Big Dungeons - An unrequited love?

[Jim Hague]

$120 plus 15% sales tax is a whopper to swallow at the FLGS. They got in exactly one copy and finally managed to sell it 3 months later. They'll only do a special order for it now and don't mind me making the occasional online purchase (I get 95% of my gaming stuff from them after all). I've never used buy.com and the sloooooooow shipping of amazaon.ca kind of irked me last time (3 weeks to travel 200km? HUH?).

Amazon's not the best at shipping game books, honestly, and it looks like Buy.com is out. However, I know there's several retailers offering hefty discounts for WLD...would any posters here care to share some links?

 

[LostSoul]

What i mean is that PCs are assumed to be 'taking 10' on the 3 key detection skills (Spot, Search Listen) at all times and I (as DM) will tell them if there is something amiss.

Aren't the trap DCs generally too high for a suitable-level Rogue to spot them when Taking 10 on a Search roll?

But either way, don't you just get "switch" traps - either they are within 10 points of his Search skill, and he finds them all, or they aren't, and he doesn't find any of them.

I think the solution is to call for Search checks whenever there's some information to be found. (And throw wandering monsters at the PCs if they linger too long.) The information could be a trap, a secret door, footprints, a piece of cloth, burn marks, etc.

 

[Psychic Warrior]

Aren't the trap DCs generally too high for a suitable-level Rogue to spot them when Taking 10 on a Search roll?

But if it was trapped it was a significant feature of the area (a statue, a chest etc). The Take 10 is for walking down a corridor. Generally it is to make the Rogue players back off and not roll 326 times per dungeon.

But either way, don't you just get "switch" traps - either they are within 10 points of his Search skill, and he finds them all, or they aren't, and he doesn't find any of them.

Isn't that what we have now?

 

[LostSoul]

But if it was trapped it was a significant feature of the area (a statue, a chest etc).

Perhaps. I'd also trap areas like front doors when I have a back door. Or traps with bypasses, like Glyph of Warding, down the corridor.

Isn't that what we have now?

I could be wrong, but looking at the trap DCs it seems that you are expected to roll for them (or Take 20) - Taking 10 just isn't enough. CR 1 traps have a Search DC of 20+. So the Search switch is set to "always fail" if you Take 10. (And "always succeed" if you Take 20 - but time is an important factor.)

I think that if the player states "I'm looking for traps," calling for rolls only when they matter would solve the problem. Might not work for all groups and dungeons/adventures though.

edit: Changed "exploding runes" to "glyph of warding".

 

[Staffan]

I started running a bunch of people through Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil, but gave up about half-way through (they had just started making forays into the Inner Fane). This was for two reasons:
1. I live in a different town than the players, so we only played every couple of months or so when I went to visit them.
2. I got tired of the endless dungon-slogging.

My preferred model for large-scale adventures is the 2e Dark Sun adventure Dragon's Crown. It is split up into eight parts, each of which takes place in a different location (

Spoiler

raider camp, Urik, giant tribe on an island, ancient fortress, halfling tribe in the jungle, thri-kreen horde in the Hinterlands, jungle surrounding the Dragon's Crown fortress, and the Dragon's Crown fortress itself

). In addition, it had a number of side treks, things that could happen in between these main adventure places that weren't directly related to the main adventure.

 

[Jim Hague]

I started running a bunch of people through Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil, but gave up about half-way through (they had just started making forays into the Inner Fane). This was for two reasons:
1. I live in a different town than the players, so we only played every couple of months or so when I went to visit them.
2. I got tired of the endless dungon-slogging.

My preferred model for large-scale adventures is the 2e Dark Sun adventure Dragon's Crown. It is split up into eight parts, each of which takes place in a different location (

Spoiler

raider camp, Urik, giant tribe on an island, ancient fortress, halfling tribe in the jungle, thri-kreen horde in the Hinterlands, jungle surrounding the Dragon's Crown fortress, and the Dragon's Crown fortress itself

). In addition, it had a number of side treks, things that could happen in between these main adventure places that weren't directly related to the main adventure.

I feel you on that one. That's one of the big reasons WLD has plots and subplots flying around in it like clouds of bats. You don't have to follow 'em, but they're there if you want to, and they're good for the most part.

 

[Evilhalfling]

I ran RttToEE and got close to halfway through the 131 room part. Then both I and the players got very bored - a little sizesmic activity and they were done.

With same group I had a PC in CoSQ - I got bored but the clock was ticking- that one had punishments for long breaks. The DM was tired and by the end, he did a big rewrite on the ending, and we finished early.

