Tell me about your Big Dungeon

[jrients]

I'm not sure how many people write there own big dungeons anymore, but back in the day it was the thing to do. My big dungeon was simply called the Dungeon of Doom. It was ten levels, though I never needed more than eight of them. My favorite feature of the dungeon was what the players dubbed the Hellevator, an elevator trap that sent PCs from level 1 down to level 4. There was a Greater Hellevator from 5 to 8 that the PCs never went inside. They learned their lesson about nondescript 10' by 10' rooms.

My PCs decided to start doing more wilderness adventures after a tentative scouting of level 7 of the Dungeon of Doom. First there was the pit trap that was home to a Pit Fiend. They beat the guy and decided they'd do some basic reconnaisance before looking for any further fights. Our heroes discovered in one room lurked an old red dragon, the mother of the younger red dragon they killed back on level 4. (That was a tough fight. All the PCs went down except the monk, who spent 3 or 4 round in one on one combat with the critter. How many PCs can say they karate chopped a dragon to death?) Across the hall lived a six pack of demons, one of each number I through VI (nowadays that would be a vrock, a hezrou, a glabrezu, a nalfeshnee, a marilith, and a balor). Not far from these rooms were the residence of a trio of mind flayers. Given the choices of doors to bash down, I'm not surprised that they never went back in.

So anybody else got any favorite snippets from their big crazy dungeons?

 

[diaglo]

over 480 rooms

9 levels.

all dungeons had 9 levels back in the day.

thousands of gps. and even more experience points to be earned.

killed 100+ PCs.

 

[Kalendraf]

Back in high school during the mid-80's, I got my hands on some of that small graph paper where the lines are like 1/16th or maybe 1/8th of an inch wide and I went totally nuts drawing a dungeon. The final dungeon was going to be 10 levels or so, and each level would have had 100's of rooms.

I got level 1 drawn, and began populating it with monsters, traps and the like. I sent one party into it, and they promptly died after a couple rooms due to intra-party squabling over something or other unrelated to the dungeon. I had some rather immature players at the time.

I shelved the maps and ideas until some other time. Shortly after that, big dungeons started falling out of favor, and I started using more city, wilderness and political style campaigns later on. I'm not sure where the map is, but I suspect it's in my loose pile of 1e stuff (maps, adventures, character sheets, etc) collecting dust on my shelf.

Nowadays, any dungeons I run with more than 1 level or more than a dozen rooms are considered big. My how times have changed.

 

[the Jester]

Ahh, the Hill of Skulls. You had to riddle with a crypt thing to get in (there was no physical entrance), and if you answered wrong you were teleported to a deeper level (depending on what you guessed).

Many levels, including trap levels. It was a 2e dungeon; it had a Ravenloft style gnome vampire jester that I would love to update to 3e.

Pcs went in there but ended up fleeing after they fell for a trap set by a group of dao. Most of them made it past the fire giant with a harpoon standing in a pool of lava, though.

Poor Drelvin got turned to stone there.

 

[Zappo]

Hah! Back when I played OD&D, I made a 10 levels dungeon where each level had at least 20 rooms, chock full of monsters, traps and riddles.

That was the last big dungeon I ever made. Apparently, the shock left my players with a deep hatred of dungeons.

 

[Raven Crowking]

The Dungeon of Thale

The Dungeon of Thale had 20 levels and six sub-levels. Each map was drawn on 8 squares/inch architect's graph paper, and each level had over 200 (and as many as 500) distinct encounter areas. The dungeon contained towns, cities, and inns. The lowest level main map was drawn at a scale of 1 suare = 80 feet; sub-maps were needed to detail important ares (like the Mind Flayer City). Over 50 unique tunnel systems were described on that level alone, joining larger cavern areas, and most of these were oer 1,200 feet in length and included major encounter areas of their own.

Then I moved, and the dungeon disappeared.



EDIT: I'm working on a new mega-dungeon, though.


RC

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

I'm actually trying to put a massive dungeon together for my current world - a kind of "MY world's" largest dungeon. Its still very much in the conceptual stages, but I bought an 11 x 17 pad of graph paper to draw the maps out on... We'll see how far i get with it.

I'd love to hear more ideas - especially the trap/trick stuff - I'm never all that good at that.

 

[jrients]

Ahh, the Hill of Skulls. You had to riddle with a crypt thing to get in (there was no physical entrance), and if you answered wrong you were teleported to a deeper level (depending on what you guessed).

Dude, that is effing beautiful.

 

[Hand of Evil]

Like a few I guess mine was based from Tolkin's Mines or Moria, first I started with a dwarven highway trade way below a mountain range, 360 miles, I then made way stations every 30 miles with a town every 90 miles, in the middle was a city. I then went outward from the line with everything, mines, caves, rivers. Then I added levels, I would only map the bits the players were dealing with, mostly it was used to quick travel from one side of the mountain to the next but I would have raids from the underdark or bandits.

 

[VirgilCaine]

The Dungeon of Thale had 20 levels and six sub-levels. Each map was drawn on 8 squares/inch architect's graph paper, and each level had over 200 (and as many as 500) distinct encounter areas. The dungeon contained towns, cities, and inns. The lowest level main map was drawn at a scale of 1 suare = 80 feet; sub-maps were needed to detail important ares (like the Mind Flayer City). Over 50 unique tunnel systems were described on that level alone, joining larger cavern areas, and most of these were oer 1,200 feet in length and included major encounter areas of their own.

RC

Maybe I should take this idea and combine it with the very dungeon-like stuff from Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz IIRC. Dorothy and the Wizard get trapped underground in an Oz-like Fairytale-esque realm with different unique magical things. Like the "wooden" plane where there were wooden trees, grass, etc. including flying gargoyle like things, all carved out of wood. Also, the tiny Valley of Voe, where invisible bears hunt the invisible people.