Creative Director
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So, over the next couple of days, I'll be finishing off the writing and development for Into the Darklands. The book is mostly written, but there's still some stuff left to go in there. I'm trying to hit all of the deep underground tropes in there, not just drow and Lovecraft stuff and Journey to the Center of the Earth stuff and morlock stuff. I'm pretty sure that I've got most of the major bases covered, but as the time to turn it over to art for layout nears, I'm getting paranoid that I'm leaving something out.
SO! Is there anything that you think absolutely has to be in a book that talks about what's going on in the deep underground world in a fantasy setting? (Keep in mind that kuo-toa, mind flayers, and umber hulks are all closed content that we can't use...)
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In doubt, go for the ecology spot.
Flora (fungi, lichens, algae, primitive plants such as horsetails adapted to the rare underground light-rich spot), fauna (again, primitive arthropoda and stuff that evolution might have eliminated on the surface but that might survive in pocket areas underground, aberrations small and savage), a lot of geological features and hazards, a list of concepts for exotic locations and encounters.
In short everything that a GM might need for improvising a side trek or just a random encounter to boost the party XP or provide clues/equipment/etc.
Bottomless pit?
Underground waterfall that falls into nothingness?
Pale skinned humanoids?
j/k
Giant lodestone that immobilizes everyone with metal?
Poisonous gases from the deep-deep?
Hot babes in chainmail bikinis?
Gary Coleman?
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James - thanks for asking.
Here is what I would like to see:
1) Darkland atlas to give a general feel of the more common areas to explore. A fold out map would be great.
2) Secret tunnels/portals leading from one section of Golarion to the another.
3) A handful of new monsters that are unique to the Darklands
4) An overview of the major races in the Darklands (I suspect that you have that one covered)
5) All sorts of legends & rumors to build adventure hooks
6) Darkland magic items/equipment
7) History to include some of the more notable events that have happened in the Darklands.
8) Wandering monster charts
9) Sample tunnel maps
10) Art that shows off interesting locations in the Darklands, with the aim of inspiring adventure design. maybe ruined underground forts, or cities, or temples....etc...
maybe alternative class features....
for the peeps who'd like play using golarion rules only (just a few in the campaign setting)
maybe themed in a sort of dungeoneeringstyle
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Let's see... trying to leave out things you mention, so no DERO, K'n-Yan, or Tszulcha.
Morian dwarven delves that dug too deep and too greedily?
Passages to the Hollow Earth?
Caves the lead into the Underworld (as in Hell, Hades, or the Hopi First World)?
An Elaborate Underground Base? Can be superheroic or supervillanous.
Mole Men?
Call backs to the Greyhawk Star Cairns, and the "classic" adventures Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth, Tomb of the Lizard King, and Vault of the Drow?
Vast fungal grottoes with mushrooms the size of men, and an eerie phosphorescent glow?
Crystalline forests?
Rovagug's Prison?
Hidden Fairy Kingdoms, such as Domdaniel of the Arabian Nights, the Irish Sidhe (or fairy mounds), and lands of the Gummi Bears?
Actual rules for Spelunking?
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How the Darklands are influenced by the surface lands above them (or vice-versa). The most obvious example are the Drow being descendents of surface elves and the circumstances surrounding their migration to the Darklands a millenia ago, and their current threat to the surface world. How about other denizens of the Darklands and surface empires (current or ancient)? How are the Darklands beneath Osirion different than those beneath the Mwangi Expanse or the Linnorm Kingdoms?
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Fungus/mold/slime/ooze creatures and culture!!!
Lots of descriptive elements for helping the Darklands something more natural than a really big dungeon of 10' hallways. Nearly no terrain should be flat and stable. Cover everywhere! Lots of hard to see vents, chutes, crevices, chimneys, and the such (treat as secret doors).
(I just started reading Jeff Long's Deeper this weekend so I am pumped).
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Creative Director
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In doubt, go for the ecology spot.
Flora (fungi, lichens, algae, primitive plants such as horsetails adapted to the rare underground light-rich spot), fauna (again, primitive arthropoda and stuff that evolution might have eliminated on the surface but that might survive in pocket areas underground, aberrations small and savage), a lot of geological features and hazards, a list of concepts for exotic locations and encounters.
In short everything that a GM might need for improvising a side trek or just a random encounter to boost the party XP or provide clues/equipment/etc.
We'll have a fair amount of this, especially in the first chapter.
