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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".
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Either way, it should hopefully provide a stronger motivation for the players to keep adventuring in the MegaDungeon.
Oh yeah, Quests. I think you'd want the PCs to have lots of Quests at the same time, so they have to decide which one to pursue. I'd make some Quests out of their reach, some risky, some easy, etc.
Would you tell the players what level the Quest is? That would lead to informed choices - "The Library of Skulls Quest is Level 7, and we're only Level 4... it might be out of our reach."
__________________ "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
Note sure if it's been mentioned, but Castle Whiterock was an amazing megadungeon for 3.5E, and it also had a VERY in-depth series of "sub-quests" that provided extra XP rewards, magic item rewards if you went back to the person who gave you the quest, or increased power to some of the named magic items when you did certain things.
Basically, it had Milestones, Quests, and so on, and it wasn't even 4E yet!
I think the setup of the dungeon itself takes a lot of cues from what you guys have been talking about, too: a living dungeon with reorganization, random encounters are not a big deal and mostly there just to drain resources, and key locations that are tied to Quests and other historical info.
Worth looking at, as I've been reading it and the 4E-ness of it jumped out immediately.
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Castle Whiterock was pretty awesome, especially for 3.x era. I agree completely that Whiterock took the idea of quests, subquests, milestones, etc to a very high art; well worth reading for inspiration. My group was obsessed with ultimately finding the lost shrine of Justicia. (But they died...)
Comparing it to a classic megadungeon (let's say Temple of Elemental Evil, something most people are familiar with) - you can see the levels are not as large horizontally, they're fairly linear, there's typically only one access point per level, one exit down per level, few/no major highways in-out of the dungeon, etc. But the encounters are very well-designed and there's very good details on making the dungeon 'respond' to incursions via 'high alert status' and restocking.
I can say its the only 3.x era adventure I ran (right up until my group's TPK).
Would you tell the players what level the Quest is? That would lead to informed choices - "The Library of Skulls Quest is Level 7, and we're only Level 4... it might be out of our reach."
I hadn't considered that, but yeah, it might be a good option. Especially if I can think of a way to convey that information in a more "organic" way, as I don't want to be too metagamey.
Stuff like this makes me miss the "named" levels of B/X, 1E, etc, where a magic-user was a "Sorcerer" instead of "9th level", etc. Not impossible to port something like this to 4E, though, with a little thought...
__________________ "There are few problems a well-placed fireball cannot solve. Now, tell us more about this... orphanage?" - Balfour Grimstaff
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I hadn't considered that, but yeah, it might be a good option. Especially if I can think of a way to convey that information in a more "organic" way, as I don't want to be too metagamey.
The easy way to do this is to say "The Library of Skulls is hidden on the 7th level of the Dungeon".
Let the players come to their own conclusion about the level of the Quest involved
__________________ "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.
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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.
I don't really see much of a sandbox here. The only freedom the PCs basically have is that they can choose their railroad (5 room dungeon).
But then, I think dungeons are the worst environment for sandbox games anyway.
__________________ Everything about RPGs is subjective, so everything I say about them is I my opinion and not hard facts
Having a backstory is good. Using this backstory in game is better. And for that you need background skills.
4E, the game where you play HSMFOS
Heroic
Only good, or at least unaligned adventurers are supported and no monster you can fight is good aligned.
Super-
The PCs become masters in any skill automatically and it is impossible for them to be bad at a mundane task
Mutants
Compared to NPCs of the same strength, PCs poses a ungodly amount of HP and can withstand huge mountains of punishment. That or they can spontaneously regenerate wounds.
From Outer Space
Yet despite no matter how powerful the PCs become, they can never do anything special what the "natives" (=NPCs) can do like animating a skeleton.
I don't really see much of a sandbox here. The only freedom the PCs basically have is that they can choose their railroad (5 room dungeon).
But then, I think dungeons are the worst environment for sandbox games anyway.
