I'm creating a big (6-8 level) dungeon as the centrepiece to an upcoming campaign, and I'm considering locating it under a ruined city that has recently become re-occupied by pillagers, outlaws, and other unsavoury types. So I've been looking around for other examples of this dungeon location. And I don't mean a few buildings over the dungeon location (like the Dark Tower), but a living city.
I remember some of the earliest issues of the Strategic Review and Dragon magazine talked about building castles or cities above your dungeon, as a way to broaden the game and give access to merchants, guilds, etc. And yet it seems that model quickly fell to the wayside. Yes, we have have couple prominent examples - Castle Greyhawk and Undermountain come to mind. I'm having trouble coming up with others, though.
Can anyone else name some examples? And if anyone has run campaigns centred on big dungeons under cities, can they share their experiences - good and bad?
Big Rubble (Gloranthan runequest) is more or less like this. There is no equivalent of the multi-level megadungeon in any version of Runequest I've encountered, but the notion of a ruined city as your big, open-plan first level, with other stuff underneath is definitely what this place is about. I really like it.
I'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
?
Quote from: Haffrung;875377Need to justify why dungeon isn't looted yet.
Create a loose history of how it came to be and what happens to it and then set the campaign at the point in time when it would make sense that it would still have treasure to be looted.
I am not too familiar with traditional D&D dungeons, but the Catacombs underneath Paris are a great starting point for inspiration. They're vast, confusing and most has been left untouched (even by urban spelunkers). Google the Crypt of the Sepulchral Lamp for a good example of creepy underground ossuarial chambers. There are also a lot of great articles and maps online you could crib.
The movie As Above, So Below is a great reference point to see how to use under-city tunnels as a focus for claustrophobia, environmental hazards and spooktacular challenges.
Haffrung, that's the premise of the Tunnels and Trolls solo adventure called Naked Doom.
The blurb:
"They caught you ... and now you must go on a forced march through the Royal Khazan Gauntlet of Criminal Retribution and Rehabilitation.
Khazan does not believe in coddling criminals, and now you must run the Royal Khazan Gauntlet of Criminal Retribution and Rehabilitation. You are taken into the catacombs, beneath the Khazan Courthouse, and stripped of all clothing, jewelry, weapons, amulets, and other devices. If you can make your way through the series of tunnels and caves that lie ahead, you will escape with your life - and if you're lucky, treasure! For a warrior, levels 1-2."
The link: http://www.tunnelsandtrolls.com/soloadventures/le_depouillement_dernier.shtml
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
?
A couple of years back I ran a post apocalypse game with dungeons under the main city.
The upper levels were mostly looted and filled up with monsters over time, so the city guard basically kept things locked up -- and periodically went in "in force" to clear things out.
The catacombs were also used by theives and secret societies and people who wanted to move around without being noticed... and there were accesses to otherwise secure buildings.
I used a random dungeon generator to create a truly enormous map.
It wasn't the main dungeon the PCs were interested in (they went in a couple of times), but it worked well as background color.
Cheers,
-E.
City State of the Invincible Overlord has a dungeon under it... several dungeons IIRC. Accretions of ruins left by former inhabitants, factional delving, smugglers and invaders.
The old Judges Guild City-State of the Invincible Overlord had a slightly obscure product associated with it called "Wraith Overlord." It was the sewers and dungeons below the CSIO and might be similar to what you are looking to find, since characters could move freely between the city proper and the underground regions.
From literature I'm pretty sure both Conan and John Carter explored various ruined tunnels and "the pits" below cities, although in "Red Nais' Conan explores something like this which is above ground. Ged of Earthsea has some adventures in some tunnels much the same. Not sure if any of this helps you much, but it might provide some inspiration.
EDIT: Simlasa scooped me on the CSIO reference.
