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Badwe, maybe I'm not understanding where you're going and will need to wait for the example...
In an old-school throwback model, dungeon level *does* equal encounter level... yes yes, it may seem illogical, but it's part of the players being able to make good choices about their level risk/reward (part of challenging the players).
This may be an issue of nomenclature. You might say that the first floor is assuming a level 1 party, and thus averaged around it. This is not the same as saying "clearing the first floor nets you 1 level". If it did, you would HAVE to create 8-10 encounters averaging level 1. So Floor is not necessarily equal to level, but floor may have an average level.
The parcel example. If your PCs face 10 level 1 encounters, they go up to level 2. At this point, they have many options in this megadungeon but we will classify them generally as either "move on to a placewhere the average level is 2 and do 8-10 more encounters" or "go do 10-12 more level 1 encounters". Now, how much treasure would you give them? In previous editions you would simply roll out from a random table and assume the average works out.
You can't do this in 4th ed because there are no table to roll from. You, as the DM, must choose what each group holds. To come out correct, the players must collect 10 parcels in the course of gaining a level. How do you account for when the players choose to move on to "floor 2" where there are monsters averaging level 2? And what do you do if they stay on floor one to stomp more level 1 groups? What if they do _both_ ?
To give you an example of my solution. Let's say your dungeon is limited in scope, and is only meant to handle levels 1 and 2. You can extrapolate this example to as many levels as you want. So, of the 10 first level parcels, and of the 10 second level parcels, 2 of them call for a level 3 magic item. Where do you put these 2? What happens if the PCs skip one of the encounters? Now they're underpowered. What if you put 3 level 3 items in the dungeon assuming they'll miss 1 and they end up clearing the whole place. Now they're overpowered. Instead, let's assume you create some amount of encounters in this dungeon worthy of a level 3 magic item. The first one they defeat, they get the first item on your list. When they defeat another, they get the other. If they do anymore, they get nothing, or a small amount of gold to keep the idea of a reward present.
Long story short: this is meant to be a way to adhere to the 4th edition treasure parcels, keeping player power relatively on par, without having to resort to random treasure tables.
Long story short: this is meant to be a way to adhere to the 4th edition treasure parcels, keeping player power relatively on par, without having to resort to random treasure tables.
Ah, okay - I see what you're saying now. (It's maybe freaking me out a little bit, I'll have to wrap my head around it).
Yes, dungeon level could/should equal average encounter level. So if you're on the level 1 of the dungeon, and you enter a typical delve or lair, the encounters would range from level 1 to level 4 (easy, standard, hard) just like in the encounter guidelines, and the potential for some level 1 treasure parcels would be there.
I see how stocking everything is problematic - you could over-wealth the group if they clean a level; it's the corollary to the XP problem I've indicated with clearing a level as well. On the other hand, I don't know if treasure should be completely dynamic, either. Maybe employ a similar strategy - stock it up, but once the group has hit their 8-10 parcels, it stops appearing, or treasure gets fractioned as well? The other approach (once they get their first 8-10 parcels, no more monsters have treasure) seems heavy handed - but I guess it works if we assume the stragglers are 'wandering monsters'. And maybe no more heavy-handed than fractioning XP.
Maybe it won't be a problem and my group will be eager to stay on the curve... I guess I'll find out shortly (scheduled to start the sandbox game in Jan).
I've never seen a problem with PCs having say half or twice of standard wealth-by-level, and for a megadungeon especially I don't think you should worry about it.
I've never seen a problem with PCs having say half or twice of standard wealth-by-level, and for a megadungeon especially I don't think you should worry about it.
3e made it kinda a problem as wealth could give access to really high powered stuff. For 4e, additional wealth is more likely to lead to flexibility in items, not excessive power, but because of the caps on per day usage and the exponential growth in the wealth curve, its hard to gain access to more powerful items that way.
That said, what might work best for a mega dungeon would be to have essential items keyed to the areas the party is likely to go, with extra wealth available if they hunt through the level.
