General RPG DiscussionDiscussion of all RPGs and non-system-specific topics. DM/GM/player issues, settings, etc. Rules discussion belongs in one the forums below.
Nate, see some of my earlier posts about using treasure parcels equivalently. Basically, there are a few ways to resolve your concerns while still using parcels (although you can also just as easily use TMT, please don't take this as criticism, merely elaborating on how one can use parcels).
So if you dislike having encounters with no treasure, 10 parcels = 10 encounters in a level. If you're concerned about players catching on that there is "no more treasure on this floor", then I would say simply don't do that. This goes back to my equivalence of parcels idea. You can do it for gold too, but let's stick to magic items for simplicity. At level 1 you hand out magic items levels 2-5, and at level 2 you hand out magic items levels 3-6. This means that magic items of level 3, 4, or 5 could potentially show up in either parcel.
If the players increase to level 2 but remain on floor 1 and fight challenges averaged around a level 1 party, start handing out the level 2 parcels that could have been level 1 parcels. you have at least 3 magic items, and some of the gold values should be comperable as well besides the lowest gold from 1 and the highest gold from 2 (possibly more, but you get the idea.). When you finally run out of things from level 2 parcels, if you absolutely must, move on to level 3, that should be a level 4 and 5 item, plus any gold.
When you finally run out of options, then you should DEFINITELY stop giving out treasure. It is likely a good idea to do it sooner than that.
__________________ "There are few problems a well-placed fireball cannot solve. Now, tell us more about this... orphanage?" - Balfour Grimstaff
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Location: Toledo, OH; formerly Louisville, KY; formerly Somerset, KY
Posts: 444
I'm new to this trhead and loving it (so much in fcat that I am about to be late for work- good thing I am the boss). It seems a lot of discussion has been spent on what happens when characters level up, but don't descend deeper into the mega dungeon.
I think I would handle this by converting wandering monsters into static encounters in a way that brings level appropriate encounters to the PCs without breaking believability.
For example as the PCs are working to purge the first level of the dungeon, increasing numbers of monsters from the second level of the dungeon will come up to see what is going on (and why there easy food source is so quickly becoming depleted). Likewise, even larger numbers of those second level monsters might descend to the third level of the dungeon (again, perhaps, in search of food).
This creates a situation in which second level encounters start coming to the PCs on level 1. The PCs then find a level 2 that is mostly deserted (except for nasty traps without treasure) that serves to spur them on to level 3 (which hopefully is level appropriate at this point). Finally, level 3 has been reinforced with a few larger groups from level 2 that, because of their increased size, are hopefully appropriate challenges for the characters.
Very happy to see this thread bumped. I wanted to bump it for a long time but I was the last poster so I didn't want to be too overt about it. In regards to random encounters I'd like to get a little more mathy without biting off too much work for me :-P
First, it's easy to justify increasing the level of random monsters as the party levels up. Clearly they're killing off/clearing out part of the dungeon and potentially raising alarms. Of course, the choice is yours should you decide you would rather let floor = encounter level. I'm going to use mostly small dice for this as an example of how one might make a decent set of random encounter tables. These borrow from a concept I read in mike mearls' blog about using wide rather than tall tables.
Ok so to start, pick a level, either based on the party or based on the floor. Take the result from that roll, and roll from each table it proscribes. This second layer of tables is based on similar xp values:
Level tables Level 1: 1d6 1: roll twice from 200XP (easy) 2: roll twice from 200XP, once from 100XP (normal) 3: roll once from 300XP, once from 200XP (normal) 4: roll twice from 250XP (normal) 5: roll once from 200XP, twice from 100XP, once from 125 XP (normal+25) 6: roll once from 300XP, once from 200XP, once from 125 XP (hard)
Level 2: 1d6 1: 250XP twice (e) 2: 375XP and 250XP (n) 3: 375XP and 125XP twice (n) 4: 300XP and 200XP and 125XP (n) 5: 250XP twice and 100XP twice (h-50) 6: 375XP twice (h)
Obviously I went with very small die sizes to keep from going overboard, and limited myself to two levels. Also I picked XP values as the titles for tables to make my intentions clear, but it may be easier to give them generic titles like "1-1" or "1-3" for "Level-NumberOfMonsters". Naturally you could add another layer by actually dividing out the different races rather than letting them end up mixed up all willy-nilly (might be a bit odd to have elves and kobolds working together) to increase the options, or just use a bigger die than d4. Near the end I started getting creative with XP totals with some tricks such as 3+2+1 gives you the same total as 3 2s, or combining a pair of 3s with a pair of 3 minions (off by only 1xp).
