Enter The Underbranching

 

This was a massive undertaking, but it was also something I felt the TTRPG community needed. 

Megadungeons have been done before. Heck, you might even say that they've been overdone. What I haven't seen yet done is a megadungeon built to serve more modern, NSR or Oddlike RPG schools of play. That's what The Underbranching seeks to be. Instead of providing a spiraling staircase of doom where heroes go from room to room slaughtering helpless kobolds until there are none left to oppose them, The Underbranching provides modular sections which interrelate to each other in complex social, economic and physical ways. The design won't stop fans of wanton violence from tearing a path of carnage through The Underbranching if that's what they desire, but that's not the kind of campaign this megadungeon is built for.

Also, it's defined. I have seen some megadungeons that are not composed of clear maps with keyed rooms, but rather of points or zones to crawl between. I wanted something concrete.

I love Cairn as an RPG system. It's creative, it's deadly and it's streamlined for exactly the kind of creative play I prefer. It's also "old school" enough that a megadungeon like this one can easily be converted over from Cairn to the OSR or NSR system of your choice. Cairn's flexibility and inherent deadliness are factors that have to be taken into account for any megadungeon built for the system. It has to provide both the players and The Warden with a myriad of different, interesting obstacles to resolve in different and interesting ways. Can you go through the whole megadungeon without getting into a single fight? Maybe, if that's the story that both the Warden and Players want to tell using this modular system. There's a lot of space to take the various sections, factions and personalities in this 800 room megadungeon out into the greater world in all kinds of interesting and far-reaching directions. 

This 210 page book is divided into 99 sections (plus appendices) that have everything you need (besides the Cairn rulebooks, which are technically free) to run an entire campaign centered around a sprawling labyrinth of wonder and terror that can connect other parts of your campaign world together in all kinds of physical, emotional and economic ways. 

Best of all, at the time of this writing, I've made the digital copy of this 100,000 word dungeon "Pay What You Want" on a number of platforms (RPGtrader, Itch.io, Gumroad, etc.), so check it out, give it a try, and if you want to order a paper copy, you can pick that up over here.

Happy delving!