It sounds like the kind of dungeon that makes a lot of gamers hate really big dungeons.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;590489It sounds like the kind of dungeon that makes a lot of gamers hate really big dungeons.

Yeah, it really does.

Quote from: Elfdart;590451I don't know, maybe it's good to try someone else's material if for no other reason than to try something new and surprise players who have become too familiar with a particular DM's style.

That may be so. I was responding to the notion that players (who had never heard of the modules) could detect no difference between those games when a DM ran his own material and ran a published dungeon.

Quote from: Elfdart;590451Now now ... You're being grossly unfair to the Teabaggers of D&D. There are at least nine or ten members doing the K&K Circlejerk -1st Edition Circlejerk, of course.

When I want an easy win to let everyone know who's boss I make fun of Zak Shibboleth and the inbred monkey tribe of the K&KA (excepting Philotomy and actually grodog too). It's like taking a hot shower, relaxing and invigorating at the same time, like sipping coffee while having a massage.

Quote from: EOTB;590461That's true...and only six of them are sockpuppet accounts belonging to Kent and Elfdart.

Again.

Quote from: RPGPundit;590489It sounds like the kind of dungeon that makes a lot of gamers hate really big dungeons.

RPGPundit

I don't hate megadungeons but I don't really get the appeal. I've played in one and built one as a DM and the interest just wasn't there.

Quote from: Elfdart;590656I don't hate megadungeons but I don't really get the appeal. I've played in one and built one as a DM and the interest just wasn't there.

They aren't really my favorite environment either. But I think that if one is really well-written, and isn't just a series of disconnected rooms that serve no purpose, then at least its going to be more generally playable.

RPGPundit

Quote from: Joethelawyer;590021I think a takeaway is that the quality of the module is determined by how much you have to tweak it to make it fun.

I agree with this. It takes me two seconds to decide a room has 9 rats and 2000 cp in it. That's not of great value to me. It's the additional stuff, the real zest and creativity, that makes a product worth parting with good cash for.

Otherwise, I'll just make a map (or steal a suitable one) and do the work myself.

Quote from: Philotomy Jurament;590400SoCal MiniCon 1
SoCal MiniCon 2
SoCal MiniCon 3
SoCal MiniCon #4
SoCal MiniCon 4
A Fifth of SoCal MiniCon

Also here.

I emailed the guy in the last link, who seemed to be in charge in prior years.  He's moved to NYC, and says it's kinda unclear who is in charge for next year, but that there should be a post that works it all out eventually over at dragonsfoot.

megadungeons are an art form and, unfortunately, some megdungeon creators are more cecilia gimenez than elias garcia martinez.

Quote from: ICFTI;590915megadungeons are an art form and, unfortunately, some megdungeon creators are more cecilia gimenez than elias garcia martinez.

I am really tempted to sig this.

Quote from: ICFTI;590915megadungeons are an art form and, unfortunately, some megdungeon creators are more cecilia gimenez than elias garcia martinez.

And THAT, ladies and gentleman, is how you use a pop culture reference to good effect.

Wow, a few sick days and you miss an incredible thread. Benoist's examples of a megadungeon really inspired me to try my own hand at one and reading this thread was really food for thought.

I think I've made a few comments about this situation on various blogs (in a nice combination of a fever/medicinal haze) and I know I was at least fairly rude to Tenkar and maybe Joethelawyer, but after reading what has been said I still feel that the fault lies not in the stars with the way this game was run.

I didn't notice any references to module G1 Steading of the Hill Giant Chief iin this thread. It is perhaps my all time favorite module but it suffers from a bad translation from tournament scenario to published module.

I have seen and heard from far too many inexperienced DM's that just didn't know what to do with this module. Gygax has stripped down the encounters by placing the bulk of the active opponents all in a single locale, the great hall, while also making them extremely vulnerable to area effect attacks. Fair enough, but there is only minimal guidance in the module as to what might happen next, and none as to what the steading would be like at any other times. I have heard many times that DM's would simply run the module by always having the giants and guests crowded into the great hall no matter what time of day or night, or how many times the steading had been attacked or explored.

