D&D 5E Megadungeon delving as a campaign’s core; is it compatible with modern play?

[Lanefan]

What is the point of exploration? I don't mean this rhetorically, I mean this as an actual question. Why are you exploring?

Isn't it to gain information so that you can make informed choices? Exploration isn't done for its own sake.

Ah, there's the disconnect.

In my case exploration is done for its own sake, along the same lines as real-world me walking down a new trail in the woods just to see what's around the next corner. Except in an RPG setting, instead of just a new trail I've a whole new world (or more!) to explore.

It's done with a purpose. What is down this or that corridor, what opposition or opportunities are available in what direction. So on and so forth. IOW, it's the information that matters, not really how you get it.

So, why not abstract getting the information. Instead of forcing everyone in the group to play a stealth character just so that they don't have to sit around and watch everyone else play for extended periods of time, why not just make it a mini-game that everyone can participate in, get the information into the hands of the players and then move on from there?

If all you care about is the information then yes, I can see what you're getting at. But there's more to it than just information; mostly the whole "what's around the next corner" piece, even if around the corner is only some empty hallway. And that's what exploration is - finding out what's around the next corner, or behind the next door, or over the next range of hills.

No thanks. I absolutely hate this style of play. IME, it leads to completely passive players who contribute nothing that you couldn't get from a dice bot to the game. No family? No history? That's not a character to me. That's just a couple of numbers on a sheet.

To begin with, perhaps; but after a while IME the characters develop connections to each other, to the specific campaign, and to the setting as a whole...for those players who want such. Some don't care as much, and this is fine too.

And believe it or not, this can go too far. I've one active character of my own, for example, who has so much on her plate in the greater setting (spell research, political ambitions, a family and manor house to look after, a party-company base to help with, etc.) she really hasn't got time for adventuring any more, but still keeps getting hauled into the field regardless as she's our company's most experienced mage.

I want to take it even further and force the players to have connections to each other through a variety of mini-games, but, I know when I'm beat on that one. The players don't like it.

Why not just let those connections develop as they will, organically during play?

But, yeah, the most interesting, memorable characters are the ones that actually are tied to the campaign.

My experience begs to differ.

In my current campaign that's seen over 950 sessions, the most interesting and memorable character was around for a mighty 17 of them.

He had no connection to the campaign other than he'd randomly met one of the then-current party members at some point in their adventuring past. He had no connection to the setting other than he lived in it. He had no family history, no background other than what roll-up forces you to determine (languages, age, secondary skill). But the party needed a mage, so they took him in, and his player quickly made him utterly unforgettable.

Cycle out characters? No thanks. I am totally not interested in that style of play anymore. I've had my fill of the kinds of characters that you are talking about here and I just won't play that way anymore. Make the campaign about the characters at the table, or I'll go play somewhere else because I will not enjoy the game.

I'd rather make the campaign about the party, with individual characters as sometimes-interchangeable parts of that greater whole. Just like a sports team is (or should be!) bigger and longer-lasting than any of its then-current players.

 

[Micah Sweet]

What is the point of exploration? I don't mean this rhetorically, I mean this as an actual question. Why are you exploring?

Isn't it to gain information so that you can make informed choices? Exploration isn't done for its own sake. It's done with a purpose. What is down this or that corridor, what opposition or opportunities are available in what direction. So on and so forth. IOW, it's the information that matters, not really how you get it.

So, why not abstract getting the information. Instead of forcing everyone in the group to play a stealth character just so that they don't have to sit around and watch everyone else play for extended periods of time, why not just make it a mini-game that everyone can participate in, get the information into the hands of the players and then move on from there?


No thanks. I absolutely hate this style of play. IME, it leads to completely passive players who contribute nothing that you couldn't get from a dice bot to the game. No family? No history? That's not a character to me. That's just a couple of numbers on a sheet. I want to take it even further and force the players to have connections to each other through a variety of mini-games, but, I know when I'm beat on that one. The players don't like it.

