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

[Hussar]

Welcome to the madhouse Sevlow.

As someone who wrote most of the erratta on the AEG website, I was not so happy to learn that it was buried so deeply.

Take a look over at the AEG forums, through this link here and it will take you to the AEG forum archive for the WLD. I hope that will cover much of your errata needs.

I tried to read this entire thread, but gave up after 3 days of reading. So if these questions have been answered, I apologize.

1) What is the A in the corridor to the north east of B10 supposed to be? I'm guessing it is one of the region F warp gates, but it is in a different color and such.

2) Room A46 states that "the" door is trapped, and that the room is safe. However, there are two doors. I have decided that in order for it to be safe, they must both be trapped. Otherwise every room with just one door would be safe. Is there any official word on this, or anyone else do it differently?

3) Is there an official Errata somewhere? All of the websites I saw at the beginning of this thread from 5 years ago seem to be dead or changed to other topics, and the WorldsLargestDungeon.com doesn't list one.

4) For those that have finished the dungeon, how has using the EL for XP worked out? Has it seemed to be workable?

For about the first half of the module I did the EL for XP thing. Y'know what? It worked out to about the same as just bumping everyone up from time to time. My bunch finished a region in about 10-12 sessions. Whether I did xp for EL or just bumped them every 4 sessions, it worked pretty much the same. I'd go with just bumping them as it saves recordkeeping.

5) Finally, I'm real big on the "benefit of the doubt" concept. I realize that there are a lot of arguments for imbalance between various powers and such, but I always start from the premise that the designers of a module or campaign have balanced that module in regard to the availbable material. In this case, since the module is using SRD creatures, I have to assume, barring any official notice to the contrary, that the dungeon is balanced for the SRD character races, classes, and prestige classes (with the exception of psionics, which I have already read is not included in the book). So I have limited my players strictly to the PHB, and later the prestige classes from the DMG. Has anyone seen any problems I am going to run into with this approach? I have already denied an artificer request by one of the players, because I don't want to open up the whole eberron suite, on the assumption that then I will have to throw in eberron monsters and npc to balance it. However, I have also pretty much decided that if they end up with a TPK fairly quickly, I will probably open up the selections.

I wouldn't worry about it too much to be honest. It didn't matter what my bunch brought to the table, I could still kill them. 20+ PC deaths over the course of the campaign. The SRD monsters are more than nasty enough.

About the only thing I wouldn't use is Vow of Poverty and warforged. At least early on. A lot of the fun of the module is the survival thing and being immune to disease and not having to eat or drink is a HUGE advantage in the early stages.

 

[Bathnor]

Whew...

Well I've been running the WLD almost a year now. My party is currently in the maze. The decided to go exploring in the maze because they had enough of the "Uppity Celestials" in The last Stand.

They had spend a long time doing that region. It was supposed to be a revenge session, where they avenge the deaths of previous party members at the hands of the shadows. by the time they were finished they had found all of the staves and the All Door. They also healed the rift between the celestuials and the Inevitables. They were asked to try to slay the twins in the Halls of Flesh. They didn't explore much though, they fought Anguish pretty early and one player lost his hand when Anguish tore it off with a crit.

So after "killing" Anguish, they retreated to The Maze. My party consists of Shield Dwarf Barbarian 9/Fighter 9; Shield Dwarf Cleric 9 / Fighter 8 Barbarian 1 ; Gold Dwarf Cleric 9 / Sorcerer 9; Human Fighter 9 / Thief 8 Spellthief 1. I believe they thought the minataurs would be an easy fight. They have no idea how wrong they were .

This has been a gesalt campaign. It's been time consuming going over the encounters in the book and adding classes to them. I've aded levels of fighter, or scout to all of the minataurs that already have barbarian. The Barb/ fighter ones are better with their weapons. And the charge attack from a Barb/Scout can be deadly, and 50' movement is always helpful.

Anyways, they fought past a group of the guards and thought they could continue without resting. The next room has 10 elite guards (barb3/sct3). All hell breaks loose as the Shield Dwarf Barbarian in the door almost dies in the first round of combat. One minataur gets reinforcements which arrive in 3 rounds. After felling a few minotaurs the party starts a tactical retreat knowing that death is way to close. 2 characters are in the 20s for HP, and healing is getting low. We ended the session there (it was really late). We play again tomorrow. There's no way they can outrun them. We'll see what happens.

 

[Lwaxy]

I'm going to combine World's Largest Dungeon with World's Largest City, I just need to find WLD as book first. I only have a bad PDF right now. Seeing that it took over 4 years for some to finish playing, I wonder how often did you meet? Our epic group meets several times a month, often several times in a week, and we hope to be much faster than that.

 

[Bathnor]

2) Room A46 states that "the" door is trapped, and that the room is safe. However, there are two doors. I have decided that in order for it to be safe, they must both be trapped. Otherwise every room with just one door would be safe. Is there any official word on this, or anyone else do it differently?

3) Is there an official Errata somewhere? All of the websites I saw at the beginning of this thread from 5 years ago seem to be dead or changed to other topics, and the WorldsLargestDungeon.com doesn't list one.

4) For those that have finished the dungeon, how has using the EL for XP worked out? Has it seemed to be workable?

