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ULTIMATE DUNGEON
Apr. 17th, 2014 11:41 amPremise
You, brave heroes, have been transported across space and time by a mysterious entity known only as The Dungeon Master in order to SAVE THE UNIVERSE by conquering The Ultimate Dungeon! Use courage and cunning to overcome the deadly obstacles within and reach the ending alive!
Or at least, that's what The Dungeon Master says. There are a number of things wrong with that explanation.
The Dungeon Master, in reality, is a powerful yet whimsical entity that, having grown stupendously bored and lonely, designed (mostly by stealing from more famous dungeon architects) a mighty dungeon for heroes to challenge, then told them that the fate of the universe depended on it. He's not a very good liar, but he has the power to keep you here until the dungeon has been cleared, so why not have fun with it?
Also, the deadliness of The Ultimate Dungeon may have been slightly exaggerated. It's heavily pixelated, like walking into an 8-bit video game, and nothing in it is really all that much more than mildly painful. This raises a lot of questions like "how do pixelated skeletons with 2 frames of animation interact with actual 3D people and objects in any way that makes an ounce of sense" that I vigorously encourage you not to think too hard about.
ULTIMATE DUNGEON is a PSL about dungeon crawling, slapstick violence, and homages to both retro video games and retro tabletop RPGs.
Mechanics
While inside The Ultimate Dungeon, all characters have a Character Sheet that they can pull up at any time, looking something like this. Visible fields are Level, Race, Class, HP, AC, THAC0, Move, Strength, Constitution, Dexterity, Intelligence, Wisdom, Charisma, EXP and Gold. All characters start at level 1 (2,000 EXP to level 2), with 100 Gold. The rest vary by person, with the Strength/Charisma/etc all in the range of 3 to 18. Race and Class are interpreted and assigned by The Dungeon Master (although OOCly you can choose something yourself if you want).
Here's the big secret: None of these numbers actually mean anything. If Character A has a Strength of 11 and Character B has a strength of 15, that has no bearing on which one of them could win in an arm wrestling contest. They are The Dungeon Master's crude and pointless attempt to enumerate your abilities, and he probably got some of them wrong. Here is all that is set in stone, with everything else being vague, meaningless filler:
Format
ULTIMATE DUNGEON would be played out through a combination of DW posts/threads and IRC logs. If I'm feeling whimsical, I might even occasionally roll a d20 to see what happens. I'm looking for 4 to 6 characters, OC and canon both legit.
There is no reason to keep this to a strict linear narrative. A post or an IRC log could always just be "this is another part of the dungeon we found". If we get tired of it at any point, we can just declare the next floor to be the final floor, and round out the dungeon crawl.
You, brave heroes, have been transported across space and time by a mysterious entity known only as The Dungeon Master in order to SAVE THE UNIVERSE by conquering The Ultimate Dungeon! Use courage and cunning to overcome the deadly obstacles within and reach the ending alive!
Or at least, that's what The Dungeon Master says. There are a number of things wrong with that explanation.
The Dungeon Master, in reality, is a powerful yet whimsical entity that, having grown stupendously bored and lonely, designed (mostly by stealing from more famous dungeon architects) a mighty dungeon for heroes to challenge, then told them that the fate of the universe depended on it. He's not a very good liar, but he has the power to keep you here until the dungeon has been cleared, so why not have fun with it?
Also, the deadliness of The Ultimate Dungeon may have been slightly exaggerated. It's heavily pixelated, like walking into an 8-bit video game, and nothing in it is really all that much more than mildly painful. This raises a lot of questions like "how do pixelated skeletons with 2 frames of animation interact with actual 3D people and objects in any way that makes an ounce of sense" that I vigorously encourage you not to think too hard about.
ULTIMATE DUNGEON is a PSL about dungeon crawling, slapstick violence, and homages to both retro video games and retro tabletop RPGs.
Mechanics
While inside The Ultimate Dungeon, all characters have a Character Sheet that they can pull up at any time, looking something like this. Visible fields are Level, Race, Class, HP, AC, THAC0, Move, Strength, Constitution, Dexterity, Intelligence, Wisdom, Charisma, EXP and Gold. All characters start at level 1 (2,000 EXP to level 2), with 100 Gold. The rest vary by person, with the Strength/Charisma/etc all in the range of 3 to 18. Race and Class are interpreted and assigned by The Dungeon Master (although OOCly you can choose something yourself if you want).
Here's the big secret: None of these numbers actually mean anything. If Character A has a Strength of 11 and Character B has a strength of 15, that has no bearing on which one of them could win in an arm wrestling contest. They are The Dungeon Master's crude and pointless attempt to enumerate your abilities, and he probably got some of them wrong. Here is all that is set in stone, with everything else being vague, meaningless filler:
- Your HP total is reduced when you are hit by traps or monsters. If it reaches 0, you don't die, but The Dungeon Master declares you slain and transports you into a chamber from which you can watch the action but can no longer aid your allies (although if you shout, you can still hear each other). If you find a Checkpoint in the dungeon, then any slain allies can be restored.
- As you overcome traps and monsters and find treasure, you are awarded Experience Points. If you get enough, your level increases. This mostly does nothing.
- As you discover hidden treasure, you are awarded big, blocky gold coins that look something like this. Despite their clunky appearance, they take up no actual room once you've picked them up, so thousands can be carried at once. Periodically,
vending machinesDungeon Shops can be found, where people can trade in gold coins for useful items, some of which may grant special powers or skills. Magic items may have a level requirement to use.
Format
ULTIMATE DUNGEON would be played out through a combination of DW posts/threads and IRC logs. If I'm feeling whimsical, I might even occasionally roll a d20 to see what happens. I'm looking for 4 to 6 characters, OC and canon both legit.
There is no reason to keep this to a strict linear narrative. A post or an IRC log could always just be "this is another part of the dungeon we found". If we get tired of it at any point, we can just declare the next floor to be the final floor, and round out the dungeon crawl.
