Dungeonpalooza:Main Page
Dungeonpalooza is a collectively-created world for any version of Dungeons and Dragons, Castles and Crusades, or just about any fantasy system where the GM wants to add a bit of levity -- and dungeons. LOTS AND LOTS OF DUNGEONS.
Dunegeonpalooza is designed to be a "living system" -- constantly in flux, with enough freedom for GMs to throw in just about any creature, location and dungeon their minds can create. The tone is generally humorous, although there are opportunities for drama and even terror. It is safe to say that if you aren't playing the setting at least some for laughs, though, that you are missing the point.
The primary adventure setting of Dungeonpalooza is the dungeon, and there are dozens upon dozens of such locations in any given section of the soon-to-be-created map.
The idea is this: Dungeons, old-school ones, were fun. Yes, they were somewhat silly. No, sometimes they didn't make much sense. But it was this wondrous anarchy that made them memorable and at times wonderful.
All of the background material of Dungeonpalooza is designed to give the Game Master ample reasons to send players packing off to forbidden caves, underground temple complexes and vast citadels of night deep within the earth.
It is largely assumed that bad guys lair in dungeons in Dungeonpalooza. In fact, they all do. Depending on the GM, this may even be considered a point of curious honor for the evil ones:
Ortak the Unclean: "Didja hear about Xyanthra?"
Blazzzor the Lich-Lord: "Yeah. Something about a floating citadel?"
Ortak: "I know, I know. It's horrible. I mean, lairs are hidden underground. That's ... that's just the way it's done."
Blazzzor: "Indeed. Evil exposed to the sun and air? It's just ... just ... unnatural!"
The Dungeonpalooza Theorum is this: The wackier the dungeon, the more fun for the players. The entire setting is designed to promote this sort of play. There is a sort of world background, but its primary function is to provide a backdrop to all the dungeoneering.
Magic mouths spouting riddles, living cystal statues, rotating rooms, checkerboard floors, fountains that change your sex if you drink from them, girdles that change your stature if you wear them ... it's all here and should be. While every dungeon should have some sort of internal consistency in terms of difficulty and theme, weirdness and humor are the watchwords for a Dungeonpalooza quest.
Enjoy what we've created so far, and add your own ideas -- either to the offical thread in the forums, or here.
The Continents of Dungeonpalooza
Cretaton, where gnome meets dinosaur in a land of savage, one-sided battle.
Kas-Turaaal, now with every type of climate for your adventuring convenience.
Pagurus; In Pagurus, the crabs scratch you!
Schlackengravva, storied birthplace of dwarven surliness.
S'yar Wan, a rainy, depressing and rodent-infested haven for adventurers too low-level to fight real monsters.
A Low-Rent, Black and White Map of Dungeonpalooza
Gods and the Afterworld (thus far)
The Shining One
The Shining One is the sun-god of the setting, a tireless crusader against evil. He is, as gods go, fairly meddlesome in the world of mortals, reaching down to smite darkness when it rises on the land. His priests are often trained to be expert dungeoneers and spelunkers, being the Shining One's agents where the sun itself does not reach.
(Domains include Good, Sun, Fire, and maybe Glory from complete Divine. I see him as rather focused at what he does, but if others wanted to include War or Wrath or the like, that wouldn't be entirely inappropriate.)
Granted Power: Clerics of the Shining One who are underground can glow with light equivalent to the brightness of a single torch at will. This way, parties can delve into the deepest dungeons while still forgetting to bring that torch they bought during character creation.
Sometimes, the Shining One gets a bit too zealous and mistakes simple selfishness for world-spanning evil. Not often -- just often enough so that the PCs might accidentally become a focus for him for a time.
The Lurker Beneath
The Lurker Beneath is not a nice god. Its domains include Chaos, Evil, Death, and Earth, and those with access to the book of vile darkness can add Corruption, Darkness, and Pain to the list, and the Complete Divine suggests Madness and Pestilence. In Mythic Times, the Lurker Beneath was known as the Darkness Manifest, but it was struck down by the other gods, the high church splintering into thousands of warring cults, and it was entombed deep, deep, deep within the earth. The Lurker Beneath's cults, who all worship it under different names and aspects, seek to unearth their dark god, the labyrinth designs of their tunnels a foul geomantic ritual to summon aberrations and others of that ilk to defend them against those heros who would try to stop them.
The Lurker Beneath does have a name, one known only to his cultists. It is so horrible and alien that devastating acidic balefire consumes all who hear it. The cultists of the Lurker are known to sow discord by scrawling the name in restrooms, passing notes containing the name to adventurers and then running away, and by training parrots to say it before releasing them into heavily populated areas.
But it is said that there is a greater name -- a truer name. Finding the Lost Name is the obsession of all of the cultists, for it is said that those who know and comprehend the lurker's True Name will usher in his final return, a holocaust of death, freedom and ecstasy (but mostly, truth be told, death) that will consume Dungeonworld/verse/whatever as a purifying flame.
Tickets available now. Book early, 'cause it's gonna be one hell of a show.
