When it comes to dungeon-crawling campaign building, would you rather have a campaign centered around one vast dungeon (the proverbial megadungeon), or a campaign that successively explores different dungeons, big (though obviosuly not as big as a megadungeon) and small ("lairs" in Gygaxian parlance)?
And why?
Feel free to point out examples from published modules and/or from elsewhere on the internets.
I prefer the megadungeon (http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?p=504466) surrounded by a regional hex map/sandbox, with one or several closeby settlements for trade, and lairs/smaller dungeons/adventure locations sprinkled throughout the wilderness.
Gives the best of all worlds for me and my game table: you want to stick around town and learn about its people, groups, factions and so on? No problem. You want to go back and forth on expeditions to the megadungeon? Be my guest. You want to solve the problem of the goblins attacking farmers or assault the fort of gnolls blocking the trading routes East instead? Go ahead! Explore further north and map the mountainous area few ever came back from? Sure!
And so on.
Ben pretty much nailed it for me. In the sandbox I've been working on in my free time, I have a "safe" base of operations, the beginnings of a megadungeon, half-a-dozen or so smaller dungeons and lairs, and rumors galore. I figure if I ever get to run it, the players can decide what they want to do. They can get involved with the politics of the region or just chase some xp and gp in the nearby Mad Archmage's House of Horrors. :)
I would expect variety is the best course. I know some days I just want to roll a d20, and other days I want to play D&D as if it were "Diplomacy".
I would prefer the smaller dungeons. I've used Megadungeons in the past, but smaller dungeons/lairs feels more like multiple adventures are taking place, rather than the PCs' careers defined by one long adventure (even though, yes, a well built Megadungeon can have a lot of unique, unconnected stuff going on).
I haven't run a megadungeon campaign that I found satisfactory so I stick with the many little lairs that can be explored in an evening or three. For me, I find players enjoy "going somewhere new" instead of the idea of drilling deeper and deeper.
I wrote "13 Dungeons Down" for Tunnels & Trolls and I have been trying to run it for years, but no group stuck together long enough to drill past the 6th level thanks to real life intrusions. Which is a bummer. I intentionally added Up/Down spells into the campain ala Ultima and elevators also they would not have to "grind" through the same levels.
For our preferred playstyle, a single large campaign can support about one mega(ish) dungeon and several smaller ones.
This feels like pretty much the epitome of a false dilemma.
I tend to prefer travelogue type games so the mega dungeon just doesn't work for me, so mark me down to liking smaller dungeons.
And yes I find the traveling segments of The Lord of the Rings the most enjoyable to read. Mmmmmmmm... Trees...
Quote from: Justin Alexander;608033This feels like pretty much the epitome of a false dilemma.
Please elaborate.
I prefer smaller dungeons and lairs nowadays, mostly for the same reasons as Tommy and Piestrio. Some dungeons in different regions link together through my meta-dungeon, the Black Ziggurat, they are like Warrens in Erikson's Malazan novels. Magic Items often have a dungeon within, like Disgaea 2's Item World. Beat the dungeon to ungrade the item.
The dichotomy is really one way, as every campaign I've ever known with a "mega" dungeon also had lots of smaller places.
The old-style large dungeon is great one-stop shopping for adventure. Doorways can potentially lead anywhere, so you can have town and wilderness scenarios accessible from there, too.
You know what's not done enough?
Something in the style of Fallout 3's subways. Light complexity, large scale, and dungeons as a manner of trekking from point A to B or C far away.
As a strung-together network they could act as a megadungeon, but in practice players might treat segments more like individual dungeons.
Quote from: beejazz;608885You know what's not done enough?
Something in the style of Fallout 3's subways. Light complexity, large scale, and dungeons as a manner of trekking from point A to B or C far away.
As a strung-together network they could act as a megadungeon, but in practice players might treat segments more like individual dungeons.
That's exactly what I am doing with my AS&SH game (http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?t=24537) and the network of caverns surrounding Kusu's Cove (I'm super late in the writeups, we've just played session 11 yesterday, as a matter of fact). The networks are on my hex map of the Cove. Some of these areas are actually entirely mapped as dungeons. Others are hex maps in their own right at a different scale. Others are more like passages from one spot to another, etc. In effect you can get around the Cove through its network of caverns and experience very different types of adventuring throughout, i.e. 'underground' wilderness, dungeons, etc.
So you've got the Cove, right...
(http://enrill.net/images/ASnSH/Kusus-Cove-800-5.jpg)
All over the Cove you have different locations with different things going on, and on the beaches etc you have entrances to the network of caves all around, in the deep grey areas around the Cove proper here (can't show the complete map, players might be looking).
Quote from: beejazz;608885You know what's not done enough?
Something in the style of Fallout 3's subways. Light complexity, large scale, and dungeons as a manner of trekking from point A to B or C far away.
As a strung-together network they could act as a megadungeon, but in practice players might treat segments more like individual dungeons.
Isn't this the Underdark?
Quote from: Benoist;608896So you've got the Cove, right...
(http://enrill.net/images/ASnSH/Kusus-Cove-800-5.jpg)
You, doing maps on the computer? Now I believe the world is doomed. ;)
What did you use to draw this?
Nice map, Benoist. In actual play, has this done anything interesting? Do players surface and have no idea where in the setting they are? Stuff like that?
Quote from: The Butcher;608905Isn't this the Underdark?
I always imagine the underdark as bigger and deeper than this (more along the lines of the big dwemer city in Skyrim). The subways are shallower and more properly a strung out set of minidungeons that occasionally surface at subway stations.
Quote from: The Butcher;608905Isn't this the Underdark?
Quote from: beejazz;608907I always imagine the underdark as bigger and deeper than this (more along the lines of the big dwemer city in Skyrim). The subways are shallower and more properly a strung out set of minidungeons that occasionally surface at subway stations.
