Inspired by the ever-relevant Philotomy's Musings
"Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster... for when you gaze long into the abyss. The abyss gazes also into you.” ― Friedrich W. Nietzsche
I've been working for over a year now on my own fantasy heartbreaker TTRPG. Your condolences are much appreciated. It's been a great way to interrogate what I love about various editions of D&D and more importantly, what makes my friends groan when I begin to rant about them. Team initiative is in, tracking ammo is fun but needs abstracted and acquiring wealth and treasure beyond your wildest imaginings is the truest spirit of the game.
But today, after a short few days to recharge, it led me to look at dungeons as characters. This is nothing new or substantive, there have always been themed dungeons, full of character. But this heartbreaker will (hopefully) sell them as not merely full of, but actually as characters.
The central theme of this heartbreaker is that you're playing jerks with hearts of gold. Knaves, buffoons, thugs, brutes and most importantly bastards. People who are the result of abandonment, misuse and abuse, trying in their own way to make it in the medieval world. In many ways, the typical dungeon has experienced the exact same thing. How many dungeons take place in desecrated temples, defiled crypts and forgotten homes. They are left to crumble, decay and are taken over by typically awful, evil or similarly misbegotten creatures. If you believe a house can be alive, that a place can have a spirit, why cannot it too be traumatized.
Philotomy's Musings surmised that the many odd rules of early dungeon exploration were due to it being part of a mythic underworld, one where laws of reality are twisted, inverted or otherwise different. Doors that close on their own, barring PC passage but allowing easy monster egress. Monsters losing their ability to see in the dark when they ally with the players is a funny referee adjudication with even more fascinating implication.
Patrick Stuart's Veins of the Earth describes The Rapture, a malevolent force that's part of the caves deep below the earth as much as its a part of the overworlder psyche and biology. One that that twists up the people it attacks in darkness.
Inspired by these ideas I propose that dungeons are psychological spaces as much as they are mythic and physical spaces.
One of the elements of the heartbreaker are what I call retroactive backstories. To speed up character creation, you're encouraged to create a character on the fly without a substantial backstory. As the game progresses certain (usually violent) triggers will ask you roll on a memory table that informs your backstory. The first time you drop to 0 HP reminds your character about a tragic event from childhood or adulthood as an example of trigger and result. I think dungeons could fill a similar purpose, presenting psychological elements from the character as twisted truths for them to respond to. And of course, to attack or run away from. Like something out of Stephen King's The Shining, the dungeon knows your thoughts and fears or comes to know them as you adventure within and weaponizes them against you.
For example, as part of a wandering monster table, remove some of the results and replace them with "Psychological Enemy". Whether randomly or otherwise, determine who the dungeon is preying on. Perhaps it uses a potent phobia of the PC, spiders made giant or corpses now animate. Maybe instead the ghost of a PC's parent forcing them to live a horrid memory before attacking the party or disappearing. Feelings related to the dungeon's abandonment and anger could be felt as physical forces in rooms: potent starvation, fatigue, withdrawal or infighting. Whatever relates to the dungeon's history. Traps too could be manifestations of the dungeons twisted psyche; malevolent pit traps designed to cause suffering or doors that fly open to reveal monsters. In essence the dungeon is haunted.
Two potential flavors (I won't say issues) are fixed here. First, if you're worried about naturalism (how the hell did this dragon get down here and where does it shit) worry not. It's a manifestation of the party's greed, of all the greed that led to the downfall of the temple, that caused it to be here, waiting. Perhaps the monsters aren't real at all, and the dungeon pulls them from stories in our head.
Second, traps resetting could be dungeon spirits, manifestations of the dungeon preparing them again or else simply the dungeon doing it itself. It's not a real space, it's a mythic one. A reflection of twisted psyches. An entity as greedy as you that hoards its treasures and resents you taking them away.
Joseph Campbell in his Hero with a Thousand Faces cites the Abyss or Atonement with the Father as one of the integral steps within the Hero's Journey. The hero enters into the worst part of their journey, where they must transcend their previous life in the face of their greatest adversity.
"The problem of the hero going to meet the father is to open his soul beyond terror to such a degree that he will be ripe to understand how the sickening and insane tragedies of this vast and ruthless cosmos are completely validated in the majesty of Being. The hero transcends life with its peculiar blind spot and for a moment rises to a glimpse of the source. They behold the face of the father, understand — and the two are atoned."
Pop culturally recall Luke Skywalker heading into the cave on Dagobah to fight dream Darth Vader and reveal horrible truths to him. That is the essence of what I'm talking about.
For your trouble, some tables to roll upon
The Trauma/Memory Table
The heartbreaker uses an Odd-like HP/STR system. The d20 you roll to stay conscious at 0 HP correlates to the tables below. With a success, you gain a Trauma, an awful physical or mental wound among other things. On a failure gain a harsh Memory or mental disposition. I'll balance it better later for varying Constitutions.
Trauma
20. Yikes, that hit actually killed you.
19-15. Dismembered. The limb struck (determined by 1d6) is severed. If head, lose eyes, ears or nose.
14-10. Mortal Wound. Limb is savaged.
9-7. Grievous Wound. Limb is crippled.
6-5. Pain. Your HP will always be one shy of full.
4. Phobia. You fear the foes or its type (spiders, giants, magicians with weird mustaches)
3. Vengeance. Gain +1 damage/defense against foe or its type (spiders, giants, goblins with funny voices)
2. Grudge. Gain +2 defense against foe or its type (spiders, giants, insurance salesmen). +1d6 HP if you resolve to never use the weapon or armor worn by the foe.
1. Perspective. Your life flashes before your eyes. Gain a new perspective, a personal rule about the world.
Memory
Fill out your own table appropriate bad memories and put them here. Here are some vague, evocative ones from my table. Just subtract 10 from the d20 roll if you get over 10 to have one less roll.
- Bruises. Just empty words. Scars. Now those are promises.
- "So much potential and yet still you fail."
- "I raised you better than this." But you didn't.
- "Dinner was nicer when you worked through it."
- "The things you think they say about you are true."
- Through tears I heard "Such a DISAPPOINTMENT"
- "Try this. It will make you feel better." It did.
- "Worthless."
- "If you loved me…" The rest was a blur because I did.
- I didn’t mean to do it. To hit them so hard. To run. It just happened.
Here is 1d6 random encounter table for your dungeon to abuse your players with. Tweak it to match the energy of the dungeon. You could also take an existing Wandering Monster Table and replace results you don't like with some of these.
1 | Encounter, Denizen of Dungeon |
2 | Encounter, Phobia pulled from the bastard’s mind |
3 | Encounter, Trauma. Player rolls on the memory table. Dungeon twists it if necessary. |
4 | Encounter, Ghost. A simulacra of someone who died in Dungeon |
5 | Ennui, a great cloying feeling gnaws at the interlopers |
6 | Encounter, a monster of yore pulled from the bastards’ minds |
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