D&D 5E Megadungeon delving as a campaign’s core; is it compatible with modern play?

[Lanefan]

This seems, to me, to bring up the Coco Chanel moment....

The question in the OP was about making megadungeons compatible with modern play. Given that folks have limited time at the table, the typical old megadungeon play must be edited down to allow space for the modern play moments to happen.

Which megadungeony concerns do we set aside, then?

None.

Instead, players need to be made aware going in that this type of play/campaign takes a lot of time at the table, and not to expect the campaign to be finished anytime soon; think years rather than months. Further, that if a player has to leave the game due to real life rearing its head - it happens, no big deal - the game will continue, quite possibly with a new player with (a) new PC(s) taking the place of the one who leaves. Meanwhile the departing player's PC(s) is/are retired at the next reasonable in-fiction opportunity.

And yes, I'm reversing the polarity on this one: instead of making megadungeons compatible with the players, I'd rather make the players be or become compatible with megadungeons.

 

[Lanefan]

It depends, sounds a lot like you are thinking a megadungeon has to be run as kick-in-the-door and not used like a dynamic setting with lots of factions and locations. When used in a such a way, time management is no different than any other setting But my group runs 2 hours sessions, and we are used to stopping in the middle of battles when we have to. We don't have the expectation that every game session needs to be wrapped up like some chapter in a book or TV episode.

This. Seconded.

That's the advantage of playing weekly, our memories are still good enough we can remember where we were a week past.

Our memories aren't, but that's what game logs are for.

 

[Lanefan]

Yeah, but, after twenty years? Like I said, 5e is no different than 3e or 4e in this sense. HP haven't been a logistical resource since AD&D, and, even then, they were barely that. I cannot possibly be the only group out there that had two clerics in the party. The longest any rest ever took was a couple of days. And, again, that's ignoring the pile of potions, scrolls and various magical doodads that granted HP.

Indeed.....until one or both of those Clerics dies, and-or the various healing doodads run out or get dispelled or blow up in a fireball. Or the dedicated curing Cleric with all the healing doodads gets turned to stone - I've seen this happen.

IME sometimes no matter how much healing a party thinks it has, it's still not enough.

There's a very good reason why HP isn't used as a logistical resource anymore. It hasn't been one for decades.

Just because a design mistake has become persistent doesn't absolve it of being a mistake.

There's a middle ground between 1e natural healing rates which were too slow and 4e-5e natural healing rates which are way too fast. My/our solution is that what 5e would call a long rest gets you back a fixed % of your maximum hit points*, unless you've recently been badly hurt i.e. gone below 0 (in 5e, having to make a death save would be the equivalent) in which case recovery is slowed for a while.

The advantages are twofold: because it's a % of one's total it works the same for everyone and doesn't favour any one class over any other; and because it's a fixed % value any given DM can raise or lower that value to suit what she thinks works for her table/campaign/playstyle.

* - we use 10%, round all fractions up, i.e. someone with 20 h.p. max would get back 2 while someone with 21 max would get back 3.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Maybe, but the thread premise is if it’s possible to bridge and combine the two, character story first in the megadungeon setting, I guess without being required to specifically tailor their characters to the dungeon setting.

So what I'm taking from this is that you'd like to use the setting of a megadungeon rather than how to make everything Old School.

The concept was pretty big in anime/manga a few years ago with Tower of Uruk, DanMachi and more recently Made in Abyss.

Basically what these do is present the dungeon is something so vast, so infinite that it has a direct impact on the world economy and culture. Cities spring up in them, they're so gigantic and so many people challenge them that there's entire ecosystems and even civilizations inside with demarcations and secret paths with forward outposts and adventurers even retiring down there.

The key is the use the dungeon itself as a setting with its own discrete regions and even miniature dungeons inside it rather than the endurance test it was back in the day.

With that in mind, use the nature of a giant dungeon to build the narrative. Maybe there's a new unexplored area; maybe the party is racing rivals to some goal, maybe an enemy is trying to hide in the depths, etc. Fighting the dungeon doesn't have to be the focus.

 

[Hussar]

The timeline is pages long

The only story hook is that there is a legendary dungeon surrounded by dark rumors in the wilderness.

See, this is where I have something of a problem with the idea that there is no pre-authored story in your campaign. If the timeline is pages long, there are entire stories going on in your game. Have to be. Without any sort of story, you can't have a pages long timeline. Now, these aren't complete stories, obviously, but, they are stories, IMO.

But, I do think that where these conversations go off the rails (heh) is that people have different definitions of "story". Which makes the conversations somewhat difficult.

 

[Hussar]

None.

Instead, players need to be made aware going in that this type of play/campaign takes a lot of time at the table, and not to expect the campaign to be finished anytime soon; think years rather than months. Further, that if a player has to leave the game due to real life rearing its head - it happens, no big deal - the game will continue, quite possibly with a new player with (a) new PC(s) taking the place of the one who leaves. Meanwhile the departing player's PC(s) is/are retired at the next reasonable in-fiction opportunity.

And yes, I'm reversing the polarity on this one: instead of making megadungeons compatible with the players, I'd rather make the players be or become compatible with megadungeons.

Meh. I don't do math on an abacus, I use a calculator. So, I don't rely on decades old play styles. Sure, mapping and tracking all that stuff is fun... for a session or three. Then, it becomes tedious accounting that, frankly, the players stop caring about because it's tedious accounting.