I think you've missed the point of the Megadungeon, which is the antithesis of railroad dungeon design.
The Megadungeon is basically a campaign setting, that setting being the Underworld. How the players function in and around the Megadungeon is intended to be entirely up to them, whereas the normal dungeon, or "lair" as many megadungeon afficinados call them, is intended to be linear, with one way in, one way out, and one goal to accomplish.
The Megadungeon is a living breathing sandbox that can be the centerpiece of a campaign, without restricting the players to a single course of action. Numerous adventures can be had outside the dungeon, without ever decreasing its importance. PCs may build baronies or even kingdoms of their own in the lands surrounding the MegaDungeons.
I'm probably not describing this as well or as succinctly as I could, so I'd recommend checking out the wonderful Megadungeon threads on Dragonsfoot and Knights-n-Knaves Alehouse, or researching the many anecdotes about the original MegaDungeons: Greyhawk and Blackmoor.
__________________ "There are few problems a well-placed fireball cannot solve. Now, tell us more about this... orphanage?" - Balfour Grimstaff
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Yeah, the megadungeon ("campaign-dungeon" is an alternative term I tried to introduce that didn't gain much traction -- emphasizing that the nature rather than the size of the dungeon is the important distinction) is a way to "sandboxify" the dungeon concept, blowing up the size and scope of the dungeon to the point that it becomes essentially a campaign-setting, serving more or less the same function as the wilderness hex-map serves in a more "traditional" sandbox setup. In a mega/campaign-dungeon there are essentially "points of interest" scattered throughout the dungeon plus lots of "dead space" (empty rooms and miscellaneous tricks, traps, monsters and treasures) in-between. The players have their choice of which points of interest they wish to seek out and explore (with dungeon-levels allowing them to assess likely difficulty and reward), or if they choose to they can grind in the dead space, or they can leave the dungeon entirely and have sandboxy adventures in the wilderness or in town (the idea shouldn't be that the megadungeon is the only place to have adventures, just that it's the best and most convenient, especially for low level characters).
Two important keys are that there are always more points of interest (the party should never feel "stuck" exploring a particular area because there aren't any other options), and that the dead-space is never "cleared" (there will always be at least vermin and wandering monsters there). Certain areas within the dungeon will eventually become familiar -- the players will return to and pass through them again and again on their expeditions, eventually developing detailed maps, and even later not needing those maps because they've got the area memorized -- but around the edges (symbolic, not necessarily literal - depending on how you draw your maps it's entirely possible to have "remote" or hard-to-access areas right in the middle of the map) and deeper down there will always be fresh and unexplored areas.
__________________ "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)
Two important keys are that there are always more points of interest (the party should never feel "stuck" exploring a particular area because there aren't any other options), and that the dead-space is never "cleared" (there will always be at least vermin and wandering monsters there). Certain areas within the dungeon will eventually become familiar -- the players will return to and pass through them again and again on their expeditions, eventually developing detailed maps, and even later not needing those maps because they've got the area memorized -- but around the edges (symbolic, not necessarily literal - depending on how you draw your maps it's entirely possible to have "remote" or hard-to-access areas right in the middle of the map) and deeper down there will always be fresh and unexplored areas.
This "unexplored edges" concept can really keep the setting fresh for a long time. The EX mods and Expedition to the Barrier Peaks were both based on parts of the original Greyhawk dungeon that Gary used as a sort of "break" from the normal Sword-n-Sorcery flavor of his Megadungeon. One area riffed on a deadly Alice in Wonderland theme, and the other was a crashed UFO which offered some sci-fi to the mix. He reported that the players welcomed the "break" both times, and were eager to get back to exploring the dungeon proper afterwards.
__________________ "There are few problems a well-placed fireball cannot solve. Now, tell us more about this... orphanage?" - Balfour Grimstaff
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This "unexplored edges" concept can really keep the setting fresh for a long time. The EX mods and Expedition to the Barrier Peaks were both based on parts of the original Greyhawk dungeon that Gary used as a sort of "break" from the normal Sword-n-Sorcery flavor of his Megadungeon.
