The Megadungeon and other Campaign Structures

[MerricB]

G'day, all!

I'm almost up to the second anniversary of my AD&D campaign I've been running in my FLGS. Last night's session had seven players (it wanders between five and nine for the most part, mostly hovering near the higher end of the range). Due to the inconsistent nature of who can turn up each week, although there are underlying plot threads for the campaign, the majority of the play takes place in dungeon environments - in particular, a megadungeon that we refer to as the Caverns of the Oracle.

I've found that I'm horrible at actually planning it out in advance. A lot of the play is improvised with help from tables in the AD&D DMG. However, I take notes of all the encounter areas, so the dungeon is getting rather populated (and then depopulated). At times, the campaign has visited other places - the Isle of Dread and Rappan Athuk being two such - but over the last year it's been more concentrated on the Caverns. Once they find the quest object I've seeded down there, they'll move on, but a few recent PC deaths has meant they're exploring the upper levels and sublevels again so that the new PCs can gain enough levels to help once they return to the depths. (Well, not that deep - just the seventh level of the dungeon...) PC levels range from 1st level to 9th level - a thief and a magic-user have reached that dizzying height. And the 7th level fighter wields a vorpal sword. We've been having fun.

Megadungeons have been a recurring part of my campaigns over the last couple of decades. Not all of my campaigns use them, and I've never run a campaign totally devoted to one as the play will move outside them, but they pop up again and again. (My current 4E campaign began play in a megadungeon - Castle Zagyg - but moved elsewhere and has become much more episodic and story orientated).

So, I'm wondering if people other than myself use megadungeons? And, if you don't (which I expect is most of you), how would you describe how your campaign is structured?

Cheers!

 

[Celebrim]

I strongly advice against mega-dungeons unless you are explicitly doing one as a campaign... yet I've managed to get myself into two of them in succession in my storyline.

My campaign is basically an adventure path with a narrow-broad-narrow-broad structure. I have in mind particular encounters that will provide clues that lead to the next 'zone' of the story, but within each zone players are expected to be able to piece together where the zone boss is through any of a large number of paths, and come up with a solution from a number of possible options.

The basic problem with mega-dungeons is that they are too big to prep. My current one has encounter areas in the thousands, and probably 60 miles of passageways. It's just too freaking big. I'm forced to improvise, and dungeons above all other settings are better prepped than improvised. That's why DM's that try to run improvisational style campaigns usually have encounters in a generic 'outdoors' that is largely wall-less and feature-less - an 'open world' as opposed to the closed world of a dungeon.

However, if you can focus on a classic dungeon (which sadly my current dungeon isn't) the big advantage of a dungeon is a relatively large pay off in play time relative to preparation time. For my open dungeon crawl nights back when I was the 'house DM' for the local store, I started out doing mini-adventures to the standard I'd normally do for play. But the preparation time was rough considering we were only playing 3 hours or so. I moved to a mega-dungeon and not only was able to prep far more material than I'd ever use, but for the purposes of the game framework the mega-dungeon was more excitedly received because returning players had something of a continuing 'story-line', parts of the map that they wanted to revisit. And yes, that mega-dungeon was based off the dungeon generator in the back of the 1st edition AD&D DMG.

 

[Nagol]

My last D&D campaign was set in a variant-history Greyhawk -- I like the maps.

There were a couple of mega-dungeons on the map for the PCs to explore if they wished. The largest was the ruins beneath Castle Greyhawk.

The PCs made a half-hearted foray into the complex twice, but had many other things on the go that held their attention better.

The other was a "lost" dwarven city that was cut off from the surface during the Invoked Devastation millennia ago. The PCs penetrated the city a few times, but intra-party squabbling limited their explorations. It was amazing how frequently they made things worse for the inhabitants of the city.

I run a very open sandbox so the PCs are free to engage or ignore world aspects at their leisure and peril.

 

[Stormonu]

The first campaign I ran was retconned into a vast superdungeon held within a mountain larger than Everest.

These days, due to time constraints I tend to run Adventure Paths, or use linked modules (always with a little extra throw inbetween books so I can customize some events to the players). At low levels, I like running dungeon romps and slowly open up the wilderness at higher levels. And I tend to stay away from adventures in large cities (like Greyhawk City or Waterdeep large). It's too easy to watch the players run amok and, as one of my players once put it "It's been an hour and we haven't moved 30 feet down this corridor."

 

[saskganesh]

I get bored running large dungeons and prefer seeding smaller ones that can be completed in 1-2 sessions. I can make those up, or swipe them from published modules.

Basically, I have an area map that's about the size of the French Riviera. There's a homebase/port town, some (allied)pirate towns off shore, some scattered villages inland and a variety of terrain: plains to the west, bands of forests and hills and valleys to the north. mountains to the north-east, scrub to the east, an archipelago in the south. A major trade route cuts north overland from the port. The party has a couple of patrons who send them on mini-missions. Meanwhile, there's a roster of NPCs with their own agendas, and the PCs get caught up in their schemes. There's several conspiracies at work, multiple religions and a variety of human cultures in play. And as the party grows in relative power, they are seizing the initiative more and more and are poised to make some big changes to the area.

