D&D 5E Help me grok mega-dungeons

[Lanefan]

About the only thing I can add to the benefits others have mentioned is that a DM could, if she wanted, make the megadungeon BE the game world. You walk in, the wall seals off behind you, and now you're on your own. Want supplies? You'll have to steal them, or kill for them, or get lucky and just find them. Want food? Cook and eat what you kill. And so on.

Kind of like an underground Mad Max scenario.

Lanefan

 

[Mephista]

So... what's a mega-dungeon?

 

[Staffan]

So... what's a mega-dungeon?

A really, really big dungeon. On the upper end, you get things like Undermountain or The World's Largest Dungeon. Somewhat smaller, you have things like the Emerald Spire for Pathfinder.

A big problem with them is that they are hard to do well commercially, because the really big ones don't fit in a single product. For example, the original plan for the release of Castle Zagyg (before those plans were scrapped by the untimely death of Mr Gygax) seems to have been a total of six boxed sets (plus one for the nearby town). I don't know about you guys, but my patience for buying six boxed sets for one dungeon, probably released about 1-2 years apart, is fairly thin, particularly when there's no guarantee the endeavor will be finished.

 

[Croesus]

So... what's a mega-dungeon?

Note: nothing that follows is terribly profound. I just think we need to figure out what we mean by the term megadungeon before we can discuss why we like/dislike them.

What's a megadungeon? This is the question I've been asking myself since this thread started, since the term "megadungeon" appears to have quite a few assumptions behind it. For instance, when someone says "dungeon", we often envision: usually underground, has walls, has opponents, has loot. But (and this is not an original thought on my part), there's no reason a dungeon has to have walls. Walls are just an obvious, overt method of constraining player choice. One could just as easily have a valley with some monster lairs (rooms), and multiple overland features (rivers, cliffs) that limit how one reaches those lairs.

Further, some of the early posts in this thread suggested a megadungeon could be fun because it can be a portal to other worlds (Sigil), it's so large it can have different factions one can interact with, it's a setting, not a single scenario. But those things can also define a campaign world. So what's a megadungeon?

It appears, based on responses in this thread that a megadungeon in common parlance is an overtly contained world. It has walls, corridors, rooms - in other words, overtly constrained choices. It's so large, the concept of clearing the dungeon completely is ludicrous. But most of all, it emphasizes one pillar of play - Combat. Yes, Exploration can play a part, but only so far as it facilitates killing things and taking their stuff. As for Social Interaction, that's clearly the forgotten stepchild. At least, that's the common perception. And based on that, I can see why many folks (myself included) are turned off by the idea of megadungeons.

So it seems that if one wants to make megadungeons interesting, the concept has to be expanded beyond 80% Combat, 20% Exploration, .000001% Social Interaction to a more even mix. In other words, the megadungeon needs to be more like a campaign world, less like a place to simply kill things and take their stuff. But then, if one does that, is it still a megadungeon? Who cares, as long as it's fun.

 

[jayoungr]

I've never actually played a megadungeon, but one thing I like about them in theory is that they give an ideal chance for the exploration pillar of the game to get some love. They should allow exploration-leaning classes to shine.

 

[MackMcMacky]

You can role-play in a mega-dungeon. You can have mysteries in a mega-dungeon. You can have plots carried out in a mega-dungeon. I disagree with anyone who claims otherwise as their opinion contradicts my experience as a player and as a DM who has run mega-dungeons.

 

[Croesus]

You can role-play in a mega-dungeon. You can have mysteries in a mega-dungeon. You can have plots carried out in a mega-dungeon. I disagree with anyone who claims otherwise as their opinion contradicts my experience as a player and as a DM who has run mega-dungeons.

I'm not sure anyone in this thread has said you cannot do those things. Based on comments I've heard over the years, however, I suspect that most folks don't equate megadungeon with the Social Interaction pillar of RPGs. So the question is, why not? Is it because too many megadungeons have tended to ignore such things, or because of how they are run, or just how the term "megadungeon" is interpreted?

 

[LordEntrails]

(Important background: My tastes run to plot-heavy games, where the combats are almost all plot-related; and to fewer, more dangerous combats. I don't care for random encounters. I don't care for combat for its own sake. I prefer mystery-solving and social/political interaction to seeing what's in the next treasure chest.)

This is why you don't grok mega-dungeons. They are all about combat, puzzles and exploration. It's very hard to make them plot heavy and any mystery is usually only do-able within a few rooms, not across the whole thing.

If you don't like combat for no reasons but survival or the chance for loot, then you won't like mega-dungeons.

 

[RedShirtNo5.1]

I think the broad definition of a mega-dungeon is simply "a big dungeon."
But the best technical definition of a mega-dungeon I've seen is "a dungeon sufficiently large to support simultaneous exploration by multiple groups of players over an extended period without becoming fully explored." In short, the environment that Gygax was operating in for the original Castle Greyhawk.

 

[S'mon]

I'm not sure anyone in this thread has said you cannot do those things. Based on comments I've heard over the years, however, I suspect that most folks don't equate megadungeon with the Social Interaction pillar of RPGs. So the question is, why not? Is it because too many megadungeons have tended to ignore such things, or because of how they are run, or just how the term "megadungeon" is interpreted?

I think it's because post-2e D&D followed the module convention of "attacks immediately" monsters rather than the Reaction Table of older editions. Talking to monsters used to be more common, and I find running Classic D&D it's done a lot, eg by my son, as he has not had the kill-everything convention drilled into him.