Into the Metadungeon Open Dev I

The metadungeon is an amalgamation of every dungeon ever. It contains heinous monsters, 

untold treasures, and bad puns. Everything is life or death slapstick tragicomedy.

Are you a hero? Are you a villain? Are you just here to kill things and take their stuff?

Find out in the metadungeon!

DISCLAIMER: THIS IS A REALLY DUMB RPG. IT IS ONLY VAGUELY SUITABLE FOR 

PLAY, HAS NOT BEEN TESTED, WAS DEVELOPED IN HALF AN HOUR, 

AND IS NOT FINISHED.

Enjoy!

System

Rolling: 1d20, roll under. If you get lower than your total, you succeed. Roll 3d6 for each stat, 

in order.

Stats:

Strong (damage, hit things)

Tough (health)

Agile (dodge, sneak)

Talk (followers, luck)

Smart (experience level)

Modifiers

Stat	Modifier
1	-5
2	-4
3-4	-3
5-6	-2
7-8	-1
9-12	+0
13-14	+1
15-16	+2
17-18	+3
19	+4
20	+5

Combat

On your turn, you can attack. Your attack is equal to 9+your level+any relevant stats. 

Strong is relevant for most weapons. 

Agile is relevant for ranged and light weapons. 

Talk is probably only relevant if you have a sharp (literally) tongue.

 Smart never goes near weapons. 

When you hit someone, you roll your damage dice, and add the relevant stat. If they have 0 health,

they die. A HD is 1d8.

If you are attacked, your defence is equal to your agility. 

If you are hit, subtract your armour from the damage you take. 

If you ever get to 0 health, test tough. On a failure, you die.

Choose class:

Slayer

Health: 1d10/level +tough modifier

Damage: 1d10

Gain a weapon (you must have a copy of this weapon/object in real life, or at least a close approximation). 

Give the weapon a name. 

If you attack using the weapon and wave the real version of it around threateningly, you gain +1 damage 

or attack for every level you have. If you ever lose or break the weapon, find another one.

Abilities

Choose 1/level.

Berserker: If you scream and froth at the mouth enough that other people are worried you might spit 

on them, you can reroll your health dice. 

If you aren’t wearing a shirt, gain armour equal to half your level.

Preacher

Health: 1d8/level +tough modifier

Damage: 1d6

You can pray, reciting scraps from your holy book that are relevant to your situation 

(you do not have to make a holy book beforehand. That can be done as you recite from it). 

Whenever you do this, ask the GM if they thought it was a nice bit of wisdom. 

If they did, gain a favour point. 

The maximum number of favour points you can spend each turn is equal to your level. 

If you ever gain more than 5 favour points, you ascend to a higher plane of existence (e.g: die).

Abilities

Heal: You can spend a favour point to heal someone, provided they swear to serve the tenets of your 

god (define the tenets of your god). 

If they laugh or break their oath, you can smite them for 1d100 damage.

An Divine Load of Bullshit: If the GM doesn’t like a scrap of your holy book that you recited, 

or instead of asking the GM, you can ask the players if they liked it. 

Gain 1 favour point for every one who did.

Stealer

Health: 1d6/level +tough modifier

Damage: 1d8

If you can manage to steal dice from other players or the GM without them noticing, 

you can give those dice back, but not before rolling them and using the outcome instead of one 

you rolled. 

You can do this a number of times per turn equal to your level.

Abilities

Choose 1/level.

Backstabbing Bastard: If the GM isn’t paying attention, and you can manage to stab them in 

a vital area (it doesn’t have to be with a real knife), then you can tell them which monster or NPC 

you just killed. 

If you stab a player instead, you can kill them. 

If the person you are trying to stab catches you, you have to deal with the consequences.

Sneakster: If another player can’t see you, neither can any of their characters.

Liar’s Dice: You can hide the result of your roll behind a cup or your hand, 

and tell the other players whatever you like. If one of them tells you to, reveal your dice. 

If you rolled what you said, you gain an experience. 

If you didn’t roll what you said, you lose an experience.

Reader

Health: 1d4/level +tough modifier

Damage: 1d4

Bring a book with you when you play (if you don’t have a book, you’re shit outta luck). 

This book is your spell book. 

Every time you level up, you can get an additional book. 

