D&D General Designing Adventure: Can a Megadungeon... not be a dungeon at all?

[Urriak Uruk]

Hello! The inception of this thread, was when a friend recently asked me, "Would you ever consider making your own megadungeon?"

My initial response was, "No." And this isn't because I don't like megadungeons, I do! Who doesn't like a huge multi-level underground complex, filled with elaborate traps, dangerous monsters, and few locations to rest or spend that gold?

Well, I suppose a lot of people don't like that actually, but I am ok with it for at least a handful of sessions.

For those who don't know what I'm talking about, I snapped up this definition of a megadungeon from 1d4chan;

A megadungeon is a really big dungeon designed for crawling.
OK, more details. Well a megadungeon IS a big dungeon, often spawning several floors, each floor containing several rooms. The dungeon itself usually has several entrances from the outside.
A megadungeon is not just a big dungeon in the sense that it come with more than a list of room and their content. You usually got a description of the surroundings, a history of the dungeon itself, a description of the different factions of monsters and their relations, etc. Since megadungeons are huge and are intended to last for more than a few sessions of play, the sandbox aspect is often emphasized more than in a regular dungeon.

So, why was my initial response to designing a megadungeon "No"? It isn't that it would be a ton of work (although it would), it's instead that the most famous megadungeons carry pretty common themes. They are obviously huge, underground complexes... which means that these had to be built or created in some way. It's not a coincidence that the most famous megadungeons (Castle Greyhawk and Undermountain) are both created by insane wizards. Because after all, who else but a nutty wizard has the ability, and the reason, to build such a mega-complex?

Other megadungeons, like Caverns of Thracia, are a bit more creative in why they are constructed, but they all carry the same theme; big, underground complex. So when I was asked if this is something I wanted to build, my gut said no, because this is a concept that has been explored pretty thoroughly.

But then, the nuttier part of my brain thought, "Well, yes, I would build a megadungeon... but it can't be a dungeon."

To illustrate my point, here are two maps from the very famous video game Dark Souls. One perhaps underappreciated part of this game's design is it's map/level design, for how non-linear, connected, and creative the pieces fit together. The map to the left is an artistic interpretation of the levels, the right is a more literal mapping of the game.

Looking at the literal map, it actually does look a lot like a megadungeon... if the different colored-levels were connected by going up or down (and they actually are in-game), this mapping is not so different than say Undermountain, although this map is not as sprawling. The left map does a great job of illustrating the verticality of Dark Souls, much like a dungeon complex.

But Dark Souls technically isn't a megadungeon; although many segments of it are indeed underground, many segments are very much not, and instead stretch up into the sky. The Demon Ruins under the earth feels very much like a creative level of a dungeon, but the open air of Anor Londo?

Despite this, Dark Souls very much feels like your playing a megadungeon, albeit alone instead of in a party of adventurers. There are a handful of spots where one can rest and level up, but the remainder of the game is filled with enemies, zones that will repopulate with monsters regardless of how many times they are defeated. Different levels have their own themes, but they are all interconnected in both design and story. In nearly all respects, Dark Souls is a megadungeon... except it's not entirely a dungeon at all.

So that leaves my question... can one design a megadungeon, that is not a dungeon? If you have an open-air space with map-design similar to dungeons, such as an abandoned open city, or a burned-out forest, or a mountain side, can these be "levels" of an open-air megadungeon? Or is this entirely different design, and the megadungeon must be and only can be underground?

I'm curious as to which way the replies tilt, as I'm unsure of the answer myself.

 

[TaranTheWanderer]

Why can’t a hex crawl be a mega dungeon?

 

[aco175]

Some may depend on how you approach it. A city can be a mega dungeon since it is filled with places to explore and monsters to kill. Some monsters you run into can be good or neutral and you engage with them or you may fight some. There are levels in each building that act as sections to a layer of the city where each section has a theme like a noble section or docks, or sewers. Depends on how you look at it.

 

[Yora]

In practice, Lordran from Dark Souls is a dungeon where you can see the sky from several places. While there might not be a roof everywhere, it's still pathways flanked by walls, even if some some walls are pits.
It has the skin of a city, but the layout is all dungeon.

 

[Mannahnin]

Yes, I would tend to say that such an adventuring locale can indeed be a megadungeon. Having parts of it open to the air doesn't negate that. It isn't essential to the definition that it be entirely underground.

You could theoretically have a megadungeon that was largely open to the sky, like the goblin king's Labyrinth from the Jim Henson movie.

The main reason most megadungeons aren't, I suspect, is because letting the players just climb over/walk on top of/fly over the walls would tend to sabotage most of the channeling and limitations of exploration that a dungeon normally does. It's also a challenge to describe. "Ok, the thief climbs up the wall and can see for quite a distance in every direction. I could give you a map of all the rooms and corridors in this area, but it really should be a perspective map, because the walls should block most of your view into any given space. Heck, how do I present that?"