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The other approach (once they get their first 8-10 parcels, no more monsters have treasure) seems heavy handed - but I guess it works if we assume the stragglers are 'wandering monsters'. And maybe no more heavy-handed than fractioning XP.
This is sort of like one of those mind-bending excercises where I try to convince you to "Think outside the dungeon" :-P
In all seriousness, the idea of the parcel handouts is that even after those 8-10 encounters you continue to hand out treasure. The difference is you are now (or perhaps already were) pulling from items set aside for the 10 level 2 parcels. This is sort of an existential idea, in that as soon as the PCs go up to level 2, they are "on" level 2. The fact that they are choosing to either take on more easy encounters or fewer difficult encounters is irrelevant, what has happened is merely you as the DM have put that choice in the player's hands rather than making a concious decision of "I will give my PCs lots of easy encounters" vs. "I will give my PCs a few difficult encounters".
Eventually though, you'll run out of treasure to give the PCs. A Level 5 item doesn't fit into any level 10 treasure parcel, and therefore probably shouldn't be dropped by an encounter balanced for level 1 (level 2 would be ok, of course). At about the point that you've given out all the treasure from all the parcels, levels 1 2 and 3 for example, that could be given from level 1 monsters, is about the point that treasure SHOULD start drying up completely.
Summary: Whatever level your PCs are, that is what "floor" they are experiencing. The megadungeon merely gives them the choice between taking it easy or making it hard. Whatever they choose, they should still get treasure to keep from being underpowered. However, no encounter should drop an item 5 levels higher than their EL.
I hope this all makes sense, I know it is something of an abstraction of the dungeon.
3e made it kinda a problem as wealth could give access to really high powered stuff. For 4e, additional wealth is more likely to lead to flexibility in items, not excessive power, but because of the caps on per day usage and the exponential growth in the wealth curve, its hard to gain access to more powerful items that way.
That said, what might work best for a mega dungeon would be to have essential items keyed to the areas the party is likely to go, with extra wealth available if they hunt through the level.
Yeah - you're completely right. The players are going to care, first and foremost, that they're getting their most important gear / magic item wishes in the important parcels.
It won't be imbalancing if they eventually get a +1 version of a secondary or tertiary weapon or item, and the 4E economics (items are worth 1/5th their value if sold) reigns in abuses. I think you guys have talked me down.
Game balance expects PC's to have a certain amount of magic items (and money to spend on more, or potions and rituals) - and in 4E, this aspect of the game is managed by the Parcel system. From that perspective, the DM can create treasure and magic items for a series of encounters, literally in minutes.
My advice?
Ignore game balance.
Seriously.
Balance the encounters on any given level as though it were for a given level (or level range) of characters, and then give treasure as you feel appropriate. Let the players worry about "game balance". If you really want that Old School feeling, the primary difference between OS & NS is that in OS, it is incumbant upon the players to decide what they can handle.
If the PCs don't have enough OOMPH to survive on level 3, they don't go to level 3. Or they don't survive. Easy.
(But let your players know what you are doing.....WotC-D&D players are unlikely to be expecting this! Unlike the 1e PHB, the 3e and 4e PHBs have scanty or no advice for the players in terms of how to judge a challenge and survive it. I would suggest having them read the player advice section from the 1e PHB. Lots of good stuff there.)
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If you built a level 1 dungeon with 50 encounters, you literally could give every monster an appropriate treasure. And one reason players might not spend time on level 1 any longer is the XP and Treasure rewards they're getting no longer keep them moving forward at an acceptable rate.
In the 4E paradigm, I don't believe XP is exponential any longer... it's a more gradual curve... raising the issue that a level 2 party could still be advancing at a decent pace while whomping on level 1 monsters.
That's what happens when you change things without understanding why they were designed in a particular way in the first place. The easiest thing to do here is to simply 'port in another XP paradigm. Use the Fighter XP progression from the 1e PHB, and determine XP with the 1e DMG....without giving XP for hit points, because hit points are crazy in 4e.
