I'll third CSIO.  Every faction had a basement level, linked to all the others, underground.  While everyone was cordial and peaceable topside, underground turf wars and vicious raids were a constant.

On Tekumel, This is pretty much standard.  All the cities are ancient (in the order of thousands and tens of thousands of years), and built on tels.  Owners are reluctant to just abandon older spots, so you have something like inverse skyscrapers, as the city builds up (literally), and a dozen levels of underground city, sometimes still connected with contemporary levels, sometimes not.  And only the Gods knew what strange secrets were buried in the lowest basements.

Gamelords' The Free City of Haven had something of the sort underneath the po' part of town, called the "Forgotten City," which were the built-over ruins of the earliest iteration of the city.

Quote from: Haffrung;875377I'd forgotten about Big Rubble (I used to have the Pavis/Big Rubble book). Yes, that's very close to what I'm looking at - a functioning city with a large, ruined section, and dungeons underneath.

Pros:

Makes for some roleplaying opportunities - delvers guilds, permits to enter the ruins (bribery), patrons for retrieving artifacts, rival factions, etc.

Lots of interesting and plausible geographical features - sewers under city, secret connections between city buildings (palaces, dungeons, crypts) and under-dungeon, rubble inhabited by monsters and outlaws, etc.

Don't have to worry about overland travel if you're not interested in that.

Cons:

Need to justify why dungeon isn't looted yet.

No overland travel, if you enjoy that.

Could be a pain to map a dungeon at such a scale

?

I recently started a project mapping all of the rubble in detail, down to a 10 meters per square level (with spots in greater detail). It might sound horrendous but actually isn't that bad. The whole thing is ~8x6 km = 800x600 squares = roughly 20x20 sheets of graph paper. Not the sort of thing you can knock out in an afternoon, but you'd be surprised how far you can get if you've been at this game for a while. The base map is already complete at a level of detail ~100 m per square, and there are detailed location maps for several places (Balastor's barracks, etc.). I've accumulated a couple dozen pages of maps I've made over the years for other sites in the Rubble. And a fair slice of area can be knocked out quickly. It is definitely doable if you are the sort of person who sticks with campaign settings for a long time.

I don't know if it's the kind of thing you're looking for, but maybe Ptolus has something you can use.

Quote from: Crawford Tillinghast;875454On Tekumel, This is pretty much standard.  All the cities are ancient (in the order of thousands and tens of thousands of years), and built on tels.  Owners are reluctant to just abandon older spots, so you have something like inverse skyscrapers, as the city builds up (literally), and a dozen levels of underground city, sometimes still connected with contemporary levels, sometimes not.

Are there modules/write-ups available on any of those? Something I'd be curious to read.

Quote from: Crawford Tillinghast;875454On Tekumel, This is pretty much standard.  All the cities are ancient (in the order of thousands and tens of thousands of years), and built on tels.  Owners are reluctant to just abandon older spots, so you have something like inverse skyscrapers, as the city builds up (literally), and a dozen levels of underground city, sometimes still connected with contemporary levels, sometimes not.  And only the Gods knew what strange secrets were buried in the lowest basements.

In addition to the natural gradual build-up, it's also traditional in Tekumel to raze cities every couple centuries and rebuild them, although important sites tend to be passed over, so you end up with modern-day temples whose priests go to an ancient underworld temple for certain ceremonies.

Quote from: Simlasa;875482Are there modules/write-ups available on any of those? Something I'd be curious to read.

Try asking in the Questioning Chirine thread.  Or maybe he'll notice the question here.  Either way, if anyone would know, it's him.

I've seen a photo or two in which a map of the Jakalla underworld is partially visible, but I don't know offhand of any Tekumel underworld maps ever being published officially.  I believe the Tekumel Foundation has said that they're in the process of cleaning up the Jakalla underworld map to get it into a state suitable for publication, but haven't seen anything resembling an ETA for when that might happen.

Quote from: Simlasa;875482Are there modules/write-ups available on any of those? Something I'd be curious to read.

I have never heard of EPT having modules. But I believe one of the "Adventures in Tekumel" solo books had you delving into some. Been ages since played so could be wrong.

