Your entertaining rules / hazards for the Darklands

[wheatleymr]

This is a question primarily for the players, either directly, or what DMs have noticed about their players:
What specific attributes of playing in the Darklands made it more entertaining, from a player's perspective?
And, conversely, what reduced the entertainment value?
Or perhaps there was something that nearly worked, as a game concept, but failed in execution?

And I'm particularly asking about things specific to the Darklands:
- Not so much "mega dungeons" in general. (But please do mention significant play experiences.)
- Not so much overland travel or exploration mode in general. (Again, please do mention significant play experiences.)

Off the top of my head, this could be a location to add OSR style concerns to a campaign that doesn't normally care about such things. ...
...But what have you actually experienced in actual play?

[Ascalaphus]

Interesting question. My Sky King's Tomb campaign will soon be heading deeper into book 2 so I'm curious too :)

One point that is interesting to note is where all these tunnels from from. Of course there's some geological processes and dwarves digging deep and all that. But a significant amount of it may actually be due to various cave worms leaving tunnels behind. Which has some implications:

- a tendency for tunnels to be about 4-6 squares wide.
- new tunnels can "just appear" which can suddenly change local dynamics. Local kingdoms aren't necessarily in a position to do anything about it if a cave worm decides to give them new neighbors.
- if a worm tunnels into an underground lake, someone's lake may suddenly flow away and someone else may experience a sudden flood

[Claxon]

That actually leads me to think that any sizeable community would probably do something to control or kill off worms in the area. Suddenly losing your water source would be a big problem. And it would likely be something that enemy communities would try to weaponize.

I imagine communities would have developed some technique of generally keeping cave worms away. But mind controlling one to go rip holes in your enemy's reservoir lake could be a big concern.

[Ascalaphus]

I suppose bigger powerful communities would yeah, but the classic cave worm is level 13, so for a lot of smaller settlements it's basically a natural disaster they don't have any say over. Also, it could just come tunneling up from out of nowhere. Even at really high levels you generally can't do much to block out creatures that can burrow through miles of solid rock.

Now, if we're talking about using cave worms against your enemies, well people have thought of that...

[wheatleymr]

Some thoughts:
Navigation. On the surface you can head north, east, etc.
In the Darklands, there might be a tunnel that starts off going the direction you want. And after several days travel, it might still be going in that direction. Who knows if it ends up where you wanted to go???
In other words, it's a maze, with inclines so gradual that the paths can cross over, and there isn't any hedge to climb over.

I'm not aware of any navigation spells that would actually help?
Casting Know Direction as an exploration activity - I'm not sure it actually helps much? If the tunnel is snaking left & right, there's no way to know if it is going more left than right. And even if tunnel turns the wrong way - you either keep going and hope, or backtrack a lot and hope there's an alternative.

But - is this actually entertaining for players, to engage with this sort of logistical problem?

[Bluemagetim]

wheatleymr wrote:

Some thoughts:

Navigation. On the surface you can head north, east, etc.
In the Darklands, there might be a tunnel that starts off going the direction you want. And after several days travel, it might still be going in that direction. Who knows if it ends up where you wanted to go???
In other words, it's a maze, with inclines so gradual that the paths can cross over, and there isn't any hedge to climb over.

I'm not aware of any navigation spells that would actually help?
Casting Know Direction as an exploration activity - I'm not sure it actually helps much? If the tunnel is snaking left & right, there's no way to know if it is going more left than right. And even if tunnel turns the wrong way - you either keep going and hope, or backtrack a lot and hope there's an alternative.

But - is this actually entertaining for players, to engage with this sort of logistical problem?

Survival or Darklands Lore really help with this.

[Ascalaphus]

wheatleymr wrote:

Some thoughts:

Navigation. On the surface you can head north, east, etc.
In the Darklands, there might be a tunnel that starts off going the direction you want. And after several days travel, it might still be going in that direction. Who knows if it ends up where you wanted to go???
In other words, it's a maze, with inclines so gradual that the paths can cross over, and there isn't any hedge to climb over.

I'm not aware of any navigation spells that would actually help?
Casting Know Direction as an exploration activity - I'm not sure it actually helps much? If the tunnel is snaking left & right, there's no way to know if it is going more left than right. And even if tunnel turns the wrong way - you either keep going and hope, or backtrack a lot and hope there's an alternative.