(You might need to do a bit more tweaking than this to make 4e work in megadungeon mode, but that's the way I would handle this particular problem.)
RC
__________________ [A]ny good dungeon will have undiscovered treasures in areas that have been explored by the players, simply because it is impossible to expect that they will find every one of them.
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The 4E XP system is exponential (at least until you reach the part of the XP table where they smoothed out the numbers), it just doubles every four levels instead of every level. Squashing two Level 1 encounters together gives you a level 5 encounter. This means that any given level of a dungeon can have a wide variety of encounter levels on it without changing much in the way of individual monster strength, and if players get too overconfident about staying on one level to clean it out, the beseiged monsters can cooperate against them and still provide them with a reasonable challenge for the characters' level. Even if you don't, once characters hit ~5th level, they'll be gaining levels half as fast by seeking out level 1 encounters as they would be if they pursued level 5 encounters.
The GP system in 4E is also exponential. An item of level x+5 costs five times as much as an item of level x. Also, selling a magic item yields only 1/5 of it's nominal value (or the value of an item of level x-5). However, each 5x increase in cost doesn't bring with it 5x more power - that's how much it costs just to go up a single +1. Assuming you managed to get all your items to 5 levels above what you should have, you've essentially got an extra two levels worth of attack and defense bonus, and maybe enough extra powers/static bonuses/healing from those levels to match 2 more levels worth of hp, powers, and feats that you'd otherwise be bringing to the table. In order to get there, you'll have to sell twenty-five items of the level you're supposed to have. I don't think you'll have too many problems with wealth by level - once players start to see that they're being left behind, they'll move to fix that by taking on harder challenges.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Lonely Tylenol
I didn't sign up to play this game so that I could spend all my time doing clerical work.
It's a tougher argument in 4E, where it takes 1,000xp to get to level 2, and only 3750 to get to level 4, but the difference between a level 1 standard fight is 500xp and level 4 is only 875xp. Players *might* still be leveling at an acceptable (albeit unchallenging) pace if given access to enough encounters below their character level.
The difference in XP, hopefully, is proportional to the difference in difficulty (at least in theory). And turning a 1st level encounter into a second level encounter means adding 125 xp worth of monster. I don't think that players who kick down a door and see 6 orcs instead of 5 are going to cry foul. Plus you can use alliances between monsters, tricks and traps, etc. to boost the encounter difficulty on short notice.
IME people that ran old-school megadungeons would have to have plenty of tricks up their sleeves to balance encounters, which I think is far more difficult in earlier editions. I don't think the basic principles have changed (and as much as it might seem otherwise, the rules don't prevent the PCs from running away). People interested in megadungeons IMO should consult the 1E DMG and Dragon Mags from that time period, although the advice is of mixed usefulness IME. Unfortunately, IMO, the 4E DMG lectures pretty much run contrary to what a DM wants to do in a sandbox game.
The world/environment (which, in this case, is the dungeon), should adapt to the presence of the PCs, and the DM can see to it that it does so on a way that suits his interests in terms of balance. For example, I think the monsters living on level 2 would get curious about all the crashing and banging they hear going on upstairs. IMC they would investigate sooner or later. Meaning if the PCs don't go to the dungeon, the dungeon will go to the PCs. Probably while they are camping. Things that are good for game balance are often good for versimiltude as well.
I don't take the treasure parcels thing seriously either. I don't think it's necessary for 4E. I don't think it takes a DMing genius to get a sufficient sense of the PCs power. IME you can't balance challenges on a razor's edge no matter what, unless you fudge. That's due to random chance as well as tactical decisions by the PCs (which often appear as random chance due to the fact that two smart people often see the same thing two different ways). Bottom line is, place the treasure however you want, require the PCs find it, and expect the encounters to adjust to the PCs power level (which will just simply not be the same as character level). The adjustments don't have to be heavy-handed, the in-game rationale for them is basically that the more successful the party is, the more powerful creatures become aware of them and the weaker creatures band together for their survival.