Very true. This is also where using sub-levels can really shine: either as additions to previously-explored areas in order to breathe some new life into them, or as obscure/funky/mythic/hard-to-find areas that PCs may be a) elated or b) horrified to discover themselves in after a teleport trap/chute/trick staircase/etc. that drops them into such a location without a simple return. In order for that horror/elation to be real, the PCs and players need to have heard of these mythic areas before, so that they in fact have some true qualities of legend about them. Think of some dungeon levels or key encounters as artifacts and relics, and build them up in a similar manner.
Another key to campaign dungeons is breathing life into it, in the sense of layers of history. Not that you need to design oodles of backstory or anything like that, but that the dungeon will accumulate things: slain PC groups' equipment and maps will be scavenged by looters and perhaps reappear as part of monster hoards/in town in pawn shops/etc.; dungeon dressing should help bring out whatever distinctness for a level or an area within a level (all lights dim to 1/10th radius on the Crypt of the Vile Saint of Shadows sub-level; streams of water run throughout the top-most four levels after an extended rain, washing away tracks and perhaps flooding some levels below; etc.); layers of filth, dust, debris, mold, slime, and such may cover up paintings on the walls, or make secret doors much more difficult to find than usual; and NPCs and monsters will leave tell-tales all over the place---whether graffiti, cryptic messages ("Turn 5 B2 Fox"), evidence of mining/carbon scoring/lock-picking/door smashing/lightning-bolt-blasting/etc. These kinds of details help to simulate the idea of multiple parties of simultaneous explorers---definitely one of the highlights of DMing a campaign dungeon if you can pull it off, and even if you can't, you can simulate this layering of rumors/dungeon impacts due to enemy action/etc. by setting up some NPC parties who are rivals to the PCs.
Anyway, great thoughts in the thread!
@ Trent: you still need to write an essay or four on this for me
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One alternative, especially given the shallowness of the XP curve, would be to have each floor of the dungeon equate to about 2-3 levels worth of xp. So when the party enters the dungeon at level 1, the first floor contains 25-30 encounters some of which at level 1, some at 2 and some at 3, but not necessarily in order. Since XP is fixed, by the time they get through the level, they'll be 3rd-4th level, and ready to take on the 2nd floor, which has encounters of 4th-6th. Just because tradition has one floor per level doesn't mean it has to stay that way.
I'm leaning towards this.
Level 1 - PC levels 1-3
Level 2 - PC levels 3-5
Level 3 - PC levels 5-7
Level 4 - PC levels 7-9
Level 5 - PC levels 9-10 - this would be a "milestone" level, in that it should provide an iconic battle/adversary to usher in the next tier...
and so forth...
__________________ "There are few problems a well-placed fireball cannot solve. Now, tell us more about this... orphanage?" - Balfour Grimstaff
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My Thunderspire Labyrinth game is starting to take on the feel of a big ol' dungeon.
There is one safe point (well, maybe not so safe!) and elsewhere in the dungeon there are random encounters. Lots of random encounters. If the PCs take an extended rest there will be one.
How Random Encounters work in H2
You roll 1d20 each hour. (I want to change this to include when they fail Dungeoneering checks to find their way around and at the end of a fight.) If you roll a 20, there's an encounter. There are a couple of modifiers, the big one being the +2 if there hasn't been an encounter yet.
I'm not sure what the odds are, but you have to rest at least 6 hours. So it's 5%, 15%, 25%, etc. until there's a 55% chance of an encounter. Pretty bad odds. And that's without the other modifiers.
So far the PCs push on for a bit and then are forced to retreat back to town to lick their wounds. They have made choices to avoid long travel times even though they would gain an advantage in doing so.
There is one problem: they have a lot of XP. The random encounters give lots of XP, so it's all been a net benefit for them. They're a little on the light end of treasure, though, because random encounters have no treasure.