There is a lot of flexibility here, allowing you, the DM, to come up with some interesting (and decidedly random) wandering monster encounters. If you were particularly attached to the "sandbox" mentality, you might even make a large enough table of monsters, then strike out each entry of monsters as the players defeat them, essentially creating a more mobile form of "clearing out the dungeon". You might even concoct scenarios such as "monsters escape and warn others" or "the great relic has been stolen and the alarm is sounded" to justify rolling additional times or re-introducing previously defeated monsters.
A final note: the tables as written are intended to allow you to generate a complete, level appropriate, encounter for 5 PCs. Obviously you can mix and match for more or fewer PCs, but if you are subscribing to the "wandering monsters dogpile" method of making wandering monsters more dangerous, just decide how much XP you'll add to an existing encounter and then roll. Example, if the PCs encounter a level 1 encounter and you want to make it more difficult by a single level, roll from the 125xp table (the difference between 500xp and 625 xp). Or, if you only have 4 PCs, roll from the 100XP table (to go from 400XP to 500XP).
How prevalent do you guys think traps should be in a MegaDungeon?
Lots of them, scattered around?
A few, here and there?
A lot in special, trap-focused areas?
etc?
__________________ "There are few problems a well-placed fireball cannot solve. Now, tell us more about this... orphanage?" - Balfour Grimstaff
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How prevalent do you guys think traps should be in a MegaDungeon?
Lots of them, scattered around?
A few, here and there?
A lot in special, trap-focused areas?
etc?
IMO "traps" that serve as obstacles (open pits or crevasses, portcullises, chutes, shifting walls or rooms, one-way doors, teleporters, elevator rooms, etc.) should be pretty common, and are a big part of why when you go into a megadungeon you can't always count on just being able to retrace your steps in order to get out. The idea of being lost in the dungeon with no idea how you're going to get out and hoping you can find an exit before you run out of supplies (torches, food & water, hit points) is a very big part of the "megadungeon experience" and shouldn't be discounted.
OTOH, traps intended to injure or kill (spear or arrow traps, spiked pits, deadfalls, poison needles, poison gas, acid jets, flooding rooms, etc.) should be rarer, and usually placed for a specific reason (guarding a particular location or treasure) and not just randomly (except on the lowest levels of the dungeon, where in some sense the entire level counts as a "particular location"). The players should be constantly worried about such traps (because when they spring one chances are pretty good they're going to die) but if they're actually encountering more than, say, 1 for every 3 or 4 monster encounters (which is to say about 1 for every 10 to 12 rooms explored, or about 1 per session) that's probably too much.
I'm speaking generally (edition-neutrally) here -- I have no idea how the specific dynamics of 4E might affect the above.
__________________ "AD&D is designed to be an amusing and diverting pastime, something which can fill a few hours or consume endless days, as the participants desire, but in no case something to be taken too seriously." - Gary Gygax (DMG, 1979)
"There are people who regard the RPG as something more than an amusing game, more than a most entertaining hobby. They really do need to get a life" - Gary Gygax (EN World, 2004)
__________________ "There are few problems a well-placed fireball cannot solve. Now, tell us more about this... orphanage?" - Balfour Grimstaff
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4th edition generally uses a trap replacement theory. The stats and experience rewards are typically balanced around the idea that they should replace a monster of the same level. So you might, for example, have traps working alongside monsters in a single encounter. You can also create an encounter that revolves around traps, although you must be careful about this one. There is an example of an all-trap encounter in Keep on the Shadowfell, and it works fairly well, other than the relative difficulty of disabling the traps being very high and the general danger level of the traps being very low (and easily circumventable).
