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Post by jeffb on Mar 22, 2020 7:29:10 GMT -6
The Halls of Arden-Vul- I've been sporadically following development of this product. OSR mega Dungeon. Though I am not a Mega Dungeon person, The art, maps, everything looks absolutely amazing (the artwork got me interested) Hefty price but it *IS* over 1100 pages Link below- I'm no affiliate or anything so I'm not getting any money for clicks Halls of Arden Vul |
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Post by aldarron on Mar 22, 2020 8:36:07 GMT -6
Looks like the real deal, but an awfully expensive one. Set up is for OSRIC so aside from a few wonky classes, conversion should be a snap on the fly. With a dungeon that big though, I'd be most concerned about the treasure situation and the commonality and ratios of magic items.
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muddy
Level 4 Theurgist
Posts: 159 
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Post by muddy on Mar 22, 2020 8:46:09 GMT -6
With a dungeon that big though, I'd be most concerned about the treasure situation and the commonality and ratios of magic items. I'd be interested in hearing more about your concerns. |
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Post by tacojohn4547 on Mar 31, 2020 15:46:50 GMT -6
Arden-Vul is, IMHO, one of the best examples of a formally published mega dungeon ever published, for any edition of D&D or other fantasy FRG.
I’ve been watching the development of Arden-Vul for about 5 years - we had looked at publishing it under Black Blade Publishing many years ago, when there was only 4 or 5 levels, and it wasn’t anywhere near complete. I’ve seen it come to life and grow in that time. The history & lore in A-V and the depth of content is amazing! And the maps are both mind-bendingly complex and beautiful to behold.
I’ve ran exploration scenarios using Arden-Vul at GaryCon, North Texas Con, and Gen Con, over the last few years. In preparation for those scenarios, I’ve read the 6th level and 1 or 2 of the 6th level’s sublevels, and various parts of levels 7-9.
It is pricey as pdfs go, but purchasers who buy the pdf can receive a 50% discount code for ordering the print version, which will be available when the print proofs are approved.
It’s a little early to say for sure, since the finished product isn’t even available in print yet. But I suspect it will be crashing into my top 10 adventures and probably my top 10 rpg products lists soon.
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Deleted
Deleted Member
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Post by Deleted on Mar 31, 2020 23:48:28 GMT -6
Full disclosure - I'm friends with the creators of the book, and I might even be listed in the book in some very minor role, like perhaps as a playtester.
So, surely I'm more positively predisposed to like this one than I'm to not like it.
With that out of the way, let me say that I really think this is a one-of-a-kind project - and product. While I'm not sure if I want to go as far as to say that it is "the best" indie dungeon that I know, I have a very hard time thinking about a project like this that would do the things it does better than Arden Vul - if you get my drift. It's designed in a smart way, it's written well, and, from what I've seen from the finished product so far, the editing process has not taken anything of that away, as may happen ever so often.
The only things that I liked less about AV are determined through its form and through the medium the author has chosen: This is a megadungeon, meaning a "location-based adventure that focuses on exploration and on combat and goes on like this for a really long time". It's "oldschool", which means "you will understand what's going on if you know Tolkien, Moorcock, and Poul Anderson" and "the narration happens in the encounters, and usually not in a music-video storyline". You will like it one if you successfully ran modules like "Caverns of Thracia", "Necropolis", "Rappan Athuk", "Eyes of the Stone Thief" or "Return to the Tomb of Horrors", and are looking for an adventure that is more expansive and intense than the titles I just named. - If you don't like that, it's not the right thing for you, but complaining about that is like saying you don't like Ravenloft because there are vampires in it, or like that girl all of us dated at some point that would later say she would never have watched "Star Wars" with you if she had known it was sci-fi flick. Some problems just come with the territory; or, rather, every territory will have its problems.
Now, what sold me on Arden Vul was the writing: It's consistent, and it's consistently good. In the beginning, I considered the setting is a bit too vanilla for my personal tastes, sort of a "Glorantha goes D&D goes Blackmoor goes the Barrier Peaks". Now, later on into the game, this initial lack of complexity becomes an actual asset because Arden Vul, despite its size, remains a remarkably focused and coherent scenario as you move into the more demanding parts of the adventure. It's "gettable" for your players, in a way that allows you to focus on the actual action, instead of on some irrelevant meta-based narration. This is not "The Lost City of Barakus", where the prequel chapters in Endhome are already enough to distract and confuse even an experienced party. And this is not "Dwimmermount", which DMs basically have to rewrite encounter by encounter before they can do anything with it. Arden Vul is a dungeon that you can use basically as written, and that doesn't impose on the DM with overcomplex shenanigans that will be irrelevant to 99% of the players, anyway. This asset makes it pretty unique among oldschool-oriented supersize-adventures. The only title that has a similarly high degree of actual playability that I can remember is Goodman Games' "Castle Whiterock" - and that one, to me, lacked soul.
