Topic: How do you go about designing your MegaDungeon? (Read 7,729 times)
Stonegiant Level 5 Thaumaturgist member is offline
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Re: How do you go about designing your MegaDungeon « Reply #30 on Dec 23, 2007, 8:31pm »
One of the problems I have faced with the mythic underground was the need of the party to heal, resupply, level up, etc. in their base of operation. Along time ago I read a story in Dragon called "Catacombs" which inspired me, in the story was a city called Wizard's Gate which controlled the access to the Mega-Dungeon and the city was underground as well and thus the otherworldlyness of the setting even when in the city was not lost.
Joined: Sept 2007 Gender: Male Posts: 942 Karma: 27
Re: How do you go about designing your MegaDungeon « Reply #31 on Dec 29, 2007, 3:22pm »
After months of waffling about with other notions, I have settled on the following premise:
Two jaded and incredibly hoary wizards, powerful enough to fear no meddling by princes in their affairs, entertain themselves with a game of dungeoneering. They invite adventurers to brave their labyrinths, with special rewards for those who accomplish missions pertinent to the wizards' rivalry.
Each serves a Lord of Chaos with strategic ends to which the "harvesting" of high-level mortal souls is a means.
This "game within the game" should be warrant enough for whatever artifices I contrive to challenge players.
I am now considering what peculiarities of character should distinguish the two realms of the Underworld.
Re: How do you go about designing your MegaDungeon « Reply #33 on Mar 5, 2008, 12:42pm »
I've been wanting to try my hand at running/creating a megadungeon, but honestly, it all seemed like a lot of work.
The more I read from the regulars on the subject though started to remind me how I used to play long ago. I mostly ran one other guy solo (similar to what I'm doing now - with an occasional second or third). I NEVER planned anything. He either decided to stay in town and find trouble or travel the 4 days by boat to the dungeon entrance he'd found.
I would just make up everything on the fly and we had a great time. In the "dungeon" I almost exclusively rolled on the random dungeon generator from the DMG (but then morph the results into something interesting).
I've decided to see if I can regain that magic (and my own imagination ) by trying that again. I want to have a base to start with though so I started rolling on the tables to see what came out.
I decided that the "entrance" is a magic portal in the basement of Mabelak's tower (Judges Guild adventure). I like the idea of the entrance being a portal (inspired from this thread) so it sets the precedence (and I'll go with the assumptions) that everything about the "underworld" is otherplaner to some extent and all entrances will be magical. Doors "out" of the dungeon could actually be anywhere in the world.
I won't try to plan the dungeon out (i.e. high level plan), but instead just insert anything I come up with that I think would be fun. I will plan areas ahead of time, of course. It will be never ending and could theoretically lead anywhere (the river Styx will be in there somewhere). This IS the "underworld". This is bastion of Chaos.
Starting from the mystical and magical removes any bounds and make anything possible. Need a town to recoup...put one there. They may not even KNOW you came through the underworld...heh.
The more I think about it the more inspired I am and the more I want to flex my creative muscles. It may end up great, it may be a train wreck...we'll see.
PS. I don't pop into these discussions much, but I've been lurking for quite some time. Thanks to everyone who participates, you've given me some great ideas and inspiration.
Joined: Jul 2007 Gender: Male Posts: 2,503 Karma: 57
Re: How do you go about designing your MegaDungeon « Reply #34 on Mar 5, 2008, 1:40pm »
Quote:
It may end up great, it may be a train wreck...we'll see.
Absolutely.
As a matter of fact, with dungeon design as well as any other creative endeavor, just taking the risk that it might end up a train wreck liberates you enough to make it great.
If you go into it thinking "This has to be great!" there's too much pressure. But if you take the attitude "Hey, this might stink, but I'm gonna go for it!" you have a better chance of achieving greatness.
Good luck with your dungeon, and let us know how it turns out!
Re: How do you go about designing your MegaDungeon « Reply #35 on Mar 5, 2008, 2:45pm »
Quote:
But if you take the attitude "Hey, this might stink, but I'm gonna go for it!" you have a better chance of achieving greatness.
I also think the bottom up approach (just design as you go and add as the good ideas hit) gives you the best chance to fix it or adjust if it is a train wreck (and learn as you go) with the least amount of wasted effort, which I like. Very much like rapid development or extreme programing for the software engineers in the crowd.
Joined: Sept 2007 Gender: Male Posts: 942 Karma: 27
Re: How do you go about designing your MegaDungeon « Reply #36 on Mar 10, 2008, 8:53pm »
I think this may relate to the "bottom-up" issue: What about long-term consequences? What about reuse?