I'm not sure how I'd want to handle this problem, if it even is a problem.
Now we aren't using maps, just Dungeoneering checks (it's more like wilderness) so it's not a true megadungeon, but it's interesting.
__________________ "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
There is one problem: they have a lot of XP. The random encounters give lots of XP, so it's all been a net benefit for them. They're a little on the light end of treasure, though, because random encounters have no treasure.
I'm not sure how I'd want to handle this problem, if it even is a problem.
When I run my next 4E game I plan on cutting monster XP down a significant amount and either increasing the XP value of quests or just making sure there are a lot of quests available.
__________________ "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.
My Thunderspire Labyrinth game is starting to take on the feel of a big ol' dungeon.
There is one safe point (well, maybe not so safe!) and elsewhere in the dungeon there are random encounters. Lots of random encounters. If the PCs take an extended rest there will be one.
Thunderspire Labryinth has a lot of the feeling of a mega-dungeon, yeah. Really, you could run a very long campaign in it and never leave, as you've got your city for resting and refitting right there (Hall of Seven Pillars). and it has lots of evocative areas for DM expansion in addition to the described zones.
Oh yeah. I just got through an encounter in a lair I designed - 3 rooms, two level 4 encounters, 1 level 5. It was pretty cool.
__________________ "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
It seems that my campaign is about to move out of the dungeon, but a thread on old-school ways is still interesting.
I have to say: from play experience, in the 4E dungeon, if you remove the ability for the PCs to take an Extended Rest safely, things really change. Encounters are still the focus, but Healing Surges become much more valuable.
I think this cuts down on the potential for grind as well, since each HP becomes a resource you don't really want to lose.
I'm still wondering about the best way to deal with wandering monster XP - "grinding" (in the WoW sense) through a dungeon is a smart choice, and I don't think it really should be.
__________________ "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
I am writing a 4E megadungeon now, and I have come to the conclusion that you can only do it properly and get the right feel if you remove all connection between fighting and XP; after all, that is how it originally was in the Halcyon days of the Megadungeon, as XP were gained exclusively via gold. I plan to do the same thing, or else use a version of the Quest XP system, since I want a system where the PCs can go anywhere.
I am also removing most magical treasure that gives the PCs any advantage in combat, and making all magical treasure something interesting and quirky rather than something you grab simply to bash things with.
I plan to add some extra stuff to the level progression charts for characters to make up for the lack of +1 magic swords etc, so that this side of things is taken care of and the PCs don't end up underpowered.
Hopefully, with those two modifications, I will be free to write a true sandbox megadungeon, free from the constraints of 10 encounters per level, treasure parcels and all the other baggage that makes it difficult to run a true sandbox in 4E.
Then I can stick in proper wandering monsters and hey presto, I will hopefully have myself a nasty, vicious megadungeon. We shall see, as it is still very much a work in progress and I am still coming to grips with this system.
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My own 4E design is going pretty well. My group is just finishing up Thunderspire Labyrinth; my agreement has been to run the heroic tier (H1-H3), and in between there and P1, kick-off the first few levels of the megadungeon game with new characters - PHB2 should be out by then. I know the 6 players are looking for a chance to swap some roles around and try on some new classes. 1-2 months in the megadungeon should get them close to L3, and then it's back to Paragon tier with the original guys while I go back to building the megadungeon.
I know, bouncing between campaigns isn't great, but I don't want megadungeon building to be a burnout generating hamster wheel, either. I figure when we exhaust the material, I'll run P1 for the first campaign, and develop the next few megadungeon levels, run it, switch back to P2, etc.
Anyway, I am going with the design model of 'delves' and treating the megadungeon as a location for expeditions rather than an unending dungeon crawl. It's a modular approach and takes advantage of the improvements in the 4E XP and encounter building system, while not overwhelming me. To that end, wandering monsters are part of the 8-10 encounters per level and are accounted for in the XP and parcel system.