Your ‘reading pool’ is equal to the number of chapters in your book. 

This reading pool recharges every time you read a chapter of the book. 

The number of reading points you can spend every turn is equal to your level.

Abilities

Choose 1/level.

Devil Summoner: For a reading point, you can test smart to try to summon a character from that book, 

with the stats below. 

If you fail, the GM chooses what character you summon from the book, and they are hostile.

Book Character HD=the number of syllables in the character’s name.

Damage=1 dice size for every vowel in the character’s name.

Morale=the number of titles the character has, +1, x1d10.

Stealth=the number of consonants in the character’s name

Blast: You can blast enemies with your book. 

You can expend a point from your reading pool to create a blast that deals 1d6 damage.

Monsters

Y’p’wrxs’mnb’q

HD: 5

Damage: 2d6

Special Abilities: Each player must try to guess how to pronounce it’s name. 

Whoever the GM judges comes the closest gains +1 armour and +1 damage against it. 

Everyone else takes 1d6 damage from too many consonants.

Dice Monster

HD: 1 HP

Damage: 1

Special Abilities: At the beginning of each round, every character must make a save. 
If they fail, their player gives the GM 1 dice. 
That dice is rolled, and it’s total is added to the Dice Monster’s HP. 
The dice is then put aside. 
If all dice are put aside, the players can no longer roll dice, or do anything that requires dice, 
unless they find a way to get more dice. 
A stealer can try to steal the dice back, so the GM should be vigilant against that.

Subverting Mage Steryotypes

Think of a 'bad wizard.' They're a necromancer, right? Maybe a rat mage, a pyromancer, or a witch.

Now think of a 'good wizard.' Light mage? Healer? Lovable illusionist?

All of those are wrong.

Shadowmancers
Shadow mages get a bad rep. Sure, in the civilized lands they conjure darkness, despair, all the crap, but Shadow mages are, by and large, pacifists.

Shadow is scary, but it in itself can't hurt you. Shadows can blind, but when the darkness clears, you'll still be able to see. But if light blinds? You may never see again.

Shadow mages in most lands are thieves and tricksters, using their magic to enhance their larcenous skills. It is an art rarely taught outside criminal circles.

In the Inkal desert, Shadowmancy is one of the most taught schools of magic. It is powerful, versatile, and useful. During the day, it can be used to hide from the burning heat of the sun. At night, it grants concealment in an otherwise flat land.

The north is the one place where Shadow mages are almost exclusively evil. There, powerful shadow mages shroud entire valleys in darkness, blotting out the sun and bringing a cold, dark, slow death to all inhabitants, after which they descend to claim the spoils of war.

Pyromancers
Fire is dangerous. In the middle-lands, pyromancy is feared, much as anyone would fear someone carrying a Molotov cocktail everywhere they went. It is dangerous, volatile, and causes too much collateral damage to be safe.

However, in Inkal, pyromancers are praised for their ability to turn sand to glass quicker than any forge. Great works of art, palaces, and even, once, and entire city have been raised by a dedicated pyromancer.

But, it is in the northern lands where pyromancers are granted the most respect. The north is cold, and fire is warm. Pyromancers bring light and heat to entire tribes during the long months of dark and snow. Many tribes have survived solely because of the loyalty of a single fire mage.

Enchanment
Of all the schools of magic, enchantment is the only one universally feared, and regarded as evil. Taking away the free will of a person or creature, while powerful, is regarded by most as the height of immorality. Enchanters survive through secrecy or fear, and entire armies have been raised to kill a single mage who went too far into the depths of mind-magic.
 

Wandering Necromancers and the City of the Dead

A History of Death

Necromancers have been around for a very long time. Almost as long as death itself. They are older than humans, and older than most of the gods. The very first necromancers arose from a race long forgotten, back when words had real power. Back when death was knew, and even more frightening than it is today.

Once upon a time, a young child asked their mother to get up. They sobbed as dirt fell, covering her corpse until it was six feet underground.

But as I said, words had power. The mother's body heard her child, even if the soul had long since departed. She dug her way up before nature even knew what was wrong.

Thus began the necromancers. Kings eternal over kingdoms undying.

