I can’t get enough of games like Dark Souls and Darkest Dungeon — they exemplify the best qualities of a great dungeon delve, not only because they are challenging, but also because they tease out their plots and lore in a way which makes you want to keep exploring, even though you’re getting killed all the time. Part of that intrigue comes from the fact that the stories aren’t your standard fantasy tropes. There might be dragons and zombies, but they still subvert our expectations in interesting ways. With that in mind, I think one of the most important things our mega dungeon needs is a good, creepy, hook to get the players interested. Lovecraftian themes have been in vogue for a while, and I see no reason not to continue the trend.

Now, horror and dread are difficult to build into a game like Dungeons & Dragons. For one, the system just doesn’t support these things very well. D&D wants you to hit things on the head to get their juicy experience, and true horror often rewards combat with an untimely end. So rather than try to scare the players, we should be interested in showcasing how wrong and weird things are in our game.

What might that look like? Well, a few weeks ago, my players and I got together and talked about what they thought the world was like. They decided on a high fantasy, high magic setting; something along the lines of the Eberron campaign setting. In this world, magic can be taken for granted in many places, and most “human-like” races are fairly prevalent. The more monstrous races; dragonborn, tieflings, anything in Volo’s guide; are more mysterious and rare.

That sounded good to me, but then I watched the WebDM “elves” video, and got an idea. In the video, the hosts discuss the idea of elves — who are effectively immortal — being completely aloof from the cares of the world. After all, if you live 600 years, any human civilization is going to be mostly inconsequential to you. What if most “magical” peoples are somewhat common in our world, with the exception of the elves? Maybe all of the “elves” in our world are something closer to half-elves; or maybe other elves (wood elves, drow, etc) exist, but the high elves don’t. What happened to them? Perhaps these elves were masters of the arcane, and the remnants of their civilization are what explain (and power) the mundane magic the people who came after utilize.

Sure, this is a tried-and-true trope, but that just means we get to subvert it later. If adventuring is an accepted occupation for people who venture into ancient dungeons to retrieve items of power, which are then dismantled and used to power society at large, it gives us a good jumping off point. It’s a good start, but it isn’t very creepy or dreadful. Time to amp it up.

In a remote region of the world, people are having trouble sleeping. A plague of nightmares has descended upon the area; preventing the local population from getting a solid night’s sleep. If this was an area where the “magical revolution” was slow in coming, an population who can’t sleep is a population who can’t work. No one knows why the nightmares assault them, but everyone generally agrees it probably has something to do with the ancient elven complex rumored to be underneath the sea cliffs. In fact, it’s common knowledge around these parts that there’s some kind of haunted or cursed dungeon on a rocky strand nearby; all you have to do is look for the pillars, jutting out like broken teeth from the cliff, and descend the wall to the entrance…

I think this hook is good enough to get us going, and it will give us plenty to work with as the characters uncover the plot while moving through the dungeon; where are the nightmares coming from? What did the elves do to cause this? Why have the disappeared, and what did they leave behind? Of course, when I say “uncover,” I really mean “come up with interesting ideas we can then use ourselves, which will make them feel clever.”