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

[Bathnor]

Player with PDF?

Greetings everyone I hope you can help with a dilemma I have. I am currently running the WLD as a 3.5e gesalt campaign. My players are a bit over halfway done.

Now my problem comes from one of my players, and my DM senses tell me he's downloaded the PDF and is using it to help guide the party. He's joked before that he downloaded the PDF. At the time I thought he was just messing with me.

SInce then though he has called out what 2 of the BBEGs are ... before they received that information from NPC's. (A Kraken and the Tarrasque) They have yet to encounter either of these and only last session learned of the Kraken.

Now I'm not sure how to approach this. Do I kill his character outright via lightning or a small cave in? Do I start having the NPCs metagame against his character? DO I ban him from the group and tell him stfu not on my watch? Or do I change stuff just to mess with him??

He's not some random guy either, we've been friends for a lot of years. I understand the WLD is massive .... but there's no need to cheat. So .. what would you do if this happened to you?

 

[Ghostwind]

Change up the monsters. Apply templates to them that make their tactics different than what he is expecting. In essence, turn his own knowledge against him. After a couple of mistakes, the players won't trust him anymore to guide them.

 

[Raven Crowking]

"Sorry, but you can no longer play in this campaign. You seem to have information you should not have, and it will destroy the fun for everyone else."

 

[Hussar]

Can't posrep RC at the moment, but, yeah. That's just lame.

Now, to be fair, considering the amount of spoilers out there (certainly not limited to this thread) for a module that's now, what, five years old? it's not a huge stretch that he might have picked up stuff without actually reading the module.

But, yeah, sit down and have a conversation with him. If he has read the module, ask him to keep his knowledge to himself or he will be ejected from the group.

 

[Beginning of the End]

I'm afraid you have no choice: You're going to have to kill him.

I suggest poisoning his Cheetos.

.
.
.
.

(Or I suppose you could try that whole "sitting down and talking with him" thing.)

 

[erucsbo]

ask him if he wants to DM, or wants out of WLD.
Killing the character isn't going to help because it is player knowledge.
The level of player knowledge is the problem - does he know about cursed items, specific vulnerabilities, secret rooms etc - in that case you have a real issue and need to confront him with it - especially if he is a friend he should see how his actions spoil your enjoyment of the game and your ability to weave a story.
If it is information he has picked up elsewhere or it is incomplete knowledge then change monster powers, change energy types, make NPC reactions change because the PCs already know stuff and therefore they must be in league with the enemy - with a goal to making trusting his information leading to bad consequences.

It may be a sign of frustration at having been stuck in WLD for so long (as happened with my players). In that case it might be time to break the campaign, use WLD sections as stand alones later if need be but don't let the players enjoyment of the game die because of the size of this beast. Have the dungeon collapse and a way out present itself, or something similar, but get to the source of the problem or it will just reoccur and establish itseld as an adversarial relationship between you and the players.

 

[thufur]

Mere HOURS away from finishing Map G, Hell on Earth

Running a bastardized 1st edition version of WLD. Finished up The Maze in March and started this mammoth endeavor.

The biggest changes I made were (for those familiar w. map G) that the Flame had been stolen by Saryikan (sp?) the Eryines and sold to servants of Demogorgon and taken to their temple, the entrance to which I placed on the edge of the lava flow near the EEE and AntiPaladin
That temple was the Demonwing map from "Paladin in Hell" and the Flame was in the possession of Straoth the Type VI
So we finished THAT gigantic, titantic struggle this past weekend and now we're moving onto by far the biggest change I made -- I replaced the captive Type IV / Nalfeshnee with... drumroll.... Orcus.
They JUST returned from the Abyss , thinking they were to be greeted as bad [MENTION=40136]SS[/MENTION] champions of awesomeness by the Children ... instead , 99 % of them had been killed or captured by the escaped Orcus, included Evelan who was psionically mind raped by Orcus and blasted by 4 black dragons ( 1st ed. Orcus can Polymorph ANY object, including babaus into black dragons). The Solar survived but is of absolutely no use, but they did replace the Flame and the wards are re-engaged, now they just have to get the Big Goat back into his cell.
The knock down drag out end game denouement involves three groups:

Orcus' minions, led by the anti-paladin, include babaus, retrievers, bebeliths, succubi , dretches, vrocks, a maralith, hezrou, glabrezu, nalfeshnee the aforementioned black dragons, shadows, vampires and titanic sized zombies & skeletons.

The forces of Demogorgon arrayed against Orcus are a balor, nalfeshnee, marilith, chasme, a goristro, merrow and scrags.

The Good guys:
Paladin 16
Cavalier 17
Kensai 18
Cleric/Ranger 14/13
Cleric/Bard 14/17
Ranger/MU 10/12
MU / earth specialist 14
MU / alchemist 14
Cleric 14
F/Thief 10/12
Paladin 12
In addition, they have as allies a dragonne, baku, couatl , lamassu, ghaele eladrin, leonal guardinal, and herd of blink dogs ( polymorphed Ettins)

I am so stupidly excited about getting this over & done with an being able to move onto something different that doesnt involve needing the be fully versed and competent at running demons & magic resistance & teleporting away & innate abilities.

