So many men have fallen So many more must die An OLD SCHOOL megadungeon for 5e Well, hello. My name is Chris. I have been working some time on bringing Barrowmaze to Roll20, and now is your opportunity to jump in. The game will be played on Wednesdays , 5-9 PM CST-US , weekly . What is Barrowmaze? Barrowmaze is a megadungeon written by Dr. Greg Gillespie for Labyrinth Lord, a retroclone of the 1981 D&D basic set. It's incredibly deadly, featuring some straight-up save-or-die effects, fiendish traps, interesting treasure, and unique monsters. The dungeon is over 300 rooms and includes an attached hexcrawl of the surrounding region. It's sometimes called "vanilla +", and strives to be sort of a "traditional" setting rather than completely gonzo as some OSR products can lean. What is OSR? In this case it's "old school revival/renaissance". The idea of looking to D&D with rules instead of a collaborative storytelling experience like some other systems. Combat is deadly, the encounters are unfair, balance is nebulous, player agency is king, and resource management is the most important thing. OSR does not assume heroism. This is not a game of superheroes. Life is cheap. Magic is magical. Player skill over game skill - don't roleplay your stats, instead find some way for your character to do the smart thing you want them to do. Think of yourself as the character's guardian angel. OSR doesn't frequently "fail forward". One wrong move and you're done. Everyone has differing opinions about what the pillars of OSR are, and this thread isn't about that. For the purposes of this game, this is the definition of OSR you need. Isn't this a 5E game, though? Yeah, about that. After the Labyrinth Lord version came out, there was a 5E version commissioned by Rogue Comet, and now we can enjoy. We will be using a "hack" of 5E that removes cantrips, Bards, death saving throws, and streamlines a few other rules. The engine is 5E still, and all the same archetypes etc. apply within these house rules. I'm using the "Zak Hack" as a basis, a chop of 5E by Zak Sabbath (who wrote things like Vornheim, Red & Pleasant Land, etc). Easily findable and shareable. Don't fret about this. The main idea is to squash certain spells and features that trivialize exploration and dungeon crawling. What makes this game special? Well, where to begin? Firstly, I remade the hexmap from the book in HexKit with pixel tiles, to reinforce the aesthetic we are going for. The soundtrack is somewhere between teased hair dark synth scores that you'd find in something like Hotline Miami or Sword & Sworcery LP, and dark ambient metal tracks recorded in underground caves. I've spent a lot of time on the music, using my own Fanburst account to get the sound right. The dungeon is good to go, and you have the ability to trek off to this place and go through any of the ... 70+? entrances/mini-dungeons assuming you can find them and make it in there. Life is cheap, so I recommend you always have a character in the wings. Bring your 10 foot pole, and leave your 3-page backstory. Character generation rules and the like are reserved for those selected. It's more important that you can make the games and you aren't a jerk than any sort of system mastery or experience. In many ways, the house rules have simplified things. That being said, please respond below or send me a DM. I need 4-5 strong hearts.
