I started posting ideas about what happens if you stay too long in a megadungeon long ago, 2021 maybe. And I am still trying to thread the needle and square the circle. I think I got it this one on the player’s side, one or two the GM’s. And we keep it simple.
Roll your luck score or less on a d20 (if you lack that stat, roll it!) when you end the session in the dungeon.
If you fail, the Judge rolls a d20.
If multiple players fail the roll, only one PC, the lowest of the lowly low rollers, suffers a fate from the table (we are rolling this last thing in the session and don’t got time for a million Chinese hells to be adjudicated here).
- Bad roll. In the stomach of a dragon. Your foodie brother has to eat his way through the dungeon before your remain reach an unresurrectable state .
- You catch the dungeon crud, which halves your HP for one outing. If you fumbled, you are diseased with something from the 1e AD&D DMG or that old Gorgonmilk table... anyone still got it?
- Got wet and gear is all rusty.
- Got lost. Other PCs have to find you where you are living like Lawrence Fishburn ( (roll your PC one up in the meantime).
- Imprisoned somewhere in the dungeon. Roll up a PC to help rescue you.
- Held for ransom. Roll up a PC to help pay for, rescue, or avenge you.
- Someone stole something from you. You gonna let them just keep it? Well, it might already be on the goblin market (aka eBay).
- Appeared naked and in a fugue state in somebody’s barn.
- It’s cold in those caves. Lot’s of sharp things too. Lost a toe. Will be a month till you walk at normal speed.
- Charmed by a harpy, lamia, or sphinx. Roll up a new PC to join the group that has to find you and tell her that you cannot, in fact, fix her.
- Took some bangs and bumps on the way out. Can you survive d30 damage?
- Angered a faction. Negotiations, alliances, and deals will not work out with them if you are spotted amongst the party. Time for a disguise.
- There is a price on your head. An AD&D assassin is rolled up by the GM and they start to stalk you.
- Geased! You are compelled to perform a certain task (retrieval? message relay? be dinner?) somewhere in the dungeon and lost 1 HP for each day you don’t work towards that task.
- Somehow you got stuck in charge of a monstrous child or a dangerous beast. It thinks you are momma or something. Don’t believe Gygax; it is not morally right to kill a child.
- Saw something so horrid your hair went white and you lost d4 Wisdom/Sanity/Personality. If you go to 0 in your score this way, you are basically a drooling vegetable. Cure disease type spells might work, but you will be broken.
- Had to join a faction or cult or cultish faction to survive. You live in the dungeon now. Roll up a new PC to go deprogram your old one.
- Driven cray cray by your escape. Gain a dungeon madness.
- A witch caught you. You are now a mundane-seeming animal the party has to find and kiss. Prolly a frog. Roll up a new PC while your party gets gross with every beast.
- Little elf guys stole your treasure. No XP for gold till you go kick their asses.
Share good posts with good goblins.
Claytonian at the gmails.

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