Downcrawl

by Aaron A. Reed

Downcrawl is a system to help gamemasters run randomly generated, open-ended adventures in a weird and fantastical underworld called The Deep, Deep Down: a place so far from the surface that the sun and sky are only legends, and so vast that no bounds can be placed on its dimensions or contents.

Compatible with any fantasy roleplaying system, Downcrawl contains rules for taking dangerous journeys through unmapped places, tables of fungi with curious effects, procedures for GMs to generate strange new peoples, places, and encounters, and tips for running a satisfying, spontaneous campaign when your players might explore in any of six directions. Oh, and huge intelligent spiders who eat faces. Watch out for those.

Genres: Role Playing Games

60 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2019

About the author

Aaron A. Reed is a writer and game designer focused on the intersection of prose and play and finding new ways for people to tell stories together. His fiction, games, and playable artworks have won recognition from a broad range of storytelling communities, including the Independent Games Festival (video games), the ENnie Awards (tabletop roleplaying), and Kirkus Reviews (traditional publishing). Aaron is a multi-time IndieCade and IGF finalist, and his work has also been shown at South by Southwest, Slamdance, and GaymerX; he has spoken about digital storytelling at PAX and PAX East, Google, WorldCon, NarraScope, and the Game Developer Conference. He lives in Santa Cruz, California.

Reviews

[Juho Pohjalainen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm not so sure of the travel and exploration rules - I'd have to give them a spin to form a final judgement, but as it stands they seem far too cooperative and "modern" for an old-school borderline-adversarial dungeon master such as myself. The random generators are all pretty good in terms of sparking up one's imagination, though I feel like they could go a little bit farther: they feel a little light as it stands.

Certainly many good things here, plenty of good inspiration. I will use it. It's just that it could have gone farther.

[Matthew J. · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read the author's SkyCrawl a couple months back, and this does for underground exploration what SkyCrawl did for Fantasy-Space. To be 100% honest, I'm more likely to use SkyCrawl, due to my own particular interests. However, this book has a lot of useful toolkit stuff for a GM who wants to get weird in the darkness below.
Like SkyCrawl, it uses elements of Powered by the Apocalypse, but works as a kind of plug-in/cap for whatever game you might be running.
Good stuff.

[Jerzy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading the 2nd edition, which just came out in March 2025. (I thought I'd add it here myself, but it seems Goodreads doesn't allow readers to add updated editions anymore, alas...)

Haven't finished reading every page yet, but my kids and I are already enjoying a little cave crawl adventure based on this!