Several times I've started old school style campaigns. In each of them I've put in a "Megadungeon". The old school megadungeon is a multi-level complex, that is not the sole lair of a single monster or single overlord. There are multiple entrances and exits and mutliple reasons to enter, although one mostly goes there because "thats where the money is".
To my chagrin, the problem with megadungeons for me has been, no one goes there. In the 2nd edition AD&D game I ran in Virginia, it took the players about 10 months of real time, playing every other week, before they even got into the dungeon, they just found too much else to do.
I recycled much of that megadungeon for the short-lived "Six Dales" campaign, here in PA, but no one went in there at all. When I ran a Castles and Crusades campaign a few years ago, and that campaign lasted a solid year, there was a megdungeon, the Castle Aquila, hard by the PC's headquarters, but they only ever went into one or two levels.
Even in Return of the Trolls, there was a dungeon under "Deadman's Town". There were several levels and several entrances, and they did return there many, many times, but always by the front door as part of a feud with the master of the first level, an Old One sorcerer named Horrible Cyrus. The second level was guarded by some giant ape warriors who handed the PC's their hats the first time they tried to go there. The PC's gave up on trying to get past the apes and never went back.
It seems to me that a megadungeon campaign would be thematically easy, a nice focus for PC action and so forth, but no one ever seems to want explore the whole jobby. I suppose if I were to make another one, I should explain more directly that if the PC's want loot, the best place to go is the "main dungeon" that the place is huge and the exploration is open-ended.
The area underneath Noviodunum is perfect for a megadungeon. The undead and goblin minions of Dengwur would rove there, adventurers and bandits from Bastardville are nearby, and the Old Ones deep underground lair would poke up there too. But, maybe I'd be better off not trying to connect various bits into a grand underground mega-whats-it and just make a series of 20 room areas.
We never went back to the giant apes, because everybody was so scared that they took out the awesomeness that was my first character in that campaign, that they wouldn't dare risk it again.
ReplyDeleteI remember I ran a 2E campaign years ago that I ran, which had a gigantic magic-infused, haunted town located in it (basically a city-sized open air dungeon, including several monster factions and dozens of mini-dungeons). The players were hired to recover an artifact in a wizard's tower located in the middle of the town. They avoided the obvious lures (a trail of coins leading into a ruined mansion). They ignored the subtle lures (a band of zombified adventurers carrying a journal containing information about 'great treasure and danger' in a nearby tomb). They skipped easy encounters with vocal clues (a band of orcs dragging a kicking and screaming captive towards a cave mouth). They fought the things that were supposed to chase them into clues (a dragon appeared near an easily defended fortified home). Eventually they made their way to the tower, slaughtered every last thing inside (including the things they could've used to work with them), looted it seven ways from sunday, and left. They worked hard to avoid ever going back. I suppose it was kind of a reverse Smirkenburg. Or it could just be that my players were bone headed jerks.
Why make a megadungeon? I believe that the problem is motivation. If all I'm going for is loot it feels like a job. I guess that is why I prefer building briefer encounter based dungeons.
ReplyDeleteI say raise the stakes to hook your megadungeons (if you must make them). Maybe the dungeon is the haunted remains of the PC's ancestral home or they have been poisoned and the only cure is rumored to be found somewhere within the complex. Maybe both.
The reason I like the megadungeon, is that it adds more of the exploration element to the game. The whole idea of the players exploring the world is something I really enjoy both as a player and a DM. I find that when something exists in a game world merely for story-purposes that it looses a lot of its charm.
ReplyDeleteA megadungeon is a boiled down version of that vibe. The sense of it I get from looking at the early Gygax and Arneson campaigns I find to be pretty intersting. Those campaigns gave the players a choice, search for adventure in the wilderness (where random stuff happened) or explore the dungeon, which was a planned out environment. I just found it to be an appealing idea. It saved having to come up with plot hooks. The players would be looking for ways in, ways around obstacles etc.