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What do you think of mega-dungeons for online D&D play?
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<blockquote data-quote="Retreater" data-source="post: 8216166" data-attributes="member: 42040"><p>I'll just share my brief comments about Dungeon of the Mad Mage here and not full-on rant about it.</p><p>It is really big, but it's also bland and has numerous empty/boring areas. My players would go through entire sessions encountering no monsters, traps, or interesting features whatsoever. In face-to-face play, I would have been able to easily add stuff, but on a VTT after I had spent around $50 on the official adventure, it was a hassle to add stuff and change things on the fly. </p><p>To try to lead my players to the "better" stuff, I just walled off entire sections of the complex, hoping they would be lead to the "good" stuff. Even that didn't work, and they lost interest.</p><p>There's not a good theme, unifying concept, or reason to go into the dungeon. You can add this, but there are so many great dungeons already out there that you could likely find something better.</p><p>We were on Roll20, where module content was largely limited only to official WotC releases. We shifted to "Tales from the Yawning Portal." The dungeons in that are more varied, interesting, and are short enough to string together into a "dungeon campaign" without being exactly a megadungeon.</p><p>It took a lot of work for me to add Barrowmaze onto Roll20, but it's superior in nearly every way to Dungeon of the Mad Mage. I have also added Frog God Game's Rappan Athuk, also better than Dungeon of the Mad Mage. If you are just learning the ropes of VTTs, I wouldn't recommend trying to convert a megadungeon right away.</p><p>If you're not on Roll20, other VTTs might have better selections of 3PP content. But if you are looking for good dungeons ready to go on Roll20, I would recommend Tales of the Yawning Portal over Dungeon of the Mad Mage. Conversely, you could run Tomb of Annihilation and start at the fairly big dungeon at the end. </p><p>But if you do decide on Dungeon of the Mad Mage, be ready to add encounters, traps, and a plot. As it is, it's very bare bones. (Just want to add that I'm writing my own mega-dungeon for publication, so I've been studying the mega-dungeon design for a few years now. I would never have submitted something like Dungeon of the Mad Mage to my editor.)</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Retreater, post: 8216166, member: 42040"] I'll just share my brief comments about Dungeon of the Mad Mage here and not full-on rant about it. It is really big, but it's also bland and has numerous empty/boring areas. My players would go through entire sessions encountering no monsters, traps, or interesting features whatsoever. In face-to-face play, I would have been able to easily add stuff, but on a VTT after I had spent around $50 on the official adventure, it was a hassle to add stuff and change things on the fly. To try to lead my players to the "better" stuff, I just walled off entire sections of the complex, hoping they would be lead to the "good" stuff. Even that didn't work, and they lost interest. There's not a good theme, unifying concept, or reason to go into the dungeon. You can add this, but there are so many great dungeons already out there that you could likely find something better. We were on Roll20, where module content was largely limited only to official WotC releases. We shifted to "Tales from the Yawning Portal." The dungeons in that are more varied, interesting, and are short enough to string together into a "dungeon campaign" without being exactly a megadungeon. It took a lot of work for me to add Barrowmaze onto Roll20, but it's superior in nearly every way to Dungeon of the Mad Mage. I have also added Frog God Game's Rappan Athuk, also better than Dungeon of the Mad Mage. If you are just learning the ropes of VTTs, I wouldn't recommend trying to convert a megadungeon right away. If you're not on Roll20, other VTTs might have better selections of 3PP content. But if you are looking for good dungeons ready to go on Roll20, I would recommend Tales of the Yawning Portal over Dungeon of the Mad Mage. Conversely, you could run Tomb of Annihilation and start at the fairly big dungeon at the end. But if you do decide on Dungeon of the Mad Mage, be ready to add encounters, traps, and a plot. As it is, it's very bare bones. (Just want to add that I'm writing my own mega-dungeon for publication, so I've been studying the mega-dungeon design for a few years now. I would never have submitted something like Dungeon of the Mad Mage to my editor.) [/QUOTE]
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What do you think of mega-dungeons for online D&D play?
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