If it takes a DM more than one or two encounters to figure out how powerful a 1st level party is with a bunch of +5 weapons, then that DM should stick to treasure parcels.
Also, when it comes to too much stuff, don't forget rust monsters, disenchanters, thieves, former owners, etc. Certainly, "taking away the PCs stuff" is something that is increasingly unfamiliar to DnD players but it's not prevented by the rules. Done badly, many of the tactics suggested by 1E for dealing with these issues can be obnoxious and heavy-handed, which is probably why 4E steers away from this gaming style. But IMO a DM has so many options for dealing with this issue that with some thoughtfulness, subtlety, and experience a DM make this into a good game.
My goal here is not to rehash megadungeon design but discuss how to modify the theories to work with 4E adventure building models.
I understand you want to focus on 4E impacts to this method of play, but I can't resist making one suggestion that should greatly simplify your work - don't map out the dungeon.
By this I don't mean that you don't have encounter areas mapped out, as needed. I mean don't try to map out the entire Undermountain, 5' square by 5' square. Instead, use a flow chart to show how things connect. The flow chart is easier, less time-consuming, and much more flexible.
Take a 5-room dungeon and piece of paper.
Draw a circle - that's the entrance.
Draw a line from circle 1 to circle 2 - add whatever description you want to explain how the two connect (a well, a pit, a hallway, stairs, teleporter, genie grants a wish, etc).
Draw a line from circle 2 to circle 3.
Draw a line from circle 3 to 4.
Draw a line from circle 4 to 5.
Maybe you also want a line from 3 to 5 - if the party avoids the trick or setback, they can slip past the guards directly to the treasure, or rescue the princess while the guards are distracted.
The point is that it's extremely easy to add (or subtract) connections this way. You don't have redraw your intricate map, you simply redefine the connections between the individual areas. Just remember that connections show options the players have, once they've overcome the challenge - they're not encounters themselves. If a the hallway connecting two rooms is a trap, it's not a connection, it's a circle. In a way, you can think of connections as cut scenes.
I believe there's at least one good thread (from a couple years ago?) on using flow charts instead of maps - if anyone can find it, a link would be great.
I used a flow chart for the Ruins of Old El-Lay in a Mutant Future PBEM I ran, but I don't see much benefit with a dungeon. It would work well for Underdark 'wilderness' though.
By this I don't mean that you don't have encounter areas mapped out, as needed. I mean don't try to map out the entire Undermountain, 5' square by 5' square. Instead, use a flow chart to show how things connect. The flow chart is easier, less time-consuming, and much more flexible.
I see what you're saying Croesus - and I was thinking of taking that approach. Here is an old thread on Dragonsfoot (I'm highlighting Melan's post) - Megadungeon Mapping - where he analyzes certain dungeon layouts as flowcharts. I think it's a valuable technique to make sure you've provided enough access points and avoided a railroaded experience. Plus - you can set up some "pinch points" for those areas that are crucial.
But taking it a step further, I'm considering the scope of the place large enough to use the flowchart as part of the actual map - much like the current H2 Thunderspire Labyrinth map. So we agree!
It seems much less daunting creating a flowchart approach and then spending the time building the interesting delves/lairs.
The Five Room Dungeon
A modern theory I like is the five-room dungeon - it's a compartmentalized approach to design (like the 'Delve') - here's a typical 5-Room Dungeon style:
Room One: Entrance And Guardian
Room Two: Puzzle Or Roleplaying Challenge
Room Three: Trick or Setback
Room Four: Climax, Big Battle or Conflict
Room Five: Reward, Revelation, Plot Twist
Okay, so what's a 5-Room Dungeon doing in my Megadungeon?! Keep on the Borderlands is a good example of how a dozen independent lairs, loosely connected in a sandbox, can be assembled to form something larger. I'm keeping the 5-Room dungeon option open as a design model, assembling the megadungeon from a series of lairs or delves. It means you don't sit down and design 20 rooms... you sit down and design a handful of loosely connected delves or lairs.
