Heart of Darkness

Heart of Darkness is a novel by Joseph Conrad, Polish immigrant into the British Empire. This book concerns Marlow's journey up a tropical river to find Kurtz, an operative who has vanished. Much of it involves the horror, the horror of the region: which becomes more and more savage the further Marlow ventures. At the end, Kurtz is found to have created his own kingdom; based on brutality, greed, and massacre.

Welcome, in short, to the Victorian update of The Tempest. Conrad was musing on imperialism versus savagery. We're left unsure as to which is better than the other. We are sure that whatever Is To Be Done, it is not what Kurtz is doing. The subtext is Leopold II's adventure in the Kongo. We cannot much snark about this here, the book is a classic and the Belgians should feel bad (and the Brits, not much better).

Apocalypse Now is self-consciously a map of this to the Vietnam / Cambodia wars in the 1970s. We also got Forbidden Planet, lampshading it all more obvious-like. Or Inception. Or - just head on over to /tv/ already, would you? or to /lit/.

As to /tg/, there exist several roleplaying adventures which follow this template of a journey into a dark and and evil place being a metaphor for a personal journey into darkness and evil. Carl Sargent's Night Below is perhaps closest in spirit. Or check out the Abyss. 40k fans might note that some of the names above sound familiar...

Whether a module like this should be written is quite another question. It's a parallel to the Magical Realm phenomenon, inasmuch as such an experience drives your players to question whether they are roleplaying something gone wrong in the designer's own head. We will note that Sargent himself didn't stick around this field long after Night Below.