The Nightmares Underneath is an old school role-playing game with a strong horror theme, set in a fantasy Middle East where dungeons are invading nightmares intent on the destruction of civilization. This product includes both the first edition and the newly revised second edition.



In the Kingdoms of Dreams, all is right with the world—except for one thing. Even though the Law has triumphed over the powers of Chaos, banishing idolatry and superstition in favour of science and reason, humanity is still threatened by a dangerous, otherworldly force. The Realm of Nightmares invades the physical world, sending incursions in the form of dungeons to undermine and destroy society. Perhaps you might recover items of great magical power from the ruins of the Ancient World that will help you banish these nightmares. But can you trust these devices from the Age of Chaos?



The Nightmares Underneath conforms to the following common assumptions of other old school games: six attributes, 3d6 in order, class and level, xp for treasure (but not magic items), and there is a simple system of rolling under your attribute scores for saves and skill tests.



Some aspects of the game are less common:

Initiative is rolled again each round, but only by the players—monsters always use the same initiative scores.

There are 5 alignments, instead of the usual 3 or 9, and they affect the way a character interacts with magic and social institutions.

Instead of hit points, this game uses a Disposition score, which you roll for each day of adventuring. Once your character runs out of Disposition, instead of dying, successive damage reduces your attributes, and may cause you to be crippled, maimed, or knocked unconscious before being killed. The special attacks of monsters may also reduce your attribute scores instead of causing normal damage. Disposition does not increase with level, however. Only a good night's sleep and a hearty meal will give you a high score.



So what is unique about The Nightmares Underneath?



Nightmare Dungeons

The justification for dungeoncrawling in this setting is that adventurers are raiding nightmare incursions, to find the treasure that keeps an incursion anchored to the physical world. Once the treasure is looted, the incursion is destroyed, and the adventurers profit. Individual creatures made of nightmares can be killed, but as long as the incursion exists, it will continue to spawn more. This is reflected by a countdown die, used in addition to encounter checks for wandering monsters.



There are procedures for creating nightmare incursions, the creatures that stalk them, and how they grow larger and more dangerous the longer it takes adventurers to deal with them. The rules also include procedures for creating ancient ruins that may or may not be plagued by nightmares.



Nightmare Curses

The terrible experiences adventurers face inside these nightmare incursions can leave lasting damage in the form of nightmare curses. When the darkness creeps into your soul, the result is madness, or supernatural restrictions, or even physical changes.



The players’ characters only suffer these curses when they are severely injured inside an incursion, while normal people can be driven mad simply by being inside an incursion to long. Be careful what hirelings you take into the dungeon with you!



Social Institutions

Once the dungeons have been looted, the carousing chapter includes guidelines for investing money in social institutions that can then provide favours and much-needed services to adventurers later on. Once you’ve spent enough money in town, you can attend classes at the local university to become more intelligent, the local druggist starts stocking the good stuff, and the geographical society lets you use its maps of the wilderness.



Characters can also turn communities against them, by committing crimes, leading villagers to their deaths inside the dungeon, or using chaotic magic items in public. Settlements have resentment ratings with each of the players’ characters, which may cause them to be forcibly driven out, if they get too high.



Spellcasting

Players must roll to control a spell they cast. A failed roll makes that spell harder to cast and may result in unexpected results. There are 100 spells, and though they have levels, this does not restrict them to characters of specific levels, it only makes them harder to control. Beginning characters have the same chance of knowing any spell.

The 1st edition rules are somewhat different and feature spell memorization, similar to many other old school fantasy rpgs, but still require a roll to cast spells properly.

The Second Edition

The revised edition includes better explanations of the rules, some more setting material, more support for normal dungeons and looting them of their magic items, and perhaps most significantly, the spellcasting system no longer uses memorization (you can still use those rules from 1e if you prefer them). I have also removed the bestiary and the wilderness exploration rules, both of which will be expanded into full-sized supplements to be released in the future.

But you can always read it for yourself: this version is free and contains the entire text of the game.

And you can watch a flip-through video of the first edition, in print, below:



Check out the latest Red Box Vancouver release: The Nameless Grimoire! A magic supplement for The Nightmares Underneath.