Yeah I more or less agree with that. It's a question of scale. The "Underdark" to me would be literally a parallel world under the surface. We're talking thousands of miles of tunnels, caves with plains that could have the size of baronies or even countries of the surface, and so on. Whereas the way I construed Kusu's Cove (you can see the scale of the hex map at 160 feet, which gives you 16x16 squares per Cove hex to work with at 10 feet squares dungeon scale), it's more like laying out the areas and dungeons on the hex map, horizontally as well as vertically for areas on top of each other or connecting with each other at different levels of depths and whatnot. Think of it as a different way to organize a very large dungeon or even mega-dungeon as setting of adventure tied to the hex map in a more explicit way.
Quote from: The Butcher;608905You, doing maps on the computer? Now I believe the world is doomed. ;)
What did you use to draw this?
My hands. :D
Seriously. That's a map I drew by hand, scanned afterwards and shaded using photoshop. The tokens are just an easy way added later on photoshop to specify areas in play.
Quote from: beejazz;608907Nice map, Benoist. In actual play, has this done anything interesting? Do players surface and have no idea where in the setting they are? Stuff like that?
I find it interesting because the players have a very concrete way of seeing where they are, what they have explored, without giving out too much or spoiling the pleasure of exact mapping during the exploration proper. I use Twiddla as a white board in parallel of Skype, and I map the immediate environs of the PCs, but I don't give them a general map of the dungeon. There's a player who's actually putting all the tactical bits together and keeping track of the overall maze as mapper. It's working out great, if anything. The PCs at the moment went from straight dungeon to making friends with a tribe of Crabmen lower into the depths and helping them battle some fishmen in Cthulhu's service in a huge hex-mapped cave below, and it's great. No problem whatsoever so far.
Quote from: Piestrio;608036I tend to prefer travelogue type games so the mega dungeon just doesn't work for me, so mark me down to liking smaller dungeons.
This.
The starting region for one of my campaigns was the lower right one of those maps:
Spoiler
(http://bp0.blogger.com/_xfOyBn2ninU/R1A12EJqMHI/AAAAAAAAAD0/JQY5A8B2_rU/s1600-R/FW.jpg)
The region had everything - mountains that promised lots of dungeons, an elven forest, towns and cities and politics, and a background history ripe with adventuring hooks. Originally I had planned to spend a long time there. But after only four sessions I created a patron to send the characters to the north. I drew a new map, and we (players and me) discovered the world as we went. We spent about one year real time on each of the other maps.
I don't like settings that are
too defined, not in commercial games and not in my own creations. It's not that I feel constrained by them - I feel
bored by them. Once I think I know everything that is to know I feel the urge to move on.
So I prefer smaller dungeons to the megadungeon, clearly.
But there's another reason for that: In 35 years of RPG history I have not found a megadungeon (game product) that I found believable. Underdark, Undermountain, the Fight On! collaboration, Rappan Athuk, Whiterock just don't work for me. Underground regions, going on and on, with thematic levels serving as towns or even countries make my disbelief suspenders go "snap!"
Big dungeons, like Moria, with different levels having served different purposes, and being usurped by different factions (goblins, orcs, undead, a balrog) make sense to me, but those don't have the size to support more of than a month (or two) of playtime. So I don't view them as the big tent megadungeon campaign concept that is so much talked about in the OSR. Maybe they are, and I am missing a crucial thing.
But I like to give it a try. I am currently preparing my take on the megadungeon concept, the
Valley of Wonders and Dark Wishes. A closed valley with lots of dungeon structures (including settlements and castles) in the surrounding mountain sides is something that could work for me.
The closed valley with multiple dungeon structures, including the megadungeon, is basically the direction my work started on the megadungeon thread is taking now. The opportunities for various adventure settings, extrapolation and variations all packed in a tight regional area are endearing.
Love your maps, Dirk. They remind me of the maps in the old basic D&D Gazetteers, albeit not computerized, which in my mind means yours are instantly waaay better. :)
Quote from: Dirk Remmecke;610996But there's another reason for that: In 35 years of RPG history I have not found a megadungeon (game product) that I found believable. Underdark, Undermountain, the Fight On! collaboration, Rappan Athuk, Whiterock just don't work for me. Underground regions, going on and on, with thematic levels serving as towns or even countries make my disbelief suspenders go "snap!"
Big dungeons, like Moria, with different levels having served different purposes, and being usurped by different factions (goblins, orcs, undead, a balrog) make sense to me, but those don't have the size to support more of than a month (or two) of playtime. So I don't view them as the big tent megadungeon campaign concept that is so much talked about in the OSR. Maybe they are, and I am missing a crucial thing.
But I like to give it a try. I am currently preparing my take on the megadungeon concept, the Valley of Wonders and Dark Wishes. A closed valley with lots of dungeon structures (including settlements and castles) in the surrounding mountain sides is something that could work for me.
Hmm, I think I'm in the same boat as you. The closest I came to be at peace with dungeons and megadungeons was thinking of them as the anti-city. So Moria makes sense to me -- even if it would be an area that as a player I'd have no interest in going.
However, to have it persist beyond into the realm of countries and 'underground continents' feels like it's no longer a megadungeon but just an alternate world. The FR Underdark or Hollow World is an atlas unto itself, not a single locus radiating power.
I think the closest I came to appreciating the idea of megadungeon was recently reading Forgotten Realms' Lands of Intrigue and the mega-ruin of the lost empire capital city of Shoonach. As a metropolis covering miles, with undoubtedly as many layers of catacombs beneath as complexes tower atop the city, it sorta works for me as a locus of power... But I think a heavy part of that is that hordes of undead don't need supply logistics.
PS: Yes, your maps are quite kickass.