Lots to do. It's a cocktail of social/political intrique, dungeoneering and wilderness travel. I like having PCs move around. I try to make sure the prep I do is flexible, adaptable and relates to immediate needs.

 

[delericho]

Like Celebrim, most of my campaigns have a somewhat-AP structure, generally with a narrow-wide-narrow structure. Though sometimes that final 'narrow' ends up somewhere quite different than I'd thought!

I've been considering ways to put together an "open tabletop", to allow for greater flexibility in player availability, and also to ensure that people who can't get in on a regular campaign can still get a game. My gut feeling is that this will probably be mission-based, where the PCs are given a task, go do the task, and then a few hours later (real-time) they return to base for the end of the session. But I haven't yet gone anywhere with that, as I don't really have time to run more than the occasional one-shot game in addition to my regular campaign.

 

[Gilladian]

I ended a campaign that was several years long, based around the Dragon's Delve (Monte Cook's Dungeon-a-day). I also mixed a bunch of adventures from the first two Kingmaker books "outside" the dungeon. We made it to the 6th level of the dungeon before real life caused me to suspend the campaign. We COULD go back to it, but I suspect it would be better to start afresh.

I almost always have a large dungeon near my campaign base. Once it was a stubby little dungeon that had many "gates" to other places, also mostly dungeons, and the PCs hunted for various keys that would let them pass through to places that attracted them, or that they needed to go.

Other campaigns, I've just put a whole variety of Dungeon Magazine dungeons in various spots and lured the PCs in with appropriate hooks. They are always interested! In some ways the smaller dungeons make more sense, but the mega-dungeon is such an iconic DnD theme that my PCs are always happy to have one to explore.

 

[Greg K]

I don't use megadungeons. I don't like them as a player or DM. I don't even, particularly, care for dungeons in general. Since 2e, I include 2 or 3 single session dungeons at best in a given campaign.

My campaigns begin with me building a "world" which is one or two continents and some islands. For the world, I'll create different nations, cultures, and major NPCs. I'll throw in some notes on local history and legends, current events, cultural organizations, etc. that can all serve either as potential hooks or provide context for players to create a background that fits their character into the world and a particular culture.
Based upon the character backgrounds and goals (usually, with kickers from the players) that, I receive, I create an adventure that brings everyone together (sometimes just to a location and the group has to get themselves together). After that, it is primarily follow the player's lead and respond to them and what they do.
Along the way, I will throw in additional hooks, people in need of the party's help, have enemies they have made come after them, and throw in sessions that highlight backgrounds and/or goals.
For example, when the party returned to the knight's homeland from which he had disappeared- abandoning his post without a word to search for those that ambushed and slaughtered his patrol unit- the session was about the consequences of his actions and the party helping him clear his name of treason and find the culprit responsible. Similarly if the barbarian's goal is gaining status among his people, a session when he returns home will include party members regaling his people with stories of his exploits.
Then there are sessions that arise from new goals that the players randomly set (e.g. an evening of comedy as they tried to get the virgin Druid "laid", because he is stuffy, uptight, and needs to relax).
Long term quests evolve from the players. If they decide to focus on a particular enemy or on a particular player's quest, I'll go with that. If they do both and I can tie other the backgrounds/goals of other player characters to it, I will do so. Usually, what happens is that, if a particular PC's particular goal/quest is completed, they help the others out of friendship and/or gratitude.

 

[the Jester]

Yes! I love megadungeons; my campaign is seeded with a bunch of them (the Hill of Skulls, the Marble Halls, etc, including some published ones like the Temple of Elemental Evil, which isn't quite but borders on being a megadungeon). It's rare that a party explores too much of one, but not too uncommon for a group to make a foray or two into a megadungeon at need.

Then there's the Underdark. I just ran sessions 7 and 8 of a long delve into the depths to confront Torog (well, to talk him into letting them put an artifact around the neck of the Final Phoenix that Torog has imprisoned, anyhow). The Underdark is far more than a mere megadungeon, but it's akin to one.

 

[MerricB]

One of the big things that differentiates my AD&D campaign from a standard D&D campaign you run in your home is that I'm running it in my FLGS, with an ever-changing array of players. I'm never sure who will be there every session. So, the megadungeon is a better environment than a standard game where the individual stories (or story) takes many sessions to play through. I wonder how similar my game is in structure to the original D&D games.

With my 4E campaign, I've been running it mainly as short story-arcs (normally of 4-6 sessions length). Some of the arcs link together to form a greater story, but we don't stay on the big story all the time. It's more my normal style for running D&D campaigns with a stable group of players. Well, a mostly stable group of players!

Very rarely, I've run campaigns that are far more unified in theme and story - more "adventure path"-like - well, when not running an actual adventure path!

Cheers!