World's Largest Dungeon in actual play [Spoilers!]

[Hussar]

Yeah, going to have to dump lots of goodies onto the party between fights. Fortunately, between the angels in the Garrison and Raverna, there's more than enough cleric power to keep them going. Heal them up, buff them a touch and send them out. Have each "encounter" occur in different locations around the map. Haven't worked out all the details yet. It really depends on how much the party does beforehand. Probably work something like this:

Fight 1: Zombies and Ettins, possibly with a night hag in there, if any are left. Probably on the beach in front of the Ettin's lair.

Fight 2: The party spots a strike team trying to sneak in. Babau and Dretch. Somewhere in the garrison itself.

Fight 3: Vrock assault on a weak point. The party must shore up the defenses along with some of the Garrison. Likely around area G9.

Fight 4: Party leads an assault on Aramnan's fortress in an attempt to establish a control point. Aided by the Garrison. Will likely feature one of the demon lords - I like Nasherbiz at the moment.

Fight 5: Climax battle. The party, along with a team of celestials, breaks into the Horde's base and has it out with the biggest and the baddest - I wanna use the Marilith here. Maybe in area G91. Nice big room, difficult terrain.

The only real malfunction that I'm having at the moment is the fact that there aren't a lot of open areas for set battles. I'm thinking the garrison can transport the party around where ever, but, I need some elbow room to play with things. Maybe some wall of stone spells over the lava river to make bridges. The bigger celestials can create some pretty big bridges I'm thinking.

 

[tbug]

This sounds really fun!

I recommend that you keep people in initiative rounds the entire time, even if they're back inside the garrison getting healed up. That will keep up the tension nicely.

Good plan, regardless. I hope your players love it!

 

[twilko]

Why not have them witness the aftermath of an encounter that *would* have eaten the party. Show some badly wounded Celestials, a pile of drow bodies from Region I being burned, and if you want to include the conflict between the Celestials and the Inevitables, have one of the Inevitables telling off the Celestials for not using the Redeemed in the battle, or not checking to see if any of the Drow could have been "rehabilitated" before killing them all. Have the Celestials explain that if it hadn't been for the restored ward staff that Sanjid would have had to be spending time maintaining a door ward instead of being available to heal the damaged Celestials (or party members if they need healing on their return to the garrison). Then have the howls of some Shadow Mastiffs echo through the hallways. If the party is not powerful enough to tackle them by themselves then have Besar go to deal with the doggies and ask the party for help, but limit Besar's powers if you want due to him having expended them in the battle with the Drow. This would also provide you with an opportunity for Besar to tell the party about the split with the Inevitables and the need for the Garrison Charter, and of his duty to protect his Celestial brethren.

ie - talk up the work that the Garrison has been doing in the party's absence. Just because the party members aren't there doesn't mean that things aren't occurring.

COOL! Big nastinest without having to think up a nasty to do it. If I leave enough Drow around to give the party something to do, then drag them off with say Morkor to re-instate the door wards then that would all work. Thanks.
Thanks also to rvalle. Great ideas guys.

 

[erucsbo]

off camera action.

How do you approach your role as DM and does WLD make a difference? D&D is an exercise in collarborative story-telling, so a DM could be Author and/or Editor (where prose is the example medium), Composer and/or Conductor (music), Scriptwriter and/or Director (theatre), or Coach and/or Referree (sport) or any other analogy you might come up with. I try and adopt more of the latter role than the former as I don't want to be prescriptive in what happens (and if I was the players would find ways to deviate from the desired plot-line), but that doesn't mean I can't borrow from techniques used by the different roles.
One of the greatest directors was Alfred Hitchcock who established great tension by putting things off-screen. Audiences would imagine far more then ever would have been the case if everything had been 'in camera', and all the extra information/plots/intricacies contained in WLD should be allowed to peek through from time to time to play upon the imaginations of the players. It is a pity that so many pages got lost in the crash, but hearing about things that other DMs have done in other sections (and considering how the ripples might spill over in to other sections) helps give the illusion of the Dungeon as a whole rather than a patchwork of barely connected sections. Keep it simple enough (and don't correct the players wrong assumptions) and you should be able to adapt to whatever you want when the players finally do arrive in a different section and they start to see where the snippets of information/news that they got from other sections fit in to the jigsaw (and where they were right and wrong).
My players are about 75% the way through E now and they may end up skipping N altogether, but next session I think I will have my first wave of negative energy pulse through the entire complex, signalling the World Eater's awakening. It may even occur partway through an expected fight against Seraxes and the shadows
I'd be interested in what other "signs and portents" I can throw in from other later sections, especially from those that have had parties go through later sections and in hind-sight wished that there had been some foreshadowing.
Taking my suggestion about the aftermath of the celestial/drow battle a bit further, one could have the celestials say how atypical it was of the drow to attack like that, and that they kept calling out "Madness is coming" (which is easy to misinterpret!) [truth might be that they were trying to flee from Madness after he had decimated a drider leader and that they were the slaves running away].
Other things from movies/books that might work:
- repeated wall markings from previous adventurers like AS (Arne Saknussemm) from Verne's Journey to the Centre of the Earth.
- increase of rat swarms fleeing from something (can be small enough to not do any damage and rush straight past the party) from just about any number of disaster movies.
- foreshadowing of stuff from other sections/plot lines (Babylon5)
- change the colour saturation/hues of the landscape as evil ebbs and flows, or temperature changes up/down from the lava flow felt in the non-lava flow areas of the dungeon (most VR type movies have something like this happening, including parts of the Matrix trilogy).
You don't have to act on any of these - all they do is indicate that change is occurring, and the party's actions might well be the small events that precipitate other things (Jurassic Park - read the book, not the poor interpretation that was the movie).

