One of my favourite roguelikes, ToME (now sadly transformed into something overly complicated, which seems the fate of all roguelikes in the end, and even more sadly shorn of its Tolkienism), used to have that kind of feature. In it, you could begin in the normal way as an adventurer in Bree about to explore Middle-Earth. Or you could begin as a "lost soul" in the Halls of Mandos - a spirit trying to make his way back to the real world again. This was a considerable challenge, because you began in the deepest part of the Halls of Mandos, home to the most powerful monsters in the game. Most characters starting as "lost souls" last about 2 minutes before being squished by some ancient wyrm of power or colour out of space. (Yes, ToME gleefully mixed Tolkien, Zelazny and Lovecraft, because fuck you, that's why.)
I imagine a D&D variant of this revolving around the Abyss, where the Abyss is some vast megadungeon which is at least in part procedurally generated - between sessions by the DM, most likely. The PCs have for some reason ended up on, say, the 3654th layer. Maybe they are dead souls of Chaotic Evil types; maybe they were kidnapped by Demons; maybe the Celestial Bureaucracy just made a clerical error. Whatever the reason, they're somewhere very dangerous and they need to get out.
Another idea: the PCs begin having accidentally wandered into the dream-space of an eternally slumbering crocodilian demigod and have to find some way back to the world of the waking - while surviving the contents of a crocodile's dreams.
A third: the PCs are victims of the Lady of Pain, who has whimsically spirited them off to one of her mazes. What else is there? Other prisoners. Billions of them, amassed over the many eons the Lady has ruled in the city. All eternally doomed to wandering a world of corridors and rooms that is literally endless.
I would like to call this method of play "The Dungeon Escape" and raise it at the next annual meeting of the OSR.
One dungeon I designed was the Traitor Pit- an excavated mine out in the desert that uncovered some old ruins, so the dwarves suspended a guard hut over it and lower those who have committed capital crimes into the bottom, trusting that the gods will guide the innocent to the surface.
ReplyDeleteThat's a pretty cool idea. I also like the notion of desert dwarves.
DeleteI always thought making dead charcters have to fight their way out of the afterlife was a potentially groovy idea, but outside a TPK I couldn't figure out how to work it with a regular gaming group.
ReplyDeleteMy inspirational model for this was Goku's having to run on the eternal serpent road to get out of being dead in Dragon Ball Z.
Other characters go to shrine of friendly cleric and are told they must go to hell to rescue their friend.
DeleteBurn this incense, chant this phrase and you will be next to them.
You have to get out on your own.
That's good.
DeleteI'll have to keep that card in my deck for future use. In fact, I think that would be my go-to replacement for resurrection spells the next time I get a campaign going. :)
Surviving the dreamworld(s) of a Crocodilian demigod sounds extremely cool...
ReplyDeleteI used to have a computer game called exile that started you out trapped as subjects in an underground empire that wanted to be free, it worked.
ReplyDeleteI think I vaguely remember having Exile on the Atari ST...
DeleteIn a more prosaic vein, I'm currently running a campaign where players are trapped in an enormous manor (i.e. they could reasonably never escape) which has been transformed into a goblin city. Having fun seeing themselves work their way into the ecology of the place. There are numerous rumors about ways to escape, almost all false. Was inspired by the endless library world in Tad Willams' Outland, although it's played more like Snowpiercer meets Labyrinth.
ReplyDeleteNice. Could also be like Borges' Library of Babel.
DeleteThis is pretty common in CRPGs, where it obviates the need to create and populate the outside world at all. See e.g. Legend of Grimrock.
ReplyDeleteIn TRPGs, however (is that the right initialism?), there seems to be more of a culture of player agency pre-game. You get to buy your equipment and so on during character creation, which implies a starting point in civilization. If you start a character in media res, players are likely to complain that "my guy never would have [done the thing that got him into the situation] without first [doing something else in civilization beforehand]!"
Or so I've heard.
Yes, I think that's one of the reasons there may be resistance to it. I prefer sandboxy player-agency type games but I've never been massively concerned with having a railroad-y explanation for why the PCs are where they are - and to be honest I've never had people complain about that in reality. Players are normally pretty good about buy-in at the start phase.
DeleteThats what the Comic BLAME! Is partly about. Also my Assistant Romanov is running a round called The 1000th Dungeon. We started in the Throneroom of the Demiurge and had to crawl back up....
ReplyDelete