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Designing Adventure: Can a Megadungeon... not be a dungeon at all?
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<blockquote data-quote="Mannahnin" data-source="post: 8317348" data-attributes="member: 7026594"><p>Yes, I would tend to say that such an adventuring locale can indeed be a megadungeon. Having parts of it open to the air doesn't negate that. It isn't essential to the definition that it be entirely underground. </p><p></p><p>You could theoretically have a megadungeon that was largely open to the sky, like the goblin king's Labyrinth from the Jim Henson movie. </p><p></p><p>The main reason most megadungeons aren't, I suspect, is because letting the players just climb over/walk on top of/fly over the walls would tend to sabotage most of the channeling and limitations of exploration that a dungeon normally does. It's also a challenge to describe. "Ok, the thief climbs up the wall and can see for quite a distance in every direction. I could give you a map of all the rooms and corridors in this area, but it really should be a perspective map, because the walls should block most of your view into any given space. Heck, how do I present that?"</p><p></p><p>But if you're open to and can handle the increased options for vertical movement and players moving over the walls, it sounds like it could be really interesting and a format more open to players moving any direction they choose than a usual megadungeon. </p><p></p><p>As Taran indicated, it could also work more like a hex crawl, where players can move in pretty much any direction on a more abstracted level. Come to think of it, I ran an abstracted megadungeon like that back in 4th ed- Thunderspire Labyrinth. It worked basically like a point crawl; miles of abstracted corridors and galleries through which movement took time and navigation checks (unless you had a guide), and in which were lots of specific detailed locations, and if the party ran into a random encounter between them, I'd plop down a random map of corridors and put the PCs down in the middle of it, in marching order.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Mannahnin, post: 8317348, member: 7026594"] Yes, I would tend to say that such an adventuring locale can indeed be a megadungeon. Having parts of it open to the air doesn't negate that. It isn't essential to the definition that it be entirely underground. You could theoretically have a megadungeon that was largely open to the sky, like the goblin king's Labyrinth from the Jim Henson movie. The main reason most megadungeons aren't, I suspect, is because letting the players just climb over/walk on top of/fly over the walls would tend to sabotage most of the channeling and limitations of exploration that a dungeon normally does. It's also a challenge to describe. "Ok, the thief climbs up the wall and can see for quite a distance in every direction. I could give you a map of all the rooms and corridors in this area, but it really should be a perspective map, because the walls should block most of your view into any given space. Heck, how do I present that?" But if you're open to and can handle the increased options for vertical movement and players moving over the walls, it sounds like it could be really interesting and a format more open to players moving any direction they choose than a usual megadungeon. As Taran indicated, it could also work more like a hex crawl, where players can move in pretty much any direction on a more abstracted level. Come to think of it, I ran an abstracted megadungeon like that back in 4th ed- Thunderspire Labyrinth. It worked basically like a point crawl; miles of abstracted corridors and galleries through which movement took time and navigation checks (unless you had a guide), and in which were lots of specific detailed locations, and if the party ran into a random encounter between them, I'd plop down a random map of corridors and put the PCs down in the middle of it, in marching order. [/QUOTE]
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