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Creative Director
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Wow. LOTS of great suggestions here! Keep 'em coming! Most of them are in the book (or are scheduled to be in there), but a few things I HAD forgotten about and I'll make sure to get them in there.
One thing the book WON'T have, though, are lots of maps. We'll have maps of where the major entrances and locations of the Darklands are, set against a light background of the Inner Sea region so you'll be able to see what nations have drow cities under them, for example, but we won't have detailed maps of all the tunnels, or even of sample tunnels or smaller locations. With Gen Con compressing our schedule... the addition of lots of map stuff to this book was one thing that we had to take a pass on. :(
That said... there'll be a LOT of Darkland type maps in Pathfinder over the next several months!
EDIT: Oh, and yeah. I'm a HUGE fan of both Descents: the book AND the movie. The crawlers from the movie are played by morlocks in the Darklands, and the hadals from the book are one of the inspirations for a new deep-subterranean race called the urdefans.
Replace kua-toa with another fish-like race that is closer in appearance to things from the deep deep ocean; black scales, big eyes, florescent dots, and teeth that are so big they don't seem reasonable.
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Creative Director
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Replace kua-toa with another fish-like race that is closer in appearance to things from the deep deep ocean; black scales, big eyes, florescent dots, and teeth that are so big they don't seem reasonable.
Our official kuo-toa replacement are the skum; the aboleth minions. Makes sense that they'd have a larger presence down there, since the aboleths do!
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1) Sample monster groups(eg a drow priestess + a couple of fighters and a spider pet) to make for some quick and easy random encounters.
2) Cthonians. Oh yeah baby.
3) Golarion version of Mole Man and his countless Darklands minions !
4) Darklands monster hunter prestige class
5) Aliens. "Alien" aliens.
6) Sample settlement - a trading post or neutral ground for Darklands races to meet and interact with abovegrounds.
7) A tribe of psionic humans, who fled the surface in fear of persecution and hatred, led by a powerful individual who believes the only way to save them is to launch a preemptive strike and wipe out the "normals" first (yeah, Magneto.)
8) Aliens. "grey" aliens.
9) Please, no "good" drow deities and Drizzts. Make them evil, make the bad. You got the "evil villain" thing right with Ileosa, just some more of that magic to make the dark elves an enemy to hate.
10) Intellect devourers ftw. "Oh look, it's one of those stupid old D&D monsters... Yeah, a brain on legs, roflmao *SPLOOORTCH* *AAARGH*,
7) A tribe of psionic humans, who fled the surface in fear of persecution and hatred, led by a powerful individual who believes the only way to save them is to launch a preemptive strike and wipe out the "normals" first
Only if they worship a nuclear bomb!
The crawlers from the movie are played by morlocks in the Darklands
Real Morlocks! Cool :)
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RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16
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Ancient fissures in the rock so catastrophic they rent the very fabric of reality (creating anti-magic chasms)
New fancy schmancy crystals and minerals from the depths
Stalactites, Stalagmites and Stalag 13’s
Magma and volcanos plus the local flame-resistant wildlife.
Darkness, Super Lonely Darkness and Insane Zombie Mutant Crushing Death DARKNESS that attacks you with energy admixture (darkness) magic missiles
Deadly, deadly glow worms
Para-elemental Plane (Earth, Magma, Mud, Dust) overlaps / gates.
Dangerous 'King Kong movie' vermin. I hate that for a monstrous spider or centipede to be scary it has to be enormous. Personally I reckon once it gets to the size of a horse that should be enough.
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Well since I was vetoed on the no mushroom men thing, not that I had a vote. :) I would like to add a second request, out for a large body of water or the Undersea with both a logical way someone to use this to go back "up" to the ocean. Such as pressure filled tunnels that if one has a way of not breathing they can traverse. I would also like to see a "lost" realm under the world sort of like Romans (or ancient Chelaxians) stuck after a freak cataclysm or similar catastrophe. Maybe a small group of Azlanti who somehow survived the Star-fall yet have grown inbreed and restless beneath the earth as minions of the Aboleths (oh could that be where Skulks come from?)
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Creative Director
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Dangerous 'King Kong movie' vermin. I hate that for a monstrous spider or centipede to be scary it has to be enormous. Personally I reckon once it gets to the size of a horse that should be enough.
That's easy, especially since we've got Ben "Mr. Skull Island" Wootten doing some of the art for the book. The giant albino cave solifugid looks pretty creepy, in other words...