Wanderers
Nowadays, most necromancers are Wanderers. You do get the odd extra-antisocial manic who wants to live in a dungeon and conquer the lands of the living, but they don't last long. Sometimes they starve to death, or their focus lapses and their creations eat them. Anything can happen.

There are also sometimes pirates or priests, but they're a different thing altogether. 

Gryphon, 'Necromancer'

  Wanderers, although despised, looked down on, and ridiculed by many, are an integral and valuable part of society. Like retail workers, if they could run an entire store with the corpses of your ancestors and sheer force of will.

Necromancers, in those places out of the eye of the True God, or simply willing to bend some rules, provide labour, defence, or even entertainment, for a fee. Many of the more selfless ones even forgo the cost, doing good deeds for free.

The typical life of a Wanderer follows a simple pattern: Get to town with a group of undead, reanimate as many more as possible, work for a few weeks, get kicked out, repeat.

Of course, they often move on simply because the pay wasn't good, or because they got bored, but mages are notorious drama queens.

All schools of wizardry have a negative emotion that they suffer increasing amounts of, simply from casting their spells. Necromancers are lonely. They have the power at their fingertips to raise armies, bring the dead (partially) back, and turn enemies into friends, but they are lonely.

It's an ironic hell that they live in.

Most small towns were built by Wanderers, or at least started by them. When settlers came, the Wanderers paved the way. They built the first houses in the mountains, and gave the order to drag their own limp, dehydrated bodies across deserts to found sugar plantations.

Wanderers have a strained relationship with the Church of the True God. The Church's inclination to kill all necromancers other than themselves is conflicted with their desire to make life better for themselves and, to a lesser extent, their followers.

With the common folk, Wanderers are treated as an unpleasant necessity. Some towns are more welcoming than others, but the general respond to a Wanderer is 'here's some cash, do the job, and get out.'

Necromancers and ghouls generally fight, as both of them view corpses as a precious commodity. Both of them together, however, will often make a great team.

 redpencilart, 'Bonecarver' 

Necromancy. What is it?

Now: Necromancy is defined as:

Necromancy (/ˈnɛkrəˌmænsi, -roʊ-/^[1][2]) is a supposed practice of magic involving communication with the deceased – either by summoning their spirit as an apparition or raising them bodily – for the purpose of divination, imparting the means to foretell future events or discover hidden knowledge, to bring someone back from the dead, or to use the deceased as a weapon, as the term may sometimes be used in a more general sense to refer to black magic or witchcraft.^[3][4]

 Now, for today, we're focusing on the 'Bodily part. The core of what a necromancer does. Turning a useless old sack of meat and stink into a helpful old sack of meat and stink. Sometimes this is slow, sometimes this is fast. Sometimes you need to call up the spirit of a fallen warrior to posses the body, sometimes you just need to tell the muscles that to do. It all depends.

In addition, the types of undead are exceedingly varied. You've got your typical zombies, skeletons, crawling claws... but then you have odder things. Skin kites, nailmen, organ-snakes... the list goes on. A sufficiently experienced necromancer should be able to make four or five functional undead from a single body.

Necromancy, at it's heart, is a complicated process. Everyone approaches it differently, and listing all the different methods possible is too large a project for this post.

 Yuriy Chemezov, 'Night lamp gone dark' 

The City of the Dead 

The City of the Dead is not quite a city. It's a library. Countless rooms, towers, and basements, each filled to the brim with books. It was made over the course of nearly a thousand years, and tended to by an army of undead. Although anyone is allowed to peruse it's endless halls, necromancers are the most frequent patrons.

It is guarded by the same army that cleans it, organizes the shelves, and carries candles for any mortal who wishes to read. The entire place is protected by wards, preventing fires, water, or removal of books.

Mages, the curious, and any who would add to the library's defences or knowledge are welcomed with open arms. No one owns the library, and nobody knows who originally created it, but it protects itself. It has endured the rise and fall of many empires, and catalogued them all.

Some mages have made their homes there, nestled in the crooks and crannies of shelves, seeking out the secrets of immortality, death, and ultimate power within the books. They are most often necromancers, as they can send their servants to fetch food and drink from the outside world.

Ghosts often frequent the halls, often simply to read, wiling away their afterlife on the pursuit of knowledge.

