Rolling like it's 1974

I’m excitedly running an OD&D dungeon crawl, a game that takes place almost entirely within the confines (both fictional and mechanical) of the underworld as defined in The Underworld and Wilderness Adventures.

This game is intended to be easy to pick up and put down supplement to my “main” campaigns. Guided by the charts for monsters encountered by dungeon level, the random dungeon room content guidelines, and a simple setting, this underworld is created as needed. A reality generated by random numbers, ready to be explored at a moment’s notice.

The fiction is that the player’s characters are prisoners of the God-emperor Adia, and are tossed into a magical underworld as sacrifice to Adia’s patron, Nyarlathotep. The underworld is called The Interzone by those deranged inhabitants who have survived. The characters wake up with no memories and no equipment. They chose a class and roll initiative.

Not having a back story will encourage the players to define characters through play, as influenced by the dice.  The stories will be made collaboratively at the table.  Absent or dead characters are magically teleported away by the keepers of The Interzone, and new characters are dropped into play immediately.  

The characters each have a sigil on their foreheads reflecting their experience level. These sigils are the key to lower dungeon levels, and will eventually be the key to escaping the dungeon at 9th level when lands may be claimed and wilderness play begins.

Adia uses the The Gharban as keepers of The Interzone. The secret wizards observe the actions of the characters and expect the characters to deliver treasure to them for which they award XP. They also absorb the XP and possessions of those who die in The Interzone, awarding a fraction of the XP for a new character and for use in other campaigns.

This is a very different sort of D&D. It is much more of a “game” than the free form action / reaction role playing of our other campaigns. This is D&D in the “Fantastic Medieval Wargame” sense. I’ve even considered encouraging competition between the players, but I suspect their ethos of teamwork will be hard to overcome. I’m afraid it will be difficult for some of the players to adapt to the game, but damn if I’m not having a blast! Hopefully the spirit of the endeavor will sink in, and the players will create truly heroic personas in play.  With skill and some luck from the dice they may face the impossible and either die, or become gods!