Tell me about your Big Dungeon

[BiggusGeekus]

I can at last reveal my Big Dungeon.

It was entitled ... Dungeon of the Purple Splotches!!!!

I, uh, was in 7th grade at the time.

Anyway, the dungeon was only about three levels deep, but it used four pages of graph paper for each level. The kicker was that the party was automatically hit with a fatal magical disease as soon as they entered and the only cure was at the heart of the dungeon. So, my premise was that the party goes into the dungeon for their motivation to go into the dungeon. Clever, huh?

My dungeons got better after I discovered girls.

 

[Crothian]

Mine was a Pyramid back in second edition. The players expolored it one room at a time, one room a day. They found it early in their carriers and it was something meant to find, do other things, go back to explore, do other things, come back explore more and learn more mysteries and answers. But no, the players went in, fought hard battle after hard battle. Needed a full day to recoup after each battle, but refused to give up on it.

 

[JamesDJarvis]

some of the dungeons in my current campaign:

“The Black pit of the Dark Masters” home of a hideously powerful cabal of necromancers is 50 levels deep and all told has about 70 levels when sub levels are considered. A few levels only have a dozen or so rooms but there are also several levels with 50 or more rooms, one has more then 200 rooms, features and chambers.

Other big dungeons in my campaign are "The House of the River Witch" about 30 levels with lots of magical stuff and hybrid monsters.
It is a tower that “travels” along major rivers in my campaign setting.

"The Metal Fortress of Suffering" at least 20 levels of constant misdirection and deathtraps a real meatgrinder of a dungeon with a horrible secret at the end. Divination magic is a bad idea in this one and it messes up folks part of the time. The metal floors and walls of this dungon also absorb any metal that forcefully strikes them.

"The Elementalist Monastery" is multiple structures in a vast ruined temple complex with 80 or so "levels" of above ground ruins and underfoot catacombs populated with ancient religious relics, guardian spirits/elementals, creatures and tribes that make use of the ruins and currently the domain of a dwarven warlord that has almost organized the ruins and raised an army of darkness.

"The Fallen Towers" is an immense multi-mega dungeon in a vast maze of caverns, chasms and water courses that flows through a region dotted with the remains of an ancient civilization and the strongholds and hideouts of modern rebels and miscreants, also a bunch of dragons. I've been working on bits and pieces of it for 2 years at least and am still just beginning to work on it really.

 

[Wombat]

Well, I had an OD&D dungeon back in the day... Faiyne's Dungeon.

By the end of two years the players had mapped the 1st level 100%, the second level about 70%, and the third level had two small areas (near the stairwells) and no further.

I had mapped out the requisite nine levels, but, well, things happened

OTOH, everyone loved the game, so we just kept playing

 

[KB9JMQ]

Mine was called Dungeon of Doom also. It was a nine level pyramid with level one being the bottom and largest.
The first level had about 100 rooms in it. The one room ninth level had Tiamat in it. It was some sort of transdimensional room which was larger on the inside than out.
No one ever played it though. I designed it back when I got Campanion Set.
I lost it a couple of years ago while moving.

 

[Swedish Chef]

Back in the early 2ed days, I was getting tired of campaigns getting derailed as the players kept fighting each other. No matter how often I tried to get them to create characters that would logically adventure together, I'd either get drow assassin mixed with High elf cleric mixed with Duergar theif mixed with Half Orc fighter mixed with a Human Paladin (if I didn't limit races/classes) or a bunch of half elves that were anti-social (if I did limit races/classes).

So, to cure it, I had every create high level PCs. No restrictions. Anything goes, as long as it was in the rules. 1,000,000 base XP. They were going to enter the Deathtrap Dungeon.

Yes, I based it on the Fighting Fantasy book. (side note, I'm going to purchase the d20 version soon!)

The rules were simple. The players entered one at a time. First one out, won. They could team up or kill each other or do whatever they wanted. It was a simple turn based system of running things, just to keep movement easy for me to manage.

It wasn't large. 2 sheets of 8.5x11 inch graph paper. Maybe 50 rooms total.

But no one ever made it out alive. 75% of the deaths were the results of monsters or traps. The other 25% were the result of player vs player.

It did cure the inter-party squabbling for about 18 months. Then I had to break it back out and teach my players manners once more. Haven't had to use it since.

 

[osarusan]

Deep Temple

A colony of terminator-like robots from another planet built a giant temple underneat the largest mountain range in my homebrew. The players stumbled upon it and ended up spending about 5 months real-time sneaking and fleeing their way through a dungeon where nearly every trap was a save-or-die, most monsters they fought were golems, and the "hard" monsters weilded laser rifles and plasma canons.

That was my only mixture of space sci-fi into a fantasy game, and it actually worked... they seemed more like golems than alien robots.

The best part of the whole adventure game about when the players rescued one of the robots from a trap, and he became their ally. He asked them who they were, and they told him they were travelers. So for the rest of the robot's life he always called them by the name "Travelers."

 

[jrients]

Other big dungeons in my campaign are "The House of the River Witch" about 30 levels with lots of magical stuff and hybrid monsters.
It is a tower that “travels” along major rivers in my campaign setting.

Also excellent. I am so stealing this idea if my Arcana Evolved campaign gets off the ground.

 

[cmanos]

Back in high school I found a desk blotter that was 2x3 feet and was 1/4" graph paper. Harkening back to the day when 1/4" = 10' that made for a pretty dang big dungeon.

I had 10 levels and it was called the Dungeon of Doom as well.

 

[JamesDJarvis]

Also excellent. I am so stealing this idea if my Arcana Evolved campaign gets off the ground.

In my campaign "The House of the River Witch" can only be entered via a water entry. The tower pull sthat tardis trick where it is bigger on the inside then it is on the outside. There is a gimmick to the tower, the witch is hideously powerful but the act of moving the tower puts her to sleep for sometime so it is possible to enter and leave the tower beforre she awakens (sometimes).


funny you should mention Arcana Evolved "The Broken Towers" has nearby tribes of rustics that have members that are Akashics, Greenbounds and Totem Warriors.