 Faith, 'Ghost girl in abandoned library'

The Children's Crusade

Four hundred years ago, the Children's crusade began, starting 'the Year of Nightmares.'

Like all the best wars, it started with romance. Babies started disappearing, vanished from their cribs in the middle of the night. Here and there, it happened at least once in each town. People began panicking, and couldn't find what was wrong, who was taking their children. Ghouls had taken them before, here and there, but it was rare. Mass kidnapping like this simply didn't happen.

The thieving of babies died down in a year or so, and people began to forget. All was quiet for about a decade, and then reports starting coming in from the east. Reports of monster children...

Ryan Yee, 'Blood Bairn' 

Investigations were sent, adventurers and soldier to investigate. The ones who managed to return spoke of fields of blood, with not a corpse in sight. The source became clear, and the dots were connected. The monster children were ghouls. But for what purpose was not known...

Ghoul children were an oddity. They did exist. They had to. But, they were rarely seen. They looked more human than their parents, unless they were feeding. They were generally cared for by their parents until they were old enough to strike out on their own. They rarely survived long on their own. Superhuman strength + a thirst for flesh + the emotions of a 10 year-old do not lead one to be very subtle.

Randis Albion, 'Spoiled' 

But not now. Adult ghouls had simply... vanished. Even those who had been outed, and lived off of corpses in relatively peaceful lives had disappeared.

An army was raised. Hundreds of knights on horseback rode out to face to coming horde. They stood, tall, proud, and only slightly shitting themselves as nearly a half-thousand blood-soaked children ran faster than any man up the hill to meet them. 

Photographer, 'Vampire Child' 

The knights had an advantage besides their superior weaponry and training. The ghouls, although hungry, were still children. The knights were large. When one of them was downed, he or she was swarmed, and devoured in less than a minute. The children, sated and no longer in a frenzy, would flee the battle. 

Some escaped. Most died. Just like that, the children's crusade was over. The mystery of where the adults went was never solved. The children were scared and confused. They told tales of waking alone in the night, watched by an enormous snake. They spoke of men made of blood, a grinning skull, and a field of corpses stretching from horizon to horizon. Blood-coloured skies flashing with red lightning, and stick-thin beasts striding through deserts of glass.

Several ghoul children were captured, and raised by an order of knights who paid homage to Gothos. They formed an elite crew of warriors known simply as 'the Crusaders' paying homage to the war they fought so long ago, for reasons they will never fully understand.

Darek Zabrocki, 'Twins of Maurer Estate.'

 STEALING SECTION

How Can I Use This? If you want to use to Children's crusade, here are some ideas for adapting it to your world or game: 

1. If you aren't using ghouls or something similar, try vampires. If you want to go for a terrifying mystery, make the ghouls into perfectly normal children, who suddenly grew unearthly strong and developed a taste for human flesh.

2. If you are playing an RPG, why not have the players take part in the groups of knights fighting in the crusade? Or, they could play the poor sods having to escort the captured child-ghouls to their new home, or even take care of them afterward. A ghoul PC could be the survivor of the children's crusade. If you want to get really weird, have the PCs play ghoul children leading up to the crusade itself.

An explanation: I'm sorry about my long absence from writing this blog, I've been very busy with writing, designing version 2 of Lint, and personal matters. I'll try and update it more frequently, and a guest author may make a post or two in the following months. Stay tuned!

The Not-Mice

They live in the dark cupboards, the cracks between the walls, and under your bed. They eat your food, and you don't see them. Your cat dies after catching a mouse, and you never suspect it might have been poisoned.

Your children complain of small hands skittering over them at night, and you dismiss it as the foolish thoughts of a child.

They come for you in the middle of the night, with poisoned needles and feral grins, and you finally believe.

 

Cinderella 1950, courtesy of Disney

"No! It's my turn to stab them!"

Nobody knows where the not-mice game from, nobody knows what they want. Anyone who tries to determine their inscrutable goals is found dead soon after.

They are susceptible to the same weaknesses as normal mice, but are far more cunning. Your cat may need to have a protective spell cast on it. They must see you eat the cheese you poisoned before they trust it. Mousetraps must be cleverly disguised.

They are evil and cunning incarnate.

The Races of Lint

Humans
You don't need a description of these guys. Unless you are one of my stranger readers, you probably have cursory knowledge of them. But, there is something I do want to talk about.
 
