The Dungeons of Thaarl was a (to my mind) pretty neat idea for a Megadungeon game I had some years ago. There have been two stints at running a game under that title: an initial run around the end of 2019 and a revamped attempt in early 2023. Over the weekend I found the folder (British for a “binder”) with those latter notes.
Interestingly, sometime in the last couple of days one of the guys chatting on the RPR Discord asked me what happened to the Dungeons of Thaarl. He and another good gaming friend expressed an interest in playing some more in that dungeon and, well, I found myself quite excited about the idea.
In 2023, the dungeon was rebooted to be used with Simple Dungeon GURPS and we had some fun… until I bottled out and did my usual thing of sabotaging the game. As it stands, if I was to dust off that binder and bring Thaarl back to the table, I’d want to do it with GURPS Third Edition and perhaps with the full Basic Set rules. But I’ve not said no.
Megadungeons keep eluding me. As I wrote last week in the Discord, I basically find the pressure (imagined or not) of constructing 3+ levels of dungeon and keying them hugely triggering of my anxiety. If I do this, I will need to develop some structured Tiny Prep discipline and focus on making lots of mini-dungeon sections I can string together.
So I am tempted… and excited… and also very nervous about saying yes. But I love that I found the Folder of Thaarl with some pretty detailed notes and a couple of levels of dungeon already mapped, keyed, and previously explored. I can’t help wondering what might have happened in there over the course of nearly 18 months.
Game on!
Roleplay Rescue’s Blog 
Here’s a model for your tiny prep for this, Dungeon23. While that was specifically geared for last year, thus the “23”, you could do something similar for any given period of time. For those who don’t want to click a link, the basic idea is one room each day, one level each month, for a year. That gives a 12-level dungeon with 365 rooms. It also keeps you ahead of your players if you give yourself a, say, three-month lead.
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Yeah, that’s how Thaarl started back on 2019 – one room per day, as in the approach I picked up from Peter Dell’Orto’s Dungeon Fantastic blog suggested. It’s a good shout!
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[…] of which could be re-purposed for a romping Dungeon Fantasy open table. There’s the eponymous Dungeons of Thaarl underneath a ziggurat in the harsh desert. There’s also the Fire Citadel of the Dragon Kings […]
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