But - is this actually entertaining for players, to engage with this sort of logistical problem?

I think presenting the problem for sure is interesting for a moment, because it's new and different. But making players map out kilometers of 3D tunnels would be really annoying.

I think a good metaphor would be metro network maps, such as the famous London Underground map. What you really have are interesting locations (stations) and lines between them. Not everyone knows all the lines that exist, and some are hidden. So getting information about a route that you didn't know about could be a quest reward.

Another way would be to turn it into a skill challenge - how long does it take the party to find a way from A to B? Let's collect some victory points through skill checks. The basic mechanics in the GM Core for victory point based minigames could be adapted pretty easily.

[Xenocrat]

Monster Core 2 introduced a new level 13 elemental (available via ritual or Summon Elemental 9) that can dig permanent Huge size tunnels. It introduces a new toolkit for high level casters digging mega hungover time or busting into someone else’s complex.

[BotBrain]

wheatleymr wrote:

Some thoughts:

Navigation. On the surface you can head north, east, etc.
In the Darklands, there might be a tunnel that starts off going the direction you want. And after several days travel, it might still be going in that direction. Who knows if it ends up where you wanted to go???
In other words, it's a maze, with inclines so gradual that the paths can cross over, and there isn't any hedge to climb over.

I'm not aware of any navigation spells that would actually help?
Casting Know Direction as an exploration activity - I'm not sure it actually helps much? If the tunnel is snaking left & right, there's no way to know if it is going more left than right. And even if tunnel turns the wrong way - you either keep going and hope, or backtrack a lot and hope there's an alternative.

But - is this actually entertaining for players, to engage with this sort of logistical problem?

Depends on your players and what they've got acccess to. I know mine would prefer a bit more than just rolling a skill check but yours might not. Do you have a group right now or is this just hypothetical?

[Mathmuse]

In Siege of Stone, 4th module of Ironfang Invasion, my party traveled a 90-mile section of the Long Walk in the Darklands. This was not a place for old-school traps. Rather, the Long Walk is a major highway build by the dwarves to connect their Sky Citadel cities and patroled by the hryngar (formerly known as duergar). Furthermore, they had an umbral gnome (formerly known as svirfneblin) guide Novvi. The party had some conflict with a hryngar partrol when they first entered the Long Walk but before Novvi arrived. The PCs had decided to pretend they were an acting troupe, but the hryngar follow Droskar, dwarven god of toil, who views such frivolous entertainment as immoral.

Novvi was a Darklands trader that the party had encountered in the 1st module at the bottom of a cavern system past a doorway to the Darklands. In Siege of Stone she was traveling with Caligni and disguised as one of them, because I had imagined a local war between the Darklands umbral gnomes and the hryngar. The caligni struck me as poorly designed for the Darklands, because their natural ability to cast darkness would be useless in an environment where every creature had darkvision. However, the Remastering fixed that problem. Low-level caligni lost their darkness ability. In exchange, they gained greater darkvision rather than regular darkvision and their explosion upon death flashes a burst of darkness rather than light. High-level caligni can still cast 4th-level darkness that blocks regular darkvision.

The last mile of their Darklands journey was more hazardous as the party left the Long Walk for a side passage. They encountered natural Darklands monsters, such as Carnivorous Crystals, and then entered a lava area with fire-based creatures, such as Cinder Rats and Magma Dragons. Playing with weird ecosystems different from surface life was flavorful.

Furthermore, since the party was 12th level, I roleplayed the local Darklands residents reacting to the PCs according to their legends of weird and powerful surface creatures in a reversal of the surface legends of weird and powerful Darklands creatures. "It's a pale elf! They can hide anywhere and track anything!"

[kaid]

wheatleymr wrote:

Some thoughts:

Navigation. On the surface you can head north, east, etc.
In the Darklands, there might be a tunnel that starts off going the direction you want. And after several days travel, it might still be going in that direction. Who knows if it ends up where you wanted to go???
In other words, it's a maze, with inclines so gradual that the paths can cross over, and there isn't any hedge to climb over.

