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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 5886638" data-attributes="member: 4937">I ran the LFGS's weekly open dungeon crawl for a while.  I started out preping 5-10 room dungeons set inside mini-modules, but it took me about 20 hours of work to prep a 2-3 hour session.  To reduce my work load, I started building a megadungeon using the 1e random dungeon generator to do the backbone work.  Using this pattern, I was able to prep 10-20 hours of game play in the same time it had been taking me to do my more detailed/structured work, which let me easily keep ahead of the rate of exploration.The dungeon started out as a planless sprawl, but eventually I morphed into the idea of having a 12 level dungeon.  Each level contained one room in which there was a lock of some sort, although not every lock looked like one.   The one of the first level was a circle of protective runes written in chalk in a hidden room.  The one on the second level was an enormous grandfather clock.   Each lock was gaurded, and each level also had a 'ruler' who desired most of all to open each lock.   The players were told only that the dungeon was made by a mad wizard to hide a fantastic treasure in a vault at the bottom of the dungeon.   I had eventually planned to theme lower levels by using different sorts of random generation.Anyway, my suggestion is that if you really want to make a mega dungeon and have it work, you need to find 10-12 lead developers that will commit to making a level of the dungeon in a way that feels old school.   Each dungeon should be limited to say 50-100 encounter locations, and each level should be planned to balance around a particular level of difficulty roughly 1-2 levels wide.   Once the place is mapped and populated, if you have lots of support for the project the details can be drawn up by any one who wants to contribute to one of the teams.   As lead developer, you should simply set a very broad theme that's easy to plan to, set some standards, and approve general plans (you'll probably want your own level to make as well).  Prisons for extra planar beings and mad wizards are cliche, but they do help explain how anything is possible.  Honestly, the quality of work in mega dungeons is so low generally, that it wouldn't be too hard for an EnWorld fan project to meet or exceed the general level of quality associated with megadungeons.</blockquote>

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