enough rambling - I'll get back in my box now

 

[Traevanon]

My players may want to skip N altogether as well now that they have been in it for a day.

They will be probably be forced to go through it however, due to this debate:
- They know that all the undead regenerate daily.
- They have trouble with the Dread Wraiths, if not for Death Ward they would be toast.
- We have a Thaumaturgist (summoner) in the party who is nerfed by the region, the fighters are also nerfed in the high ceiling areas fighting wraiths with fly by attack.

- They know that the World Eater may struggle out of his bonds soon.
- They know that the World Eater can turn entire races (four negative levels over the entire world, and possibly entire plane) into zombie movie fodder.
- Two of the party have signed the Garrison charter.

 

[Hussar]

Eww, you let a player take a summoner without warning him? Ouch. Evil, but ouch.

If you are feeling a bit more generous, you might let him summon. Perhaps the variant in the DMG where you summon the same creature, over and over again. The summoning draws on a spirit in the region and gives it form for a short period of time.

Just a thought. Then again, I didn't nerf summoning.

Erucsbo - Excellent idea. I occassionally throw in dream sequences as well. My backstory is a game of the gods, so, once in a while, they get a peek at how the gods are reacting to their actions. The players seem to like it. I also added in a separate idea that the Dungeon itself was taking an interest in the party. Not sure if they picked up on that one or not.

 

[Traevanon]

He's a clerical summoner. Summoning is only nerfed in Region N in my version. He is able to summon from the outside and bring something in. Overall its just something he has to deal with.

He (and the druid) were able to shine against the demons, the flying wizard and warlock rocked against the driders, the fighters rocked against the giants, now he has rely on others. Its all a part of being 15th level. Sometimes your specialty is going to rock and sometimes its not.

He is buffing / healing / meleeing, and he is the only one in the party with Mass Death Ward.
He gets to do his part.

 

[Xiag]

How do you approach your role as DM and does WLD make a difference? D&D is an exercise in collarborative story-telling, so a DM could be Author and/or Editor (where prose is the example medium), Composer and/or Conductor (music), Scriptwriter and/or Director (theatre), or Coach and/or Referree (sport) or any other analogy you might come up with.

None of the above, I'm more of an opponent / referee.

Before the game, I have the villians do everything they can to stop the party. If they know they're comming, then they really step up the preperations, if not, I might tone it down a bit. But the villians don't stop being villians for the sake of the game.

I consider it like a game of chess, where I'm trying to beat the players, but I don't know what they're going to do. I have to have all of my moves written down before they enter the dungeon, with the end game of toppling the players.

Once they start playing, I take my script and move my pieces. They may figure it out, and play off that. They may not. But I had my chance to plan, and now I have to live with the outcome, just like they do. It's not to say their isn't flexibility. It's just that I've gone through all the scenerios I can think of before hand. And if I didn't figure this one out, the villian always goes with plan B. Run.

The only change WLD makes is that I have someone else who's decided a lot of the moves. It makes my life easier, and I just have to have the pieces react, rather than invent them in the first place.

 

[BlueBlackRed]

- They know that all the undead regenerate daily.

I would strongly suggest you dump this idea.
The region has enough of the monsters (hordes, dread wraiths, morhgs, etc.) repeated throughout the region that it gets monotonous already. Repeating the same extact encounters over and over just makes it worse.

 

[jim pinto]

Was just statting up Region G and noticed something.

Grelka, the head night hag, uses a ring of shooting stars. The text mentions her relying on it in combat. Only one problem. Underground, a ring of shooting stars is mostly useless. 50000 gp for a one use spark fan for a couple of d6 damage.

I've fudged a bit and replaced it with a staff from Dragon 336 (p 72)- Staff of Nightmares. Allows her to cast Scare(1), Fear (2), Nightmare (2) Phantasmal Killer (2), Symbol of Fear (3) and Weird (4) as a 17th level sorc (51 000 gp). Gave her a level of sorc just cause.

Just a thought. BTW, I LOVE the bracers of defenselessness. The monk/paladin is going to HATE me.

sorry. the logic here was that she's a NIGHT hag... allowing her to use the power of the ring as though she were outdoors... more of a theme... sort of