The RANDOM dungeon.

[Summer-Knight925]

Well the 3.5 group I'm part of plays in Eberron, we also tend to play more powerful characters (during character creation we reroll 1's and 2's, seems cheap but it means we fight more powerful bad guys) so take that into account

we also play larger groups (8-9 is normal, although I may request 6 for this advenure)

For Pathfinder (running it in Pathfinder) I am not all that sure, but I do plan on starting pathfinder soon (october at the earliest, december at the latest) So you can make your own conversions until I can...and as for 4e, I refuse to do anything related to 4e, for two reasons.

1. I took sides in the edition wars and lost good friends to 4e
2. Oh the friends I lost to 4e, one of them kicked me out of a local gaming club (the one at our school, where I was kind of the leader, being the oldest and most experienced with table-top games) so there is a sort of hatred there...but hey, hypocits get what they deserve


so if you make a 4e conversion that is fine, but I don't want to hear about it nor do I want to start an edition war here, I stated my views for the sake of you (all readers) to understand why I won't do a 4e conversion, let's drop it right here and now.


As for the game I'm working on, it may take me a little bit to get it going, School is starting back up for me and I need to focus on my studies this final year, but it is made with massive dungeons and epic battles in mind. If you like fighting hordes of orcs, slaying dragons after weeks in a cavern system and a high mortality rate of characters, this is the game for you.

 

[Summer-Knight925]

If you are interested in either the complete dungeon or the game I am working on, send me a friend request and when I finish I will send you an email.

Thanks!

-SK925

 

[howandwhy99]

A & B (and C to populate them) are awesome appendices. I highly recommend reading them. I don't use them by the book anymore, but A & B are decent enough starting points until a DM knows what they are doing.

There's a whole lot of math in there that can be further distilled out and balanced for numerical difficulty by dungeon level. It just takes some analysis of the existing material and a little development for one's own system.

 

[Summer-Knight925]

I'm no good with math homework, but add dice and monsters and suddenly my math skills increase exponentially!

I've been working on how to fix it, most of the time I just re-roll if the result does not fit, while fudging is not mathematical, scaling is, something I had to do for most of this dungeon.

Scaling is considered mathematical right?

 

[howandwhy99]

Scaling is considered mathematical right?

It sure is. Speaking of scaling, in terms of increasing difficulty for the dungeon level, think geometrically. The size of a room matters as does its shape. The length of a hallway does too, as does its width. Ceiling height matters once we get to talking about volumes of what can fit in these rooms. Corners affect cover lengths within certain missile ranges. Doors can contain spaces, archways do not. And all of these solid materials are barriers, but their substance makeup matters. They can be damaged. More dungeon can be dug or constructed. If you are accounting for structural support as well, size and shape matter again. Pillars add support, but are structural weak points.

This is all about challenging the players, but not really about laborious mapping. It comes down to knowing how to use dungeon design in conjunction with offense and defense - and that's just the fighter's combat-oriented POV. Other classes POVs affect dungeon valuation too.

 

[Summer-Knight925]

I didn't roll up monsters in the same way as you're suppose to, I rolled up a certain amount of monsters and then put them where they would fit or be deadly.

I put smart monsters (a mind flayer lets say) near a trap and around other ways (a group of halways that formed a little maze) and mix him with certain thralls to make him as deadly as he should be, but I have the 'kick-in-the-door' monsters too, where kicking in the door is advised.

I also do the same with treasure and letting monsters take advantage of that treasure. The mighty cleaving battle axe has no use being in the room with a carrion crawler, give it too an orc warboss.

I also didn't care about if monster's were in the right climate, its a dungeon with magic portals, who knows how they got there. That and monster sub-plots. (The orc/golbin tribe that was besiged by monsters [actually a kobold tribe that befriended a trio of trolls and shepard a few giant vermin] and now is very hostile.)

it blends to challenge, using normally weak monsters and finding ways to make them more dangerous. Like a fiendish spider who set up a trap with his webs, blocking the party in and making them fight not only him but the spider swarms and other spiders. But I also know my group and them and swarms don't mix well (they HATE swarms, like HATE) so I give creative ways to fight them, even though they probably won't catch it, like in this case setting the webs on fire, so I might have to give a little riddle somewhere with a skeleton next to it.