You may note that assembling a larger dungeon from a series of delves or lairs appears to be the model for the 4E published adventures - it's present in H1 where you see the dungeon level 1 broken into areas like 'Goblin Encampment', 'The Tombs', and 'The Caves'; level 2 has 'Hobgoblin Borough' and 'Dungeon Chambers'. H2 and H3 are similar.
Good stuff, keep it coming~
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I think y'all are on to some important issues here. If your group is willing, my inclination would be to approach them by houseruling 4E to bring it more in line with the old-school rules that gave rise to the megadungeon style of play. In particular:
- Experience points are awarded primarily for finding treasure and surviving long enough to bring it out of the dungeon.
- Wandering monsters are a constant hazard with a fixed and more-or-less known to the players rate of occurence, so that the decision to search every cranny is balanced against the risk of an unplanned encounter.
- Magic items are mysterious (there's no easy recourse to the identify spell) and as likely to be a bane as a boon (e.g. cursed items, intelligent swords with conflicting agendas, etc.).
The reason that these are important to the megadungeon is that the dungeon is supposed to be an intrinsically dangerous environment, at best a constant impersonal hazard and at worst an enemy in itself. Mapping is essential because nothing is worse than losing your way back to the surface. Your initial focus isn't clearing out every room for experience like in a CRPG (although that may happen over time); the megadungeon should be about going in, exploring, and making strategic choices (do we open the door with the spooky noises, or push on further; at what point will the depletion of our resources, from HP to torches, force us to turn back given that we're likely to face a number of wandering monsters just trying to return to safety) balanced against the certain knowledge that the megadungeon is full of things that will eat you for lunch if you're not both careful and lucky.
If killing monsters is the main source of experience as per the 4E RAW, there's going to be a strong incentive for the players to treat each encounter as the next step towards leveling up - not a potentially much-more-lethal-than-expected hazard that's better negotiated using brains rather than brawn. I'd eliminate or sharply reduce the XP award from monsters, replacing it with XP from treasure awarded (or quests if you want to be a little less old-school).
This ties into the wandering monster issue - if the PCs are noisily bashing down doors, you want the resultant increased risk of a wandering monster to be a punishment, not a gift of XP. This is especially true because the random factor might make the gift a trivial gimme - fire beetles! - or a Trojan horse - trolls! - so again it's important for the players not to have a system-reinforced expectation that monsters are there to be killed. The other 4E problem with wandering monsters is that combat takes so much longer than in the old-school. You want the fire beetle encounter to be a punishment for foolhardy play in that it dings the PCs by a few hit points, not in that it forces the players to wade through an hour of dull (because ultimately unchallenging) melee. Mike Mearls has a blog post about using skill challenges to handle wandering monsters - I think at his Keep on the Gaming Lands blog, although there's also a related idea in his discussion of converting the G series at the Wizards site.
Finally, magic items are a problem, as you've noted, because one virtue of the megadungeon is that it's entirely up to the players which direction to head, making it hard for the DM to parcel out the items 4E expects. And that expectation is counter to the old-school feel; a cursed item should be like "well, I invaded someone's house and caught athlete's foot from the shoes I stole, I guess that's what I deserve" instead of "these shoes I got for my birthday have a fungus?!?" What I'd do is to abstract out magic item enhancement bonuses, similar to how it's done for NPCs. When you hit second level, choose one item (armor, weapon, implement, etc) to receive a +1 enchantment bonus, which is conceptualized as just another benefit of increased experience; it's that you're better with your sword, not that your sword started to glow. At third through fifth levels, choose another item; at sixth level, one item gets bumped to +2; and so on. The wondrous items you find in the dungeon will contribute the other aspects of 4E items (e.g. item powers), and since players are reassured that the PCs will keep up with the expectations built into the system, they ought to be a lot more open to items that have unknowable / undesirable / unreliable "special" effects.
