The waterfall plummets 1000 feet...
Bleys Icefalcon
First Post
The Great Pyramid
When I was still on Active Duty in the United States Navy our ship got permission for a rare Port Visit to the Egyptian Naval Base in Alexandria. We were there for almost a week, and during that time things were considerably less tense than they are now.
Several of us signed up for a bus tour down to Cairo, and we saw the Great Pyramid at Giza. And though there were signs clearly saying Do not Climb, in multiple languages, one of our guys almost got arrested for climbing to the very top anyway.
Our gaming group went hard core Egyptian for the better part of a year after that I'll have you know. Culminating in a modern day/DnD crossover where the players all awakened after a long slumber with a burial crypt in Egypt. They awoke as the enchantment holding them broke, when grave robbers broke the seal into their room (talk about some surprised grave robbers...)
When I was still on Active Duty in the United States Navy our ship got permission for a rare Port Visit to the Egyptian Naval Base in Alexandria. We were there for almost a week, and during that time things were considerably less tense than they are now.
Several of us signed up for a bus tour down to Cairo, and we saw the Great Pyramid at Giza. And though there were signs clearly saying Do not Climb, in multiple languages, one of our guys almost got arrested for climbing to the very top anyway.
Our gaming group went hard core Egyptian for the better part of a year after that I'll have you know. Culminating in a modern day/DnD crossover where the players all awakened after a long slumber with a burial crypt in Egypt. They awoke as the enchantment holding them broke, when grave robbers broke the seal into their room (talk about some surprised grave robbers...)
Are you aware of any effort to convert Mammoth Cave (or parts of it, at least) into a playable dungeon? I've been looking (which is how I found this thread), and I haven't found anything. I may have to do it myself.
Celebrim
Legend
On the whole, I'd say Mammoth would not make a particularly interesting dungeon, though you could use it as a template for an Underdark level by perhaps increasing the scale by a factor of 10, and using wilderness travel techniques rather than dungeon crawling.
The problem with Mammoth is it doesn't really exhibit a lot of diversity of terrain. You've got a massive fracture line cave right underneath a sandstone cap, so its pretty much a big undecorated maze - and IMO mazes have no real place in an RPG. Other than a map, it's not going to offer much in the way of inspiration.
The other problem you are going to run into is the grottos protect the actual maps of most caves pretty fiercely, just to keep amateurs from getting overly ambitious. Most of the people who have the maps will be part of the caving community and generally unwilling to share them. I don't know if it makes a difference if the cave is a national park, as it might be available under some sort of freedom of information act. But a brief google search did not turn up any real survey maps you could easily turn into dungeons.
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I forget if it was mentioned - this thread is oooold- but the crystal caverns of Mexico are stunning is size, scale, contents, variety...and danger.
You'll notice little, non-Photoshopped scientists crawling amid these gigantic crystals in one area:
And in this area, called the Cave of Swords, the scale is completely different:
You'll notice little, non-Photoshopped scientists crawling amid these gigantic crystals in one area:
And in this area, called the Cave of Swords, the scale is completely different:
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Celebrim
Legend
For those interested in realistic caves as dungeons, this is one of the few examples I've found online of actual cave survey maps.
One thing you'll note is that real caves are fantastically much more complex in shape than you can usually utilize in a game, just because the three dimensionality becomes impossible to describe.
http://www.cavecartography.com/
One thing you'll note is that real caves are fantastically much more complex in shape than you can usually utilize in a game, just because the three dimensionality becomes impossible to describe.
http://www.cavecartography.com/
Rune
Once A Fool
Well, yes and no. Compared to other cavern complexes, maybe, most of Mammoth Cave might seem somewhat mundane (being largely, what they call, if memory serves, "living" caverns. But Mammoth encompasses so much terrain that it can't help but be somewhat diverse. There are some truly beautiful "dying" caverns as well (filled with limestone structures. There are impressive heights and depths, caverns large enough to comfortably house an ancient dragon and tunnels tight enough to force kobolds to go squeeze through (although, not on any of the standard tours, naturally).
That's the other thing about Mammoth Caves. It's not fully explored, yet. It's really one of the few places on land that you might genuinely have no way of knowing what's beyond the next bend.
Celebrim
Legend
It's big, I'll give you that. It's just.... well, I have more than an average amount of experience underground, and Mammoth is not where you take anyone if you want them to fall in love with caves. Mammoth is boring in real life, and it would make a boring dungeon.
Water is the life of a cave. A cave is living if it is still subject to natural hydrogeological forces, most especially the removal and deposition of calcite. A cave is dead if these forces are not currently active, owing to the cave having become dry - usually as a result of the water table shifting to a lower level of the caverns as a result of both external and subterranean erosion.
On the other hand, having a living ecosystem in a dead cave makes much less sense. Some level of realism (along with how much more interesting the real world can be than randomly generated dungeons) is why I want this in the first place. And the fact that Mammoth Cave is long stretches of passageway between rooms just means that you treat it somewhat like wilderness travel.
But fine. I'm nothing like a cave expert. If Mammoth Cave wouldn't make a good dungeon, what cavern complex would? Has anyone turned any real-world cavern into a playable dungeon?
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