How much does it cost to rest a home in a drow city? seriously. If I was playing a dwarf that needed a retreat (from everyone trying to kill my character), finding a home in a drow city isn't a bad idea.
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Creative Director
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How much does it cost to rest a home in a drow city? seriously. If I was playing a dwarf that needed a retreat (from everyone trying to kill my character), finding a home in a drow city isn't a bad idea.
I suspect that the only way for a non-drow to get a home in a drow city is to move in to an abandoned building or to defeat the denizens of an inhabited building. Drow cities aren't friendly places to non-drow, really...
Some replacement for non-OGL dwarves-undead-aberration inspired in the Midnor Dwarves of rackham-confrontation miniatures. I think those nasty dwarves are a veeeery good and original idea.
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How much does it cost to rest a home in a drow city? seriously. If I was playing a dwarf that needed a retreat (from everyone trying to kill my character), finding a home in a drow city isn't a bad idea.I suspect that the only way for a non-drow to get a home in a drow city is to move in to an abandoned building or to defeat the denizens of an inhabited building. Drow cities aren't friendly places to non-drow, really...
What if the Dwarf took 20 on his Disguise check? You know, tried to blend in with the natives.
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I would love to see the subterranean bases/ruins of some of Fallen Empires of the surface world. Being big on PH gaming (Gamma/Darwins world), it would be fun to detail some of the more intact ruins (vaults) which were part of the larger infrastructure of a long gone surface world empire. Maybe they are inhabited by their degenerate descendants or some of the horrible powers which brought them low in the first place.
Also some rules on making the drow a little tougher somehow. The 3.5 versions are pretty weak. I created a short term armor & weapon ability enhancements so I can give low to mid level drow +2 to +5 weapons and armor...stuff which crumbles after not being exposed to the power of their underworld cities after x amount of days (or if exposed to real daylight). Recaptures the old feel/terror of the dark elves. Something to make them feel a little more different than just evil elves.
Again, I am trying to recapture the feel (and player reaction) of modules D1-3 in 3.5.
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- Information on the Darklands under other, non-inner-sea continents, like Casmaron, The Crown of the World, Tian Xia, Sarusan, Azlant (mostly underwater with the aboleth capitals, probably), and Arcadia.
- A fungal forest at least as large as one of the larger forests of the world above
- Regional Feats for certain parts of the Darklands, I liked those in the campaign setting
-At least one monster over CR 20; I think there should be some really dangerous stuff down in the hidden corners of the world’s depths
-I like the crystal forest idea from earlier in the thread; ditto for the underground sea one
- Lots of little tidbits of mystery and small descriptions of locations that present some areas that will be explored in future products but always keep a bit left for the imagination (like what you did in the Varisia and Belkzin articles (which I liked both of) and bits like the garden in Heaven and the sphere in the Negative Energy Plane from the planes section)
- Information on the shadow plane version of the Darklands, which I’d expect is even nastier than the normal one
- I second the request for wandering monster charts, I nearly always like a few of those in area-related books
- A crystal city
- Information on the original dwarf and orc cities that existed before the quest for sky, perhaps including a stil-glorious dwarven empire deep underground and tribes of savage underground orcs
The Lost civilization is ,lost, - but before they left, they opened the doors of the their wast underground zoo. Over the long years an isolated ecosystem evolved...
Well since I was vetoed on the no mushroom men thing, not that I had a vote. :)
I also like mushroom men. Yes, they're cheesy, but as the wise Joss Whedon once said, "I likes me some cheese."
With the right artwork mushroom men could look weird and alien and yet still seem appropriate for the fantasy genre generally and the Darklands in particular. And they don't have to look silly. A little great artwork goes a long way. I don't even care if they're called Myconids. I just want my mushroom men.
And I want to finally understand why we have to have not one, but two races of evil, dark, deep-dwelling dwarves (Derro and Duergar). For a long time I thought they were one and the same. Can we blend them into one awesomely cool race of dark dwarves or is this blasphemy?
And I totally agree that an underground ocean would be badass. But I'm not sure I'd have an easy way to get to the surface from there. I think if it were more remote and difficult to access it would seem more mysterious.
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One concept I'm very dubious about is that of Vaults.
Do I recall reading somewhere that some powerful entities (Gods? Off-worlders?) placed Vaults deep within Golarion as a way of preserving particular cultures, ecologies, etc?
