Down Down Down

A bibliographic deep dive into the subterranean imaginary that traces the fascination of underground spaces.

Since that fateful moment in 1974 when Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson decided to title their revolutionary new roleplaying game Dungeons & Dragons, a strong subterranean mystique has permeated gaming cultures from the tabletop to the games console and beyond. But what if the caves, crypts, grottos, and dank netherworlds explored by players weren’t only harboring treasures of the fictional variety? What if these spaces of imaginal exploration were capable of calling out to us from deep time, whispering unexpected truths about our unique relationship to the Great Below?

In this expansively imagined and deftly edited volume, writer and RPG historian Stu Horvath delves through the various strata of deep time to uncover a vast hoard of literary gems that cast strange new light on the subterranean imaginary. Tracing this fascination with chthonic mystery from the ancient world to the contemporary gaming table, Down Down Down: An Exploration of Literature’s Dungeons from The Bibliothecha To Bastionland gathers together fragments of almost one hundred resonant texts and images, illuminating them with the editor’s own commentary and positioning them in relation to contemporary tabletop roleplaying games.

A perfect resource for both games masters and armchair adventures alike, Down Down Down surveys the perennial appeal of underground spaces to writers and artists, and makes their varied works and ideas accessible to contemporary readers, players, and game designers.