The Underbranching

By E.S. Wynn
Cairn
Self Published

This 210 page supplement is a collection of one hundred two page dungeon zones. More toolkit than adventure, you stick them together, in a modular fashion, to create your own megadungeon. That’s bs, but the zones themselves are fairly interesting, if small. It channels soe decent OSR zone spirit. Putting some thought in to it would have turned out a decent adventure/megadungeon.

Is it a megadungeon or is it a toolkit? This is almost certainly a toolkit for constructing a megadungeon. It presents one hundred zones that you could stitch together in to something larger and/or drop in as sub-levels to another dungeon. You have to think of it as a kind of dungeon geomorphs project. Each section has a number of entrances/exits that you could link up to other areas, with a few being targeted at main entrances/exits to a dungeon. It’s laid out in a “facing pages” format, with the map and a little overview on one page and the keys on the other. This limits things to about twelve or so rooms per page, maximum, and zone designs that are none too complex, from a mapping standpoint. Each zone will have a few rooms related to the zone, theming wise, and generally a few more not directly related to the theme.

There is a very fine “OSR spirit” present in many of the rooms. One of rooms reads “Ominous Vault: An impenetrable door of warm stone bars access to this room. Three locks are arranged in a triangle on its face, each accessible only with a Branch Key. Inside, a cursed, deathless humanoid like those in the sarcophagi waits, bound in leather straps and desiccated, but still aware. It will wait until someone comes close enough to bite. Stat as a Vampire (Cairn Bestiary.) It may be reasoned with (or bartered with) eventually, becoming a source of information, but is currently crazed with hunger.” So, a vampire. But you’re not just walking in here, it’s triple locked. It gives the party a reason to revisit the one or at least get some knock spells agoing. Once in we’ve got a nice little description of dessicated and bound in leather straps. And then, the vampire, it does have this “you got too close thing” but also it becomes a situation. Can you bargain with the dude to get some info? Will you dump some blood at it?It’s a resource to exploit. It is a fairly involved room for being a short-ish description, with lots of interactivity possible for the party to exploit, or be exploited by. And that’s a good room. 

In other zones you’ve got some goblins running a kidnapping for ransom thing. Will you get kidnapped, or will you exploit them to get them to kidnap someone else for you? An undead zone has a lich who wants to finally get to read his big ol book collection. (I’m sure many of us can sympathize,) Are you gonna piss him off? Are you going to manage to use him to your own ends by bargaining a book? He’s testy at being interrupted. This things manages to put in an impressive number of situations in the dungeon, and not just the parties relationship with the various denizens. 

Writing is generally good, there are a decent number of evocative description, rooms that feel imagined first and statted second, the way it should feel. That vampire being desiccated and bound in leather being a decent example. It does rely on “strange” and “weird” a little too ofton; we should be striving to write a description that avoids conclusions like that and gets more visceral, to the point the PLAYERs think “huh. That’s weird.” But it’s ok in general, especially given the sheer number of rooms.

The issue here, as with nearly every geomorph type product, is that there is little in the way of a larger picture. These areas are in isolation. “He seeks revenge against whatever pushed them out of their old home in an adjoining area and will pay with a random relic,” That guy, and his situation, with his cult, would be better if he had a specific vendetta against a specific group, that was played with in both zones. The interconnections between zones, and I’m not talking mapping, just are not there. And, i think, by design. There are some possibilities, like a dude who has a bronze tablet that “someone else wants”, but then it would be better if there were, say, some cross-references with ideas for linking areas. Or, just forgo the entire geomorph thing and spend the extra effort to put this thing together into a unified whole. That shouldn’t be THAT much more effort for the designer, already familiar with its two hundred pages of dungeon. Then you’ve have a real product here.

And some areas ARE weak, or have weak aspects to them. “A Maze of rough-hewn mine tunnels carved into the living rock …” This is just a few standard rooms layouts, as one would find in any dungeon, nothing minelike or mazelike about them. 

I really like the vibe here. Strong OSR situations in the zones. Terse descriptions that still give the DM a lot to work with. But, then, I’m doing the Bryce thing. I bought a geomorphy thing and now I’m gonna complain that its a geomorphy thing. But it is! And it would be such a strong product if the designer did the work to tie the zones together and create a cohesive whole instead of explicitly noting that the DM is free to link these as they wish. Lean in to some cross-references, at least, to suggest possibilities! Oh, also, it’s Cairn, so, you have to adjust treasure appropriately and I’m not overly happy withthe magic items.

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https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/572362/the-underbranching-cairn-megadungeon?1892600