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I would have to say no. Unless the DM is going to fudge a little bit and just use them as a guideline for the adventure. Mapping those as a player would be a nightmare.
They look cool but not practical.
YS
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They look pretty good to me.... Mapping? you don't have to hit every dimension... Doesn't have to be concise. Is your character surveying the dungeon or exploring it?
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It's too difficult for me to tell - low resolution, and only one you can see. I don't think dungeon crawls that confuse players are necessarily bad, but I do know they cause you problems: 'OK, now what are the dimensions of this room again?!?!?!?'
Dungeon that big needs a really good explanation for existing. My group doesn't like dungeon-crawling for the sake of dungeon crawling. Justifiying the existance of that monstrosity wouldn't be easy. Even harder to give the characters a good enough reason to go through all that.
As a player I would love it. I like a huge ol slash and hack once in a while.
As a DM - maybe - Filling out a dungeon that large takes forever to come up with a good story, theme and reason for each of the things that might be there.
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That top map looks a little over the top, but what I can see of some of the others doesn't look too bad. As others have said, they don't look like published maps - so its not terribly important.
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I say yes, if you're in the mood for a good old classic dungeon crawl. You' might have to be careful about mapping; It might be best to give the players a partial copy of the map (perhaps the party found a treasure map of the complex).
My players are crazy nuts about mapping. They have this notion that the can find secret doors by having a perfect map.
So I long ago gave up drawing complex and confusing dungeon layouts because the night degenerated into five guys poring over graph paper.
In one campaign, I even gave out magical boot that identified the exact dimensions of any room they entered.
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A map, for its sake, does not a fun dungeon make. Its what occupies that dungeon that will determine if this is fun or not.
Those are pretty big maps, so I'd imagine that this dungeon is setup as a "mega-adventure" of some sort. There would have to be a compelling reason to explore it. Maybe this is a dwarven underground city and the tunnels that lead to the surface and deeper below. Reminds me a bit of the underdark trek during the classic Descent/Shrine/Vault of the Drow adventures.
The maps look imaginative, there are a lot of details. This has the potential to be a fun dungeon. What you populate it with will really determine that.
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Im curious where you're going with this.
I like/prefer dungeon adventures, both as a DM and as a Player. As a DM because it is generally easier for me – fewer options for direction, less to keep track of and juggle, easier to “plot”. As a Player because it takes me back to the reason I fell in love with D&D – exploring strange, unknown places, meeting monsters and killing them, and discovering treasure.
I would love to adventure through a mega-dungeon. These maps look like my early experiences with D&D. But something struck me about them – all the maze-like corridors of 3 of them (top, fifth, and sixth) with no encounters (maybe some wandering monsters) and dead ends that just waste time. 20 years ago, I would have thoroughly enjoyed such dungeons. Finding our way through the labyrinth, hoping (or fearing) running into wandering monsters, and generally just fooling around in the dungeon would have been fun.
Now, though, those labyrinthine dungeons would annoy me. I don’t think I’d enjoy the “plotless” navigating and mapping. The second, third, and fourth maps look like they’d be more fun – plenty of actual rooms with potential encounters (monsters, or traps, or tricks, or something other than just empty dead-end tunnels).
As a player I think I may have once enjoyed such a dungeon, but then, once I had an inexaustible thirst for all things role playing, and some damn good GM's. Nowdays, I would find the experience interminable, and rather pointless. Nothing against dungeons per se, as long as they are themed or there is a reason for going in I can still enjoy them, but mega dungeons just don't do it for me. Certainly, I would get no joy being the mapper.
IMHO this style of game has been done better by computerised RPGS for some time now.
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Sure - why not? But I agree with Umbran in the sense that as a player OR as a DM I would have not find some sort of reason why such a thing would exist. Dungeon crawl for the sake of dungeon crawl always kinda puzzled me. I like some rhyme or reason behind things. It doesn't take much rhyme or reason ... I'm willing to stretch my imagination for the sake of the game, after all. But the more of it there is I generally find the more I enjoy the game - again as either the player or the DM.
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I like/prefer dungeon adventures, both as a DM and as a Player. As a DM because it is generally easier for me – fewer options for direction, less to keep track of and juggle, easier to “plot”. As a Player because it takes me back to the reason I fell in love with D&D – exploring strange, unknown places, meeting monsters and killing them, and discovering treasure.
I would love to adventure through a mega-dungeon. These maps look like my early experiences with D&D. But something struck me about them – all the maze-like corridors of 3 of them (top, fifth, and sixth) with no encounters (maybe some wandering monsters) and dead ends that just waste time. 20 years ago, I would have thoroughly enjoyed such dungeons. Finding our way through the labyrinth, hoping (or fearing) running into wandering monsters, and generally just fooling around in the dungeon would have been fun.
Now, though, those labyrinthine dungeons would annoy me. I don’t think I’d enjoy the “plotless” navigating and mapping. The second, third, and fourth maps look like they’d be more fun – plenty of actual rooms with potential encounters (monsters, or traps, or tricks, or something other than just empty dead-end tunnels).
Quasqueton
There are a few questions I ask myself as a DM when I design an "adventure". These are the two that seem relevant in this case. "What am I trying to accomplish with this section?" The other one that dovetails off is, "Does this section accomplish that effectively?" The second question is much more important.
In your example you mentioned there are many dead-ends, empty areas, etc. If what I'm trying to accomplish is to make an underground trek a long and arduous event, then that does accomplish it. However, does it accomplish it effectively? I'd have to say no.
The game is really only propelled forward by action. Action on the part of the DM or on the part of the players. If as a player I spent a substantial amount of real time just dragging on through an empty dungeon, I'd probably get pissed. Why not just say, you've gone through the dungeon for 7 days and you found nothing? That would take 15 seconds and then we can move on to more "adventuresome" things. There is no sense of wonder in empty tombs.
So the action could be "encounters", "natural hazards", "traps", etc. If there are little, or worse no, encounters in a whole section of map then I've wasted a lot of real time and not propelled the game forward one bit. For sections like that I can create the same sense of long arduous travel by my simple statement above, having the players decrease rations for that period and maybe applying some circumstance modifiers like fatigue, etc.
As a DM I would not spend any significant (over 15 minutes) amount of time in empty rooms. Just state that the adventuring party explored the caves of doom and found nothing. Be generous, give them a map of the area, as it would be assumed that they explored it, and move on. In the empty caves of doom they found a note leading them to the real action, the caves of chaos, just a few miles north, near the Keep...
For a player, what does spending 4 hours or more just stumbling around in the dark and finding nothing but dead-ends accomplish? Probably just frustration.
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You're playing coy, Quasqueton, but I won't spoil your fun
Well, no, and yes. But I understand why you’re thinking what you’re thinking.
No – My question is straight and honest. My follow up post is straight and honest. I’m using the image as an example because it is that image that sparked my thinking on this. That image shows what I’m talking about better than I could explain it (picture = 1,000 words). [That is not just a representation of an old-school dungeon, it *is* an old-school dungeon.]
Yes – If someone decides to rag on me about *my* dungeon-creating ability based on that image, I can pull out the secret and shut them up. [I’m pleasantly surprised it hasn’t come to that.] I purposely am not using a map of my own old-school days as the illustration of the concept.
It doesn't take much rhyme or reason ... I'm willing to stretch my imagination for the sake of the game, after all. But the more of it there is I generally find the more I enjoy the game - again as either the player or the DM.
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