OD&D example of play

[Philotomy Jurament]

Anyone here run or play in an OD&D game where it took place entirely inside one massive dungeon?

Nope. I don't think I would do that, although it might be possible (especially if you combined the "underground wilderness" approach of D1-3 with a campaign megadungeon beneath an underground city, or something like that).

My mythic underworld dungeon is a central feature of the campaign, but it's not the whole campaign. In fact, I've come to view the "campaign" as being more about playing the setting than just playing the dungeon. I view the setting as part of the "game board," rather than just a backdrop for adventures. You play the setting, just like you "play" a combat. The setting has set parameters and resources: local lords, populations, garrisons, incomes, replacement rates. The PCs' actions can make an actual and meaningful effect on those parameters. Reaching the "end game" around name level, where the PC becomes a power in his own right, maybe with a castle and such, is part of the game. (And one way to "win.") To become the Lord Wizard, or the Baron, or the High Patriarch, you need fortune and glory. The dungeon is an effective way to acquire both of those.

I also think the "end game" can begin very early. I don't mean the actual building of a castle, but maneuvering for the end game: learning the lay of the land, the personalities of the local lords, building relationships, et cetera.

I guess I still approach D&D with a lot of wargame concepts intact. A lot of those wargamey elements (orders of battle, domain resources and income, etc) won't come into full use until upper PC levels are reached, but they're always present in the game.

 

[Philotomy Jurament]

Well, just what are you going to publish? The whole thing is always in flux, maps and keys, so all you can ever get is a snapshot. Notes to oneself are a long way from making great reading for anyone else (even if they are not simply cryptic).
…
Why not pay someone to design one specifically as a text for publication? At most, that would be just the start of the work of making a good dungeon. The mise en scene before play is in a sort of sterile vacuum, as opposed to the fertile soil that produces organic growth once players start to interact with it…It would be sort of like offering a still photograph as a movie. It might be nice, but it's not the same thing. An old-style dungeon is a process, and -- unlike the dynamics of a movie -- a point of it is spontaneity.

Absolutely. I agree. I think this style of dungeon is best created through play, in a "creativity feedback loop" with your players. That's probably why published modules focused on tournament-style adventures or smaller "lair style" dungeons, and why even the larger published dungeons tend to stick with the lair-style design approach. A persistent campaign-style dungeon is not well-suited to publication. I won't go so far as to say it can't be done, but it's definitely not easy, and the result may not be worth the effort.

Another point is that a published and detailed megadungeon is a lot for a DM to digest and master. I think it's easier, and maybe even less time-consuming, to create your own. And I think you'll have a much better handle on the dungeon and its dynamics, from the very beginning, which means you'll be more confident running it. At this point, I can't see myself ever running a published megadungeon, although I'd certainly steal ideas and good bits for my own.

 

[Ariosto]

A lot of those wargamey elements (orders of battle, domain resources and income, etc) won't come into full use until upper PC levels are reached, but they're always present in the game.

I find that it tends to take from a year to three or so (depending on circumstances of play) to get a character to "name" level. Since most D&Ders have been playing several times as long, that "until" ought typically to be in the past!

This is an example of the prevalent disconnection from old-style campaigning. Lord Millford does not suddenly cease to be, just because young Johnny Carpenter has set forth to find his fortune.

What is (in the old mode) unusual is not their co-existence. What is unusual is the state of "starting a new campaign from scratch", with nothing but a few newly rolled, first-level PCs in a single monolithic "party".

 

[Doug McCrae]

Yeah that would be my follow-on question. How common was this approach? Anyone here run or play in an OD&D game where it took place entirely inside one massive dungeon?

I'm sure there must've been some OD&D games in the 70s that never went beyond the dungeon - it's all you need to play. I've heard about some games in those days starting at the entrance to the dungeon. Which makes perfect sense - there's nowhere else to go.

Gary's Greyhawk game went a month, before the city of Greyhawk appeared. I'm not sure if it was just dungeon until then or if there was wilderness too.

In order to provide a playtest environment in which to develop these rules, Gygax designed his own castle, "Castle Greyhawk", and prepared the first level of a dungeon that lay beneath it. Two of his children, Ernie and Elise, were the first players, and during their first session, they fought and destroyed the first monsters of the Greyhawk dungeon; Gygax variously recalled this as being some giant centipedes or a nest of scorpions. During the same session, Ernie and Elise also found the first treasure, a chest of 3,000 copper coins (which was too heavy to carry, much to the children's disgust). After his children had gone to bed, Gygax immediately began to work on the second level of the dungeon. At the next play session, Ernie and Elise were joined by Gygax's friends Don Kaye and Rob and Terry Kuntz.

About a month after his first session, Gygax created the nearby city of Greyhawk, where the players' characters could sell their treasure and find a place to rest.

- Wikipedia Greyhawk entry

Interesting to note that Gary only started his game with one level. And he tells us to write six!

I know that Dave Arneson and Gary Gygax, creators of D&D, and the first Dungeon Masters, were members of a wargaming club, the Castle & Crusade Society, in the late 60s, before D&D existed. My understanding is that they each had territory on a medievalised version of a map of North America, Arneson's territory being in the vicinity of the Twin Cities, Minnesota, and Gary's being around Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. So quite possibly the world existed before the dungeons did.

