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

[BlueBlackRed]

Is it just me, or has the number of pages on this thread dropped to about half......

James

Check the # of posts per page you have on your forum settings.

And I'm bored a little too. I should read the WLD some more, but I'm so sick of reading.
And watching TV.
And my PC games are not fun to play much anymore.
And the in-laws are visiting this weekend.
I'm watching Anchorman and it's a lot lamer than I expected.

But at least I'm running the WLD this Friday!

 

[DaveMage]

i'm just posting... to post

yep

just bored

yep

its 6pm on wednesday and i've got NOTHING to do...

nope

nothing

so

how are you guys?

Well, let me ask you this - if you had to do the WLD all over again, what would you do differently?

 

[CrimsonScribe]

And my PC games are not fun to play much anymore.
[/B]

Three words:

World of Warcraft

It's the single reason why I haven't finished the player maps yet

 

[jim pinto]

Well, let me ask you this - if you had to do the WLD all over again, what would you do differently?

oooh

good question

um.... most importantly, i would have chosen different monsters for region a
or at the very least, mixed up what we did have

i love B, C, and D... so no changes there

region E needed scarier insects with a better reason for being there

i would have removed one tribe of minotaurs from region F and replaced them with ettins
that the minotaurs were warring with. that would make the two major factions in the maze creatures with two heads and creatures that can find their way through any maze

region G would have had fewer celestials and i would have designed the layout of the southern hallways differently

region H would have had more things to fight

regions I and J would have had better organization and more movement to and from

region K would have had some no-SRD monsters serving the green dragon

region L would NOT have had an island of aquatic elves (not a fan of that)

region M would have been tighter... better conceived. i think this and L are my least favorite regions.... they have potential, but i need about 40 more hours of editing to get them where i want.

i don't like the first 60 rooms in region N, but the rest of the region is perfect. the first 60 rooms have a lot of potential, but them seem slapdash. the section needed a two-page write up explaining why these "things" were buried here and what significance that has on the game world. there's a sidebar that explains this a little, but its not enough in my opinion.

region O would have had ONE writer, instead of three (four if you include me)



in all, though, these are editing concerns that i would have no matter how perfect the book was.... you always want more time to make things better.

holistically, i wish we could have done a LONG dungeon, rather than a square one

and i would rather we didn't have to do the SRD thing, but those are the only two marketing restraints that made design difficult. i also wish there had just been fewer writers. meshing voices is hard work and i'd rather spend my time improving ideas. not toning down banter and colloquialisms.

i also wish we'd done a contest, allowing people to submit room ideas

and i probably wouldn't have done encounter conditions, because from the sound of it, no one uses them anyway

(damn fine idea, though, if you ask me)

 

[DaveMage]

and i probably wouldn't have done encounter conditions, because from the sound of it, no one uses them anyway

(damn fine idea, though, if you ask me)

It surprises me that no one is using them since I consider the "encounter conditions" to be a great innovation.

For those of you who are running the WLD, please post your experiences with using the encounter conditions (or if you are not using them and why).

 

[BlueBlackRed]

and i probably wouldn't have done encounter conditions, because from the sound of it, no one uses them anyway

(damn fine idea, though, if you ask me)

?!?

I use them. (Well most of them.)
I just don't talk too much about it in the blog.

The greater shadow (king?) in region E would have bit it on turn 1 had it not been for the unhallowed & other conditions in that room.

...dang exalted cleric of Lathander...

Heck the encounter conditions schewed the combat so much that the holy greatsword wielder ran like a little girl on round 3 (raging barbarian with a 21 strength drops to 9). Had it not been for the sorcerer having just learned fireball the party would have lost at least one more character.

 

[jim pinto]

?!?

I use them. (Well most of them.)
I just don't talk too much about it in the blog.

The greater shadow (king?) in region E would have bit it on turn 1 had it not been for the unhallowed & other conditions in that room.

...dang exalted cleric of Lathander...

Heck the encounter conditions schewed the combat so much that the holy greatsword wielder ran like a little girl on round 3 (raging barbarian with a 21 strength drops to 9). Had it not been for the sorcerer having just learned fireball the party would have lost at least one more character.

the were meant to be the great equalizer, especially against PCs that find combos
that DMs can't possibly predict (and to provide flavor elements for the dungeon... echoes, visions, lights, whatever)

glad you guys like them

and your exalted cleric is going to HATE region N

 

[Keska]

Originally Posted by jim pinto
and i probably wouldn't have done encounter conditions, because from the sound of it, no one uses them anyway

(damn fine idea, though, if you ask me)

Oh man, I love the encounter conditions. Every time my PCs find a room that's uncomfortable feeling, or has unexplained echoes, they think that undead are going to jump out of the walls at them. And on the single occasion that the rogue/wizard decided to actually use her magic in combat, it bounced off the room's spell resistance, making her freak out. They just finished clearing out the shadow mastiffs in Region E and the craziness of the rooms they laired in added a lot to those fights.