Quote from: nDervish;875516In addition to the natural gradual build-up, it's also traditional in Tekumel to raze cities every couple centuries and rebuild them, although important sites tend to be passed over, so you end up with modern-day temples whose priests go to an ancient underworld temple for certain ceremonies.



Try asking in the Questioning Chirine thread.  Or maybe he'll notice the question here.  Either way, if anyone would know, it's him.

I've seen a photo or two in which a map of the Jakalla underworld is partially visible, but I don't know offhand of any Tekumel underworld maps ever being published officially.  I believe the Tekumel Foundation has said that they're in the process of cleaning up the Jakalla underworld map to get it into a state suitable for publication, but haven't seen anything resembling an ETA for when that might happen.

The only published 'dungeon' was "Tomb Complex of Nereshanbo", by Mark Pettigrew, that I published while at Adventure Games.

The Jakalla Underworld 'set' that Phil had consists of his massive maps and the key to them, but this does play quite well - I ran this at Gary Con, last March. I have the entire set in digital format, as well as in print format; my lovely Missus was in the process of cleaning up both the maps and the key for publication - this is when I was working for the Foundation - but had the project taken away from her so the Foundation could give it to somebody who was well-connected in the OSR. As with anything being doing 'by the Fopundation', the project has been 'farmed out' to somebody in Canada.  No idea when they'll actually get the thing out - they've been saying 'real soon now' for a number of years.

Quote from: Omega;875532I have never heard of EPT having modules.

Judges Guild had at least one, The Nightmare Maze of Jigresh. But I don't think it has the sort of dungeon Crawford Tillinghast mentioned.

Quote from: Simlasa;875442Earthdawn has Parlainth/Haven... reminiscent of Big Rubble/Pavis. Parlainth is a huge city that fell during Earthdawn's apocalyptic 'scourge' and Haven is the town that has grown up around the business of exploring and looting it. There are above ground portions as well as layers underneath. Some very powerful/scary characters visit there or make their homes nearby.

Sounds very much like what I'm trying to create. I may have to track down a PDF.

Again, the problem is I was hoping to build a conventional 6-8 level dungeon with one sheet of graph paper per level. Something a little bigger than say Caverns of Thracia or the Tomb of Abysthor.

Quote from: Majus;875471I don't know if it's the kind of thing you're looking for, but maybe Ptolus has something you can use.

I'd have forgotten Ptolus has a big dungeon (or dungeons) beneath. Getting the book is out of the question, but maybe I can dig up some summaries for inspiration.

Quote from: chirine ba kal;875553The only published 'dungeon' was "Tomb Complex of Nereshanbo", by Mark Pettigrew, that I published while at Adventure Games.

Hey, I ran that dungeon back on the day. It was a lot of fun.

Parlainth is a great setting to see how a City turns into a Dungeon (with all the "old forgotten layers" accessible under various neighborhoods).

Here is the "player map" from the box set:

Nice, I'd never seen that map before.
I'd really like to play Earthdawn again and see it from the perspective of a different GM/group.

Earthdawn had a great premise, and some very good ideas for mechanics. What ruined it for me was:

A) The sheer complexity of the rules. Just way too many sub-systems and discrete mechanical features.

B) The setting material was inspired, but at way too high a level to be useful at the table. When I read about a serpent-man city, I don't need a 16 page history of the city and 11 pages describing the competing royal houses, and 2-page fluff profiles of the queen and her consort. I need maps, encounters, adventure hooks, and the kinds of NPCs you're actually going to run into on the ground.

Quote from: Haffrung;875714B) The setting material was inspired, but at way too high a level to be useful at the table. When I read about a serpent-man city, I don't need a 16 page history of the city and 11 pages describing the competing royal houses, and 2-page fluff profiles of the queen and her consort. I need maps, encounters, adventure hooks, and the kinds of NPCs you're actually going to run into on the ground.

You wonder at what point game material stopped being written for at table use and more for reading?

Quote from: Haffrung;875714Earthdawn had a great premise, and some very good ideas for mechanics. What ruined it for me was:

A) The sheer complexity of the rules. Just way too many sub-systems and discrete mechanical features.

When D&D 3.0 first came out the first thing I did was pull out my Earthdawn setting stuff and restarted my old Earthdawn campaign with the new rule-set. It totally worked because of how easy it was to have non-standard character races.