Dungeon Dive 3: The Hungry Demiplane

[Crothian]

So you're a busy GM who has developed a plot, created some NPCs, and bought a mini for the big bad boss, but you're missing a crucial component: the dungeon.

Previously, you had two options: buy a map and spend time populating it yourself, or buy an adventure and spend time stripping out everything you don't need.

Now you've got a third option: Dungeon Dive. Each pre-populated adventure location in the Dungeon Dive line comes with a full-color map, a detailed map key, and fully developed encounter areas with options for low, medium, and high level parties. You concentrate on the adventure, and let us provide the dungeon.

At 37 encounter areas, Dungeon Dive 3: The Hungry Demiplane, is the largest in the series. It presents a living demiplane complete with traps, hazards, creatures, and treasure. Also included are sample NPCs and a new magic item and mundane item.

This product is appropriate for adventuring parties of levels 3-15.

 

[Man-thing]

“Dungeon Dive #3 – The Hungry Plane” is a 27 page pdf designed for the d20 system with the intention of making the harried DMs life a little easier. Each of the Dungeon Dive series presents a premade dungeon that requires the addition of plot and BBEG for your heroes to overcome. The dungeon is mapped and stocked with creatures, hazards, traps and treasure.

This product covers 37 encounter area which are hodge-podge of environments because the dungeon itself is a living demiplane that is swallowing up pieces of the multiverse. Trapped/residing in this plan are a number of creatures including a tribe of barbarian bugbears that use the plane as a staging ground for their assaults. The planar traits include Wild Magic, Mild Evil, Strong Chaos, and a Timelessness that allows for natural healing and poison to operate normally. Although no plot is provided I would think that stopping the mysterious disappearing raiders or stop the demiplane from consuming all reality could be a good choice.

It written for multiple levels and though the adcopy says 3-15th it’s easiest to situate the adventure at 4th, 8th, or 12th which is were the majority of the challenges are encountered. This is a good feature because it allows greater flexibility in purchasing, hazards, traps and treasure are also scalable. This could allow you to customize on the fly for things like “party never has a rogue” drop traps one level or “I play in the Forgotten Realms” and up the magic treasure one or two levels. Overall, this product is really solid and delivers what it promises, but there are a few things that hold it back from being excellent and polished product.

First, is that although the monster stats are included the description and mechanics of their special abilities is not so you will need to drag out your Monster Manual to the game table. Secondly, the map is computer-generated and looks blocky and it lacks a legend to identify what the symbols on it represent though most are recognizable. Finally, the implementation of the sentient demiplane could have stood for some more embellishment, as it stands it feeds on the pain and suffering of those inside which although sounding creepy is mechanically neutral. For instance, it might have been interesting to add a mechanic so each time a creature is killed, the demiplane adds a set number of rooms or even have new rooms forming around the party so they can see it’s just not another dungeon. It actions as written are limited to locking doors, re-loading traps, and warning occupants; instead the plane could be internally-morphic allowing the intelligence slope floors, turn out lights, or open pits to other plane.