Every once in a while, lately not nearly as much as in my nerdier teenage years, I get the hankering to plan out and map a really huge megadungeon. These days what usually stops me from starting at all is the knowledge that I will rarely feel the impulse to actually follow through and finish with the dungeon, much less actually run it for anyone.
But, I take it I'm not the only one who has gotten bit by this bug from time to time?
Tell me what your more memorable ones were like?
Also, is there any good resource out there, in book or online, with lots of good tables for "random dungeon" generation?
RPGPundit
I had a tesseract dungeon once. It was enormous. The party spent about 2 years in it and explored less than 10% of it. They never did figure out how to map it...
-clash
I get the gigantic dungeon impulse from time to time. In my ideal D&D campaign I have one huge dungeon worthy of multiple forays supplemented by a countryside dotted with minidungeons.
In practice the closest I ever got was my Bandit Kingdoms game. The Dungeon of Doom was 8 levels generated from the random charts in the 1st edition DMG. Every second or third session we'd pause from exploring it to go on some little side adventure. The players never reached the lowest level I had fleshed out. The pit fiend and mind flayers on level 7 discouraged them.
Literal dungeons have never appealed to me...
...Exploring gigantic, derelict starships, however! :D
Did it back in my teens, when dinosaurs ruled the Earth. Haven't done it since. That's 20+ years now.
A buddy of mine, my first DM in fact, was a machine when it came to producing game material. Among his achievements was a campaign world map done in pencil on regular graph paper that literally covered his entire garage floor. He also came up with his magnum opus in "the Dungeon of Hell." It was a dungeon which led, unsurprisingly, deep into Hell. It was at least 100 levels deep. I mean, I actually saw the stack of graph sheets and handwritten notes. It was jaw-dropping. We were about 15 at that time. He was a ball of energy - he could produce all this stuff, played football all through high school, and had a number of decent-looking girlfriends. Today, I have no idea what has become of him.
I guess I got into gaming a lot more recently than most here. I started with D&D but didn't become serious until Vampire came out.
I have never designed a dungeon, nor have I ever had the urge to make one. However, I have made many a map in my day.
Quote from: joewolzI guess I got into gaming a lot more recently than most here. I started with D&D but didn't become serious until Vampire came out.
I have never designed a dungeon, nor have I ever had the urge to make one. However, I have made many a map in my day.
29 years for me. I started when I was 21. Man, I'm old! :D
-clash
I can't think of one that does a decent job. DungeonCraft has one, but it requires a bit of user input.
You're almost better off finding a computer generator like Jamis Buck's DungeonGen (http://www.aarg.net/~minam/dungeon.cgi), or Irony Games (http://www.irony.com/mkdungeon.html).
Quote from: ColonelHardissonDid it back in my teens, when dinosaurs ruled the Earth. Haven't done it since. That's 20+ years now.
A buddy of mine, my first DM in fact, was a machine when it came to producing game material. Among his achievements was a campaign world map done in pencil on regular graph paper that literally covered his entire garage floor. He also came up with his magnum opus in "the Dungeon of Hell." It was a dungeon which led, unsurprisingly, deep into Hell. It was at least 100 levels deep. I mean, I actually saw the stack of graph sheets and handwritten notes. It was jaw-dropping. We were about 15 at that time. He was a ball of energy - he could produce all this stuff, played football all through high school, and had a number of decent-looking girlfriends. Today, I have no idea what has become of him.
:eek:
Are you at all sure that he hasn't joined Delta Force or the JLA?
EDIT: I tried my own megadungeon once, but I could never get it up to mental standard set by my first DM. To this day all the games run are above ground.
I get the impulse to design a mega-dungeon from time to time, but I've never really done it. I've made several smaller ones, but nothing grand like the legendary delves of yore.
I do have a pile of poster-sized graph paper (stole it from my high school's Technology class storage room about fifteen years ago!) in my closet. Been saving it all this time for the day I finally get the urge and energy to tackle designing a monstrous dungeon. One day....
[EDIT: Forgot to add that viewing the results of a game of Dwarf Fortress (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/) might give someone inspiration for a big dungeon that makes some sort of sense.]
I love megadungeons. I love the idea of getting lost in them, anyhow.
One thing that kinda started out small (an adventure about a psion trapped in a old temple basement - she was using telepathic beacons to try and find rescuers) turned into a fairly extensive sprawling dungeon adventure for me recently.
The party rescued the psion, and then they explored the rest of the place (a little 6-room map) which had as one feature "a breach in the wall leads to a spiralling crevasse.. you can't tell how deep it is..".
They ended the night saying "we should go check that crevasse out next week.."
So that week I made another level and tacked it onto the crevasse- a sort of vertical cliff drop thing with burial niches in the walls that had skeletons and then a mummy tomb near the bottom. And at the very bottom I had "and there's kind of a stream flowing down there, you can hear".
They ended the night saying "streams like tend to cut caverns and such. We should check that out next week..."
So then I made ANOTHER level. This one was a series of ancient tombs. And this one I made pretty big and I put in sort of a situation where a good ghost and an evil wraith were battling over a disputed middle zone of the burial grounds.
This turned oput to be a pretty good adventure on the last level as the ghost and the wraith both sort of made appearances and messed with the PCs, trying to get them to work for their own side. But it ended when they made a deal with the good ghost, and then betrayed him, and then fled the area.