Castle Greyhawk vs Undermountain

[demonsquidgod]

I am only aware of these megadungeons by reputation having never read any modules set in them. But they seem relatively similar to me. Both are giant crazy death traps built my insane mages.

How are they different? Which is better?

 

[justanobody]

Greyhawk vs Forgotten Realms is one big difference.

 

[Evilhalfling]

It really depends on the version.
I owned and ran pieces of 1e (comedy) castle greyhawk. and 2e greyhawk ruins, and all my info about undermountain is second hand.

the crazy mage of undermountain had no reputation or influence outside the dungeon, he might as well have spontaneously generated there. Undermountain seemed very video-gamy to me - monsters that spawn other random types of monsters, random designs, unwatched, unplanned teleporters and portals. It may work as a play environment but broke my suspension of disbelief. I think it had a few sample maps, but left lots to the DM.

Castle greyhawk didn't even make the effort, levels based on songs, fast food, puns, a gaming convention, barcodes etc. I thought it was hilarious, but only ran a few one-shots on various levels.

Ruins of adventure I loved as well, Orc and Orc+ tribes with a gold mine producing trinkets to lure adventures, mages using teleporter filled levels to run social experiments on CE, NE, and LE races I ran a group nearly to the bottom of one tower, through the first few levels of the second and ignore the wacky third tower (magic museum, cursed loot, some kind of trap that cursed you with a clown face?? ) I don't remember if it made any sense further in, I didn't have any interest in running the first few levels when the other towers were more fun.
In the first two towers, monsters had ecology, plans and their own troubles. Plus a huge amount of maps, each level was a 8x11 page, perhaps 20 pages of maps.

 

[DaveMage]

I've DMed both Undermountain and Greyhawk Ruins.

I like both. Greyhawk ruins was much lighter (overall) on each room's details, but it details more rooms in total than Undermountain. Undermountain was rich in the rooms it detailed, but the maps have huge chunks of rooms that are not detailed to leave room for the DM to fill in.

Both were fun.

 

[grodog]

I like both. Greyhawk ruins was much lighter (overall) on each room's details, but it details more rooms in total than Undermountain. Undermountain was rich in the rooms it detailed, but the maps have huge chunks of rooms that are not detailed to leave room for the DM to fill in.

Both were fun.

I'll second Dave. Ruins of Undermountain felt more structurally what I thought Castle Greyhawk should be like (the Gygax and Kuntz version of the Castle, that is): large, sweeping levels, lots of wide-open areas to get PCs lost in, and plenty of room for the DM to customize it to his own campaign's preferences. The first boxed set detailed only the first two or three levels, and included Skullport, which was mostly-wasted as a dungeon element in my book. It also outlined the whole of UM---it's history and levels---though not in great detail beyond the levels in the boxed set. RoU2 was terrible: even the poster maps in it weren't that great. There were a few UM modules published later, but I'm not very familiar with them, so someone else will have to chime in on those.

WGR1 Greyhawk Ruins was more-tightly structured and detailed (much less blank space), and was too-strongly themed via the three towers' foci, and didn't present anything at all in the way of ruins or a castle (which is why it was retitled to Greyhawk Ruins I suppose ). I was pretty dissatisfied with the design of WGR1, in particular again because the levels were pretty small in scope (a criticism I also levy against Necromancer Games' Rappan Athuk), and because there was so little of the real Greyhawk Castle and Dungeons in it (which, of course, I didn't know at the time I first bought it).

I actually touch on both of these campaign dungeons in my soon-to-be-done review of Castle Zagyg

 

[Psion]

Assuming we are referring to Castle Greyhawk as depicted in "Greyhawk Ruins": I ran both, liked both, but I'd say that Undermountain is my favorite.

I think the writing in RoU was better, and many room descriptions and encouter layouts were really cool. Though some of better descriptions and events in Castle Greyhawk were cool as well. (The porculis and message of doom thing had a big impact on my players.)

I did like the Castle Greyhawk felt like it could be finished. The implication that RoU had dozens of levels you'd never see always seemed so Gauntlet to me.

I liked Skullport as well, though it did take some massaging for me to fit it into my world in a way I could take seriously.

I also liked the empty halls. With the wicked random encounters talbe RoU had, they never seemed that empty, and I always appreciated having room to plug in my own plots and ideas for event-driven dungeon forays.

Lots of people hated RoUII, but I dug the NPC and Willowood, though I did think the maze of Tyr thing was annoying.

For as much hate as Willowood got, it's interesting that Castle Whiterock and Worlds Largest Dungeon have an equivalent.