Hazards and "natural" structures tend to follow the same rules as traps, but also make great opportunities to litter the dungeon with strange diversions. There's nothing wrong with having a locked door or a crevasse that is easily overcome by the PCs with just a few checks. Even if it ends up being trivial, it may end up diverting the flow of the game a bit. Plus you can create some very satisfying moments when the PCs, for example, cook up an idea to "surf" off the edge of a cliff on a tenser's floating disk to get an extra 5 feet of height, holding a rope, with the intent of making the jump and helping everyone else across.
Really, static hazards give PCs who are well-versed in rituals a real opportunity to shine, so don't be afraid to pepper them in.
On the subject of traps my view is that there should be some routes in that have traps that cut you off from the exit but if there is a safe route in and the party finds it then as they make more and more repeat visits to the dungeon along this route then some of the intelligent tribal inhabitants will start defending the dungeon at the bottlenecks of this route and using traps to assist the defense.
Also of the party breach that defense and the tribe is still surviving they amy try again with a larger force and more elaborate traps. Esentially the dungeon as the Western Front. This could be what the forces the party to try another route that gets them cut off in the dungeon with no known way back.
Also/instead, once the dungeon inhabitants come to realize that adventurers almost always follow into and out of the dungeon, the more intelligent ones will begin to avoid that area, making their lairs in the more remote and defensible areas (since they generally don't care about getting to the surface, what serves as an obstacle for the PCs might not necessarily be to them), meaning that if the PCs stick to the "safe" areas they'll find nothing but empty rooms filled with debris, vermin, wandering monsters, fellow surface-dwellers (bandits, NPC adventuring parties), and perhaps some poor/weak monsters that were thrust out of their original lair and have no place else to go (which can be either a boring and unrewarding combat or an interesting role-playing encounter -- perhaps these monsters are looking for revenge and might be willing to team up with the PCs to achieve it, or perhaps they'll pretend that's the case but really they're wanting to deliver the PCs to the boss-monsters as an offering, to prove their value and loyalty). In order to fight the toughest monsters (and even moreso to get the best treasures) the PCs are going to eventually have to depart from the "safe" paths and start doing some real exploration.
__________________ "AD&D is designed to be an amusing and diverting pastime, something which can fill a few hours or consume endless days, as the participants desire, but in no case something to be taken too seriously." - Gary Gygax (DMG, 1979)
"There are people who regard the RPG as something more than an amusing game, more than a most entertaining hobby. They really do need to get a life" - Gary Gygax (EN World, 2004)
Resource management is no longer such a source of tension, so how to stop the PCs thinking like a group of CRPGers; that every room is there to be cleared? I want to put the tension back into situations where the PCs must manage sustained RISK. This is what makes an MD great IMHO and is what 4E currently does very poorly for mechanical reasons. Sure it is not for every group, but then you have fun your way…………..
I think the solution to this is to just make the dungeon more realistic; there are a number of ways to do this;
1) A time-limit! The PCs only have a certain time to get to a certain place in the dungeon. If you dislike the idea of a tightly focussed plot, it could be something like a slowly toxic effect of the dungeon that increases with time spent there. Perhaps the PCs lose a healing surge permanently every day until they leave the dungeon. This makes long dungeon trips (longer than 3.5E) possible but keeps the PCs wanting to press on and not hang around.
Another take on this is that every battle the PCs fight carries with it a set cumulative penalty; perhaps all the monsters in the dungeon carry a nasty disease and exposure to their blood through battle causes an increasing chance of the PCs contracting the disease. This should have players choosing battles carefully because if they kill everything, they will all be weakened to the point where they are sitting ducks.
