A world of Dungeons, or a mega dungeon?

[smubee]

I’ve always been fascinated with the idea of setting up one central dungeon like Castle Greyhawk that is ripe for months / years of continual returning adventure.

In your OD&D campaign, is it a world full of Dungeons or is there one big multi-layered / leveled dungeon?

I’d love to hear stories if you’ve got them!

[Finarvyn]

In my early days of OD&D we started with all dungeons, so I created one that was around 20 levels deep. I know now that Gary had "theme" levels, but mine were just whatever came to mind without much of a theme or design intent. (I had imagination but not experience back then, I guess.) Many of the levels were hastily thrown together so that I could say I had done them. Once we started doing wilderness travel, however, the players had more interest in exploring horizontally rather than vertically and I stopped drawing deep dungeons.

Nowadays I typically have a bunch of smaller dungeons in various locations instead of one dungeon. I'm afraid that my players would get bored if all there was to do was delve deeper and deeper in a single dungeon, and since we usually play 5E such exploration takes forever and we only get to a few rooms per game session.

As a DM, however, I'm fascinated by the mega-dungeon. I picked up Geoffrey's "Mike's Dungeon" and its sequel (so 78+something levels) with the intent of running it as a side-dungeon for days when not everyone can play and we can't run the usual campaign

[Deleted]

Feb 12, 2021 20:30:10 GMT -6 smubee said:

I’ve always been fascinated with the idea of setting up one central dungeon like Castle Greyhawk that is ripe for months / years of continual returning adventure.

In your OD&D campaign, is it a world full of Dungeons or is there one big multi-layered / leveled dungeon?

I’d love to hear stories if you’ve got them!

Why not both? 

Why not a world filled with natural caverns, monster lairs, and ancient ruins...but if you go deep down enough in all of them, you end up in the Underworld? 

That might or might not be just a fun idea I have or the actual way dungeons work in my current campaign. My players/voters post here so they'll have to find that out.  

Having said that, I would someday like to run a campaign based around a single Mega-dungeon. I was inspired by Diablo 1 and the Diablo 1 clone called "Fate" initially for this, way back in 2009, and I started sketching out the megadungeon and little starter village back then. I could revisit that someday. I'll have to do some rewrites, though. I started it for d20, then found Swords & Wizardry, but if I run it here I'll be using this. (Or possibly Micro-Lite 74. Still pondering.)

[bobjester0e]

I'm currently expanding B4's The Lost City, and it is turning into a mega-dungeon! Much of what I've added so far is necessitated by wanting the connecting passage between the pyramid levels and the Lost City cavern mapped out.

I think it jarring to play to simply gloss over an area not mapped out officially, and I believe that my players would ask questions that deserve well thought out answers, and not be satisfied by the module's simplicity by accepting "Oh, you get there by going through a series of secret passages claimed by the Brotherhood of Gorm..." because I, as the DM am not satisfied with that.

Much of what I also want to add will come after the meat of B4 has been concluded, with other passages leading off to the brilliant "Pod Caverns of the Sinister Shroom" by Matthew Finch, and any number of dungeons by Dyson Logos or Tim Hartin left to be fleshed out and customized from their respective dungeons found online.

The Lower Catacombs are a great spawning point for many of Logos' dungeons, as are a host of other genius dungeons found online. I could create my own, but since half of my players are only able to play via Roll20, I must use digital dungeons for the time being - until I find something that suits me to render my own dungeon drawings into digital format.

In my own campaign setting, the world was populated with dungeons both small and mega-sized, but while the majority of the campaign was scantily mapped out to give the campaign some over all consistency, I didn't actually map out where every dungeon was until the players decided they wanted to go there.

(I rarely ever mapped out my own dungeons during this campaign - I've used mostly Dyson Logos dungeons as it was easier to cull a pre-made dungeon and flesh out the particulars from his brief overviews. I still prefer to do this, as it is a massive time saver for me.)

[clownboss]

I have one Greyhawk-like mega-dungeon, plus tons of side-missions in the outside world for when players need to gain extra experience, and for essential storytelling and worldbuilding.

The neat thing about my mega-dungeon is that each level has an underground railway system that leads you to a faraway part of the world outside. If you find a way to activate the train, the megadungeon is a great way to serve as a "hub" for getting to distant places without the need for flying creatures or teleportation spells.

[howandwhy99]

Drawing dungeon maps and playing the game to clear those dungeon levels is a very, very basic hobby starting activity. It goes straight to practicing the fundamentals of game design: movements, rewards, resource availability, challenge types and ratings, point scoring opportunities, balancing, proper rating measurements, and more I'm forgetting. Also it assumes simple procedural activities for the DM: like layout awareness, position and turn/time tracking, and resource tracking, which includes everything from spells and torches ending to who is carrying what.

You do not need to compile dungeon levels together but it is easy enough to do. Wilderness designs are just not as common or popular to play. But there is the basic understanding wilderness regions lie next to each other on the campaign map.