 

[Philotomy Jurament]

ISince most D&Ders have been playing several times as long, that "until" ought typically to be in the past! This is an example of the prevalent disconnection from old-style campaigning. Lord Millford does not suddenly cease to be, just because young Johnny Carpenter has set forth to find his fortune.

Just so. (Which is one reason I'm a little uncomfortable with the term "end game," and put it in scare quotes. It's not really the end of the game, or the campaign, at all.)

 

[Beginning of the End]

I didn't mean to refute that you can have fun playing D&D without any roleplaying. We certainly did have fun playing our parties. We just had more fun after discovering that we could also limit ourselves to one pc each and roleplay them, YMMV.

I think the problem is that you're projecting your own inability to roleplay multiple characters at the same time onto other people. And, from that, concluding that they're not roleplaying because they're playing multiple characters.

I don't think it's intentional, but it's kind of annoying to be told that you're not roleplaying when you are, in fact, roleplaying. (With funny voices and everything.) Particularly when your conclusion seems to rely on a false premise which would also indicate that GMs are never capable of roleplaying the NPCs.

 

[Jhaelen]

I think the problem is that you're projecting your own inability to roleplay multiple characters at the same time onto other people. And, from that, concluding that they're not roleplaying because they're playing multiple characters.

I don't think it's intentional, but it's kind of annoying to be told that you're not roleplaying when you are, in fact, roleplaying. (With funny voices and everything.) Particularly when your conclusion seems to rely on a false premise which would also indicate that GMs are never capable of roleplaying the NPCs.

Agreed. None of us was ever to roleplay multiple characters at the same time. Since my experience differs from yours, I've come to a different conclusion than you. I'm glad to hear, you're more capable roleplayers than we were - Cheers!

I still disagree about the npc thing: As a DM roleplaying different npcs at different times is not a problem (for me). Playing a whole bunch of npcs at the same time _is_ a problem (for me). Talking to yourself half of the time in six different funny voices without boring the players to death? Definitely beyond my abilities.

 

[Lanefan]

Could someone explain to me the persistent dungeon thing? That's new to me. What would be the advantages of returning to the same dungeon twice, or taking a later group through a dungeon already explored and presumably ransacked by an earlier group?

In my experience, getting double duty out of an adventure is not uncommon and usually happens for one of three reasons, one still hypothetical:

1. The original party find out well after the fact that they missed something vital - a level or area, an item, a BBEG, etc. - and have to go back and finish.
2. Enough game-world time has passed that the dungeon has repopulated naturally and needs to be cleaned out again. Keep on the Borderlands is great for this.
3. (hypothetical) The original party never came out e.g. by TPK or got teleported elsewhere, and a second party goes in to investigate.

Further, previously-ransacked dungeons are great places for raw first-level types to cut their adventuring teeth...

I tend not to run mega-dungeons (that said, I might be about to run two concurrently, depending how much exploring the PCs in each party really want to do) but all it takes is for there to be something both significant and missable in an adventure to be able to use it again later in the same campaign.

Lan-"killing monsters is the easy part"-efan

 

[Hussar]

/snip
You're right about it being potentially boring to get thru a large cleared section, with nothing but wandering monster checks. In his Dungeon Architect series in White Dwarf, Roger Musson suggests adding a teleport system to alleviate this problem.

Snort. Videogamey. :thumbup:

/snip of some interesting stuff.

I wouldn't say the contents are supposed to be randomly generated. I use random rolling as tool for filling in areas that I haven't already keyed and for generating ideas, but I don't hold myself to the rolls.

*GASP* You FUDGE die rolls? BURN THE HERETIC.

Yeah that would be my follow-on question. How common was this approach? Anyone here run or play in an OD&D game where it took place entirely inside one massive dungeon?

I did a poll here on Enworld some time ago asking this question. About 5-10% of respondents had actually played in a mega-dungeon at all. I think the point that it was not a very common way of playing is probably fairly true.

That being said, when I ran the World's Largest Dungeon, my bunch had an absolute blast. Really was a good time.

 

[Odhanan]

I think you're right. Reading Knights & Knaves Alehouse one sees a lot of talk about 'working on my mega-dungeon' but not so much 'running my mega-dungeon'.

I feel like you are somehow assuming that work on a megadungeon ends once actual play begins.
That's just not the case.

I am running a megadungeon called the Tower of St. Makhab. This megadungeon is actually a blueprint/experiment field for my larger project, the Black Abbey of St. Yessid. It's a gradual process that does involve actual play. It actually is a required process for the megadungeon to take a life of its own, in my opinion.

A megadungeon isn't something that you actually build entirely prior to play, and then call it quits. There's a constant back and forth going on between the game table and the drawing board, which informs the dungeon's further design. You can see hints of this in OD&D, when you start mapping your dungeon a few levels at a time, playing a few games, then adding a few more levels, etc. Now, the levels already designed have seen play in the meantime, and their denizens and feature will too evolve over time. It's a living environment. Not a module that is carved in stone and boom - that is it.