I'm not sure I like this idea, without further campaign background explaining their existence. At the whim of some unknowable entities seems too random and disconnected for my liking. What worldly (or other-worldly) location or time-period did they come from? What was special about this particular culture or ecology that tagged it for preservation?
Good examples:
An Abyssal pocket dimension near a city abandoned by the Drow after they opened a gate to something beyond their power, or an Ancient Undead pocket dimension beneath a cursed Osirion ruin where the ruler had all his citizens entombed with him upon his death.
Bad examples:
A Roman Empire pocket dimension, a Dinosaur pocket dimension, etc - random cultures, ecologies and time-periods, placed underground for no other reason than there wasn't a logical region to locate them on the surface world.
Executed well, Vaults could be really intriguing places to discover and explore (or escape with your life), and in terms of cultures and ecologies, there's no reason why the Darklands shouldn't be as full of diversity as the surface world is. However, I really don't want the Darklands to become Golarion's version of D&D's Hollow World.
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Creative Director
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The vaults of Orv are the deepest part of the Darklands. They were built LONG ago by mysterious entities known today only as the "Vault Keepers," and they served as "terrariums" for them to study various forms of life, prisons, laboratories, and other various uses. The magic that created these immense underground realms made them habitable to terrestial creatures, and as a result "seeped upward" into the upper regions of the Darklands as well; that's why the deep caverns of Golarion don't function like those on Earth (which quickly grow intolerably hot).
We talk more about where they came from, what the vaults were for, and what lives in them now in the book, of course, but for the most part what's going on there is the truly fantastic and the truly horrifying. Drow dwell above these vaults and don't generally have much to do with them, because there are things like intellect devourers, neothelids, umbral dragons, shiatan genies, blood-drinking humanoids known as urdefans, Rovagug stuff, and other strange things going on down there.
Including at LEAST one lost world with dinosaurs and jungles in a hollow world style zone.
The vaults aren't pocket dimensions though. They're actual caves. Immense caves, in some case the size of nations, but still... caves with different types of cool puply adventure sites, be they pulps from Edgar Rice Burroughs or Lovecraft.
How much does it cost to rest a home in a drow city? seriously. If I was playing a dwarf that needed a retreat (from everyone trying to kill my character), finding a home in a drow city isn't a bad idea.I suspect that the only way for a non-drow to get a home in a drow city is to move in to an abandoned building
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The vaults of Orv are the deepest part of the Darklands. They were built LONG ago by mysterious entities known today only as the "Vault Keepers," and they served as "terrariums" for them to study various forms of life, prisons, laboratories, and other various uses.
Do these mysterious entities resemble withered undead creatures and have high-pitched, evil laughs, and a predilection for bad puns?
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Creative Director
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The vaults of Orv are the deepest part of the Darklands. They were built LONG ago by mysterious entities known today only as the "Vault Keepers," and they served as "terrariums" for them to study various forms of life, prisons, laboratories, and other various uses.Do these mysterious entities resemble withered undead creatures and have high-pitched, evil laughs, and a predilection for bad puns?
nope
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Owner - Johnny Scott Comics and Games
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Here's a pretty cool webpage about various subterranean civilizations that you may want to use.
http://www.crystalinks.com/hollowearth.html (Sorry. I'm not sure how to linkify it)...
I personally think it would be cool to include some version of the descendents of Lemuria and/or the Old Ones mentioned in the treatise in your setting:
Descendants of Lemuria:
"The descendants of ancient Lemuria now live in peace in subterranean caverns. The leaders of these states (variously called Ascended Masters, Guardians of the Tradition, Psychoteleios or "the perfected ones", the the Shining Ones, the Ancients, the Watchers, the Immortals, the Monitors, the Hidden Directorate, the Children of Seth, etc.) all follow what is known as the Ancient Path and do not interfere in the lives of humans that live above the surface. Nor is there any interaction between them."
The Old Ones:
"In an article entitled "The Hollow Earth: Myth or Reality" for Atlantis Rising, Brad Steiger writes of the legends of "the Old Ones," an ancient race that populated the surface world millions of years ago and then moved underground. "The Old Ones, an immensely intelligent and scientifically advanced race," Steiger writes, "have chosen to structure their own environment under the surface of the planet and manufacture all their necessities."
"The Old Ones are hominid, extremely long-lived, and pre-date Homo sapiens by more than a million years. The Old Ones generally remain aloof from the surface peoples, but from time to time, they have been known to offer constructive criticism; and it has been said, they often kidnap human children to tutor and rear as their own."