[Deleted]

Feb 13, 2021 16:05:24 GMT -6 howandwhy99 said:

Drawing dungeon maps and playing the game to clear those dungeon levels is a very, very basic hobby starting activity. It goes straight to practicing the fundamentals of game design: movements, rewards, resource availability, challenge types and ratings, point scoring opportunities, balancing, proper rating measurements, and more I'm forgetting. Also it assumes simple procedural activities for the DM: like layout awareness, position and turn/time tracking, and resource tracking, which includes everything from spells and torches ending to who is carrying what.

You do not need to compile dungeon levels together but it is easy enough to do. Wilderness designs are just not as common or popular to play. But there is the basic understanding wilderness regions lie next to each other on the campaign map.

Wilderness exploration by the book is also much, much deadlier than dungeon delving at low levels in the earlier rules sets. Never was sure if that was a feature or a bug but the implications on both the fiction and the expected gameplay procedures are interesting to say the least.

[geoffrey]

In my campaign, there is one big dungeon of 117 dungeon levels. Everything else is just...lairs (nothing bigger than, say, the Caves of Chaos).

[hamurai]

Usually we have several dungeons in the game world, but it really depends on the DM and the game we want to play.

I once ran a game in which the entire world was a massive dungeon - the idea was that this "world" was in fact the moon of a world and the PCs had unknowingly been chosen to compete in a cruel TV game show, and Iwanted to shift it to a sci-fi game eventually, but sadly we stopped play rather early.

[retrorob]

IMC it's definitely the world of dungeons. Honestly speaking, I've never been completely sold on the idea of one mega-dungeon. 78 or 117 levels? It's not for me and my group (even with elevators, submarine and subway! we tried them of course). We like outdoor survival, with some lairs (caverns, ruins etc.). In addition I don't really like to design dungeons, fortunately there are so many of them out there Recently I use mostly Paratime Design (Friday Freebie Maps) and One Page Dungeon. Dyson Logos is awesome too and sometimes I re-design some of the old modules (B1 for example).

[bobjester0e]

Feb 14, 2021 8:31:43 GMT -6 Piper said:

I honestly don't see this as an either/or sort of equation. I have a so-called megadungeon and my milieu also have dungeons of varying size and levels.

They co-exist with no conflict. I've run it with one group exploring the megadungeon and other groups doing smaller dungeons, tomb raiding, etc.; and wilderness exploration.

Plus? Having the smaller dungeons helps a lot with with the mega-dungeon party and found treasure maps, a geas or quest, or cursed scrolls.

So, sure ... have one or the other if that's how you see the game. It works fine that way. I like having both and it never gave me a problem.

I believe it really is a ratio of having one style more than another, but everyone's ratio will be different. 

Retrorob said: Dyson Logos is awesome too and sometimes I re-design some of the old modules (B1 for example). 

I believe that this is what I will eventually do with the City in B4 - replace all the simple one/two story buildings with Dyson's building maps, like his 4 Pagodas of Kwantoom (or Market Street Gentleman's Club (4 Pagodas of Doom), depending on which version you have...) for the Usamigaras stronghold, Turning Tower for the Madaruan stronghold, Stone SInister as the Gorm stronghold, and a combination of the Monastery of the Eleventh Blessing and Portal Nexus as the Zargon stronghold, Ruined Canal City (jungle ruins with trees) in the fungal forest, as well as others that I am currently undecided on. 

I am using one of Tim Hartin's caverns (caves08) to represent the majority of travel between the pyramid to the City. It has a general anti-clockwise & downward spiral that I was searching for, with a few side-passages that I can easily place secret passages to the various faction strongholds in the pyramid and to the city itself, if I wish.

[geoffrey]

Feb 13, 2021 21:05:41 GMT -6 geoffrey said:

In my campaign, there is one big dungeon of 117 dungeon levels. Everything else is just...lairs (nothing bigger than, say, the Caves of Chaos).

To take that a step further...

The Caves of Chaos in B2: The Keep on the Borderlands are not simply a lair, but rather a collection of 11 lairs:

1. kobold lair of 6 rooms
2. orc lair of 6 rooms
3. orc lair of 4 rooms
4. goblin lair of 5 rooms
5. ogre lair of 1 room
6. hobgoblin lair of 9 rooms
7. owl bear lair of 3 rooms
8. bugbear lair of 7 rooms
9. minotaur lair of 4 rooms
10. gnoll lair of 5 rooms
11. evil clerics' lair of 14 rooms

That gives a good range and is illustrative of the lairs in my campaign world: 1 to 14 areas per lair.

[Vile Traveller]

For all practical purposes there are many dungeons. Certainly as far as most players ever get to see. However, in my mind map of the Known World dungeons just go deeper and deeper, and eventually they all link up. There is, in effect, a "hollow world" down there, just not in the Edgar Rice Burroughs sense.