 

[erucsbo]

Running a bastardized 1st edition version of WLD. Finished up The Maze in March and started this mammoth endeavor.

<snip>

I am so stupidly excited about getting this over & done with an being able to move onto something different that doesnt involve needing the be fully versed and competent at running demons & magic resistance & teleporting away & innate abilities.

you aren't using the WLD prohibition against teleporting?
And you might be able to do a bit of this off-camera with the opposing evil forces and supporting NPCs while just letting the PCs deal with the BBEGs - if it helps reduce your workload.

 

[thufur]

Well that only took 3 months.

Well that only took most of a year to plan, most of 3 months to run.

Used the map from the Temple of Orcus from H2, reverse engineered as a prison -- there were two groups of demons fighting throughout: Orcus' trying to free him, Demogorgon's trying to stop them.
Minor demons kept popping in and out -- basically the word had spread quickly throughout the Abyss, and it was understood that if you (as a demon) weren't there supporting either Orcus or Demongorgon, when the dust cleared there would be consequences.

The party waded through numerous skrimishes & ongoing melees to get to their destination:
dretches fighting skraggs and merrow
bebeliths and retrievers fighting skraggs and merrow
Type Is fighting chasme in a pitched aerial battle of demons BWAMPFING in and out - first time paladin & Cavalier EVER got to do mounted aerial combat - pretty badassed.
More Type Is fighting chasme in a pitched aerial battle of demons BWAMPFING in and out
Babaus slinking in & out of shadows , battling a Goristro tossing boulders & a alu-demon with a wand of polymorphing
Type V and chasme vs. Type II and babaus, in the midst of More Type Is fighting chasme in a pitched aerial battle of demons BWAMPFING in and out
Anti-paladin, type IIs and succubus -- the Anti Paladin was wielding Doomgiver.
TITANIC sized Type II standing in the midst of even more Type Is fighting chasme in a pitched aerial battle of demons BWAMPFING in and out
The Hall of the Undead -- dark room full of zombies, skeletons, vampires and shadows.

The main prison room came down to a battle of Orcus, Type V, Type II against Type VI, Type IV -- nearly everything else was eliminated w. Symbols, etc...

Took a while to finish up the fight against Orcus -- just the sheer number of creatures involved made it complicated, and the vast number of innate abilities for the demons makes running them competently and intelligently kind of hard. Mainly, he had to figure out what/who was the biggest threat and eliminate it quickly (usually with a Polymorph or Symbol)
The only thing I changed was that his Teleportation was limited to the top of the pyramid structure ( due to his imprisonment) .
What I found -- anything that gets within 60' of him is just a victim due to Psionics, especially with him sucking PSPs from friendly demons.
30' is pure suicide - Time Stop and then ... whatever. Sheesh. Seeing what would happen to any fiends foolish enough to try flying at him ... priceless -- they'd just stop in midair and then "bad things would happen" and POOF gore-spolsion.
That REALLY made the Paladin with a Hammer of Thunderbolts think twice about getting into range.

So the party stayed at a distance and the only real threat to them was the Polymorph Any Object ( still , thats a MAJOR threat) Anything they did was being shrugged off via MR or healed via Poly Self, so he wasn't seeing them as the REAL threat -- I run Telekinesis as being "g", 10m/s^2 , and that makes demons darn near invulnerable to missiles
He knew that the Type VI and his Symbols would eventually get through his MR and Stun him, then its Psionics would probably be able to knock him on his arse, so that was the main focus of his thoughts & energies.
So it was fun to run demon vs. demon combat ( and getting to see just how crazy Gate can be), and everyone getting to throw around some pretty powerful magic was a good feeling. Next time, I'd prefer a backup DM run any 3rd party.

In the end, 15th level MU used a Truename on himself, Polymorphed into a Type III and teleported near the Big Goat. The reaction he received was positive ( Orcus assumed that another fiend had come to join him). The MU then pulled out the Tome of Time ( shockingly held onto from adventures in Lost Tomb of Martek) and successfully read Timestop. Then he pulled out his Wand of Conjuration, created a Prismatic Sphere, step outside of it and read Permanancy, also from the Tome of Time.

Needless to say, some demon jaws dropped to the floor.
After that it was just a matter of mopping up the remaining demons -- Demogorgon's minions were happy and left.
I've been racking my brains & going through the MM, MMII and FF trying to find the right combination of monsters with innate abilities Orcus could ShapeChange into & get through the Prismatic Sphere -- which I thought was a completely BRILLIANT solution to a rather vexing problem.

So killing Orcus -- probably not possible.
Containing Orcus -- possible in limited circumstances ( no long range teleportation to heal up via polymorph, move out of range , etc...) and probably not long term.

__________

 

[thufur]

And on to the Tartarean Depths!

