Millenia ago, the Gravelord, an elder lich whose dread power called armies of the undead from their fated rest and challenged the gods, retreated from the world. It was an age of myths, an age where legendary heroes walked the earth, weaving sorceries to shake the heavens and wielding weapons to carve the earth. Sealing his great tomb palace deep beneath the earth, the Gravelord slipped into the slumber of ages, leaving his trusted servants, lieutenants, and majordomos to guard his crypt against invaders, content to wait out the ages until his old foes had fallen to father time.

Now, the great tomb of the Gravelord has been breached, and as hapless adventurers stumble through its depths, his dark forces are roused from their torpor. The world beyond the walls of his dungeon home has changed beyond recognition, fading as the light of legends has vanished. In this new, diminished land, will the Gravelord's servants finally secure their master's rise to power, or will his great tomb kingdom fall to bickering and infighting?

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A serious sounding premise, I know, but I'm presenting this game as something that aims to blend dark and humorous stories for something I think could be quite fun. Taking inspiration from "Overlord", "Disgaea," and more, players would take on the roles of powerful (but flawed and unruly)fiends in service to the ancient necromancer, as united by their loyalty to their master as they are divided by their egos and individual natures. Tasked with establishing his empire in the new world, they'll have to overcome their petty squabbles lest their masters ambitions fall to zany hijinks.

This'll very  much be a dark comedy, and while I think the premise matches closely the (heavily modified) premise of the japanese rpg "Maid," it's a system I'm only passingly familiar with. FATE is something I know much better, and a system I think would well handle the largely narrative concerns of the various dark personalities struggling more with themselves and each other than the largely pitiful resistance of this new world.

I'm eager to hear what sort of ideas or thoughts people have regarding this premise. While it's lovely to hear that people are interested, I'd vastly prefer more substantive posts with suggestions to make something like this work. Ideas for more source material to draw from would also be appreciated.

I have been wanting to check out Maid for awhile.

I would be interested in a Maid campaign. What rating are you thinking about? Adult? Mature? All ages? That would be quite indicative of the kind of hijinks we might get up to.

As for suggestions, I think the old Dungeon Keeper games might be useful as well as the Toushin Toshi or Lightning Warrior Raidy games (warning, NFSW).

If you want a tongue in cheek game, each of his awakened Maids/Fiends are actually Monster Queens of some sort, capable of creating new monsters somehow. It does not necessarily have to involve anything above a Mature rating. A mummy might create more mummies, a werewolf infect those with lycanthropy, etc. Thus the more adventurers they defeat, the faster your forces grow. Some Fiendish Maids might specialize in infiltration and they are the ones who go above ground to seduce specialists to your cause, scout out the surrounding area and spread misinformation to sucker unprepared people into your labyrinth.

If each Fiendish Maid is a level boss, then perhaps the first trap in the Dungeon is a teleporter that brings the adventurers to a random level of the dungeon so the PCs would have to really rush to grab them (and thus earn favour with their Master).

This sounds like a perfect premise for Maid or My Life With Master. I'd be up for either.

In reply to Togashi Kenshin (msg # 3):

I'm waffling between a mature and an adult rating. Honestly, I don't want the game to be about outright smut or "gorn", which makes me shy away from the adult rating, but given the darker moments of Overlord and the fact that I'd like for that horror evoked by the true exercise of the characters' monstrous power to be possible, I'm considering the adult rating just for the flexibility. This would come with the understanding that I'll probably keep players on a tighter leash than the rules actually require, but it might work.

The teleporter trap (actually straight from the Overlord novel series) would almost certainly be in effect.

Also, it's worth pointing out that there would be no restriction on character gender. Maid presumes a largely female cast, but there's room for both (and more) in this game.

I'd be interested in this, I don't know either system although I do have experience with a FATE offshoot called strands of FATE. How important would rules knowledge be and what kind of 'creatures' would you be looking at in your players?