Story Elements into Game Mechanics

As I said before, my craving to host a megadungeon was sparked by the trailer for Darkest Dungeon. This gave me three main story elements that I want to expand into a megadungeon: stress is a threat, death can strike at any time, and there are forgotten relics. Added to this ideas are the design principles that things get more dangerous the deeper you go, rewards are based on challenges overcome, the dungeon is huge and dynamic.

The Impact of Story Elements:

Expanding upon stress as a threat, there are mechanically and story elements that become obvious. On the mechanical side I want some form of sanity or mental condition mechanic. Currently I'm not sure if this will take a form that is similar to hit points or if it will function similarly to God-Machine Chronicle's use of integrity as a morality and mental stability stat. On the story element side darkness will be a threat and light a solace, morale will be a resource that you try to preserve, and when someone returns from the dungeon it isn't only physical wounds that you should fear. Stress, in the end, should not always be a bad thing, and there should be a mechanic for the character to find new strength when they succeed under great stress.


The second story element, that death can strike at any time, means that character generation should be somewhat simple. It shouldn't take an hour to make a character that may die within half-an-hour. This does not mean that the dungeon is a mindless meat grinder, feeding on the tears of unlucky players. No, while the threats in the dungeon should not be obvious, neither should they be impossible to detect by various means. You may not know exactly what the trap is, but it will always be clear there is something dangerous. Threats will also remain threats for longer. This means that a lowly skeleton should still have a chance to hit a powerful and experienced warrior. For threats to remain threats the math needs to be relatively flat, none of these modifiers that are larger than the total variance of the die roll (I'm looking at you 3rd edition D&D).

Finally, the mystery of lost and forgotten places. I have not gotten a firm idea yet of what the actual environ of the megadungeon will be, but I do know that I want part of it to be an ancient secret that an ancient civilization forgot. That is right, I want the players to encounter the remains of an ancient civilizations, and then eventually I want them to realize they are dealing with a threat so primordial that it had been forgotten by the ancient civilization by the time they had begun their construction. I want this to be like discovering Harappa, then realizing that they built their settlement on a city that is itself twice as old as Harappa itself, except instead of a city they find nightmare-ish terror.