Megadungeon Sandbox and 4E

[Grimstaff]

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...

 

[Lacyon]

Thought some people here might be interested in this blog post by Mike Mearls.

(Also: bump)

 

[LostSoul]

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.

[sblock=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.[/sblock]

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.

 

[Lacyon]

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.

 

[JohnBiles]

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.

 

[LostSoul]

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.

 

[LostSoul]

Bumping.

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.

 

[Ydars]

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.

 

[crash_beedo]

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...

 

[Beginning of the End]

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).

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?"

Congratulations, you're experiencing sandbox play.

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."