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

[BlueBlackRed]

MY group is going into "overtime" tonight. They've demanded an extra session, and I'm more than willing to oblige. Maybe I can finally drag them out of Region A tonight...

Our group will be going into OT as well.
Not because of extra time.
But because the most distracting player at the table won't be there.

Just a little left of Region A, maybe 1/3
Hmmm...maybe I should order the pizza ahead of time.

 

[hitomikitage]

Well, my group is nearly done with Region B (and should finish it up tonight.) This leads me to ask what kind of attrition rate other GM's have seen amongst their party. I have had the following casualties:
Human Favored Soul (class from the Complete Divine) to the multi-colored Sphere room at the end of Region A.
Human Paladin to the Lightning Trapped water room toward sthe beginning of Region B.
Lizardman Ranger NPC (from region A) to Shadows in Region F (due to two non-rogue pc's being trapped in the mirror trap room in Region B.)
Human Cleric of Palor to the Ghoul Paladins in Region B.

Also, since the party I am running through is relatively large (8 pcs, with a ninth that shows occasionally) the standard XP system out of the 3.5 DMG seems to work just fine. However, I don't give XP for random encounters or for situations where I have to bump or modify the difficulty of an encounter to handle the added people. As it stands, so far they have only taken casualties from unmodified encounters, and have not seemed to notice much difference in results between the higher challenge stuff and the regularly written stuff. Go figure.

I deal with backup characters coming in by placing them in convenient spots for discovery by the party. We had a player join who's character was found in the room in Region A with the shackled skeletons. The backup for the Favored Soul was a half-Orc that abandoned the rest of the Orcs that were waiting for their depressed leader, he was found in the supply room at the end of Region A. The backup for the paladin turned out to be the goblin that was imprisoned in the Gaol in the Goblin King's territory, and the Cleric's backup was found bound and unconscious in the empty room of the four that are attached to the circular room. It has been fairly easy to introduce new characters so far.

Thanks,
Howard Hooven

 

[slaunt]

I have been drooling over this book ever since i got it, and i am eagerly looking forward to running it. I am currently trying to get a group together for this mega-crawl.

All the suggestions i found here have been helpful, i am going to go with the Level/Power up room idea, wich i think will work really well.
I do plan on spicing up Region A, and throw in some weird monsters(Fiendish Gelatinous Kobold anyone?) to keep my players on their toes.

As i posted on Alderac board, i have an interesting idea on how to get the PCs into the dungeon. They wake up, no memory of who they are, and no info on how they got to the dungeon, why they are here. A robe figure in the room tells them that they are here by choice and that to leave they must find the exit wich is at the very end. They start off with no EQ, save that wich will be placed in a treasure chest, wich will have simple basic EQ leather armor, some daggers, a spellbook for a wizards, holy symbol for cleric, and what not. Everything else they must find.
Now here is the kicker.
If by the gods willing, this group ever makes it through to the end, and did the whole crawl and what not. They find themselves travelling up a long corridor, supposedly taking them to the surface. When they get to the end, they find themselves back at The Entrance room, where they are told that the Dungeon is a prison for them, and that they are doomed to travel through its trials for all eternity. They are then stripped of everything, memories, levels, and wake up once more with no recollection of why they are and why they are here, and start over.

May or may not go with that, but i do like the opening and will go with that, but the ending, not sure just yet

ZA

 

[CrimsonScribe]

If I pulled an ending like that with my group, I can pretty much predict that I'd be found dead in a ditch somewhere the very next morning.

 

[The Cardinal]

...with an ending like this and players like me they'd never find your body...

 

[twofalls]

Considering the effort it will take to play out this whole thing (10 sessions for my group just to make it through Region A), I'd be careful about robbing the victory from them in the end. I assume you would want them to play other games with you in the future, or even just be willing to speak to you.

Besides, I think that once you've run the whole thing, you are going to be looking forward to playing something else and wont want to go back into it a second time.