I want to talk about the ever present horror in any fantasy or sci-fi setting with non-human races: 'What makes humans special?'


The common answers are 'jack of all trades,' 'anti-magic,' or sometimes 'virility' (this is less common, because of goblins and orcs). In Lint, humans are certainly jack of all trades characters, but Embraced can literally transfer any knowledge they share between them in a matter of moments. They are not anti-magic at all, and might even be more susceptible to it than other creatures. As for virility, while they do have the more children than other races, and in a faster time. However, I think it's a bit of a cop-out, and if I ever want people to let their children read my stuff, I can't have the most interesting bit about humans be how much they have sex, can I?


So what did I want it to be? I finally decided on Religion and Community.


Other races don't really have gods. They don't become gods, they don't worship them, they don't bother with them. To the non-humans, gods are just very, very powerful beings, deserving of respect but not worship. Since gods want to be worshiped, this means that they generally favour humans.


This doesn't mean that the odd non-human will not become follower of a god they like. However, they may be one of a dozen or less of their species who chooses to worship that particular god. For less known gods, they may be the only one of their species.


Community is pretty self-explanatory. Other races are generally solitary or come together in small groups, nothing near like what humans create. We are very social creatures, which is possibly our biggest strength, and what allows us to survive in the world without the advantages of all other creatures.

Ghouls
The most common mistake anyone makes about ghouls is that they are undead. They aren't, although they like to cultivate that image, to provoke fear.


Ghouls were originally humans, thousands of years ago. In fact, they were the original worshipers of Child Eater, long before she became the wife of Gothos. They were the ones who named her, after the name their enemies gave their warriors.


They were a cannibalistic tribe, eating all those that they killed. Degenerate man-eaters, soon to be extinguished by their opponents. Child eater made them something more.


Some called it a blessed curse, others a cursed blessing. Whatever the cause, the cannibals became warped, and strange. They became ghouls.


Ghouls have a body shape that is identical to a humans most of the time. However, under close scrutiny, or when the ghoul is hungry, changes become apparent. They have sharp, vicious-looking claws and teeth, perfect for grappling a foe and rending them limb from limb. Their insides are some of their strangest parts: a ghoul's organs are alien, all in the wrong places; someone using knowledge of human vital spots will find ghouls much harder to put down. In addition, their stomachs are suited for an entirely cannibalistic diet, where they can consume nearly an entire human being without noticeably gaining much body mass.

 Josu Hernaiz, 'Hunted Ghoul'

Ghouls are, when fed, witty, friendly, and have great senses of humour (although some find it a little morbid for their tastes). They are rarely suspected by even the most diligent of men. If you are close enough to a ghoul to know it, you are most certainly within range of their teeth.


However, when hungry or hunting, ghouls are the stuff of nightmares, like fast moving shadows with glowing eyes and sharp fangs. Their bodes warp and bones reshape, letting them scale walls like spiders, or leap between buildings with ease. Combine this with their unnatural endurance, they are nearly impossible to outrun. Their claws and teeth combined with great Strength makes them nearly impossible to outfight if unarmed.

They are perfect hunters of unsuspecting humans.

 Anna Steinbauer, 'Falkenrath Gorger' 

Ghouls don't have a society like we think of it, or even a clandestine network of communication, like some particularly paranoid humans expect (although, when there are man-eating monsters hiding among your colleagues and friends, most would say the paranoia is justified, but as they say, ignorance is bliss). They operate more like tigers, or other solitary animals. 'You stay out of my way, I'll stay out of yours. You let me share your meal, I'll return the favour.'



Being obese in ghoul society is something to respect. A ghoul has to be an accomplished hunter and manipulator to even be able to get fat in the first place, and maintaining the fat is even more difficult, as now they have to hunt with a hundred or so extra pounds of flesh weighing them down.



Ghoul children can only be born if the mother of the pair eats a human baby before conception. The pregnancy is generally very quick, lasting less than a month. The children, although they do resemble their parents, will grow up to look very much like the child they would have been (there has been at least one case of someone meeting their ghoul 'clone,' who was a twin stolen at infancy).



They live quite a long time, and the average ghoul lifespan (not including violent deaths) is a little over a hundred years old.

