I am considering building out my next campaign as a mega-dungeon exploration (with a side of boom town political drama, but that's not important right now).
As I do so, I want to hear about your experiences playing or running dungeon focused campaigns. it doesn't have to be a mega-dungeon campaign, but it should be dominated by dungeons. What elements of play did you find helped make the game fun? Which ones made it tedious? If you were a DM, how much did you prep ahead of time? If you were a player, did you notice how much the DM prepped ahead of time? Was it/were they published dungeon(s)? Was it all home brew? A mix?
Any edition, and even non-D&D games, are welcome, just let me know what system you used if it is important in understanding how things went.
Just to get things started, one area where I am concerned, especially if I end up using 5E, is the rate of advancement. 5E is way too fast in a normal campaign and I expect ina dungeon it would be even faster. I want the PCs to sit at their levels for a while, both to use all their toys and to let me use all mine. Relatedly, I am worried about the level ramp in power and that makes me worry about using 3.5 or PF.
Thanks.
I’m currently running a sandbox hexcrawl, but we’ve spent about half of our time in and out of a megadungeon the PCs found, so there’s been a fair amount of dungeoneering. We started out using PF2, but we’re currently evaluating other systems (hopefully OSE). However, I don’t think anything I’m going to say is specific to any system.
I’ve found the Alexandrian really helpful for breathing life into dungeons. Justin’s done a number of articles over the years on them. Some are retrospectives while others are advice. If I had to say any techniques were particularly helpful, it’s restocking your dungeon and using your wandering monsters to keep it always feeling fresh. Otherwise, what happens is your PCs just clear it out, and it feels very rote.
The goal is to make the dungeon feel always dynamic and dangerous. If creatures are moving around, into spaces that were cleared, reinforcing positions, etc; then shortcuts and exploration becomes more meaningful as well as gaining access to other resources (e.g., allies, hirelings, etc) who can help mitigate them when you’re gone.
For example, the PCs once retreated in my game to spend a few days shopping. It took a bit longer than they initially thought. When they returned, I rolled to restock and got “zombies”. I decided a necromancer had moved into the central chamber on the first floor. They fought their way through some zombies and eventually parleyed with the necromancer. He was just looking for treasure too, but he couldn’t find it. That random roll turned into a recurring NPC.
Alexandrian articles I found helpful/interesting:
From a dungeon design perspective, I’ve found it a lot easier to write up my key first before spending too much time on my maps. I start with a sketch of everything, but then I go into keying it before actually trying to draw the rooms. I’ve done it the other way around, but it was really easy to get writers block trying to reconcile a bunch of randomly drawn rooms with a key. I’ll also second thinking about factions and who lives there if you’re doing a megadungeon.
When I first designed the megadungeon for my campaign, I had a very rough idea and figured I could try to make it up as I went along. As it turns out, that’s a terrible idea. I ran out of gas mid-way through the second floor. I had to step back and do the thing I should have done up front. Who lives here? What are their relationships like? What does the group that is using this dungeon for their nefarious purposes do, and what is
their interactions like. With that in mind, I had a much easier time actually designing the dungeon.
I also want to point out the Alexandrian’s article on
Jaquaying the Dungeon. If you’re doing an exploration-focused game, then your dungeons shouldn’t just be a straight line or sequence of encounters the PCs fight through. There should be multiple ways into and through the dungeon. All that dynamic stuff I discussed above helps make this exploration meaningful. If you found a secret passage or an alternate entrance a few sessions ago, and this session you’ve found a bunch of trolls have claimed the main entrance as their own, then you can use that alternate path to continue into the dungeon (or set up an ambush, etc).
Personally, I only sort of worry about balance. When I was designing for PF2, I tied the “tuning” level to the dungeon level. 1st level was tuned for 1st level parties, 2nd for 2nd, and so on. I also used Proficiency Without Level. You could try doing something in 5e since bounded accuracy should work about the same way. I thought it was fine. I don’t think fights are really the point, so I wouldn’t sweat balance too much. Before you need to worry about high levels, you need to get to them. One thing you may want to consider is tweaking XP progression or how you reward it. In OSE/BX, most of your XP comes from treasure, so if you want PCs to delve into the dungeon (rather than seek out fights), then target your XP rewards on things (like finding treasure) that encourage them to do that.