On the other hand, if you are up to doing a LOT of work, you can write up elaborate criminal backgrounds for your characters, and have them discover pieces of it as they adventure. Hints about what terrible people they were on the outside. Their crimes need to be abominable enough to justify this particularly cruel form of eternal punishment. That way as they adventure they will develop the feeling that there is more to this than meets the eye and the race to the finish line also becomes a quest to find themselves. Discovering at the end that they are eternal prisoners at that point brings closure to the quest and the players are given a sense of completion in the campaign (and you won’t have to hire a bodyguard to protect yourself from your wrathful players).

The major insurmountable issue with this concept is that in order for it to work and be interesting in the end, the characters need to survive to see it completed... and without an absurd (and game damaging) amount of fudging on your part, they AREN'T going to survive to the end of this with their original characters.

 

[thundershot]

And therein lies the problem. I KNOW there's no way they could all survive. No way... especially since my campaign world disallows resurrections. My wife started out hating her Psion character, saying she was weak and useless. Now she's starting to get into it... and went from wanting her to die so she can try something else, to being very adamant that her character must not die. Oy!

My sister, who is new to D&D, put all of her energy into her Rogue, and the poor thing has been the closest to death... twice! She sniffs out the traps, and isn't that good at it because they have high DC's, and ends up tripping them. With her, she'll personally blame ME if her character dies (but then don't most players?). I keep telling them to have backup characters IN MIND ... JUST IN CASE one of them dies. And what do I get? "You're out to kill us! See!"

*rolls eyes*

*gets a natural 20*


Chris

 

[DaveMage]

And therein lies the problem. I KNOW there's no way they could all survive. No way... especially since my campaign world disallows resurrections. My wife started out hating her Psion character, saying she was weak and useless. Now she's starting to get into it... and went from wanting her to die so she can try something else, to being very adamant that her character must not die. Oy!

My sister, who is new to D&D, put all of her energy into her Rogue, and the poor thing has been the closest to death... twice! She sniffs out the traps, and isn't that good at it because they have high DC's, and ends up tripping them. With her, she'll personally blame ME if her character dies (but then don't most players?). I keep telling them to have backup characters IN MIND ... JUST IN CASE one of them dies. And what do I get? "You're out to kill us! See!"

*rolls eyes*

*gets a natural 20*


Chris

You can always apply the recommendation that I've seen on the Necro boards for their modules: have the PCs be 1 or 2 levels higher than the recommended base level for each area. That should help their survivial chances.

 

[DaveMage]

Alternatively, what I may do is start PCs at level 2 in power, but with 0 XPs. It will still take them until 3,000 XP to get to level 3, but that extra boost may help get them through the early encounters unscathed...

 

[jim pinto]

Well, my group is nearly done with Region B (and should finish it up tonight.) This leads me to ask what kind of attrition rate other GM's have seen amongst their party. I have had the following casualties:
Human Favored Soul (class from the Complete Divine) to the multi-colored Sphere room at the end of Region A.
Human Paladin to the Lightning Trapped water room toward sthe beginning of Region B.
Lizardman Ranger NPC (from region A) to Shadows in Region F (due to two non-rogue pc's being trapped in the mirror trap room in Region B.)
Human Cleric of Palor to the Ghoul Paladins in Region B.

oh man. that's easily one of my favorite encounters in the book
and definately the best in the region. its nice to see it worked
the way we'd hoped.

Also, since the party I am running through is relatively large (8 pcs, with a ninth that shows occasionally) the standard XP system out of the 3.5 DMG seems to work just fine. However, I don't give XP for random encounters or for situations where I have to bump or modify the difficulty of an encounter to handle the added people. As it stands, so far they have only taken casualties from unmodified encounters, and have not seemed to notice much difference in results between the higher challenge stuff and the regularly written stuff. Go figure.

well, 8 PCs is twice the recommended daily allowance

I deal with backup characters coming in by placing them in convenient spots for discovery by the party. We had a player join who's character was found in the room in Region A with the shackled skeletons. The backup for the Favored Soul was a half-Orc that abandoned the rest of the Orcs that were waiting for their depressed leader, he was found in the supply room at the end of Region A. The backup for the paladin turned out to be the goblin that was imprisoned in the Gaol in the Goblin King's territory, and the Cleric's backup was found bound and unconscious in the empty room of the four that are attached to the circular room. It has been fairly easy to introduce new characters so far.

that's the best news i could ever hear

thanks