Anyone else not a fan of HUGE dungeon crawls?

[Baumi]

Iserith do you have a finished example of "The Delve"? It sounds fascinating, but I don't really understand how it work (reusable, choose the Scenarios themself, Maps are fixed 18x18 quares,...).

 

[Quajek]

I try to avoid a situation where the PCs are going door-to-door, killing all inhabitants therein. There's combat, but also negotiations, trickery, alliances, advances, retreats, and just plain exploration of interesting areas.

I am rock-hard right now.

 

[iserith]

Iserith do you have a finished example of "The Delve"? It sounds fascinating, but I don't really understand how it work (reusable, choose the Scenarios themself, Maps are fixed 18x18 quares,...).

They're all in Roll20, so I don't have any easy way to pull them out to show you. I did post some screen shots of a couple scenes in a thread a while back. Here's one from The Delve: Dogs of War and another from The Delve: Living Dead Girl. The former is an 8th-level scenario, the latter is for 1st level.

So imagine that you have two more scenes in Dogs of War like that one I linked. One is a scene involving crippling some siege weapons guarded by gnolls before they can knock down the castle walls. The other is a scene where a flame-throwing zeppelin called the Black Dog rains fire and gnoll paratroopers down onto the city. The players can choose the order in which they wish to deal with these challenges. Before each challenge is a short skill challenge that ties everything together.

What makes them reusable is that someone can play them in a different order and approach the challenges with new character builds in different ways. This changes the story that emerges during play, especially if it's not entirely the same group of players. I created around 10 of these things and ran them on average 3 to 5 times each.

 

[Baumi]

Cool. Thanks! 8D

 

[ninjayeti]

Like any other adventure format, megadungeons can be done well or they can be done poorly - just because you can find some examples of bad dungeon crawls doesn't mean the format itself is terrible.

Personally I think large dungeons work best when they are part of a story that is larger than "let's kill some things and take their treasure." They also benefit from mixing dungeon crawl sessions with sessions that take place outside the dungeon. Monte Cook's Banewarrens adventure is a great example of these principles and I would recommend taking a look at that if you want to get a sense of how large dungeon crawls can work well.

 

[The_Gneech]

Have you perhaps heard of the 5 Room Dungeon contest?

http://roleplayingtips.com/5-room-dungeons/

-The Gneech

 

[tyrlaan]

Not much of a fan of dungeons at all, let alone huge ones. I don't really know what it is about them, but once the players are in a dungeon, I feel like I need to get them out of the dungeon As. Soon. As. Possible.

And by dungeons, I mean the classic definition. I mention this because I agree with others that arguably anything is a dungeon, just with different trimmings, like a wilderness adventure and so on.

 

[Nebulous]

When I'm out of ideas about how to make my dungeon interesting, I put down the Dungeon Alphabet from my shelf, which is probably the best goddamn sourcebook written about dungeons. Another thing I usually do to make dungeons more interesting is taking examples from the genial Paul/Jennel Jaquays and include a lot of loops and forks in my dungeons. I hate linear dungeons, they are boring to explore.

OMG. The Dungeon Alphabet! I agree, it is the most amazing little source book that I've never used it. I had planned a whole mini campaign around it but it never happened. These are excerpts from my blog notes..

So, starting at letter A on the first level of the dungeon, the party randomly encounters an ALTAR...

...(d20)...Bright scarlet with inlaid veins of silver. A humanoid head (a decapitated mind flayer) its atop the altar. Engraved on the stone floor in front of the altar is a pulsing red unholy symbol.


On the west wall is a door leading to Area A2. But just then, there is a sudden clamor in that tunnel and the heroes see...


The PCs themselves but older and better equipped than they currently are. These other PCs are the party’s older counterparts who traveled back through time to warn the party of a catastrophe about to befall them in the dungeon. Disturbingly, not all the PCs are present in this other party. The missing members died in the event about to take place. Should the heroes heed their older selves’ warning, the catastrophe fails to occur, but this means they have no reason to later come back and warn themselves of it, making this meeting impossible. Referees with a fondness for temporal paradoxes will undoubtedly find ways to drive the players crazy with this encounter.

Holy poo, the roleplaying potential in the first TWO ROOMS of this adventure is amazing!!! And if you play it by ear, you can weave a thread through the letters as you descend toward the infamous ZOWIE at the end, maybe the thing that the party was sent back in time to warn their younger counterparts about! Or not. Who knows.

I got to see what happens next. Maybe the party recruits their older selves. Maybe the future heroes run and flee, but not before telling the halfing DON'T look in the hole, something nasty nasty will happen to you.

So they continue, somewhat shaken now, and reach B...a room of meticulously ordered and arranged books with 100 titles (see list) and strange properties. B2 is also here shortly after, Battles, as an unexpected opposition reaches the same room of books, and....(d20)....

The party’s opponents are revealed to be entirely different creatures than the PCs believed them to be. The fearsome orcs are actually bandits wearing costumes as part of their criminal scheming; the skeletons are all living humanoids that drank from a pool which turned their skin and organs invisible; or a giant lizard is truly a dragon that lost its wings to an enchanted blade.

You would need a box of minis, a grid map, and dry erase colored markers and just make up stuffas you go. Fun. Gonzo adventure. And you could start at A and roll again and have a whole different game.

It is known as the Dungeon of Dreams, The Mountain of Ill Repute, and the Fortress of Insanity, among others. Here, reality is warped and bent as multiple planes of existence converge on one spot deep beneath the surface, the results of a mad lich's experiment gone horribly wrong in ages past. Over time the rooms and hallways can fade and change and slide from existence, only to be replaced by something completely different. Many have braved the unhallowed depths; few have returned, and most that do return are the ravaged souls of the departed, lamenting their eternal damnation and cursing their foolishness. But for those who can survive to the lowest bowels of the Dungeon of Dreams, indescribable riches await...could that be YOU?

Note that this type of storytelling gameplay requires a DM quick on his feet who can try to tie inherently nonsensical events into a semi-understandable whole. Giving them a goal to get to the Z-Zowie is the crazy part, and it might just be a kitten.

 

[Gnarl45]

I personally like a mega dungeon crawl like Undermountain once in while.

 

[Quickleaf]

I'm not one for huge dungeon crawls and I wrote about it today on my blog.Anyone else out there not like the big, huge crawls? Anyone who does, how do you design your dungeons to keep them interesting and engaging? I'm not looking to start a fight, I'd just love to hear people's opinions on the matter since so many published adventures for lots of systems are huge crawls and I'm wondering who out there loves them.

Thanks for pointing out your blog, James! You've got some great free resources. I especially liked your downtime options & your hazards/traps. Both things that 5e needs more of for toolbox DMs. Kudos

I've been on both sides of the mega-dungeon debate, having run games with hardly using any dungeons at all, and games entirely focused on dungeon-delving. Both can work.

Since you were asking about how to make a mega-dungeon interesting and engaging, I attempted exactly that in my 4e Dragon Mountain conversion (see my sig). Most important point, echoing [MENTION=6680772]Iosue[/MENTION] and [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION] here, is to make the dungeon dynamic. Of course, HOW you do that is the subject of vigorous debate. There are entire blogs dedicated to how to run mega-dungeons, after all.