Middenheim in WFRP is built on a plateau with an abandoned Dwarven city honeycombing it. Back in 1st Edition it was described in general terms in Warhammer City, the Middenheim sourcebook. There was no detailed map or anything. The city of Middenheim itself was very well detailed. One of my favorite RPG settings at the time, so it is no surprise that GW destroyed it for 2nd Edition.
I second looking at the catacombs of Paris. Probably lots you could with that.
Neil Gaiman's book Neverwhere is mostly about an underground civilization beneath London. Even has magic in it.
Similarly you could go the route of the TV show Beauty and the Beast and have a communal group living in the tunnels beneath New York City as inspiration.
The AD&D module I1: Dwellers of the Forbidden City had a great map of a ruined city and ideas of what lurks beneath.
I remember when Top Secret first came out it had an introductory adventure called something like Sprechenhaltestal which featured a section of a city and all the underground dens of sin beneath it. Might be worth a look.
I used to have Wraith Overlord - another one I had forgotten.
I also have the Middenheim book, but I haven't looked at the section on the dwarf undervaults closely.
My premise is that the ruins are located on the far side of an ancient and huge wall separating the civilized world from the Elder Wilds, and explorers and exiles from the civilized side have only recently ventured beyond the wall. The ruined city will be a kind of frontier town for treasure-seekers, looters, and bandits.
I suppose the trick will be establishing some sort of equilibrium so the rival treasure-seekers aren't so strong or numerous that they simply overwhelm the dungeon, or strip any successful party of all their treasure. I'm thinking perhaps some petty lord exerts enough power that delves must be authorized, and are auctioned off (or drawn by lots) to keep numbers down.
If the dungeon is organized in the traditional way with increasing danger and treasure as you get deeper, one would wonder why the easy levels haven't been thoroughly looted by higher level treasure hunters. But that seems a question to ask of every such dungeon, whether it's under a city or not.
The city won't be there long if monsters constantly crawl out to prey upon the inhabitants. Presumably the city militia has sealed most entries and responds to new ones appearing; delving opportunities involve opening up a new unplundered area that isn't too dangerous, or getting official sanction (or breaking in) to go into more dangerous sealed areas.
I didn't see any mention of it in the thread; wasn't Blackmoor an example of this?
Earthdawn 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.
I usually have some sort of above ground structure with the "dungeon" underneath.
That could be a castle with a real dungeon complex. Or it could be a bunker or earthwork over an underground base. An trade outpost over mines. A graveyard over tombs. Standing stones over caverns. and so on.
In a city the "dungeon" could be accessways like the romans had for moving personell. They could be secret passages made and used by thieves guilds or wererats, They could be the end of tunnelling up from below. Sepulchers under the graveyard. and so on.
As for why they havent been looted. Could be they were sealed off long ago and forgotten. Could be someone has been working to keep them a secret. Cuould be the upper levels have been looted. But deeper down is a different story. Could be that the section was only recently discovered by digging. and so on.
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:
(http://www.oocities.org/earthdawnonline/parlainth.jpg)
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.
Yah, the complexity of the 1st/2nd/3rd editions of Earthdawn did tend to burn people out.
I really like the way they've streamlined the system for 4th edition. It has removed a bunch of "table-lookups" from handling any individual dice roll, and all "X happens at Y success level" powers have been standardized to the new success level mechanic (basically, you get an additional success level for every +5 scored over the target number, and no longer have to remember what different "success level names" meant for different target numbers).
They really have gone to a "Standardized Mechanic" for all the dice-rolls and it's recommended that you only change Steps if something major happens - all temporary modifiers can be applied to the Result of the roll with no real statistical problems, and they re-worked the secondary stats like the Defenses to make more intuitive sense (now: Physical/Mystic/Social).
Getting back to the thread topic, ED also had an adventure supplement for Parlainth called Parlainth Adventures by Robin D. Laws. I played through part of one of those arcs as a player, and it was very interesting to see the contrast of "Haven" (the small town carved out of one corner of the broken city wall) and the corrupted neighborhoods, like the Twists where the streets actually re-arrange themselves from week to week.