Turjan]

There was a console game - Dragon Quest something I think on the PS2 that had this sort of theme.

Speaking of videogames, there's also Arx Fatalis. Some evil caused the sun to never rise again, and humans, goblins, trolls and ratmen retreated to an old dwarven mine complex, where you can now find underground cities, etc. It was not a bad game, though the setting is a bit small for a tabletop RPG.

 

[Glyfair]

Didn't Philip Jose Farmer write a series with this theme? I think I picked up the first book, but I don't think I ever actually read more than a couple of chapters (misplaced it for a few months, and never got back to it).

 

[Infernal Teddy]

The idea sounds... intriquing.. *Scurrys of to find graph paper..*

 

[Aeric]

There was a console game - Dragon Quest something I think on the PS2 that had this sort of theme. It's in a fantasypunk/modern sort of world where most people are rigidly ordered members of this underground society with a name and number which is determined at birth. This number determines their overall and eventual status in society.

Now, imagine endless tunnels filled with monsters, secret laboritories, small isolated and desperate underground towns fighting against the hordes of the Deep. Theres a group of Scouts or something that go around hunting monsters and what not for whatever reason - but of course the government is evil.

It was cool. The endless monster battles had me bored pretty quick though. I always wanted to set a game in a world like that - a few small towns linked by safe passages, patrolled by scouts and slowly dying because of the fact no-one knows how to fix the air ventilators or what not. And those things are often far underground or far away.

The game you're thinking of is Breath of Fire IV(?): Dragon Quarter, and I was going to mention it myself. I loved that game, and always thought that it would make for a great premise for a campaign. A society that moved underground due to some catastrophe in the ancient past, and the heroes who dare to journey to the surface to discover that *gasp* the planet has long since repaired itself. Along the way, they must battle various monsters and subterranean hazards, as well as the government who wants to keep this fact a secret to maintain their control over the society.

 

[genshou]

It's more like the Underdark than an actual dungeon, but in the shareware Exile video game trilogy by Spiderweb Software, miscreants from an aboveground empire are sent through a one-way portal into a massive underground cave complex akin to the Underdark, with no known escape to the surface anywhere. You could probably glean ideas from it, if nothing else.

 

[Dog Moon]

The closest that I came to [ignoring the WLD] was a very small island with a small town and the main parts of everything occurred in the dungeon I was slowly mapping. Only got to the third level before the campaign ended.