It's a drag all around if players must trek too much through mapped, much less "cleared," areas to get back to the Unknown. On the other hand, a bit of that both gives an impression of a changing environment and allows players a chance to savor the evidence of their exploits.
I think that striking the proper balance in that regard is behind much of my own frustration of late with the mega-dungeon.
It hardly figures at all when one deals in discrete locations on the campaign map. Once Kobold Kommand is sacked, adventurers bypass it for more promising precincts.
Joined: Mar 2008 Gender: Male Posts: 384 Location: Maryland, USA Karma: 26
Re: How do you go about designing your MegaDungeon « Reply #37 on Mar 10, 2008, 11:31pm »
As anyone who reads the Mega Dungeon sub forum at K&K knows, I'm a huge dungeon crawl fan, and a recent Mega Dungeon convert. I decided to undertake a true Mega Dungeon effort recently, and I can tell you that I've been wallowing in the details for weeks now. Everytime I turn around I think of some other variable or side project that I feel needs work.
The pit-fall for me thus far has been literally sweating the details. Why? Because I want this to be an archival work. I will have plenty of connections available for higher level PC's to skip and not have to slog through an army of Kobolds everytime they enter or exit the Mega Dungeon, but...I continually come up with some other aspect of the Mega Dungeon that I feel might need more attention.
Recently, after finishing Level 1's 178 rooms and play testing a bit with my step son,
I made another list of 'to do's' AND decided that the Goblins on 1B + 1C were too organized for a level 1 dungeon. Thus I kicked around the idea of a Level 0, but ended up instead with my current project of a new sub level 1 which will 'almost' *shudder* rail road the PC's a bit before they reach the more dangerous parts of Level 1.
It will open up big time after a little crawling in the sub level, but I'm adding it as almost a 'buffer' level for low level PC's.
although I am thinking of trimming down my prep work a bit since I find I am spending too much effort on variables that might not even come into play for months.
~Sham
PS-I love the Mega Dungeon Campaign concept, in case you didn't figure that out already!
I suppose I'd like to add that I am finding that a buffer level, upper most level, or a sub level intro bit is a good way to give you the time to get the MD underway before the PC's make it into the MD proper with it's many low level connections and variables you want to add later (which take a ton of prep work). I wish I had started this way. Months from now, when the MD is more 'fine-tuned' you could even discard the intro feel of that beginning bit by adding low level connections to it as well.
Joined: Jun 2007 Gender: Male Posts: 505 Karma: 15
Re: How do you go about designing your MegaDungeon « Reply #38 on Mar 11, 2008, 2:54pm »
One thought on skipping through the boring stuff...
Worry about it later. Everaux suggests the mega-dungeon be a living dynamic work. Don't write it all up ahead of time.
You can always pencil in a new passage. The players might decide to dig/blast some short cuts. You might put a magic item or something on the lower levels.
Joined: Jul 2007 Gender: Male Posts: 2,503 Karma: 57
Re: How do you go about designing your MegaDungeon « Reply #39 on Mar 11, 2008, 3:01pm »
Quote:
The players might decide to dig/blast some short cuts.
Why he had it, I'll never know, but there was one kid in my original group back in the day (AD&D this was) who had a scroll with seven Disintegrate spells on it.
We were having trouble with a guardpost of some kind (trolls, maybe? I forget). So he pulls out the scroll and starts making his own flanking tunnel around the side, so we could get into "the real fight".
Afterward, I think the DM kind of regretted having given out that scroll...
The same way I eat an elephant: One bite at a time.
I feel that a fine approach is to map first, fill in second. Some rooms you might fill with deadly and creative material, while others might be left simple and bare.
I feel that the mapping should be done on graph paper with a mechanical pencil, 0.5mm being my personal preference. Keep the lines light, however, and if you feel the need to number early on, number very lightly, for as you begin to develop the dungeon, you might wish to expand an area here, add a secret passage there, and this can radically change your numbering sequence.
I must also concur with Evereaux. Having a basic plan as to how you will fill your dungeon is key, IMO, or at least a vague idea on how you intend to fill it out. I like to have an outline of the major adversaries to the party, a decent idea of their prime motivations, and then fill out around them. How the major adversaries' motivations conflict (or possibly a agree; as in alliances formed) is something else to consider. And sometimes you will have vast areas where the inhabitants are living in a predatory environment within which there is no motivation except death and mayhem.
Really, there are many excellent posts on mega-dungeon theory across the net (K&KA + DF being prime examples), and among my favorite MD theorists are Evereaux, T. Foster, Grodog, and Melan. There is something to be learned or inspired by from each of these gentlemen, and many others as well.
