Megadungeons

[bryant]

I begin to have a sneaking suspicion that my tabletop gaming inclinations are back. In full force.

The old school D&D guys (you know, the people playing first edition AD&D or blue box D&D or whatever) are way into the megadungeon concept these days. Big massive dungeons with dozens of levels and hundreds of rooms that can contain an entire campaign. Or multiple campaigns.

And when I say “way into,” what I mean is 30 page threads about dungeon mapping and design considerations. I’m talking an entire forum dedicated to megadungeons. There’s some serious thought going into this stuff — people theorizing, diagramming dungeon layout to determine the linearity or lack thereof of a dungeon, so on and so forth.

Plus maps! Hardcore.

I am reminded that when I was sketching out Tarnished Brass in my mind, I was trying to come up with a rationale for a dungeon crawl, although it promptly got all political on me. 4e makes a better system for a dungeon crawl than Reign, though.

Those inclinations I mentioned earlier seem to be very retro at the moment. Although neo-retro. I keep wanting to take old school gaming and put fins on it so it can go faster.

Originally published at Imaginary Vestibule.

Comments

[head58.livejournal.com]

There's a thread about them over on rpg.net as well (although the servers there seem to be having their hourly temper tantrum and aren't letting anyone in so I can't link to them). Something seems to have clicked on in the geek hivemind.

You know that whole crashed flying city thing I've posited in the DS game? The one lying on its side in the middle of a desert somewhere? I'm just sayin'

[editswlonghair.livejournal.com]

"You know that whole crashed flying city thing I've posited in the DS game? The one lying on its side in the middle of a desert somewhere?"

AWE. SOME. Just sayin'.

[head58.livejournal.com]

Actually, 1) I think I'm getting my megadungeon workout from playing Descent pretty much weekly at this point and 2) I think a megadungeon would break allegedly's head.

[editswlonghair.livejournal.com]

DyT! ;)

[head58.livejournal.com]

Don't you worry your pretty little head, Mabel. Did you hear what I said last week in the RM game about needing to go to "The Labyrinth of Haltarath"? Do you think it's going to be a Chuck E Cheese birthday party?

[dcltdw]

Okay, this is creepy. Something I keep musing about yesterday and today: Deadmines would make for an awesome tabletop setting.

Now you've just added megadungeon to that. :) And to me, that totally fits: the giant subterranean city. This dungeon that you've been crawling for multiple days? Is just a cover. It's the portal to the actual freaking dungeon that has blacksmithing workshops, mage labs, and engineering bays, that all are supporting the giant harbor that's building and training The Invasion Fleet.

Also, I was musing about how to do a stripped-down gaming system that supports arcane missiles. :)

[rob-donoghue.livejournal.com]

I'm all for this. I keep being tempted to run a Defias game because it's so full of awesome potential.

World's Largest

[amberley.livejournal.com]

And it is well known among those who know such things that you have a copy of World's Largest Dungeon.
Now just convert it to 4e as a generational saga, and you're golden!

Re: World's Largest

[bryant]

Well, WLD is not very /good/. It's a problem.

[bdeakin.livejournal.com]

Yeah. I finally got Dundjinni ripping last night and I knew it would be a problem from the get go (spent about 3 hours on maps). Part of it is getting the value out of my 11x17 printer, though.

I feel like I want to say I yearn to return to the "simpler" days of Undermountain, but I know in my heart of hearts that it won't be satisfying in and of itself. What I'm trying to do with my brand new campaign is be able to get back into the "old school" gaming style that I think you're referring to, but to give it more meaning.

That said, keeping it interesting requires, I feel, the DM to be pretty much on the ball through the whole session -- and doing that in the context of a six-hour dungeon crawl is notoriously hard. Hell, I find myself struggling to keep the narrative interesting in a kobold battle, let alone in repeating dungeon corridors.

[bdeakin.livejournal.com]

And to that point, I've been trying to think of a way to abstract the dungeon crawl a little bit, where I create the interesting "rooms" but keep the connecting bits more fluid, with rolls to handle getting lost or random encounters.

[bryant]

The megadungeon people talk a lot about putting the burden of the narrative onto the map and dungeon design phase, rather than trying to storytell the actual session.

Thinking about it, i realize that in the retro game I'm running now (Dark Heresy) I'm getting streamlining by using a fair number of more modern techniques -- scene framing being primary among those. A dungeon crawl does not have much scope for scene framing. But an unconnected series of rooms -- you lose the strategic challenge, which is front and center for these guys.

[bdeakin.livejournal.com]

Oh, and when I get a breather I'll get on these forums and start posting my "advent calendar" maps; essentially, I just cover up secret things with a little piece of paper that's the uniform background and when players go near it, I do the reveal. I don't even bother trying to avoid the meta-gaming and instead make a lot of the things you can uncover be bad.

Its fun for me, at least!

[bryant]

Dundjinni is still not exactly what I want out of a mapper; I want simple black lines on graph paper. Maybe OmniGraffle, actually.

[allegedly.livejournal.com]

-shudders- Back in my MU* days, I think I spent about 4-6 months designing (and researching the history of) a particular city's network of sewers. That would've been a fun week-long project...if only it had been so restrained. ;p

I can definitely see getting sucked into multipage posts about dungeons... ;p