Overall, I think Arden Vul is going to be the benchmark for adventures of its kind for the next decade: If this one gets a solid distribution, and people don't simply skip it because of the prize, this will be genre classic, at some point. Ten years from now, this is what many of us will be talking about, and remember fondly. |
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Post by asaki on Jul 27, 2022 13:01:24 GMT -6
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Post by DungeonDevil on Jul 29, 2022 6:01:57 GMT -6
Bought and DLed.I'm actually drooling with anticipation of reading/running this!  I haven't had any free time for RPGing for the past couple of years (durned work-schedule!!), but this is stoking my fire to get back into some good, ole-fashioned dungeon-crawling! Thanks for the heads-up, mate! 
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Post by jeffb on Jul 29, 2022 6:15:49 GMT -6
I'd be asleep in 5 minutes trying to read this on my computer/tablet.
For me to get any actual use out of them or even read time, most products I need to have an actual physical copy. This would be one of those products.
Great bargain though if you can get through it on PDF.
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Post by waysoftheearth on Jul 29, 2022 7:08:44 GMT -6
1,100 pages is WAAAAY long. I guess it's a huge resource to be mined... but, really, hard to imagine actually using a gigantic thick tome the table. I need flat-on-the-table material!
Is Richard Barton a member here?
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Post by asaki on Jul 29, 2022 12:17:06 GMT -6
I'd be asleep in 5 minutes trying to read this on my computer/tablet. For me to get any actual use out of them or even read time, most products I need to have an actual physical copy. This would be one of those products. Great bargain though if you can get through it on PDF. You can always print it out.
It just might...
...take a while... ¬_¬
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Post by jeffb on Jul 29, 2022 16:52:59 GMT -6
I'd be asleep in 5 minutes trying to read this on my computer/tablet. For me to get any actual use out of them or even read time, most products I need to have an actual physical copy. This would be one of those products. Great bargain though if you can get through it on PDF. You can always print it out. It just might... ...take a while... ¬_¬
And 6 or 7 toner catridges...no thank you. Fwiw- as I stated originally mega dungeons are not my thing. |
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Post by waysoftheearth on Jul 30, 2022 5:41:30 GMT -6
Thanks for the heads up. I bought the PDF, kinda/sorta to support indy D&D creators, but also to check out what the state of the art is these days. It's a tad annoying that you need to have/create not one but TWO online "accounts" in order to pay and download it. But that done, you get a big big fat PDF of text plus a bunch of separate PDFs with maps. A quick flick through, the maps look great, there are lots of illos that are generally nice, and the overall production looks pro. The preamble on design philosophy and the creative process sets an appealing tone to at least one no-longer-young, indy-leaning, OD&D fan. Reading through a solid 40-ish page chunk of the front part of it my initial reaction is that it's clearly well done, with a ton of purposeful energy put into it, but I will admit I'm finding it somewhat verbose. Not the quantity of it (which at 1,100 pages is something else), but moreso the general treatment of the content. To give you the gist, it begins with 60 pages of context setting/start up before some outdoor areas begin on p61. The key to dungeon level 1 then begins on p117 (!). Dungeon level 1 itself has 21 areas which are keyed across 5 full pages of text, so that's roughly 4 dungeon areas per (letter-sized?) page. I read in the forewords that part of the "zing!" is meant to be how the content is all cleverly interconnected, so looking forward to exploring a bit more to see how that plays out... Anyways, I'd be interested to hear what anyone else who has a read thinks. Especially any thoughts about mining/converting/using it for OD&D! |
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Post by dicebro on Jul 30, 2022 7:56:43 GMT -6
over a thousand pages is too overwhelming at this time. I’ve already got a ton of unread rpg material!
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Post by rredmond on Jul 31, 2022 8:07:28 GMT -6
Is Richard Barton a member here? Hasn’t been around in a couple years but @geleg is a member here. As is sirclarence, the Arden Vul cartographer and my AV DM!  |
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Post by asaki on Aug 2, 2022 12:20:04 GMT -6
Just bought it. Only took a quick glance so far, but I really like how it's built into the side of a cliff, that's pretty cool.
It sure comes with a lot of different ways to look at the maps...
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