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[crash_beedo]

Originally Posted by T. Foster

Hope my understanding of 4E isn't so woefully incorrect that there's at least a couple of useful suggestions in here

So I want to take a moment and think about how the TFoster suggestions play out in a 4E environment. If I summarize the key points they involve:

• Slowing down the XP progression...
• Double-stocked upper levels
• Empty Spaces
• Wheel and Spokes design
• Concern about Wandering Monsters & Combat times

Slowing down the XP progression...

In the 4E world, combat is intricate and takes time (way more time than the older editions). We were playing 1E as late as this past spring and it would be nothing for my players to kick in a door, see a horde of humanoids, and sleep them (a 10-second encounter). Or, as they called it "Morpheus, we need to hit the EMP button!". There are no light 4E combats... we average 3 fights per evening (range is usually 2-4) and the group has a chance to level every 4-6 weeks or so - we play weekly.

In an old-school megadungeon, the scope could easily involve 20-30 stocked rooms to clear before leveling; the 4E paradigm cuts that in half or to a third. I think the issue is to make sure the 4E megadungeon maintains a relative size.

In OD&D if I expected the group to clear 15-20 rooms before leveling, first off that would add an equal number of empty rooms (now we're at a 30-40 room level) and then you increase that by a factor to make it seem even bigger - maybe a 60-80 room level. I think the 4E equivalent is to plan for the 8-10 encounters + another 10 "empty" rooms, and then increase the size a factor beyond that so the characters never quite feel like they cleared everything when they move on. Maybe my model will be a 40-room level?

I want to keep the encounter/XP ratio in the 8-10 range per level so it never devolves into a literal grind, while creating that illusion of unknowable size in the rest of the dungeon.

Double-stocked upper levels

Hmmm... good point! Is this necessary in the 4E realm? Background (for the non-grognards). OD&D characters die. Like flies. They die in droves. And each time they do, they take a portion of the party's hard-earned experience with them. So the first-second levels of the dungeon end up being fairly well-traveled terrain, as the new party members join the survivors and delve deeper horizontally to try and season the replacements before heading down.

Wow - so I'm finding 4E is far less lethal. PC's drop in combat all the time, but I've only had a few "deaths" in the campaign. And death in 4E can be a speed-bump; the rules assume that PC's are the chosen Real Ultimate Heroes™, meaning that the Raise Dead rituals and whatnot that just don't flat out work on 99.997% of the population, actually do work on player characters. Because of their super-awesome specialness and all. Does this jive with everyone else's experience of their 4E game?

Okay, despite my bagging on 4E's Raise Dead approach (tongue in cheek, at least) it has worked well in our current campaign, and one of the PC's brought back has become an unwitting messianic figure, a Lazarus of sorts... it's been very funny...

In addition, 4E "advice" is not to penalize dead/missing characters via the experience mechanic. Real life already punishes you when a miss a day of work, gaming should be fun... I think as I get older my personal views have softened on these points too. My group of 40-year olders have been appreciating the change in mind-set.

So this might be one area where 4E and old-school part ways and sign the divorce papers... 4E characters are certainly fairly easy to roll-up, but we're talking 20-30 minutes vs the 5-10 minutes for the golden age guys.

I still agree the upper levels should be bigger, and even if they don't serve as Darwinian proving grounds for our 4E Real Ultimate Heroes™, that's not to say they won't be littered with the corpses of all the rival NPC groups and wannabes.

Empty Spaces / Wheel and Spokes design / Wandering Monsters

I agree with all the points brought up here, timeless advice for any megadungeon setting!

The only thing I'm still mulling is taking a creative approach to wandering monsters... some will be set pieces (part of the expected 8-10 encounters) and some might be handled in alternate manners as skill challenges. Either way, the investment in time required by combat in 4E, and the fact that attrition isn't usually the same kind of an issue for 4E characters, means you can't throw wandering monsters at the party willy-nilly in the 4E world.

Okay - so this does raise a question about attrition which some of the posters have brought up...

What role should resource management and attrition play in a 4E megadungeon?

How do you reconcile the 4E manifesto that book-keeping things like spellcomponents, encumbrance weights, etc is fairly dull for 99% of gamers and still create some tension around resource management? (Sure, I have some ideas, but I'll throw the questions out there first).