But, yeah, the most interesting, memorable characters are the ones that actually are tied to the campaign. Cycle out characters? No thanks. I am totally not interested in that style of play anymore. I've had my fill of the kinds of characters that you are talking about here and I just won't play that way anymore. Make the campaign about the characters at the table, or I'll go play somewhere else because I will not enjoy the game.

I've become a lot less willing to compromise on my play experience as I've gotten older.

I don't think I've encountered two people with more different playstyles who both play 5e than you and @Lanefan . Strength if the system I guess.

 

[Lanefan]

I don't think I've encountered two people with more different playstyles who both play 5e than you and @Lanefan . Strength if the system I guess.

I play and run a variant on 1e; but most of these issues are edition-agnostic.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I play and run a variant on 1e; but most of these issues are edition-agnostic.

Big fan of 1e! That's where most of my pre-5e experience came from, and where my idea of what D&D should be (for me) was formed. Everything I've done since has tried to make other versions of the game more like that.

I love your percentage of max hit points healed per long rest houserule, and will be instituting into my game. I've been toying with that idea for a while.

 

[Lanefan]

Big fan of 1e! That's where most of my pre-5e experience came from, and where my idea of what D&D should be (for me) was formed. Everything I've done since has tried to make other versions of the game more like that.

I love your percentage of max hit points healed per long rest houserule, and will be instituting into my game. I've been toying with that idea for a while.

I'll PM you a link to the details of how it works.

 

[Hussar]

In my current campaign that's seen over 950 sessions, the most interesting and memorable character was around for a mighty 17 of them.

Again, this is why we don't agree here. In 950 sessions, I've played over ten different campaigns, either as a DM or as a player. My longest, ever, campaign, is about 80 sessions. I have no interest in playing a campaign that's even remotely that long.

Edit to add

That sounds harsh and like I'm criticising. I'm not. I'm absolutely in awe of what you've created here. But, while I can stand back and think, wow, that's really impressive, I still would not want to participate.

 

[MNblockhead]

@Lanefan With the longest-living/participating character lasting only 17 sessions of a 950-session campaign, I'm wondering whether your campaign is more of a living world in which you have run a series of campaigns that influence and have lasting impacts on the world. I generally use "campaign" to mean a series of adventures that are tied together either by some over arching plot.

For example, my first 5e "campaign" was in a homebrew world that I made. Each session was mostly a stand alone adventure (some adventures lasted 2, 3 sessions at most -- a session being 8 hours long). It was often a situation of "after several months of travel, you reach..." or "two years have past, and you are called again to bring the party together once again to...." I used milestone leveling and ran from 1st to 20th. If I would have keep running games in that setting (became two much work as real-life demands grew too heavy), the next group would be playing in the same world, which had been changed by the actions of the prior group. While individual characters die, unless their is a TPK, the party would likely continue. So even if I ran this setting for many years, I would still see it as a series of campaigns in a living world.

Though, I realize other people use the word campaign differently. When I read articles about say the record for the longest-running campaign, it seems to be used to mean running regular games in the same setting with various links to prior PCs (their actions changing the world, PCs being the descendants of past PCs, etc.). Is that how you are using "campaign"?

 

[CreamCloud0]

@Lanefan With the longest-living/participating character lasting only 17 sessions of a 950-session campaign, I'm wondering whether your campaign is more of a living world in which you have run a series of campaigns that influence and have lasting impacts on the world. I generally use "campaign" to mean a series of adventures that are tied together either by some over arching plot.

For example, my first 5e "campaign" was in a homebrew world that I made. Each session was mostly a stand alone adventure (some adventures lasted 2, 3 sessions at most -- a session being 8 hours long). It was often a situation of "after several months of travel, you reach..." or "two years have past, and you are called again to bring the party together once again to...." I used milestone leveling and ran from 1st to 20th. If I would have keep running games in that setting (became two much work as real-life demands grew too heavy), the next group would be playing in the same world, which had been changed by the actions of the prior group. While individual characters die, unless their is a TPK, the party would likely continue. So even if I ran this setting for many years, I would still see it as a series of campaigns in a living world.