2) There is an over-arching intelligence that has the dungeon under constant patrol by Guardian WMs. These guardians should be there, not to fight the PCs directly, but to raise the alarm if the PCs are discovered; and this shifts that area of the dungeon into a much higher threat level than normal. The key point is that if the threat levels shifts, the monsters become much more difficult to defeat (guards reinforced, traps are activated, doors locked etc) and yet the XP rewards stay the same because the PCs are supposed to pass through these areas without being discovered. This can also later be used to rationalise why a first level area suddenly morphs into a second level area once the PCs have levelled up; because the threat level has shifted and the same dungeon is now transformed. If you don’t want to consciously control this because of sand-box style play, there could just be a chance that for every hour the PCs spend in an area, there is a fixed chance of the threat level increasing because of patrols discovering evidence of the players past battles.
I say intelligence, not BBEG, because the intelligence could be a magical book that controls things in a pre-programmed and not truly intelligent fashion via magical alarms, or the dungeon itself could be partially sentient. The key thing is that the dungeon should REACT.
The main point is to get the PCs thinking; every time we open a door, we risk discovery and this is VERY BAD. Obviously, the threat level will go down again over time but this type of risk/reward management is what made the old mega-dungeons fun, for me at least.
The other point is that if the Mega-dungeons have some very obvious reasons built in (apart from treasure gathering etc) why adventurers might want to venture into them, then this also changes entering the dungeon from “lets kills everything” to “we have to get to the oracle quickly and without losing anyone”.
Such reasons could include magical Oracles that can answer questions aka divination, or sources of healing, or just a very quick way (or the only way) of passing over the mountains in winter etc etc.
I think dungeon-bashing has often been most fun in my games when the bashing has been part of a push towards a higher goal and not just random killing.
__________________ I don't know half of you, half as well as I should like and I like less than half of you, half as well as you deserve!
Another way is to have a level or multiple levels under the lordship of a dominant creature or tribe. Say the first 3 levels is controlled by gnolls but level one is populate by a subservient goblin tribe. Once the players demonstrate sufficient threat then the gnolls start reinforcing the goblins.
Also the dungeon should be large enough that resource tracking becomes an issue, (e.g. healing surges left, arrows, torches etc)
Resource management is no longer such a source of tension
As long as the party can't rest safely, resource management is still a source of tension.
Last week I was running Thunderspire Labyrinth and the PCs were getting low on resources (HP, dailies, healing potions). There is no rest in that module out in the dungeon because you're going to run into a few wandering monsters. The PCs knew this and had to keep pressing on, making "easy" encounters tense.
__________________ "If people bring so much courage to this world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry."
-- Ernest Hemingway, "A Farewell to Arms" Burning Empires:Boldaq Keep on the Shadowfell
Resource management is no longer such a source of tension, so how to stop the PCs thinking like a group of CRPGers; that every room is there to be cleared?
One thing I'm doing with my 4E MegaDungeon is establishing some "iconic locations", which will hopefully give the players an alternate goal besides "clear level 3" for instance.
Some places I'm working on:
The Library of Skulls
The Black Gates
Tomb of the Dread Emperor
The Oracles Grotto
The Troll Gardens
My hope is that this will lend some mythic weight to the megadungeon, and give my players something to research aboveground, and target these areas for plunder/exploration.
__________________ "There are few problems a well-placed fireball cannot solve. Now, tell us more about this... orphanage?" - Balfour Grimstaff
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One thing I'm doing with my 4E MegaDungeon is establishing some "iconic locations", which will hopefully give the players an alternate goal besides "clear level 3" for instance.
Some places I'm working on:
The Library of Skulls
The Black Gates
Tomb of the Dread Emperor
The Oracles Grotto
The Troll Gardens
My hope is that this will lend some mythic weight to the megadungeon, and give my players something to research aboveground, and target these areas for plunder/exploration.
Excellent post!
This sounds like it would be a lot of fun.