__________________ I play and DM old-school D&D with the New York Red Box, play a shaman in a homebrew 4E campaign & write third-party and first-party stuff for that edition, and blog about all of the above at The Mule Abides.
You can only house-rule out so many concept of 4e before it becomes you essentially only using the combat system. Then again, that alone would be a good reason, but there's plenty more technology to take advantage of.
Regarding the incentive to mindlessly charge into any encounter for XP: this has always been problematic for RPGs, at least as far back as I know. My solution has always been that if you overcome or effectively neutralize the encounter, you get the XP. If you talk your way out of a fight, sneak by them, or even manage to run past ambushers on your way to your main goal, you get the XP. Of course, if later you encounter that same group... you get to kill them for no bonus.
I think the treasure parcel system is too integral to balance to throw out. Weather you get it perfectly delineated over a single level is probably not as important as assuring that they eventually make it to the PCs. To give you an example, in my non-megadungeon adventure, I handed out treasure parcels from both level 5 and level 6 at the same time, until by the end of 6 I had exhausted both lists.
If you are adamant about cursed items, don't count them in the treasure parcels. Traps & Hazards, "disease" tracks if flavor modified, or some of the more malicious artifacts (think eye/hand of vecna) can fulfill the duty of cursed items. Perhaps as a reward for overcoming the curse somehow, the player is THEN rewarded with a magic item.
4th edition is not designed for inter-combat attrition. The fact that, given only a few minutes to rest, the party can reheal to full, you can't plink away at HP totals as easily as in earlier editions. This is to say nothing of the fact that a night's rest will restore all resources to the party, standing in stark contrast to older editions where a night's rest would provide, at best, a few hitpoints and of course the spells to heal some more of it back. The only resources that can be reliably drained over the course of a day are daily powers and healing surges, and those only force a rest. Of course, getting caught while trying to rest for the night when you pushed yourself to the limit could put the fear of death back into your party, but doesn't quite attain the feel you mentioned of being a penalty for wandering around.
Think of it this way: in old CRPGs you had the choice to wander around aimlessly and just kill easy fights until you were stronger and could take on the final challenges more easily, or you could rush to the end and, being at a lower level, experience a very harrowing fight. Why not let the players choose? Let them decide weather they want to stomp low level monsters or dig deep and bite off more than they can chew. Either can be fun, and like another poster pointed out, if things get out of control you can have two encounters crunch together to make something very scary.
Sandbox Theory and Dungeons
I guess I consider Sandbox theory the opposite of railroading.
An aside:
I finally figured out what my problem with the term "sandbox" for this is. In software development, and several other more experimental professional realms, a "sandbox" is the place you go to play with stuff that's segregated off from other things, so you can't break anything important. You go off to the sandbox rather than playing with all the other kids.
This is rather different from how folks use the term for RPGs - the sadbox is still a place for play, but nobody is saying it is for safety of anything. There's no risk of breakage.
Every time "sandbox" gets used int eh RPG sense like this, I get cognitive dissonance, as I understood the software development version first.
I think the treasure parcel system is too integral to balance to throw out..
In a game environment where the PCs have power to choose (directly or indirectly) the level of threat they face, it's simply not true.
To put it another way: the balance point that WotC suggests and endorses is not the only possible balance point. If the players are aloud to do so, they will over time naturally gravitate towards a balance point that suits them. This may mean "overlevelled" and "undertreasured", the reverse, or something in between, but that doesn't matter, because they'll learn to gauge their actual strength (and that of their foes) and adjust accordingly.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Badwe
4th edition is not designed for inter-combat attrition. The fact that, given only a few minutes to rest, the party can reheal to full, you can't plink away at HP totals as easily as in earlier editions. This is to say nothing of the fact that a night's rest will restore all resources to the party, standing in stark contrast to older editions where a night's rest would provide, at best, a few hitpoints and of course the spells to heal some more of it back. The only resources that can be reliably drained over the course of a day are daily powers and healing surges, and those only force a rest. Of course, getting caught while trying to rest for the night when you pushed yourself to the limit could put the fear of death back into your party, but doesn't quite attain the feel you mentioned of being a penalty for wandering around.