Still I like dungeons - 8-20 rooms with a unified concept- logical defensive and/or reactive strategy. I have heard that there is room to run these as faction wars - but niether I nor my fellow DM managed it.

Soon the PCs will be heading to a 'dungeon' island that it is difficult to escape from - there are still 1-2 friendly groups,and 3 possible exits -
4 seperate complexes the largest has 18 rooms. Hopefully it will be a lot of fun.

 

[BlueBlackRed]

We went through a good portion of the RttToEE, but after a good start, the DM just got sick of it.

Then, because we hadn't learned any better, 6 months later the WLD came out.
It's been quite a bit of fun, but I am so ready for it to be done. Lots of hacking, sparse on the RP. But we expected that.

I think a large dungeon is something you should do only once in your lifetime.
And the younger you do it, the better.

 

[ruleslawyer]

Something I've always wondered, and maybe I missed it somewhere...

If UM drove Halaster crazy and extended his life, why didn't it do it for the dwarves and then the drow?

If somebody could clear that up for me?

At the risk of derailing this thread:

Undermountain didn't drive Halaster insane, per se. It was his researches into immortality, the various magics he worked on himself to increase his power, and, probably, the sheer fact of his incredibly long lifespan that drove him mad.

As for mega-dungeons, I feel the same way as you do, apparently:

As far as huge dungeons go, as with UM or any one of them really (my lastest massive dungeon would have been The Banewarrens a couple years ago) I too can't stand to run them for any length of time. I find it more tolerable to run short forays into and out of that large dungeon.

I find that mega-dungeons work as settings rather than as individual adventure locales. That's really the point of Undermountain (and, in fact, why all those barrier magics exist; to prevent ambitious players from trying to clean the place out and drive an incredibly boring game for the DM.). Located below Waterdeep as it is, it serves as a fun locale in which to stash McGuffins, send PCs on various errands, and serve as a place for bad guys to carve out lairs. The same thing seems to go for Castle Greyhawk; EGG seems to have used it as a "duck in and out" venue rather than a target for cleaning out.

This is actually the major problem that I have with RttToEE and the Banewarrens; both require you to traverse huge stretches of dungeon in a finite time span to achieve a particular set of goals, which leads to a "mega-dungeon-crawl" feel. I never had this problem running a Waterdeep/Undermountain campaign (and, incidentally, I find the UM boxed set one of the most flavorful and interesting campaign supplements I've ever seen for ANY locale, FR or otherwise); PCs formed an adventuring guild with the express purpose of exploring Undermountain and "mapping the entirety of the Underhalls," but that was just a silly ambition on my players' part that served as the overall frame within the actual campaign (consisting of numerous noble house intrigues, clashes of rival thieves' guilds, a long-term romantic ordeal involving a bride with an odd destiny, and a brief foray into buccaneering on the high seas) actually evolved.

So, in short, Psion, I think you're just accumulating a resource that will be useful in all sorts of great ways if you put it to the proper purposes.

 

[AFGNCAAP]

My group is just starting to traverse WLD, so I'll have a new perspective within 3-4 years or so.

Actually, there were 2 mega-dungeon experiences before WLD for me: Undermountain, which just fell flat on its face not long after it was started (having low-level PCs bump into the Balor room just wrecked it), & Night Below, which was a pain to endure, mainly because it was a standard 2nd AD&D module which had a bunch of non-standard PCs running thorugh it (way too many sorts of elves of some sort w/ thieving/magery, not enough warriors or clerics, and nil on dwarves or the like). Plus, the "all at once" theme made that a real hell. On top of that, irregular attendence & a changing group roster really played hell on the game, & I daresay that it killed any real excitement/fun it could have had.

I think that the key thing really needed is, if the PCs can't leave, then there should be some sort of reliable fallback point for rest & recovery (and, maybe at the least, a friendly faction or two to interact with). As previous posters have said, the original D&D dungeons of renown (like Castle Greyhawk) were taken in doses--they were expeditions into the place (with resupply & deposits back in the Overbright), & not 1 long uninterrupted journey. Putting a time crunch on top of it made things absoultely worse.

It seems (IMHO) that the Mines of Moria/Khazad-Dum really kicked off the notion of the massive underground complex to delve in, but even that scenario was just getting from point A to point B, rather than mapping out the entirety of the place. However, that complex made sense because it was a realm, a city, heck, a small nation underground. It made a lot more sense than the massive dungeon-themed (lethal) Danger Rooms that some dungeons take shape as.

BTW, since I'm just starting WLD, could anyone please warn of spoilers for WLD in their posts, or at least avoid mentioning spoilers?