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.
RCFG - My free mostly-OGC OGL game! RCFG is intended to be a fusion between OS & NS playstyles, giving the advantages of SRD-based gaming coupled with quick character and adventure generation and an Old School feel.
One thing I'm doing with my 4E MegaDungeon is establishing some "iconic locations", which will hopefully give the players an alternate goal besides "clear level 3" for instance.
Some places I'm working on:
The Library of Skulls
The Black Gates
Tomb of the Dread Emperor
The Oracles Grotto
The Troll Gardens
My hope is that this will lend some mythic weight to the megadungeon, and give my players something to research aboveground, and target these areas for plunder/exploration.
This is a very good idea and (I think) how things were done BITD -- players hear rumors about or find incomplete maps to such locations, which gives them a goal for their explorations (another possibility is that they stumble across the place while lost, and then need to figure out how to get back to it). If you're running multiple groups (not likely nowadays, but very common in the 70s) this can even occur organically -- group A finds the Library of Skulls but are run off before they can explore all of it; group B catches wind of this and decides to try and find the Library themselves before group A can get back to it...
In designing my dungeon levels I've taken to keying them with two different keys -- the "lettered areas" (A, B, C, ...) are the iconic locations (permanent features is what I called them) that are always going to be there and that players can visit multiple times or multiple groups can visit -- there may be monsters or NPCs there, and there may be treasure, but that's secondary to the location itself. There are a handful of these per level (depending on the size of the level, but no more than 1 for every 20 or so rooms) and they're either very easy to find (everyone knows where The Black Gates are on level 7, they just choose not to go there!) or very hard to find (e.g. the Tomb of the Dread Emperor is behind a secret door located 20' down the wall of a 40' deep spiked pit) making it plausible that the PCs could actually be the first set of adventurers to discover the place.
In addition to these areas, which get most of the attention and detail, I've got a second key of "numbered areas," which are the standard monsters and treasures. These are transient -- once one group of adventurers encounters them they'll either be dead or likely have moved to a different lair -- and periodically re-keyed, even if they haven't been encountered yet (monsters move around in "the living dungeon" and adapt to what adventurers are doing elsewhere in the dungeon -- the idea that the monsters are just infinitely sitting around their lairs waiting for someone to come along and kill them is anathema to the "megadungeon" concept -- when the party routs the goblins on level 1 they'd better bet that next time they enter the dungeon the kobolds will have done something to react (moved into the old goblin lair, fortified their own lair, posted more guards and alarms, gone to the hobgoblins on level 2 and asked for help, etc.)). These encounters usually get a minimal write-up of 1 or 2 lines, and any other details that are needed can usually be improvised on the spot.
I think it's important to have both types of encounters, and to recognize the difference between them -- if your dungeon doesn't have the unique and detailed letter areas then the players will get bored exploring it and realize they could just as easily be playing Diablo, but OTOH if it's nothing but lettered areas, if even the minor encounters with giant rats and such are fully and uniquely detailed, then you'll never be able to achieve the scale that a megadungeon needs because you'll run out of steam and won't be able to keep up with your players -- they'll be exploring faster than you can create.
__________________ "AD&D is designed to be an amusing and diverting pastime, something which can fill a few hours or consume endless days, as the participants desire, but in no case something to be taken too seriously." - Gary Gygax (DMG, 1979)
"There are people who regard the RPG as something more than an amusing game, more than a most entertaining hobby. They really do need to get a life" - Gary Gygax (EN World, 2004)
One thing I'm doing with my 4E MegaDungeon is establishing some "iconic locations", which will hopefully give the players an alternate goal besides "clear level 3" for instance.
Will you use the Goals sub-system for this?
__________________ "If people bring so much courage to this world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry."
-- Ernest Hemingway, "A Farewell to Arms" Burning Empires:Boldaq Keep on the Shadowfell
Very possibly. I'm a big fan of quest xp and think that would lend even more weght to using the megadungeon as a "location for expeditions" as opposed to an "unending dungeon crawl".
