Dungeon Crawls - How much is too much?

[der_kluge]

One idea to break things up is to have an underground society, or at least a fairly large community, somewhere about midpoint in the dungeon. Then they've gone through and cleared things out, can sell their loot and interact with others, then they get more dungeon ahead of them! There may even be intrigues within the city based on their actions within the dungeon.

Also, I must recommend Dungeoncraft by Fantasy Flight Games. It should be out in a month or so, and it has rules and guidelines for almost all of the ideas suggested so far in this excellent thread. Mike Mearls really did a great job on it.

Nice - that would be an asset. I'll keep my eye out for it.

 

[der_kluge]

Also, odd stuff unrelated to the main storyline is a great way to break up the monotony. Example: They're exploring the temple complex avoiding lizardmen and such, slap in an encounter with the chatty spirit of a lesser priest of the temple's former order - it doesn't do anything, and it's not malevolent, but it gets in the party's way (etc...). It sounds obvious, but is easily overlooked.

Not bad... I do really want to put a lot of puzzle/riddle stuff in there. If I read my group correctly, I think they'll eat that kind of stuff up.

And no one here is going to speak Common, so they should have fun with that.

At this point, I'm thinking Mayan temple - and then trapping them inside, with no way out, and then maybe a riddle by a spirit (yea, I'm liking that more and more), who reveals that a passageway leads further down - into a huge cave complex. From there, monsters and beasties, and then maybe a grimlock village, or svirfniblin, or something. Grimlocks are evil, aren't they?

Yea... it's all coming together now...

 

[Psion]

Thing is, I can remember back to a game I played recently, where the party was in a tomb, and it was all underground, and we totally loved it for the first couple of game sessions, but I think we spent like 4 sessions in this dungeon, and by the final session, we were so sick of being stuck in this dungeon that all we wanted to do was leave.

So, does anyone have any similar experience to dungeon crawls? How do you keep them interesting, and how much is too much?

I think it all depends on the party. I personally find that any dungeon that does not allow breaks or forays and requires you to keep plugging gets a little old real quick. For example, I ran the first of three dungeons in Necromancer's Demons & Devils and was positively ready to quit by the time I was done with it. But at the same time, my group has no problem making repeated forays into Undermountain and Rappan Athuk so long as they get out and get some fresh air (or real plot and roleplaying) once in a while.

I hope to run Banewarrens soon and think it will solve this problem nicely the way that it adds a lot of variety and forays into the dungeon.