5) Finally, I'm real big on the "benefit of the doubt" concept. I realize that there are a lot of arguments for imbalance between various powers and such, but I always start from the premise that the designers of a module or campaign have balanced that module in regard to the availbable material. In this case, since the module is using SRD creatures, I have to assume, barring any official notice to the contrary, that the dungeon is balanced for the SRD character races, classes, and prestige classes (with the exception of psionics, which I have already read is not included in the book). So I have limited my players strictly to the PHB, and later the prestige classes from the DMG. Has anyone seen any problems I am going to run into with this approach? I have already denied an artificer request by one of the players, because I don't want to open up the whole eberron suite, on the assumption that then I will have to throw in eberron monsters and npc to balance it. However, I have also pretty much decided that if they end up with a TPK fairly quickly, I will probably open up the selections.

2) There are lots of typos in the campaign book. If you pay attention while you get set up you'll catch them and be able to fix em. I thought the minotaurs in region had bad stats, so I made them the same way the PCs do. 3 stat point buy and the other 3 get 4d6 drop the lowest. Now they have str in the high twenties and some can hit 30 str if they rage .

3) A lot of the web sites for errata are gone i guess. This thread is a good place to come and ask questions. I'm sure that people that have finished it and the others still playing it will help you out as best we can. I know i've gotten some good advice here.

4) I havn't finished the dungeon yet. I have been doing more of an old school style of expreience where it takes a ton of exp to level. The players don't mind because it lets them know their characters better.

5) My party is level nine. They have finished A,B,C,E, and some of F,G, and I. I have the dungeon in the Forgotten Realms. I only allow certain material from certain books. Sword and Fist, Complete Adventurer, FR:CS, Magic of Faerun, Races of Faerun, Players Handbook, DMG, Unearthed Arcana (Paladin Variants), Complete Warrior.

I went through every book and chose feats, spells and PrCs that would fit into the setting and not be OP. I even edited the spell lists in the PHB, this makes it easier on players because they know what spells will work down here. I use the same feat/spell/PrC lists that the players do. One of my players has commented that he would like to take down the Null Field that blocks teleportation.

We also have to have a hard copy of the book we use. no PDFs. It makes finding stuff so much quicker with the book actually in front of you.

Anyways, I have to get reaady for my WLD session of the week. I can't wait to see what happens with the Minotaurs. Hope this was helpful.

 

[Bathnor]

2 more for the Graveyard...

Had 2 players die last night fighting minotaurs. The other party members limped back to region E. They wanted some diamonds for a Raise Dead spell. The celestials need theirs to keep the ward doors going.

I'm not sure what one of my players will be making, hopefully something with thief abilities. The other player brought in a Wild Elf Ranger 9 / Bard 9.

Theres two more for the worlds largest graveyard. Player deaths added from me = 7. Lol it will be fun to see the look on their faces if they make it to the WE and some upon their old characters among all the undead.

 

[Hussar]

I'm going to combine World's Largest Dungeon with World's Largest City, I just need to find WLD as book first. I only have a bad PDF right now. Seeing that it took over 4 years for some to finish playing, I wonder how often did you meet? Our epic group meets several times a month, often several times in a week, and we hope to be much faster than that.

It took us 80 sessions to finish things, although, I did change it a bit and let them out after they killed the Tarrasque in Region D. We did regions A, B, C, D, G, H, J and K, so, not too bad. Our sessions were 3 hours each. By the final whistle, IIRC, I had about 27 permanent PC deaths.

 

[erucsbo]

I'm going to combine World's Largest Dungeon with World's Largest City, I just need to find WLD as book first. I only have a bad PDF right now. Seeing that it took over 4 years for some to finish playing, I wonder how often did you meet? Our epic group meets several times a month, often several times in a week, and we hope to be much faster than that.

4 years, 4 months playing every fortnight (with a few missed). Each session about 5 hours (maybe closer to ~3.5hrs of actual gametime).

let's say about 400 hours of gameplay

2 permanent character deaths, 4 permanent character retirements, and about 6 ressurrections (IIRC)

my players sorta skipped most of A (they entered at about 5th level), then went through E, I, M, J, K, N and O to get out.

 

[Hussar]

I've said this before, but, I just noticed Raven Crowking's comment above, so I'll repeat myself. I like to hear myself talk.

Do yourself a favor and move about 1/2 to 1/3 of the encounters about thirty feet to the left. Put them in the corridors instead of only in the rooms. One thing I noticed is that almost all the encounters are enclosed within a given room. Move things into the hallways - even if it's just a couple of the whatevers entering or leaving a particular location and it will make a huge difference.

My plan is to rebuild the maps in 3d, with each level gaining multiple levels and stairs (and possibly some old school chute traps and the like). However, it also looks liek a metric buttload of work, so, I dunno if this will ever get out of the planning stage.

 

[0tt2r]

My party is almost through Region B, but we have been playing for about half a year. This is most of their first times playing D&D, and we already have had like 15 deaths:. : x But, they are getting better.
The cleric was ridiculously dumb and, in the cursed wand room, decided that since he can remove curse, he would try and take all the wands down, and then remove curse to get rid of them all. Lo and behold, 10 wands later, he took a -6 to Con, -4 on all rolls and a -6 to Wis. Now he cannot cast remove curse.
Where did you guys drop Light Archons?

 

[Hussar]

Heh, no system survives player stupidity.

Honestly, I didn't drop any lantern archons. I did, however, drop an intelligent dagger in Region A to serve as a guide. The dagger had been stuck for ages, wedged between flagstones, so it was a bit addled. Forgot names, things like that. So, it made for a somewhat unreliable guide which fit perfectly with what I wanted.

Unfortunately, the carrier of the dagger got Suggested by the were-rat in Region A and jumped into the portal, thus being smeared across several dimensions. Four allied grapple attempts, all failing to stop him. It was the first and probably the most memorable death in my campaign.