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Message: <blockquote data-quote="crash_beedo" data-source="post: 4659313" data-attributes="member: 18781">My own 4E design is going pretty well.  My group is just finishing up Thunderspire Labyrinth; my agreement has been to run the heroic tier (H1-H3), and in between there and P1, kick-off the first few levels of the megadungeon game with new characters - PHB2 should be out by then.  I know the 6 players are looking for a chance to swap some roles around and try on some new classes.  1-2 months in the megadungeon should get them close to L3, and then it's back to Paragon tier with the original guys while I go back to building the megadungeon.I know, bouncing between campaigns isn't great, but I don't want megadungeon building to be a burnout generating hamster wheel, either.  I figure when we exhaust the material, I'll run P1 for the first campaign, and develop the next few megadungeon levels, run it, switch back to P2, etc.Anyway, I am going with the design model of 'delves' and treating the megadungeon as a location for expeditions rather than an unending dungeon crawl.  It's a modular approach and takes advantage of the improvements in the 4E XP and encounter building system, while not overwhelming me.  To that end, wandering monsters are part of the 8-10 encounters per level and are accounted for in the XP and parcel system.For instance, the dungeon is beneath a city, and the first level includes the city sewers; it's been very easy to hang the small delve expeditions on the sewer map (one of them is the cellars to the haunted house, another delve is the dungeon beneath an evil temple in the city).  The first delve is the haunted house itself.There are still problems... what if the PC's find the different ways down to the second dungeon level (the actual "megadungeon" is below the sewers) - but they choose to clear out additional "delves" in the sewers without taking on greater risks?  I plan on giving them compelling plot hooks; clearing out some of those delves naturally - for instance, rival adventurers got there first; making the monetary rewards dwindle.I can't imagine 'old-school' megadungeons avoided the problem too - in fact, if you had a huge free-form map, the problem might be excaserbated by the completionists!  Your group achieves level 2 experience, has found multiple ways down, but the map has too many open areas that scream 'unexplored'.  And the group reasons, "it'll be easy to sweep through there now that we're 2nd level".  Sounds like the same 'grind' potential to me.  For that reason, I think it's important to have the illusion of size, and the ability to hang additional modular delves onto the map if necessary, but not overcreate...</blockquote>

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