Not all ghouls are the evil and remorseless beings that one would usually expect from a species that needs to consume other sentient creatures on a near-biweekly basis. Some of them are truly remorseful, or pay off gravediggers to get them their meals. Many become soldiers, although they rarely last long, due to the lack of privacy allowed in the army, especially around the recently dead.

There are records of ghoul assassins, who charge extra for their services, but can make a person disappear fantastically well. 

Ill-don
Ill-don, also called 'the eel-men' or 'mermaids' by sailors, are a progenitor race older than humans. They bear a strict resemblance to eels, with slippery (and often black) skin, long tails, and thin fins running down the top and bottoms of their bodies.

Ill-don are solitary creatures. They live in shallow-sea caverns or rivers, dependent on their surroundings for survival. They hunt with rocks and flint daggers.

However, some Ill-don become tired of the solitary, hunter-gatherer life. They come into contact with humans, offering their services as guides, navigators, or treasure-hunters.

 fuuryoku, 'Mermaid'

A long time ago, the Ill-don had a great oceanic empire, stretching from shore to shore. Ocean travel was impossible for nearly every other creature in the world, preventing any sort of trade or exploration for hundreds of years. There were ocean wars, which the Ill-don won every time.

Hundreds of men and women were captured on floating mounds of hollow bones, built into floating prisons. The Ill-don barely had to do anything, just chain the barge to the ocean floor, and throw fish up on a daily basis. Any dead were dumped over the side, and escapees were welcome to try. There are very few records of anyone escaping an Ill-don bone-barge.

However, like all great empires, it could not last. Nobody knows exactly what happened to it; slave rebellions, civil war, a great beast beneath the sea... Whatever the cause, the Ill-don rule of the ocean was gone for good. It's members scattered across the sea, hiding themselves away unless they were called by another of their kind.

  Erica Batton, 'Eel mermaid' 

They are quite friendly beings nowadays. They have mostly forgotten about their empire, and it lies rotting somewhere on the ocean floor, just a few mad zealots still residing there.


The Ill-don have eyes that are not well-suited to the darkness they live in, and so rely mainly on touch to work their ways around their caves. They hunt by snapping out and catching prey in their hands, before bringing it to their mouth. A second pair of jaws reaches up from the inside of their throat, takes hold of the fish or crustacean, and it is ground down and swallowed. They are strictly carnivores. Their language sounds like the screaming eels from the princess bride.

Pine Men
Far, far to the north, where the Utakita tribes roam and the Nosi hunt and ancient beasts sleep in glaciers that touch the sky, live the Pine Men. 

They speak in the language of the great trees that create an enormous boreal forest up north, a strange tongue that sounds like wind and creaking branches.


They hunt all who come into their lands, driving off anyone curious or foolish enough to come looking for them. Some leave to discover more about the world, but almost all of them are exiles, for crimes that we do not understand.

Artissimo, 'Twig blight'  

Physically, a pine man is made of a thick, sticky, sap-like substance, overlaid and surrounding bones and skin of bark. Their eyes appear to be made of a similar substance to the veins in a tree leaf, overlapping into a rough orb shape. Their brains, when dissected, look like a multitude of pine needles slotted into specific spots in a hole-filled head.

They are about the same height and build of a large human, but are warped. They look like someone tried to sculpt a human while only ever having seen them in armour. Their limbs are overlapping bits of bark and wood, held together by flexible 'tendons.'

They are created with a ritual performed by a pine man druid, where a specially prepared head is made, inserted with pine needles, and buried underneath a sapling. Throughout the next several years, the sapling will grow into the shape of a pine man, before uprooting itself and setting off to find it's tribe.

Gorona-alena, 'The Herbalist'

Anyone who makes a joke about
them being 'pine men' gets slapped.

They are very hostile to visitors, and even the Church of the True God, usually so stubborn in spreading word of their god, gave up on the pine men.

When out in the world, they speak of a city beneath a glacier, a place warm enough for plants to grow freely and happily, forever. They say this is their paradise, given to them by the great spirit of the north. Why they do not live there remains a mystery, and they guard their clan secrets with undying devotion.

Pine men so rarely see the sun up where they live, and so are constantly amazed by sunrises and sunsets, which they often wake early to watch.