In the end, no matter how much you read about it, you will find, I think, that you need to stumble through it on your own, discovering what went wrong along the way, what went right. It's a very challenging yet gratifying experience. The finest gratification occurring when your players are several layers deep into your diabolical dungeon, the tension is high, and a single roll of the die determines victory or defeat; the overcoming of a hard-won obstacle after which high-fives across the table are met. These are the times when all the lonely work of your mega-dungeon creation are paid off: when fun is had by your group!
Joined: Sept 2008 Gender: Male Posts: 107 Karma: 4
Re: How do you go about designing your MegaDungeon « Reply #42 on Nov 30, 2008, 9:06am »
To answer the original question, I'm a bit too impulsive and fickle to create a proper Megadungeon; so instead, I build smaller "complexes" which I then either use as standalone set-pieces, or link together for a larger dungeon.
Such a complex usually starts with a single spontaneous idea for an interesting spacial feature: for instance, I decide I want to do something centered around a spacious, multi-floor open area like a cathedral's nave, with smaller rooms around it; or I might decide on a makeshift outpost in a set of natural caverns dominated by underground streams and a waterfall.
Then I come up with a function for this dungeon feature: the large nave would be spot-on as the central room of an abandoned cathedral; while the cavern outpost could be use by, say, smugglers.
At this point I might start drawing the map, but at the same time I also decide on further stylistic elements which flesh out the location: is the abandoned temple full of minor magic like light globes for illumination and automatically opening doors, or is it dark, forlorn and non-magical? Are the statues and decorations modeled after ancient Egypt, or Aztec architecture, or something else? Are the damp, irregularly shaped caves rendered habitable by placing wooden platforms on scaffolds, or are the caves carved into regular rectangular sizes with small drainage channels, or is it a mixture of the two? If platforms, are they sturdy and well-maintained, or broken and rotting?
At this point, I have enough details to start thinking about the kinds of monsters I want to see - the cathedral is abandoned, so it will mainly have animated guardians - golems, statues, gargoyles, caryatids, etc.. It might also have restless spirits and ghosts. If I went with an Egyptian style, a few mummies are in order, along with mummy-looking lesser undead. For the smugglers' caves, the smugglers are probably there, but the streams and waterfalls are also a great entry point for subterranean and/or aquatic monsters.
One important factor I always try to keep in mind is three-dimensionality. The "standard" dungeon with its discreet, clearly separated and completely horizontal levels is, well, a bit boring, and also unrealistic - in real life we have uncountable examples of facilities and installations that span several vertical floors (not to mention natural caves, which tend to be strongly vertical and completely lacking discreet "floors" or "levels"), so why not have them in the dungeon, too? Furthermore, strong verticality also provides the players interesting mapping, orientation and combat challenges. My personal advice is: have multi-floor halls and vaults, balconies overlooking lower locations, temporarily erected gangways and bridges over depths, and climbable pillars and chutes. The concept of "dungeon level" is an abstract organizational concept with a side effect of forcing architecture into predictable patterns. Floors or storeys, however, are architectural concepts free of the constraints of an artificial dungeon organizational system. Think in terms of storeys, not levels.
Once I have several such complexes, I might want to link them together into a proper dungeon. At this point, again, the question of spaciality comes into play. Do I really need to have one of these complexes directly below the other, or could I arrange them in a different, more interesting way that makes just as much (or even more) sense? The fact that the complexes are already multi-storey easily facilitates arrangements side-by-side, staggered, or even one partially encircling the other.
Of course it goes without saying that such a linking of pre-made complexes necessitates changes vis-a-vis what creatures might live where and the like, but this is elementary and requires no comment.
It's good to have numerous transit points between different sections of the dungeon: it gives the players navigational alternatives, and it makes the dungeon feel like a a complex, integrated place rather than a haphazard collection of separate levels. (Of course, some sections make more sense being isolated from the rest of the dungeon, so there are always exceptions.)
Re: How do you go about designing your MegaDungeon « Reply #43 on Dec 21, 2008, 12:42am »
For myself on any dungeon/mapping project, I like to look at the work of others to get inspiration as I find that helps to get the creative juices going and to do rough outlines of the levels before I start getting really serious into the design stage. Some of my favorite large-size Dungeons are:
* the Undermountain Modules ( Skull Port is my favorite)
* Expedition to the Barrier Peaks
* the First Ravensloft Module
* Tegel Mansion from Judges Guild
* The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan
* All the original Arduin Dungeons ( Dave was a master of filling an entire 8''x10'' sheet of graph paper).
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) by trying that again. I want to have a base to start with though so I started rolling on the tables to see what came out.
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