In general, this shouldn't be terribly hard to deal with - it's part of the game to locate and secure safe rest areas (starting with "outside the dungeon" at first). You just have to make sure the "safe" areas are far enough apart (and sometimes not as safe as they initially appear), so that
the party has some encouragement to try to avoid less rewarding encounters (or at least avoid spending limited resources on them) on their way to and from safe areas so they can push further before having to turn back.
Someone above mentioned that Wandering Monsters have very little treasure - if you go that route, you might consider having them also be worth very little XP (that would have happened automatically under the old XP for GP systems, now you'll have to adjust it yourself).
__________________ "I gave her an egg, and some flowers, but she still won't marry me!"
The Inclusion Hypothesis: For every x, the statement "x does not belong in D&D" is false.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Lonely Tylenol
I didn't sign up to play this game so that I could spend all my time doing clerical work.
Regarding the incentive to mindlessly charge into any encounter for XP: this has always been problematic for RPGs, at least as far back as I know. My solution has always been that if you overcome or effectively neutralize the encounter, you get the XP. If you talk your way out of a fight, sneak by them, or even manage to run past ambushers on your way to your main goal, you get the XP. Of course, if later you encounter that same group... you get to kill them for no bonus...
<snip>
...4th edition is not designed for inter-combat attrition...
I agree that redefining the term "defeating an encounter" goes a long way to rewarding styles of play beyond just combat... AND it means the players can do those actions, like steal, trick, form alliances, etc and still gain experience points for it, without reverting to the 1gp = 1xp model of OD&D. The XP budget system and encounter system is too integral.
Regarding the other point, Wandering Monsters... wow, I had a bit of an epiphany after reading your bit. If you consider Wandering Monsters primarily as sources of attrition, they're not too useful in 4E. (Haha, who remembers 'Wandering Damage' from an old Dragon April Fool's Article?) I like the idea of wandering monsters helping to simulate a dynamic environment, but I'm also rethinking they need to be accounted for in both the XP budget, parcel system, and design goals of the area - I think I'm going to have to track down that bit about Wandering Monsters as Skill Challenges, too. Good stuff man!
4th edition is not designed for inter-combat attrition.
Excellent point. One of the defining moments of megadungeon play IMO is the fear of not being able to make it out (often because you fell down a one-way shaft / teleporter trap / elevator room / whatever). The importance of this factor is what underlies the necessity of mapping and drives some of the scariness of finding that your map doesn't match the territory any more. Having a single night of rest bring you back to full resources means that "camping out" in the dungeon can be a valid option, undercutting this fear of getting trapped.
Unlike the other things I mentioned, I think that houseruling healing surges and extended rests is more trouble than it's worth. (Magic items are explicitly designed to allow stripping out the way I describe; Mearls has described the ease of doing so as one of the advantages of 4E over 3.)
I think that adventure design can address this instead. I've thought about a "solar labyrinth" dungeon that becomes exponentially more deadly when the sun sets, to recreate those moments of racing back to the surface. You don't even need anything special; if the frequency of wandering monster checks is OD&D standard (1 in 6 every 10 minutes), it becomes very unlikely you'll get eight hours' worth uninterrupted rest.
You can also emphasize attrition of other resources. Running out of arrows or torches can make the prospect of getting stuck a scary one, and wandering monsters could threaten these resources (e.g. giant moths attracted to flame putting out your torches) as well as HP.
__________________ I play and DM old-school D&D with the New York Red Box, play a shaman in a homebrew 4E campaign & write third-party and first-party stuff for that edition, and blog about all of the above at The Mule Abides.
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