 

[twistedoliver]

Traps & hidden Things

This is more of a general question, but with all the traps and hidden areas, automatic door shutting in WLD. How do you handle that with your parties?

Traps...

Does the rogue get trapped behind doors that close and suffer the traps themselves, do you make it so that they close after the last PC enters (unless one specifically says they stay behind).

I will have a hard time with my PC's as they treat dungeon crawls like they were commandos... with spotters, and artilery ready most of the time, taking 20 on seach checks, etc.

Player A: I am ahead 10' and peer around the corner
DM: As you look around the corner you see an empty room (describes room)
Player A: I move into the room
DM: ok
Players B-F: we move in..
DM: Ok the doors shut and the room starts filling with water...
Players: Hey why didn't it go off with Player A?

Player A: I am ahead 10' and peer around the corner
DM: As you look around the corner you see an empty room with monsters (describe)
Player A: I move into the room and backstab one,
DM: ok
Players B-F: we move in..and rain carnage on them
DM: Ok carnage rained down...they have blabh blahb...
Players: ok great
Player A: I am ahead 10' and peer around the corner..
DM: sigh...as you look around...

Searching...

Do you make them pick the area that they are searching, the exact 5' spot. Or do you ask for a general search check of the room? If so, do you let everybody have a roll? And if you do, how long to you say it takes .. a few rounds, a minute, or 1 round * size of room.

Region F...

Has any GM split up the party by only having part of the party go through a warp gate? If so what was the ending, and how much of a headache was it for you?

TwoFalls,

Thanks for the response on the XP question.

Scott

 

[Chef]

Hello everybody. I started DMing a new campaign using the World's Largest Dungeon and I thought I'd share what I did with it so far. I was reading this thread before starting the campaign so I used some ideas I got from here.

Before the first session, I told everyone to make a character using a 32-point buy. I told them to pick skills appropriate for a long journey underground and that equipment would be handled during the first session. When the game started, I told the 6 players that they had been accused of various crimes (some falsely) and had been sentenced to be thrown "into the hole" without any equipment.

That worked out to be fun. I have been pretty liberal with letting them improvise clubs and things so they could survive the early encounters. The players didn't fight the orcs in the first room right away but ended up finding them dead later on. It was amusing to see the players get quite excited when they acquired an ordinarily mundane item such as studded leather armor.

Before the first session, I went through region A and printed out each piece of equipment on business cards. I have the name, weight, description and stats for armor/weapons on the cards. So whenever they find an item, I just toss the appropriate card down on the table and say "you find this under the rubble" or whatever. The cards for equipment idea works out pretty well, the players don't have to write things down on their character sheets and can easily give items to each other by trading the cards. I also keep a bunch of blank cards beside me for when the players pick things up that I didn't expect.

I have pretty much running the encounters as written in the WLD. I planted an extra everburning torch near the beginning so the characters without darkvision don't totally get screwed over since they don't have equipment. I'll probably just let them find a set of thieves' tools soon for the rogue.

I'm using the XP=EL system. There was only one session so far so the players have explored some of region A and made it to level 2. No fatalities so far. The hardest fight they had so far was against the ogre which I scaled down to compensate for the lack of equipment. We are having the next session on the weekend.

Some players won't be able to make the next meet. I don't like it when players who aren't there have their characters die so I'm planning to have a lantern archon appear at the start of the next meet and explain the disappearance of certain characters as space-time distortions in the area.

They don't have access to the identify spell so I'm planning to make it easy to figure out which items are magical and how they work. For stuff like sword+1, I'll just have the stats written on the card and see if they notice when I hand the card to them. I won't say what a potion will do but there may be clues in the appearance. For wands, I plan tell them which classes can use it and then they can experiment with it to see what it does. For other miscellaneous items, I'll either give a clue to what it does or just tell them the get a feeling about it when they pick it up and give them the card with the abilities described on it.

As stolen from someone else here, I'm also toying with giving the lantern archons limited abilities to summon items into the dungeon for the chosen ones. The players need to have the appropriate craft skill or feat and must sacrifice 3x the listed price of the item worth of goods or coins. Functional items like longswords can’t be used as a sacrifice but a 50gp gold ring could be (basically anything with a value listed in the WLD book can be used as a sacrifice).

So if a player wants the archon to summon a dwarven waraxe, then he needs place at least 90gp worth of stuff before the lantern archon and make a craft(weaponsmithing) check. If he fails the check then one of the sacrificial items might be destroyed and he can try again. If he succeeds then all of the sacrificial items are gone and he gets the weapon. I’m not sure how to rationalize this exactly in the game world but it seemed like a fun idea since it lets the players use crafting skills and gives a use to all the items they find.

I let them take 20 on skill checks once per character per session.