So, I don't bother with a lot of it when doing mega-dungeons. Exploration can be abstracted into a group skill check which reveals differing levels of information depending on the difficulty that the players decide upon. Failure still reveals information, although that information might be flawed in some way or the scouting might result in getting ambushed. Because spending hours and hours of the scout player going off ahead to gather information, then come back to the group, then group gets to go forward, is just the Decker problem writ large. It's mind bogglingly boring to force 3/4 of the players to warm the pines while that one player gets to actually play all the time.

And, again, as far as "years" go, well, we do not agree on this. I can honestly say that I have zero interest in running or playing a campaign for more than two years. There are just so many other ideas and campaigns that I want to run that anything more than two years is just not on the table for me, either as a player or a DM.

 

[Hussar]

Indeed.....until one or both of those Clerics dies, and-or the various healing doodads run out or get dispelled or blow up in a fireball. Or the dedicated curing Cleric with all the healing doodads gets turned to stone - I've seen this happen.

IME sometimes no matter how much healing a party thinks it has, it's still not enough.

Just because a design mistake has become persistent doesn't absolve it of being a mistake.

There's a middle ground between 1e natural healing rates which were too slow and 4e-5e natural healing rates which are way too fast. My/our solution is that what 5e would call a long rest gets you back a fixed % of your maximum hit points*, unless you've recently been badly hurt i.e. gone below 0 (in 5e, having to make a death save would be the equivalent) in which case recovery is slowed for a while.

The advantages are twofold: because it's a % of one's total it works the same for everyone and doesn't favour any one class over any other; and because it's a fixed % value any given DM can raise or lower that value to suit what she thinks works for her table/campaign/playstyle.

* - we use 10%, round all fractions up, i.e. someone with 20 h.p. max would get back 2 while someone with 21 max would get back 3.

Again, this isn't a 4e thing. This started in 2e and then really ramped up in 3e. Never minding that in 3e, you could heal to max naturally in about 2, maybe 3 days and, again, healing wands (which aren't dispellable, cannot break from fireball and are never lost in 3e) give you a battery of about 450 HP for 750 gp. Healing stops being a tactical resource. Sure, you could probably make it so again, as @Oofta mentions, slowing down natural healing and having a player that refuses to heal ((Good grief, I would expect the group to beat that player with dice bags for being such a collosal douche for doing that)) But, the point is, if you're playing baseline 5e, HP are not a tactical level resource - same as 3e and 4e.

I just don't really understand this incessant need to make HP a logistic resource. There are so many other things that actually are logistic resource. You have the exhaustion rules right there. Spell slots, maybe? Although, again, by higher levels, that becomes less of an issue. But, why bother using HP? All that does is enforce 5 minute work days. The more you tie HP as a long term resource that is only regained over longer time, well, why wouldn't I just use longer time frames to regain those resources if possible?

To me, it's just far too much work for far too little reward. There are other things that are a lot more interesting than futzing about with HP all the time.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Gotta come out sometime, and it could be that the longer you wait, the worse it becomes.

Dungeon Denizen: “I think it’s about to wear off! This bonfire needs MORE FIREWOOD!”

 

[Bill Zebub]

To my mind, that's when players submit their backstories which the DM then makes some kind of game around.

Wait…what? Is THAT why players keep handing me short stories at the start of new campaigns.

I always wondered. I thought maybe it was like giving the teacher an apple.

Maybe I should have read them.

 

[Hussar]

Wait…what? Is THAT why players keep handing me short stories at the start of new campaigns.

I always wondered. I thought maybe it was like giving the teacher an apple.

Maybe I should have read them.

Boo. This is the reason that I keep getting players who want to play orphans with no family, who have just arrived in town a couple of weeks ago, whose homeland is some plays conveniently VERY far away and inaccessible.

Climbs up on REALLY HIGH soapbox and begins shaking fist at the sky

I hate those characters with the power of a thousand suns.

Gimme SOMETHING I can use to tie your character into this setting and campaign. Anything. I don't care what it is. You give me the tiniest little corner of your character sheet to add to and I will bend over backwards to make your character the star of the setting. To give a current example in my Candlekeep game:

Character 1 - Dragonborn warlock from the Faewild. Very interesting character but entirely self contained and there's practically nothing I can use here to tie it into the campagin.
Character 2 - Owlkin Artificer - again, great character, lots of personality, but, again, entirely self contained, with zero ties to anything in the campaign.
Character 3 - Tiefling Bard -from Baldur's Gate whose family has made repeated appearances over the course of the campaign, including being the central element in one of the adventures.
Character 4- A living dream of an Aboleth - encounters the Raven Queen and becomes the central figure in the adventure culminating in the Raven Queen capturing the dreaming Aboleth for its memories and freeing the Living Dream to pursue its own goals.
Character 5 - A mysterious Warforged Cleric with a randomly chiming countdown clock inside it. - becomes the central figure in several quests resulting in the Shadowfell being restored when the Cleric turns out to be the key to releasing the primordial Zargan from its prison that was using the light of the Shadowfell to destroy it permanently. ((It makes a lot more sense that I'm telling it here, just work with me))

THAT'S why I want characters with ties to the setting. THAT'S why I loathe the "man with no name" characters that I see over and over again from players who think that parking their butt in a chair for three hours a week is enough of a contribution to the game and are just here to passively consume whatever the DM spoons up each week. Never, ever again will I play with players like that. Nor will I ever play with DM's who don't want my input into the campaign.

/end rant