The Dungeon That Always Was...

[Slife]

Hmm. Interesting idea. Sort of like a combination of the High House novel series and the Cavestory PC game.

I did something similar, although unintentionally, with the random dungeon generator in the back of the DM's guide.

 

[MoxieFu]

Hmm...

Metamorphosis Alpha anyone?

 

[hong]

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.

Hell, some people still play that way. Only now we don't worry about torches (continual flame).

 

[Matchstick]

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.

Eric Van Lustbader had a book like that, people that had retreated into a massive underground complex in the distant past due to some sort of catastrophe. It was an interesting setting. It was the first book in a trilogy if I remember correctly, it was called "The Sunset Warrior". It might provide ideas for such a setting.

 

[Abe.ebA]

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).

Sort of. He had a series entitled The Dungeon but it wasn't exactly about a dungeon world. I've only read the middle books, never the first two or last two, but the concept seemed to be that The Dungeon was a big game between two master races (the Ren and the Chaffri, I believe) and conducted on multiple worlds or in vast spaces within a planetoid that simulated entire worlds closely enough as not to matter. Each 'level' of the dungeon was a world unto itself with an exit hidden somewhere. I think the initial level(s) were actually dungeon-ish before he branched out. One was a jungle world with dinosaurs, another was mostly covered in water, another was an urban wasteland.

People got sucked into this dungeon at the whim of the Ren and Chaffri from all over time and space. Most of them were somehow related to the main hero of the story, Clive Folliet (his quartermaster from the Navy, his great-great-granddaughter, his brother) but there were others that were apparently unrelated. A dog-like alien guy and a teenage phillipino sailor from the 1600s being the ones I remember.

I ran a campaign once that was partially based on The Dungeon.


The other thing that comes to mind on the topic of indoor worlds that I'd like to run games in is Tad Williams' Otherland series. The whole thing could make for an interesting d20 Modern/Future campaign and I can't really describe it without giving away the whole secret plot but it's a great series and well worth a read (book 1 is City of Golden Shadow for anyone interested).

In any case, there's a world described in those books that's entirely contained in a house. The rooms are, mostly, vast (some have weather systems or streams running through them) and others are normal sized, but the whole place is one big house. If you find your way to the roof you can look out at a normal sky but a labrynth of gables, towers, turrets, and sloping roof surfaces stretches off to the horizon in every direction. People in the house have lived for generations and haven't ever found an exit. I've considered running a game in such a setting but I'm not really sure where I'd go with it beyond the novelty of the setting itself.

 

[Pbartender]

Sounds like the world of D'ni, from the Myst novels which were based on the popular computer game.

 

[Scribble]

Wasn't there some sort of space based RPG system that sort of had this concept too? People were on a spaceship that didn't realize they were on a space ship?

 

[Pbartender]

Don't know about RPGs, but there's plenty of sci-fi novellettes that went that way.

 

[Barak]

I don't own any FR source books for the 3.x edition, so unless it's changed, the underdark used to be a sort of naturally occuring giant cavern sort of thing...

The idea I was thinking about was a man (or monster) made complex. All worked stone (at least mostly.)

Sort of Underdark like, but with the added mythology of who built it, for what purpose, and why are there things living there...

That is pretty much the WLD. Sure, technically the PCs are meant to come from the outside, but that's easily changed, and everything else works like you said ( "man"-made complex, worked stone, questions as to who built it and why, and how whatever inhabits it got there).

 

[ColonelHardisson]

Wasn't there some sort of space based RPG system that sort of had this concept too? People were on a spaceship that didn't realize they were on a space ship?

Metamorphosis Alpha, which MoxieFu mentioned above. It predated even Gamma World, and is one of the earliest scifi RPGs. TSR revamped it with their Amazing Engine game - the book wasn't that great, but it had a cool poster map of the ship, which was obviously a kitbashed model (the engines were flashlight). You'll see the ship on the cover of the book, also. Then, Jim Ward - the original writer of MA, and also the guy who founded FFE, the publisher of Dungeon World, mentioned above! - actually revamped the game again in 2002, but it's substantially different from earlier versions.