The module should have been re-written so that the giants were normally scattered about the hall doing their business with some idea of what their normal business would have been. The assembly in the great hall, the tournament scenario, should have been an option. I know that many DMs see G1 as a static adventure, but I think it screams out to be active and vibrant, a living place with continuous activity, making the players feel that time was not on their side and that they needed to act, and act quickly.

I have no idea about Dwimmermount. The descriptions I've heard do not appeal to me, but from what Tenkar and Joethelawyer have said it does not sound like it has been run well. The DM makes or breaks an adventure. The DM is a filter. Bad adventure, then the DM sets it aside. The DM runs the world, sets the tone, creates the atmosphere, gauges the players interest, and more, but if the DM does not like the adventure then how are they supposed to do all these things, and get the players to like the adventure as well?

I don't know if it is said anymore but as a DM you buy a module, you read through it, you change what you don't like about it or what you think will not work for you and your players. If you don't like it you set it aside for a reread, steal the elements you like for future adventures, return it to the store, tear it in half and throw it at the wall... but you don't inflict it on your players. There are only 1,000+ other adventures to try out there, many of them free, and if the DM doesn't like the adventure in hand, and cannot salvage it for their use, then they turn to another published adventure or their own imagination.

With a DM that did not like the adventure as written it seems unlikely that a good time would be had for this group. It is very hard to tell whether this is a bad module or simply a bad situation. My personal feeling, which I think I developed from the style of module design in the past, is that any published module needs to be read by the DM first, judged worthy for play or set aside, and altered to the DMs taste and style. I never thought of module design to be set for RAW and do not believe RAW play is a fair test of an adventure.

Quote from: noisms;590117Do you think there is no difference between a good GM running his own dungeon and an equally good GM running a published module?

Quote from: Benoist;590121I think there will be in effect no difference because the good GM will run the published module AS his own dungeon.

We are at a point where we might define a third category of DM, a very large one at that, of great pretenders who claim to be creative but do little more than rearrange the furniture, move and resize rectangles into 'new' maps and restock random tables with brand new monsters from the monster manual (or the fiend folio!) to make a new dungeon.

For this category there is of course no difference between running their own permutation of the same old shit and the same old shit itself. Are they creative? No, they are not creative.

Quote from: _kent_;590960We are at a point where we might define a third category of DM, a very large one at that, of great pretenders who claim to be creative but do little more than rearrange the furniture, move and resize rectangles into 'new' maps and restock random tables with brand new monsters from the monster manual (or the fiend folio!) to make a new dungeon.

For this category there is of course no difference between running their own permutation of the same old shit and the same old shit itself. Are they creative? No, they are not creative.

I don't care if they are 'creative'. Are they fun? Are they and their players having fun? Bottomline for a game. Is it fun?

Sometimes I like a game that just lets me go around and blow the heads off zombies. I don't even need a reason.

Quote from: JasonZavoda;590959The module should have been re-written so that the giants were normally scattered about the hall doing their business with some idea of what their normal business would have been. The assembly in the great hall, the tournament scenario, should have been an option. I know that many DMs see G1 as a static adventure, but I think it screams out to be active and vibrant, a living place with continuous activity, making the players feel that time was not on their side and that they needed to act, and act quickly.

I disagree that the giants should be scattered about specifically because the scenario is interesting when run as an active compound. Because while the majority of the giants were in the great hall, the majority of the treasure wasn't.

If you run the scenario as a static environment, then its current design is incredibly boring: There's a ridiculously tough encounter in area 11 and the rest of the compound is filled with penny ante opposition. It's completely lopsided and poorly paced.

It's when the scenario is run as an active environment that this setup becomes interesting: Do you alert the giants? Can you successfully ambush them with area-effect spells? Can you barricade them in an burn the whole place down around them? Can you wait for them to take bathroom breaks and pick them off one by one? Can you take out the support staff ninja-style and then fill the compound with booby traps that you can lure the giants through?