Combining this with the "iconic locales" you could get a series of sessions like this:
1. Sage finds out about party's last excursion into the dungeon, seeks them out as he is obsessed with an item sealed into the Tomb of the Dread Emperor.
2. No one knows where the Tomb is, but some library research tips them off to the Library of Skulls, which is located just a short distance from the main processional stair leading to the third level.
3. The Library of Skulls is a hall containing shelves lined with skulls from all eras of history, which are used as a historical resource via rituals of speak with dead and comprehend languages.
4. The party must seek out scrolls for these rituals (or learn them themselves) and outfit and provision themselves for the delve to the third level, which they know will take them through a series of ballrooms haunted by the spectres of long-dead courtiers.
5. If successful, the party must find a suitable contemporary skull to get info from.
6. If successful, they will glean the location of the Tomb, and a whole new excursion begins...
7. And so on...
I could award xp along the various steps of this process, or just hold off until the original purpose of recovering the artifact for the sage is met.
Either way, it should hopefully provide a stronger motivation for the players to keep adventuring in the MegaDungeon.
__________________ "There are few problems a well-placed fireball cannot solve. Now, tell us more about this... orphanage?" - Balfour Grimstaff
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In designing my dungeon levels I've taken to keying them with two different keys -- the "lettered areas" (A, B, C, ...) are the iconic locations (permanent features is what I called them) that are always going to be there and that players can visit multiple times or multiple groups can visit -- there may be monsters or NPCs there, and there may be treasure, but that's secondary to the location itself. There are a handful of these per level (depending on the size of the level, but no more than 1 for every 20 or so rooms) and they're either very easy to find (everyone knows where The Black Gates are on level 7, they just choose not to go there!) or very hard to find (e.g. the Tomb of the Dread Emperor is behind a secret door located 20' down the wall of a 40' deep spiked pit) making it plausible that the PCs could actually be the first set of adventurers to discover the place.
In addition to these areas, which get most of the attention and detail, I've got a second key of "numbered areas," which are the standard monsters and treasures. These are transient -- once one group of adventurers encounters them they'll either be dead or likely have moved to a different lair -- and periodically re-keyed, even if they haven't been encountered yet (monsters move around in "the living dungeon" and adapt to what adventurers are doing elsewhere in the dungeon -- the idea that the monsters are just infinitely sitting around their lairs waiting for someone to come along and kill them is anathema to the "megadungeon" concept -- when the party routs the goblins on level 1 they'd better bet that next time they enter the dungeon the kobolds will have done something to react (moved into the old goblin lair, fortified their own lair, posted more guards and alarms, gone to the hobgoblins on level 2 and asked for help, etc.)). These encounters usually get a minimal write-up of 1 or 2 lines, and any other details that are needed can usually be improvised on the spot.
Quoted for Awesomness.
Great post, again, T.F. I will most likely be "borrowing" this technique from you.
__________________ "There are few problems a well-placed fireball cannot solve. Now, tell us more about this... orphanage?" - Balfour Grimstaff
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One thing I'm doing with my 4E MegaDungeon is establishing some "iconic locations", which will hopefully give the players an alternate goal besides "clear level 3" for instance.
Some places I'm working on:
The Library of Skulls
The Black Gates
Tomb of the Dread Emperor
The Oracles Grotto
The Troll Gardens
My hope is that this will lend some mythic weight to the megadungeon, and give my players something to research aboveground, and target these areas for plunder/exploration.
Really good ideas, and evocative names. I was taking a similar approach, but your names are cooler.
I like the technique of having some areas per level being highly detailed (the lettered areas TFoster talked about) and then doing some cursory details on the 'non-named' areas and using a simple key system to track them. Leaves more inspiration in the tank.
The Major/Minor Quest system in 4E will work really well for setting up goals and providing alternate motivation for the group to press on vs grinding.
" - Gary Gygax (EN World, 2004)
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