For instance, the dungeon is beneath a city, and the first level includes the city sewers; it's been very easy to hang the small delve expeditions on the sewer map (one of them is the cellars to the haunted house, another delve is the dungeon beneath an evil temple in the city). The first delve is the haunted house itself.
There are still problems... what if the PC's find the different ways down to the second dungeon level (the actual "megadungeon" is below the sewers) - but they choose to clear out additional "delves" in the sewers without taking on greater risks? I plan on giving them compelling plot hooks; clearing out some of those delves naturally - for instance, rival adventurers got there first; making the monetary rewards dwindle.
I can't imagine 'old-school' megadungeons avoided the problem too - in fact, if you had a huge free-form map, the problem might be excaserbated by the completionists! Your group achieves level 2 experience, has found multiple ways down, but the map has too many open areas that scream 'unexplored'. And the group reasons, "it'll be easy to sweep through there now that we're 2nd level". Sounds like the same 'grind' potential to me. For that reason, I think it's important to have the illusion of size, and the ability to hang additional modular delves onto the map if necessary, but not overcreate...
Anyone else tackle this type of problem - your characters will only likely encounter 50% of your areas, so how do you balance enough detail vs too much?
2. Leaving Room for Expansion:
Haha, I guess there have been a few creative solutions out there - the Greyhawk Construction Company comes to mind, as does 'The Fog' I heard was used in Castle Zagyg.
Both of these are somewhat connected and largely depend on how much ground the PCs can cover in a typical session. Once you've got a feeling for that (and it will vary considerably based on the group dynamics), you can detail out about 2 sessions in every direction (horizontally and vertically). That keeps the amount of prep manageable.
Some of this prep will be "wasted" as the PCs don't head in that direction, but there are a couple of mitigating factors:
(1) The PCs are likely to back-track at some point and explore other paths -- either in an attempt to find another route to wherever they're going or just to see what they missed.
(2) If the dungeon is organic and evolving, you'll find opportunities to draw players into this content. They wiped out the goblin clan but didn't move into the ogre-occupied caverns beyond? Well, the next time they head down this way the ogres may have expanded their territory into the freshly-vacated caverns.
Beyond the "two session limit" just keep some rough notes ("here there are shadow-infused orcs led by a banished dark elf prince"; "here there are mindlflayers worshipping the forgotten god-idol of Juntha'thek"; and so forth).
Quote:
3. What if they don't descend?:
So what do you do if the party levels up, they realize they only scratched the surface of level 1, and rather than descend to level 2 they decide "No matter how long it takes, let's clear this sucker first!"? Megadungeons aren't meant to be exhaustively mapped and stocked, it ruins the aura of 'it's too big to be known entirely'. And besides, after a certain point the challenges will be downright boring.
You're over-thinking it.
Let me re-phrase the problem you're anticipating: "What if my players take the opportunity to do whatever they want and use it to do whatever they want?"
If your players are having fun trying to clear all of levle 1, then they're having fun. You might think that the challenges are "downright boring", but clearly they're not boring enough for them to go and do something else.
If you're really going to embrace sandbox play, then you're going to have ditch the fetishization of balance that got its misbegotten start in 3E and ended up hard-coded into the design of 4E.
Get rid of the notions that encounters are supposed to be "balanced". Get rid of perfectly balanced treasure parcels. Sometimes there are bad choices to be made and sometimes there are hard choices and sometimes there are easy choices. Let the PCs steer their own course.
Now, you may run into a situation where the players believe that they're "supposed" to be clearing the dungeon level. So they'll continue doing it even after they've stopped having fun. What you've got there is a misunderstanding of the style of game you're looking for. And the easiest way to fix that problem isn't to try to mechanically brow-beat them... it's to sit down and say, "Look, if you don't want to do this, then you don't have to do it."
I think you'd want the PCs to have lots of Quests at the same time, so they have to decide which one to pursue. I'd make some Quests out of their reach, some risky, some easy, etc.
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