Though, I realize other people use the word campaign differently. When I read articles about say the record for the longest-running campaign, it seems to be used to mean running regular games in the same setting with various links to prior PCs (their actions changing the world, PCs being the descendants of past PCs, etc.). Is that how you are using "campaign"?

Just throwing my own definition in of ‘campaign’ here, a campaign should be an adventure or series of adventures (depending on how smoothly you transition between individual arcs/modules) that have a consistent through-line that connects them together in some significant way (with some leeway, typically the first adventure is more about cementing the party and there may be a personal sidequest or two irrelevant to the main plot), I generally expect a campaign to have some sort of build up and eventual pay off so you can look back at how all the smaller pieces came together, to see how being sent to stomp that chicken-thieving goblin pack who had that weird rock in their cave lead to you standing at the gates of the underworld ready to stop overlord blackhelm from completing his apocalypse ritual.

A series of unconnected adventures with the same party, while fun, I would not call a campaign.

 

[Hussar]

A series of unconnected adventures with the same party, while fun, I would not call a campaign.

Now that I disagree with. The connection is the party. For example, Ghosts of Saltmarsh has virtually no connection between most of the modules. The three that are based on the original Sinister Secret series, sure, they are tied together. But, the other six or seven adventures aren't connected in any way. Yet, I would certainly call that a campaign.

Heck, my current Candlekeep Adventures campaign has next to nothing connecting any of the individual adventures. It's very episodic. What happens in one adventure is largely self contained and has no impact on the next adventure. Yet, again, I'd certainly call it a campaign.

Or, back in the day, running Keep on the Borderlands and then transitioning to Isle of Dread was a pretty typical campaign. Again, nothing connecting the modules.

 

[jgsugden]

I never found megadungeons interesting, even back in the 1980s. They got repetitive real fast. But I see nothing in the 5e ruleset that impedes playing megadungeons if that's what floats your boat.

Just investigating here: Do they have to be? Or have they just historically been so?

Here is an adventure I ran 15 years ago that went over well (tweaked to work out my homebrew elements). Would this be interesting to you? If not, what could you change to make it interesting?

Let's say you've joined a campaign playing a 1st level half-orc paladin that has been entrusted with an artifact in a sealed box by the last member of an Ancient Sacred Order that was charged to protect the artifact - or destroy it if necessary. The order was wiped out by agents of evil and the last member of the order handed you the box and told you that it had to be destroyed to avoid a great evil from returning. Destroying it will require you to venture to the core of the Maelstrom Hive, a Cenobite (Hellraiser) inspired nightmare dungeon filled with Traps, Demons, Devils, Aberrations, Undead and a variety of other evils. Unfortunately, with his dying breath, the last member of this order revealed that the exact method of destroying the item was not known to him - but he knew that it had to be done in the heart of that complex.

You get a chance to find allies (the other PCs) to join in your quest and then set off on a series of low level adventures to discover more about the artifact, learn about the complex, and figure out what you can about how to destroy it. As you do, you discover that the agents of evil that wiped out the sacred order come from the Maelstrom Hive, and are hunting you and your allies now - but you've discovered a way to sneak into the Hive. You've also discovered it floats in a pocket dimension accessible from the Astral Plane, but the pocket dimension was formed by mashing together pockets of Elemental Planes, Hell Dimensions, Abyssal Diemnsions, the Shadowfell and the Far Realm. The Cube is 3 miles tall, 3 miles has served for time untold as a prison for entities that the Gods and Powers of existence determined to be too dangerous to allow to exist free. Just as your group is about to sneak into the Hive, you discover that the agents of evil have taken several of your allies' family members and friends as prisoners in an attempt to force you to hand over the artifact.

You'd be 5th level PCs headed into enemy territory to explore a gigantic complex with the MacGuffin in your grasp - with a clock on your exploration as the people you care about are prisoners of the enemy that has been lurking in the background over the first 15 sessions of your campaign... And you have a feeling that once you enter the complex, you may never be able to leave it as it is a prison.