News Update: 2022-DEC-29
Caverns of Carthage is a new roleplaying game setting I am writing. It was inspired by looking at the cover of the 1983 Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) Red Box. The amount of gold in that single dragon's treasure hoard is probably equal to all the mined and unmined gold on Earth. This inspired the thought experiment: what if D&D-style dungeon crawling actually made some kind of economic sense? How would it work? I came up with some pretty interesting ideas and a compelling magic system. I felt really inspired and the ideas just kept coming. I had so many ideas that they started to form into a coherent game setting. Then I started doing some real-world history research and it all started coming together. So I decided to try developing a full-fledged game out of what was originally a whimsical day-dream.
The year is 176 AD, when Imperial Rome is at the height of its power. The Emperor is the stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius. Ten years prior, Roman co-emperor and general Lucius Verus defeated the Parthians to the east. At the end of the war, the city of Seleucia surrendered to the Roman army but the Romans sacked the city anyway. The gods punished the Roman army for this act of bad faith and infected it with the Antonine Plague, which the army brought back with it to Rome. This plague was so horrible that it might very well have brought the Empire to its knees, if not for the intervention of the mysterious Artificer's Guild. This shadowy organization used its magical secrets to shield the Empire from the worst effects of the Plague.
The setting is the region of Roman Carthage, in Roman Africa. When the original Punic Carthage was destroyed in 146 BC, the Romans invoked a religious ceremony, Evocatio, which stripped the city of its protector gods. The land was sown with salt and left cursed and barren. A century later, when the Romans returned and founded Roman Carthage on the ashes and bones of the defeated city, they brought with them Roman gods. The city and its environs were restored, but the mountains to the south remained cursed. The Roman priests call the curse Chaos, as it causes dungeons to randomly appear and disappear in the mountains, along with strange dangers, monsters, magic, and seemingly endless wealth!
The players take the part of slave-adventurers, owned by and toiling for the Roman state, under the supervision of Governor Quintos. They are forced to regularly delve into the Caverns of Carthage to extract its wealth. The details of how to create and use magical items are a closely guarded secret of the Artificer's Guild, but it is widely known that a lot of treasure is required. Consequently, Rome has a constant need for more precious metals and gems to feed its needs both magical and mundane. Governor Quintos is always on the lookout for new slaves to send into the Chaos dungeons. The Player Characters are among his newest acquisitions.
The game rules are a reskinned version of Into the Odd (Pay Version | Free Preview), which is itself a simplified version of Classic D&D or Original D&D (OD&D). It is part of a movement called Old-School Revival (OSR). Where modern D&D 5e involves players following a series of encounters with monsters, Classic play instead focuses on player agency. In Classic play, you solve challenges to acquire treasure. This might involve fighting monsters, but it often means avoiding or tricking them. You have to play intelligently to win and failure is likely. The Caverns of Carthage rules are easy to learn and the product will include all the rules you need to play.
Please contact me if you have any questions or comments.
—Jonathan Benn