The Katabasis to Coal Mining Scale of Dungeoneering (ft. thoughts on His Majesty the Worm)

30 Jul, 2025

It's dark as a dungeon way down in the mines.
-“Dark As A Dungeon”, Merle Travis

The dungeon holds no special nostalgia for me – I started gaming with the libraries and cultists of Call of Cthuhu – yet somehow I find dungeons a compelling trope. I think this goes beyond their convenience in providing unity of place, unity of time, and storytelling through architecture. I think the narrative draw of the dungeon comes from synthesizing two archetypal stories: the katabasis and the coal mine.

Katabasis is a term for mythic voyages to the underworld and back. This is an ancient type of story that can be found around the world. The journey of the Hero Twins through Xibalba, Orpheus rescuing Eurydice, Aeneas seeking his father, Enkidu in the Underworld, the Harrowing of Hell by Jesus Christ, and so on. The protagonist of a katabasis is usually a great hero who descends into an underworld or land of the dead. They overcome obstacles and enemies through their exceptional nature or the aid of their destiny, and may return to the world of the living with a treasure or reward beyond any price. These deeds happen only a few times in an entire cycle of myth, and they can change the cosmos.

The coal miner, by contrast, is an ordinary person. Each day the miner descends into the mine and faces death to win enough coin for another day’s room and board. The miner overcomes danger through preparation, tools, skill, and back-breaking effort. Even if they survive immediate perils, their time in the mine kills them slowly, wearing them down and poisoning them – unless, through extreme risk, they can get a little extra bonus and be able to retire. When the coal miners end their shifts, fresh waves of the desperate are always ready to take their place. Coal mines, or similarly dangerous and unrewarding professions, have also been found around the world since antiquity, but as far as I’m aware tales about them really become popular with the industrial revolution.

The two stories are naturally complementary when combined. The contrast between possible protagonists and stakes throws each into sharp relief, while the adversaries and dangers overlap. The mythic foes of a katabasis are often incarnations of the very things the coal miner fears – darkness, fire, suffering, crushing, disease – while the implacable realities of the same darkness, fire, suffering, crushing, and disease may as well be vengeful gods to the humble coal miner. Both paths of description and portrayal lead to the same place of intensity and extreme.

Not every RPG is a dungeon game (and vice versa), but within RPGs, the OSR in particular has embraced the dungeon. Dungeon Crawl Classics and Knave lean heavy on the side of coal mining, with mundane, often rogueish characters seeking scant riches through tools and cleverness. Mork Borg has some of the trappings of katabasis, with the apocalyptic setting and grandiose class names suggesting a glint of mythic importance to the protagonists. Stepping back from the OSR, later editions of D&D sit somewhere in the middle; being an adventurer or dungeoneer is an ordinary profession in settings like the Forgotten Realms, but characters who attain high levels can face the rulers of the underworlds, wield legendary, world-altering powers, and literally retrieve souls from hell. Shadow of the Demon Lord leans closer to katabasis, with the heroes guaranteed to personally face the breakdown of their world’s reality in ten adventures. 13th Age nods towards katabasis by giving every hero One Unique Thing. Often the more mythic elements of the katabasis lurk in the adventure itself, while the mechanics create characters who have more the coal miner to them, and slowly if ever find themselves to be mythic heroes.

I recently had the chance to play a game of His Majesty the Worm run by its creator, Josh McCrowell itself. I wasn’t sure what to expect but ended up liking the system immensely. It plays quickly, elegantly and fits quite a lot into a single game: collective worldbuilding, lethal tactical play, gentle but firm mechanical pushes to emphasize the emotional bonds between PCs as they delve a thoroughly dangerous dungeon. What I found most remarkable about it is the way it synthesizes the katabasis and the coal mine. The world is explicitly one of katabasis on a grand scale: a mortal army invaded Hell itself and cleared the upper layers, allowing adventurers to enter and delve its cursed depths. The characters are as close to coal miners as it gets: part of character creation involves picking a career they failed at before choosing to become dungeon delvers. They enter the dungeon with mundane skills from up to three previous jobs and bags full of ordinary tools and supplies to overcome peril with. The truly rare thing is that the mechanics create the sense of katabasis. Combat and skills are resolved through drawing and playing from a deck of tarot cards. It’s as tactical a game of numbers as any RPG, but the act of drawing and playing tarot cards in accordance with specific rules gives those tactical choices the feel of a mystical ritual. This single choice completely changes the flavor of the game. I felt like I should have been playing with a fog machine, a skull on the table, and a thunderstorm outside. His Majesty the Worm shows that even the most ragged and mercenary group of desperadoes can feel like mythic heroes on a katabasis when their fates are decreed using tarot, and that's more flavor that a lot of systems get from their mechanics alone.¹