But if you're open to and can handle the increased options for vertical movement and players moving over the walls, it sounds like it could be really interesting and a format more open to players moving any direction they choose than a usual megadungeon.

As Taran indicated, it could also work more like a hex crawl, where players can move in pretty much any direction on a more abstracted level. Come to think of it, I ran an abstracted megadungeon like that back in 4th ed- Thunderspire Labyrinth. It worked basically like a point crawl; miles of abstracted corridors and galleries through which movement took time and navigation checks (unless you had a guide), and in which were lots of specific detailed locations, and if the party ran into a random encounter between them, I'd plop down a random map of corridors and put the PCs down in the middle of it, in marching order.

 

[TaranTheWanderer]

To expand on what I was saying, a 'Hex' could be a room. The pace of movement and description is different but, essentially, you're going from one locale to the next. Most mega-dungeons have factions that are in competition with each other. Describing, "You walk down a long hallway to a locked door." and "You travel for half a day to the Mountain Pass Gate" is fluff even if the challenges are slightly different.

Are there traps in the hallway? Is there a pitfall on the way to the Mountain Pass?
Is there a guardian at the Door to the locked door or the Mountain Pass?

The Mountain Pass is just the territory of the Stone Giants that inhabit the mountains and you have to deal with them as you go through their territory and they're in competition with the neighbouring Cult-leading Sorcerer living on the escarpment. Do you fight your way through their territory or do you help them defeat the sorcerer in the next part of the 'dungeon'.

 

[Quickleaf]

So that leaves my question... can one design a megadungeon, that is not a dungeon? If you have an open-air space with map-design similar to dungeons, such as an abandoned open city, or a burned-out forest, or a mountain side, can these be "levels" of an open-air megadungeon? Or is this entirely different design, and the megadungeon must be and only can be underground?

I'm curious as to which way the replies tilt, as I'm unsure of the answer myself.

Wow, that's a gorgeous and well conceived map. Great example!

If I were doing an open-air megadungeon, I would aim to address flight through judicious use of (a) isolation / blocking, (b) aerial hazards, and (c) lures.

The idea being that, yes, you can survey the surface with unimepeded arcane eye, sending a flying familiar to scout, or everyone jumping on the flying carpet, but the major quests require you to go underground / past indoor defenses.

Then you can start to get creative with how open-air, flight, isolation/block, aerial hazards, and lures work each of your zones in the dungeon.

For example, take a funnel-shaped basin, shear off portions of the interior which now become "open-air" in a "surveying the many dark entrances as we fly lower and lower into the pit" kind of feeling. Add some cascading waterfalls which further limit access and explain a pool of water at the bottom. Then have a dragon obviously lairing there, but it's often out hunting, so there's a ticking time clock when the PCs enter the funnel. They can fly in to survey their options, but then they've got to delve to pursue quest objectives, all in the back of their head that if they're not either expeditious or able to find an alternate exit, the dragon may have returned when they attempt to fly out.

 

[Wolfram stout]

IMO, No, it does not have to be a dungeon. If you go to BoardGameGeek.com and look at their recommendation forums, you will threads (there always seems to be one on the first couple of pages) ask for Dungeon Crawler games. A few years ago, it was inevitable that someone, very quickly, would recommend Space Hulk. And that has impacted my views since on both dungeons and meg-dungeons.

So, an abandoned town as a Mega-Dungeon.....Heck yes, it has a lot of pros to it that an underground dungeon would not. A forest where it is effectively a hex crawl, sure, that has lots of design choices to make the work more fun.

 

[GMMichael]

My dungeons tend to be underground affairs, for the purpose of keeping prisoners away from fresh air. Which is apparently misinformed, because the word used to mean "great tower of a castle. .."

An adventuring site, which has limited routes for the PCs to take and is accompanied by one or more maps, can be just about anywhere. I would hesitate to call something a " megadungeon" if it has a peaceful settlement somewhere within, especially if that settlement has an armorer, inn, or tavern.

 

[Urriak Uruk]

I want to respond to each of these comments (because I love them!) but I do have a simple solution to the "Well, what do you do about PCs who can fly?"

Now maybe don't actually have a huge dragon patrolling the skies (but also, why not, it is Dungeons and Dragons after all). But I absolutely do believe there should be random encounters and other encounters in the sky above, to keep PCs on their toes. It helps that although having a couple PCs who can fly is pretty common, but having an entire party who can much less so. Meaning, it can be a risk to send a PC to scout above when that might attract the attention of a nearby nest of harpies!