Familiar with the mega-dungeon?

[Raven Crowking]

During my BD&D and AD&D1 days, these modules were what I thought was the standard format:

In Search of the Unknown
Keep on the Borderland
Palace of the Silver Princess
Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh
Village of Hommlet
Secret of Bone Hill

When I and my friends created our own dungeons, they fell into the pattern set by the above.

First off, that's a great set of modules to use as templates. There is something uber-cool about the layout maps of Hommlet and the caves in KotB. The playtest dungeon PDF I made for RCFG was based on memories of Bone Hill.

Like you, I didn't play megadungeons in 1e. I don't know why; maybe it wasn't until Undermountain that I had a real example of how cool they could be. Even in 1e, though, I loved the idea of an endlessly sprawling ruined city. I suppose that came from Dwellers of the Forbidden City and reading S&S novels.

Again, my real interest lies in trying to find out how that megadungeon meme got transfered. I knew about it in my 1e days; I don't know why I knew about it then. I'd like to know how Gary passed on the idea that his campaign centered in and around the ruins of Castle Greyhawk, and how he managed to promote this as a normal and/or desireable kind of campaign. Where was that elusive first hint to be found?


RC

 

[Bumbles]

I knew about it in my 1e days; I don't know why I knew about it then. I'd like to know how Gary passed on the idea that his campaign centered in and around the ruins of Castle Greyhawk, and how he managed to promote this as a normal and/or desireable kind of campaign. Where was that elusive first hint to be found?

Well, that might be a bit of a different subject, as I'm not sure I ever thought of what Gary, Arneson, Greenwood, or anybody else was doing. Others may be the same, or different. However, it might be worth looking at some of the writings of the time, such as in the early issues of "The Strategic Review" "The Dragon" and even "White Dwarf" for ideas?

 

[coyote6]

I don't remember when I knew about Castle Greyhawk or what kind of game Gygax ran originally; probably sometime in the early to mid-'80s, and probably from Dragon magazine. I didn't go to conventions, so it wasn't from there; the people I gamed with didn't discuss Gygax's game or how we thought the game should be played, or anything nearly as meta as that, so it wasn't via osmosis from people.

In addition, even once I knew how the original Castle Greyhawk game went, I didn't care. It never even occurred to me to care; the thought that it might have been how one was supposed to play D&D simply never came up. My understanding of "how to play" came from how we played, which in turn came from three things, IIRC: the modules we had (especially the ones that came with the basic sets, or were for Basic D&D), the ideas we had (which were largely inspired by our imaginations and fiction), and the random dungeons we would roll up (which we got bored of doing way before they became "mega").

If someone had come up with a CG-esque megadungeon, I'm sure we would have ran with it; but no one did, so we didn't.

(Or, if they did, we never got around to it -- I remember one campaign where we never quite got to the actual adventure part, between bandits, the trouble various PCs stirred up, and the campaign stopping for reasons I don't quite recall. So maybe we were following a rumor to a Greyhawk-esque delve of Gygaxian proportions. I kind of doubt it, but who knows.)

 

[Mythmere1]

Started with Holmes Basic, played a mishmash of OD&D + AD&D PHB. Definitely used the megadungeon as the center of everything, starting with a kid's enthusiastically deep 20 level dungeon side-view, and maps were based on the method of B1.

The only campaign I had was Blackmoor, so the megadungeon concept was reinforced, but so was the wilderness side of things. We tended to go straight from the dungeon to the freehold on reaching high level (which happened reasonably often since we played a lot and also cheated a fair amount).

 

[Ariosto]

Where was that elusive first hint to be found?

D&D Volume 1, pp. 5-6 ("Preparation For Play"), and elsewhere in the original set (especially Volume 3, with starts with a cross-section of levels). It was hardly an "elusive hint" there, being quite explicitly described.

Even if one never encountered the "little brown books", one was unlikely to be separated by many degrees from someone who had until some time after the Holmes Basic D&D (which also conveyed the dungeon concept) came out in 1977.

The Advanced books were explicitly aimed at experienced D&Ders ("No more searching through stacks of books and magazines ..."), and at first the only way to have acquired such experience was via some recension of the original game.

After AD&D alone (or, more likely, Moldvay Basic) boldly went where no D&Der had gone before -- when and where its local roots were planted at least primarily by the new texts without the context drawn from the original and passed on by example -- the original conception was easily obscured. It stood clear as day in the PHB and DMG for those prepared to see it, which may be one reason neither author nor editor sought to make it clearer.

The "mega" aspect is more a second-order component of the first-order design considerations that sought NOT to produce a linear string of encounters that could be "finished", "cleared" or "solved" by players.

 

[coyote6]

Even if one never encountered the "little brown books", one was unlikely to be separated by many degrees from someone who had

I never gamed with anyone who mentioned OD&D, at least not while I knew them. They may have played or started with OD&D, but it never came up, and there was no discussion of how one should play. We just played (sans megadungeons, as I mentioned).

Then again, the first time I played was around late '78, when I was 8 or so, so I didn't care about game theory. What I cared about was that the game was pretty fun, despite the fact that my first level fighter (with 4 or 5 hp, IIRC) got beat up trying to get into the City-State of the Invincible Overlord, and went home. After that, I hectored my mom into buying me that game, which IIRC led to me ending up with the AD&D PH & DMG and Basic D&D. My friends from grade school and I ended up playing Basic (and Expert) D&D, along with home-made variations thereof ("roll a d6; on a 4-6, you hit!"), before we found folks playing at the public library, and joined them -- where it was a mix of AD&D, Traveller, and eventually Champions.

 

[Voadam]

I knew deep dungeons were a regular part of play from the Moldvay basic set and the AD&D PH and DMG, but my initial experience was with modules and homebrews that felt like modules. Temple of Elemental Evil was the biggest dungeon but things like B1 In Search of the Unknown and B2 Keep on the Borderlands were more common. Things like modules from the slavers series, the Pharoah series, the L series, and the C and I series were even more common IME.

 

[Baron Opal]

Yes, definatly.

Where did the idea come from? Dunegon Geomorphs set, Encounter and Treasure tables, Skull Mountain in the Holmes Blue Book, &c. There are a number of examples of and aids to make megadunegons in the early products but it wasn't a necessity in order to play.

 

[rgard]

We played in a mega-dungeon in 1979-1980 at UofM (Go Blue). I believe the DM had been designing the dungeon for 2-3 years prior to when we played. She was a senior and we were freshmen.

We never managed to explore the entire dungeon. I don't remember how many levels it had but the first couple of levels were drawn on dozens of 1/4" graph paper sheets with one square = 10'x10'

We played at least once a week in that campaign usually a Friday night through early Saturday morning.

It was a hoot.

Thanks,
Rich

 

[Gilladian]

I started playing in 1976, or possibly late 75. My brother brought the game home from boyscouts. We played just the two of us for a couple years, with a few brief joins by family and friends. We ALWAYS played in a dungeon. Since Tod was the DM, I can't swear they were always the SAME dungeon, but I think they were. I wasn't really quite aware you could do things OUTSIDE the dugneon except train and sell stuff.

Then we moved, and found a game shop, nd the game-world expanded wildly...

(Edit: I remember we had dungeon geomorphs and dungeon encounter tables and it seemed to me that adventures just naturally occurred in dungeons... where else?)