#RPGaDay2024 - Day 7 - Legends of the Lost City

Day 7 of #RPGaDay2024 was supposed to be "RPG with Good Form."  I'm feeling this is the most British of the prompts in eleven years, and I'm just not feeling it.  So, using the alternate option, Day 7 is "Forgotten City" and the randomizer came up as "Legend or Rumor"

In the Pre-4th Edition days, I ran the module B4 - The Lost City using Hackmaster 4th Edition. It was great fun, with 12 players, and the character ultimately slaying the Zargon.  But reviewing everything afterwards, I felt as if there was a something far greater to to with the adventure setting.  

The Lost City is a solid adventure:  Characters get lost in the desert and find the top of a ziggurat, buried deep within the sands.  Once gaining access inside and away from the blistering sun, they navigate through the sub-levels and ultimately discover a civilization living underground for generations.  The civilization had escaped from an apocalypse, but over time they became dependent on hallucinogens  as the dress with masks and worship their gods who have apparently abandoned them.... Except for one god, Zargon:  a physical manifestation of evil that is straight up inspiration for the finale of Conan the Destroyer, made two years later.  In the original module the xenos from above should dispatch the Zargon, and further adventures are suggested in the back of the module.  

My alternative campaign idea is much better.  Like an 80s coming of age movie, are heroes are teens living in Cyndicea (The Lost City).  Perhaps they're rebelling teens, perhaps the batch of hallucinogens are as strong as usual, but the characters join forces to uncover the evil and corruption in the city, and once vanquished, the underground world expands to the mushroom fields, the goblin cliffs, and god-knows what evil lurks in the further corners, much less responding to incursions from up above.  

The Vaults of Pandius has a nice 48-page overview of the setting

I don't know much of the Goodman Games classics reimagined version of the Lost City covers playing the Cyndiceans, but it would be a utter failure if playing the locals was not an option.  

For another overview of The Lost City, I refer you to Greyhawk Musings.

(Edit: I searched high and low for all my notes regarding a Reverse Dungeon Lost City, and I feared there were lost to a old laptop, but following up on some later #RPGaDay posts, I found them.. in an unpublished  Blogger Page, using the OMNI system. There may be life to this yet.)