After wrapping up the Children of Inner Light , the party was next manipulated into cleaning out the Tartarean Depths of the Xill Master.
There goal was to find and free any and all Duergar slaves ( i replaced any deep dwarves, etc... with duergar), to capture or kill any derro, to stop the production of TrueSilver and to find out what Chtrax was up to and stop him.

They were down a man after "THEE" Paladin disappeared fighting an Anti-Paladin, so the party consisted of :

Cavalier 18
Kensai 19
Cleric / Bard 15/18
Cleric / Ranger 15/14
MU 16 , earth mage
MU 15, alchemist
Ranger / MU 11/13
Fighter / Thief 11/13
Cleric 15
Paladin 13

After fighting against demons and demon princes, going toe to toe w. derro was a bit of a let down. However, the derro used good tactics ( aiming for unprotected heads) and the Stone Golems Slow proved VERY effective.

They first scouted the north and south tunnels to the extent of their abilities ( no divination above 2nd level worked) , and then cleared both of those mines out quite easily (freeing duergar, killing derro & Xill )-- they did a meet & greet with the Myrmarch in the northern mines and agreed to clear out any Xill they found in return for the Formians staying out of combat.

They cleared out Taliq and the Stone Giants after the reaction was "not so positive" , but were able to interrogate any survivors w. ESP and charms.
Next they cleared the Forge area, where the Formians made themselves scarce prior to their attack. They killed derro, freed duergar.

The kensai, rangers and thieves scouted out the Great Hall, remaining in the deep shadows to avoid detection. After getting a good idea of what was going on, and locating Chtrax's headquarters, they made a plan to create a diversion by using Rock to Mud on the ballistae positions, and to Disintegrate the support structure of the Bore.

After gaining access to Chtrax's HQ, they had the hammer drop on them -- Chtrax dropped several pretty powerful spells on them - bypassing their Globes of Invulnerability & even the MR of the Paladin's Holy Avenger. When that didnt kill them, he assessed the situation and fled with the Phylactery.
After he fled, while the Cleric & Paladin cured disease on the captives and the Cleric/Bard was translating the journal, the Cleric/Ranger summoned an Aerial Servant to retrieve the Phylactery.
Learning about the Tarrasque, they used Limited Wishes to Commune and Contact Other Planes to figure out what it was and how to defeat it. This garnered the attention of an Argenach Rilmani, who Gated in to discover why Wishes were being used.

Seeing the Great Hall in disarray, they followed the tunnels to the deeper mines. The kensai, rangers and thieves scouted out the lab and the nexus area, where Chtrax had fled and was organizing his defenses. Staying in the shadows, moving silently , and covered by the noise & dust generated by the Tarrasque, they were able to circuit that area and developed a plan.
They approached Korus, who was generally nice at first, but grew progressively more & more belligerent, eventually exploding and attacking.
Once he saw his spells weren't killing them, he assessed the situation and fled to the nexus area.

The party searched the lab, freed the duergar and located the Collar and Shackles, which the Bard Legend Lored. Before moving down the tunnel to an expected "UN-Welcoming Party", the Clerics Conjured Animals and summoned Giant Insects and the Bard cast Animal Summoning II (I allow insects to be conjured/summoned ) as well as Sticks to Snakes by all the Clerics.

Chtrax had arrayed his forces behind a wall of Duergar slaves with picks -- Grimlocks and their basiliks & cockatrices / Formians on their Gorgons & Chimeras, the Myrmarch & Task Masters and then Chtrax & Korus. Rroliq was completely mad and ignored any and all entreaties to bring the Tarrasque to bear.

According to the text, this should be a very complicated and pitched battle. I agree. The party MUs targeted the leadership & spell casters, the clerics targeted spellcasters , and the warrior types did what they do.

Two events changed the battle -- The Myrmarch uttered his DICTUM, which took out the ants, rats, bats, centipedes, etc.. that the party had summoned, but also devastated the derro, grimlocks, chimera & gorgons.
Then the Aerial Servant showed up and forcibly removed the Phylactery from Chtrax, turning the Formians from allies to enemies REALLY quickly.

After that, things went downhill -- Chtrax used a Fireball on the ceiling and Korus unleashed his Greater Shout to attempt a cave-in. Chtrax Plane Shifted away, his plans ruined. Korus died crying.

Dealing with Rroliq and the Tarrasque were quite easy, all things considered. They read a scroll of Temporal Stasis on Rroliq, then the MUs each cast Sepia Snake Symbol until they hit the big brute -- the text says it will ignore EVERYTHING and keep digging. Oh well. Scratch one tango.

After that, it was just a matter of clean up. They used another Limited Wish to restore the Hive Queen to life. This garnered the attention of an Argenach Rilmani, who Gated in to discover why Wishes were being used.


So it took nearly a year to go through the Children of Inner Light, mainly because we also included parts of 2nd edition "Paladin in Hell" , including nearly 3 months to finish the fight against Orcus.

The Tartarean Depths took most of a weekend.

On to the Pyrefaust!!! That should be the last adventures in the WLD for us.