PAX Unplugged 2025 - PAX Metro: The Underground Expedition
For those of you who were at PAX Unplugged you may have encountered the Line Entertainment team. And if you found us at night, you may have been presented with the opportunity to participate in the Grand Campaign - a distributed adventure narrative told over the course of the weekend.
As each story beat progressed attendees were presented with the current situation and a variety of options, each with a custom Difficulty Check (DC) attached. Rolling on the giant inflatable d20 and passing the DC added a vote to the attendee’s preferred narrative path. The accumulation of votes determined the path the story took.
Presented below is the narrative we created. More details will be forthcoming in a later Postmortem post.
The Descent
Your expedition team stands at the entrance to Service Tunnel 404, deep beneath PAX Metro. The air is thick with moisture and strange, chittering sounds echo from below. Your guide points to three possible routes deeper into the metro system, each leading into darkness.
🔹 Follow the Main Service Rails
It’s the official route, but also where the missing crews were last seen.
1 vote
🔹 Wade Through the Flooded Lower Level
Knee-deep water glows faintly with bioluminescent algae. It’s a shortcut, but you’ll be walking blind through an unknown ecosystem.
3 votes — CHOSEN
🔹 Climb Through the Ventilation System
The metal grating overhead leads to the air ducts. Risky and noisy, but you’ll see everything below before committing.
1 vote
Bioluminescent Gardens
The flooded tunnels have become an underwater forest. Glowing algae creates an ethereal blue-green light, schools of translucent fish dart between submerged platforms, and the water hums with life. But larger shapes move in the deeper channels ahead.
🔹 Follow the Water Source
Trace the clean, flowing current upstream to see what’s feeding this thriving ecosystem.
5 votes
🔹 Investigate the Far Tunnel
Head toward a side passage where the bioluminescence seems brightest and most concentrated.
15 votes — CHOSEN
🔹 Approach the Large Shapes
Wade toward the massive forms moving in the deeper water - they could be debris, vehicles, or something alive.
13 votes
The Hidden Passage
Behind concealed maintenance doors marked with symbols that predate the metro, you’ve found passages that lead to the true heart of this underground world. The architecture here is older, more purposeful - this was built to be hidden.
🔹 Commit to the Hidden World
Cross the threshold into whatever lies beyond. There may be no going back to the surface world as you knew it.
10 votes — CHOSEN
Guardians of the Deep
You’ve become protectors of the underground ecosystem, working alongside the enhanced wildlife to maintain the delicate balance between the surface metro and the hidden world below. The creatures accept you as allies, and you’ve found a new purpose in bridging two worlds that were always meant to coexist.
You may notice The Hidden Passage had only one way through. This is a design mistake that I’ll talk more about when I follow up with the LimeTools Postmortem.