[jeffb]

Always interested in hearing about the original mega(and other) dungeons of the original players DMs (Gary, Dave, Hargrave, St. Andre, Perrin, etc).

That said, I quickly bored of mega dungeon play, and that holds to this day * As a player, and DM I prefer variety. Small dungeon type locations, scattered throughout the world. A lonely tower. A graveyard crypt, etc.


I have one massive exception- The Ruined Mega-City. prior to 2E D&D never really got into this- sure we had B4, and I1, but I'm talking about BIG sprawling massive above ground ruins- In particular Glorantha's The Big Rubble (ruins of Old Pavis). Later on things like Earthdawn's "Parlainth", and even 4E's "Vor Rukoth". I've adapted The Big Rubble or Parlainth to every setting I have ever ran. Fantastic products.

[Deleted]

Feb 15, 2021 10:19:58 GMT -6 jeffb said:

Always interested in hearing about the original mega(and other) dungeons of the original players DMs (Gary, Dave, Hargrave, St. Andre, Perrin, etc).

That said, I quickly bored of mega dungeon play, and that holds to this day * As a player, and DM I prefer variety. Small dungeon type locations, scattered throughout the world. A lonely tower. A graveyard crypt, etc.

My current world has small-ish layers (a single large cavern, with maybe a few side-chambers), single level or small two level dungeons, as well as two megadungeons which sprawl mightily beneath the world — occasionally even emerging into some of the smaller dungeons as the eldritch forces below attempt to erupt to trouble the overworlders.

Even in the megadungeons, though, variety is not an issue. The fictional assumption for me is that megadungeons are inherently weird and supernatural invasions of Chaos into the island of Law that is the world, so some levels, sub-levels, or regions are very different from the rest. My players recently stumbled into the laboratory of some time-traveling cyborgs who set up shop within the overall dungeon complex because of the ready access it gave them to a variety of experimental subjects. The PCs managed to rescue a number of lizardfolk from becoming the next victims of the cyborgs' weird experiments, and the lizardfolk led them down to a large natural cavern which opens out into an underground ocean — opening up some sailing adventures with islands to explore, complete with their own dungeons.

A level they have not yet made it to is an underground forest with a graveyard inside it; a sub-level is the graveyard caretaker's house with its haunted cellar.

This is all within the same megadungeon. As odd as some of the areas within may be, there is an internal logic to each of them, as well.

[smubee]

Wow.. That is the level of whackiness that I love to see!

Thanks for sharing.

[hamurai]

Feb 18, 2021 8:52:02 GMT -6 smubee said:

Wow.. That is the level of whackiness that I love to see!

Thanks for sharing.

Then you might want to have a look at The Nightmares Underneath, an OSR game where the dungeons are explained as tunnels made by nightmarish creatures from other realms which invade the world through subterranean portals. Heroes constantly battle those "nightmares underneath", but one closed portal may only bring peace for a while, because others will open soon enough.

Also, nice grimoire addon (The Nameless Grimoire) and a variation on the classic magic system which I liked. Wasn't as rules-light as I had wished for, but still a good idea.

[blackbarn]

I’ve played various editions of the game and it’s always been multiple smaller dungeons, but my best and longest running OD&D game was indeed a central mega dungeon. I used a slightly expanded version of the Holmes sample dungeon for the first level and made up my own levels beneath that. It worked well and I liked how the players grew familiar with the layout over time and even made allies with some inhabitants. It developed and came alive like any campaign setting, but was focused almost entirely on the dungeon!

[scottyg]

When we play OD&D it's just the original box set, an old school mega dungeon and a small surrounding wilderness that includes the Wilderness Survival map. Part of how we differentiate editions.

[smubee]

Mar 24, 2021 15:23:38 GMT -6 scottyg said:

When we play OD&D it's just the original box set, an old school mega dungeon and a small surrounding wilderness that includes the Wilderness Survival map. Part of how we differentiate editions.

That's exactly what I was thinking, too.

[tetramorph]

IMC it is a world of dungeons.

To get a S&S vibe I have set the OS board near the Silk Route, as it crosses through Hecatompylos on the southern shores of the Mazandaran (Caspian) sea. This allows a cross roads of all kinds of human civilizations and whatever alien or fay or fell pasts we want to add as well. It is, of course, "post-apocalyptic," with civilization just regrowing again (this is what "law" is after). So there are simply ruins everywhere. You never know which ancient civilization, human, god, elven, dwarven, alien, you might be delving into. And the old gods are all still real and linger over their relics and ancient hidden altars. All that.

So, yeah, a world of dungeons is more my style.

[tkdco2]

I never got to try a mega dungeon per se. The ones I've played in had no more than three levels. I notice I tend to design single-level dungeons nowadays.

[doublejig2]

At this time, it's Darkness Beneath for me. That dungeon is dynamite!