Don Jonze
Article by Matt Machell (September 2001)
or something different for the roleplaying favourite
The Dungeon crawl is traditional roleplayers fayre, but like all traditions it can get a bit repetitive. Sometimes it's nice to play around with it's conventions, so presented here for your amusement are some dungeon crawl variants.
The concept behind these variants. is that the world in which your dungeon crawl takes place has a magical equivalent of cable TV. Created by wizards and hosted by typically vacuous presenters (taken from MTVs VJ clone vats no doubt), the Cabal Broadcasting Network (CBN) pumps out televisual delightsTM.
Down the Tunnel®
The prime time favourite is Down the Tunnel®, hosted by maniacal investigative reporter Don Jonze (sharp blue doublet, smarmy attitude). Don takes his camera crew on location, following around groups of adventurers as they loot, pillage and murder their way through dungeons. It's like Cops, but for adventurers and your PCs are the stars. Plenty of opportunity for monologues from party members saying exactly how wonderful they are (or the other party members aren't). CBN are paying them a large amount of money to keep Don and his camera crew safe while down the dungeon. This is a tad difficult with all those monsters around (especially as Don insists on interviewing them for their side of things, no matter how suicidal). Still, there's lots of money (and lucrative mercenary contracts and sponsorship deals) to be gained from going along with it, as long as they can keep events under control.
Game stuff: Don and his crew are pitiful characters stats wise, though don is smarmy and the crew have some magical knowledge.
Dungeon Popularity Votey ChallengeTM
Another favourite of Cabal TV is Dungeon Popularity Votey Challenge, much like the TV show Big Brother. As the party progress down each level of the dungeon, the Party get to vote off the least popular member. Of course this member then gets to publicly whinge about other characters to the host (yup it's Don again).
Game stuff: While the party wait between levels, the player of the voted off character gets to roleplay his interview with Don(the GM). The player then gets control of some of the monsters to give him something to do.