This idea started when I caught my first episode of Dirty Jobs in quite a while. What if you combined that ugly, gritty, see-how-the-sausage-is-made attitude with The Wire's sense of real, imperfect people trying to do a hard job? And what if you threw in some deconstruction of D&D fantasy tropes?
The only "people" living in the Underdark who are halfway decent and halfway committed to keeping the place livable are the dwarves. They keep to themselves and build to last, but there are all kinds of things out there in caverns natural and unnatural that would eat your soul as soon as look at you. Someone has to see to it that a stray Purple Worm doesn't burrow into a dwarven creche and eat up all the little beardless kids. Someone has to keep those nasty illithids and their weird gods in check. That someone is you. It may not pay well, it'll certainly get you covered in some nasty substance or other, and your life expectancy will be shorter than a goblin's. But you're making the undermountain safe for all dwarvenkind.
Picture a fire team of dwarves with steampunky flamethrowers strapped to their backs, clearing out a nest of carrion crawlers. Picture a sergeant or foreman in back of them, shouting advice and insults around a huge cigar stub. And just to make it fun, let's say those carrion crawlers invaded from some alternate dimension full of nasty, inimical things. C'mon, you can't tell me carrion crawlers don't have at least a little Lovecraft in them.
Take every fantasy rpg trope about dwarves and underground critters and merge them with gritty, slice of life television. The players are a team of troubleshooters armed with clunky, dangerous technology and sent out to keep dwarven homes safe from the awful, awful things out there in the dark. If you're low on awful things, go pull out some old-school rpg supplements. Any of those weird monsters like otyughs and rust monsters can be scary and nasty if you describe them right.
Possible systems: I'd do this in Reign or Savage Worlds, but you could work it into D&d (3E or prior), Warhammer fantasy, Pathfinder, or Fantasycraft. If you're willing to do a little prep work, The Shadow of Yesterday would work if you grit up the pool recovery rules.
Personally I'd probably run it in PTA or Smallville, something that would highlight the relationships between the team members rather than the combat. But you still need a credible threat. Yup it kinda feels like a Cortex+ hack...
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