I'm not aware of any navigation spells that would actually help?
Casting Know Direction as an exploration activity - I'm not sure it actually helps much? If the tunnel is snaking left & right, there's no way to know if it is going more left than right. And even if tunnel turns the wrong way - you either keep going and hope, or backtrack a lot and hope there's an alternative.

But - is this actually entertaining for players, to engage with this sort of logistical problem?

Navigation I think is one of the top challenges in the darklands. Determining which way you want to go is hard and finding a path that actually goes the way you want to is harder yet. Lots of dead ends/cave ins or things that sure you can get there but um there is a 1k foot tall sheer wall that you have to ascend/descend to continue. If you are closer to the surface a rain storm 20 miles away could suddenly mean the tunnel you are in starts flooding rapidly with very little warning. Even ignoring weird critters/magic cave exploration is super challenging and dangerous all on its own.

[wheatleymr]

Thanks for all your replies & thoughts!

"Do you have a group right now or is this just hypothetical?" - hypothetical.
I can't remember how I got onto this train of thought now, probably some YouTube videos, but it made me realise that the existing Darklands Pathfinder information is ... in the format of an above-surface gazette, without capturing any of the things that make a vast underground setting unique.

As Kaid says - navigation is a big problem. And as Ascalaphus says, it's most likely that "maps" are in the form of the London Underground map.

But I'm very aware that whilst I happen to like maps, and mapping - it turns out I'm in a minority - and most players don't.

Hence my realisation that I'd want a set of subsystems and plot approaches that I could use to "zoom out" of concerns that a given player group find boring (turn it into challenge their characters resolve "below the abstraction layer") - or alternatively, to "zoom in" to considerations that the players actually find interesting.

E.g. an interesting comment made in an OSR video was that instead of rolling to "find a secret door" you should instead roll to "get an obvious clue from the DM" - so that the player can feel clever for discovering it.

[Castilliano]

One thing to embrace about the Darklands is how huge & diverse it is. The Vaults are more than buried continents, they're effectively new worlds with potential for unique flora, fauna, politics, culture (or lack thereof); whatever Golden Age SF & fantasy exploration tropes you want to highlight. Utopias? Sure. Post-apocalyptic scavengers? If you want. Lovecraftian ruins, cults, dimensional gates? Have at it. Love some eclectic Earth myths not yet represented on the surface world? There's room down below. Heck, there might be a civilization of billions who've been fighting on Golarion's behalf for millennia, long forgotten from being isolated for X,Y,Z reasons (and perhaps conveniently re-isolated after contact).

The unlimited fantastical is possible where both the players and their PCs can operate as outsiders, explorers into realms wondrous.

[Claxon]

Yeah, you can literally make whatever you want down there.

Wasn't there at one point (iN golarion's lore) a huge civilization underground in a continent sized cave, that had a giant false sun thing (I think it was a magical light emitting crystal) so that it actually had day and night cycles and light based food cycles (plants).

Or am I confusing myself with something else?

[steelhead]

Claxon wrote:

Yeah, you can literally make whatever you want down there.

Wasn't there at one point (iN golarion's lore) a huge civilization underground in a continent sized cave, that had a giant false sun thing (I think it was a magical light emitting crystal) so that it actually had day and night cycles and light based food cycles (plants).

Or am I confusing myself with something else?

The lore is real and the implications of the ‘sun’ (actually ‘suns’) were explored in the Extinction Curse adventure path - most specifically in the fifth book. In Lord of the Black Sands the PCs travel into the Darklands in search of one of these suns. In relation to the OP, the bonkers nature of underground radiation killing off everything but the strongest of sentient creatures made for a great setting. Although some people didn’t like it, my group enjoyed the unique location that a deadly, deep underground vault provided.

[BotBrain]

wheatleymr wrote:

Thanks for all your replies & thoughts!

"Do you have a group right now or is this just hypothetical?" - hypothetical.
I can't remember how I got onto this train of thought now, probably some YouTube videos, but it made me realise that the existing Darklands Pathfinder information is ... in the format of an above-surface gazette, without capturing any of the things that make a vast underground setting unique.

If you do get players, don't be afraid to ask them what they want! It's helped me a lot when it comes to working out how complex to make a subsystem like navigating tunnels.