Norton GloverRPGaDAY2025 - Day 8 - Explore
https://polyhedralnonsense.com/2025/08/08/rpgaday2025-day-8-explore/
#BlackHack, #Fantasy, #OSR, #RPG, #RPGaDAY2025, #Ttrpg, #Undergloom
Polyhedral NonsenseRPGaDAY2025 – Day 8 – Explore
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Day 8 – Explore
For an occasional Black Hack game, I use a little homebrew setting called the Undergloom. It’s essentially the Underdark – a vast underground network of caverns and tunnels extending deep beneath the surface of the earth. It’s full of fantastic underground empires and creatures.
My Undergloom setting is a little more trade-related that the Underdark stuff. In the one-shots I’ve run, the players are members of the Lithospheric League, a loose trading collective.
Normally in the games I’ve run, the players are protecting (or avenging) trade caravans under some kind of threat, but I’ve been thinking about an exploration-based campaign.
Lewis and Clark in the Underworld
I’ve always wanted to run a trailblazing Undergloom campaign.
The idea is that players are members of the Lithospheric League, trying to find new routes through the underworld for trade purposes. If they succeed, they get a hefty bonus, and possibly a tiny cut of the trade profits.
They’re not trying to kill a wizard, slay a dragon, or topple a dark lord. They’re not trying to steal a treasure hoard, they’re trying to earn one.
The incentives for this game would be somewhat different that an standard dungeon crawl. If they come across a colony of troglodytes, it doesn’t have to be a fight – they could avoid them, negotiate, or even cut them in on the action.
They wouldn’t necessarily be looking for place with the most monsters or treasure, they’d be more interested in finding a path a caravan could follow. In fact, piles of treasure would really just be a burden slowing them down.
I’d probably have to adjust how experience is rewarded. Instead of rewarding finding gold or slaying monsters, I’d probably give them points for the following:
- Every mile of new navigable tunnel explored
- Establishing trade relations with a new community
- Making a reliable map of a new route
- Shortening existing trade routes
- Getting rid of any navigation hazards – dangerous underground beasts, crumbling tunnels, etc.
- Finding a new resource to trade
No actual rules for any of this yet, but I’ll eventually get around to it.
#BlackHack #Fantasy #OSR #RPG #RPGaDAY2025 #ttrpg #Undergloom