Dungeonaday.com: The Original Online Megadungeon! Kickstarter Project

Harrrbinger · Aug 19, 2012

Dungeonaday.com: The Original Online Megadungeon!: What dungeon, you ask? Dragon’s Delve — a massive 27-level mega-dungeon more than half-a-million words long! It’s an adventure with 661 encounters, none of which are empty rooms or featureless corridors, arranged over nearly 30 maps! A whole campaign worth of material, capable of taking characters from 1st to 20th level, that begins with a bell on a string set by goblins and ends with a battle against a great wyrm red dragon demigod where the fate of a god hangs in the balance!

And while Dragon’s Delve may not be the biggest dungeon in the world, it has the distinction of having been conceived by Monte Cook (Ptolus, 3E Dungeon Master Guide) as the initial offering for Dungeonaday.com — a subscription website that created a classic “dungeon delve” style dungeon by releasing a single hyperlinked, cross-referenced encounter every weekday (each of which now has years of forum posts giving ideas on how to tweak, improve, or survive its challenges).

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Gilladian · Aug 20, 2012

I've been a member of DaD since the very beginning. It's a GREAT dungeon (my party is on level 5-6 right now), and runs very well indeed.

If you love dungeon-based campaigns, this one is worth it...

Emerikol · Aug 20, 2012

I was a paid subscriber the whole time my 4e campaign ran. (about a year). I converted everything no problem. I think it would have been a ton more fun with 3.5e or Pathfinder. I love the whole concept.

I am joining the kickstart so I can get all the levels.

Nikosandros · Aug 20, 2012

Yes, it's a very good dungeon. I already have the PDFs, but the hyper-linked online version is extremely convenient.

Revinor · Aug 20, 2012

Emerikol said:
I was a paid subscriber the whole time my 4e campaign ran. (about a year). I converted everything no problem.

How well does it convert? 4e encounters are generally very different to 3/3.5 ones - more tactical, with more varied enemies and terrain. I remember considering conversion of Return to Temple of Elemental Evil to 4e, but most encounters as stated would just not cut to 4e quality. 5 indentical Orcs in a plain cave is not a 4e encounter, regardless of stats conversion.

How this megadungeon fares on that scale?

Sir Robilar · Aug 21, 2012

Definitely a cool Kickstarter project. It would be awesome if it included the option for a print book of the dungeon however as pdfs sadly don't really do it for me.

Emerikol · Aug 22, 2012

Revinor said:
How well does it convert? 4e encounters are generally very different to 3/3.5 ones - more tactical, with more varied enemies and terrain. I remember considering conversion of Return to Temple of Elemental Evil to 4e, but most encounters as stated would just not cut to 4e quality. 5 indentical Orcs in a plain cave is not a 4e encounter, regardless of stats conversion.

How this megadungeon fares on that scale?

I just did a name and level conversion. So didn't worry about making the challenge the same because my group was already higher than the 1st level of the dungeon. And I'd mix in a variety of orcs in the example situation. At least two. Also it's not really hard to put in stuff to make it more tactical if that is what you like.

I decided long after this dungeon that 4e wasn't really my game. I'd like play 3e or 5e with it nowadays. But I definitely felt like 4e was super easy to DM and easy to swap out monsters so I believe these conversions are not hard. To me it's the fluff and the overall design that matters most if converting to 4e. Again maybe it's just me but I feel like I could convert about anything to 4e given a little time. I never played ToEE so I can't be sure on that one.

Revinor · Aug 22, 2012

Emerikol said:
Again maybe it's just me but I feel like I could convert about anything to 4e given a little time.

Absolutely yes - if you have proper background, location etc spelled for you, 'upgrading' combat is probably 30-90 minutes exercise per encounter (including joining nearbly locations for bigger fights, printing out monsters on single sheet of paper for ease of reference etc). Still, for normal sessions of 3-4 fights, it means 3-4h extra before the game, which could be spent on preparing nice handouts, reading up confusing part of plot few pages down the line etc.

For offering which basically sounds like set of locations+combats (don't think there is a lot of intrigue and NPC interaction in that dungeon?) you end up recreating half of the content?

Alarian · Aug 23, 2012

I asked them a question about 4 or 5 days ago and am still waiting on an answer. I've seen them post several times on the KS page since then so my question must not be worth their time (or my money).

Gilladian · Aug 24, 2012

There's a moderate amount of interaction. Brindenford, the town, plays a lot of roles in interacting with the dungeon. I certainly haven't had to ADD huge amounts to keep my players feeling emotionally invested and interested.

You can read my online game notes here, if you want: Vishteer Campaign / Campaign Notes