OSR The Science Facility Megadungeon and "Post-apocalyptic Alfheim"

[Lord Zack]

Hello. While I hope my current campaign goes on for awhile yet, but there are some difficulties that may yet lead to its end. Therefore I endeavor to have a back up, though if I am able to find some players in IRL I will try to run this campaign for them as well as my current, online, campaign. For this campaign I am using some form of OSR ruleset, possibly OSE due to its popularity, though am also leaning towards some combination of the "without Number" games due to the scifi and post apocalyptic themes I intend to use.

The setting is roughly ten thousand years after the war with the drow... just like, say, the Forgotten Realms. However in this setting both sides used highly advanced technology... nukes being about the least spectacular. Goblinoids were used by the drow as slave soldiers, and now have come to rule much of the continent using the remains of the advanced technology that their masters and their enemies once used.

Now the place where this technology was given to the elves, which is inspired by places like the Black Mesa Research Facility from Half-life, Aperture Science from Portal, Big MT from Fallout and to a degree the BSL station from Metroid Fusion, is a ruin. However it still contains a lot of valuable materials and scientific wonders. This is our megadungeon for the setting.

I must admit I need some help putting it together. Obviously, the trick is to start small, so how do I do that? Where should I start in this massive colossus of science? I am thinking that there may be some kind of transport hub as the starting area. These may even include portals to far away lands. This even allows the rest of the complex to be connected through this area, though much of the actual mechanisms may have broken down. The issue here becomes how to delineate areas of higher difficulty, assuming I don't just use the usual "deeper is more dangerous" idea. Also this is quite a bit different from the usual fantasy dungeon. Besides the sources I have already named are there models I can use? I have heard of various "scifi megadungeons," (like Anomalous Subsurface Environment) but are they good models for what I am looking for?

 

[Mannahnin]

ASE seems more goofy/gonzo than you're aiming for, but I still think it'd be useful for you to check out in terms of organization and structure.

 

[Lord Zack]

I have decided to call the megadungeon "the Halls of Knowledge," but I am actually going to have a different introductory rpg. I am wondering, besides the ones I mentioned what systems might be best for this campaign?

 

[Gus L]

I think you might find ASE quite instructive, not necessarily because it offers a guide for the sort of aesthetic your project seems to have but because it demonstrate something about designing Mega Dungeons. I would also read the blog about ASE's creation "Henchman Abuse".

What I mean is that writing a Mega Dungeon for publication - this is why there aren't more of them. This is compounded if:

A) One wants to write a good mega dungeon for publication
B) The Mega Dungeon strays significantly from the core aesthetics of RPD/dungeon crawling fantasy and/r the setting material of the system its designed for.

I can explain these problem in detail if anyone in interested but the basic issue is that the more information your need to impart to a 3rd party running your adventure the harder it is to get that right and the more work it requires. The special issue with Mega Dungeons is size, the size of a dungeon increases its complexity and so the amount of writing needed (see Arden Vul) but also the referee attention needed - meaning how concise that writing should eb for best effect. It increases these both almost exponentially.

So what the design of ASE suggests is ... don't start with the Mega Dungeon, start with the concepts of the Mega Dungeon in a smaller dungeon. ASE does this in two ways. First it includes a small (10 or so rooms) intro dungeon that gives the players the map to and means of opening the Mega Dungeon, and follows its themes and aesthetic. Then Patrick Wetmore provided a "0th" level of the ASE - a "gatehouse" that is a standard 30 room dungeon even more in the style of the Mega Dungeon below.

These works are themselves both playable on their own and represent useful tools to get the players/referee of an ASE campaign familiar with the ideas involved (especially how the dungeon handles science fantasy traps and creatures. I suspect they also served as a training ground for Patrick's own writing and design process.

So it might be worth emulating this rather then leaping into the big show to start.

NOW MORE...

I make a clear distinction between writing a Mega Dungeon for publication and running a Mega Dungeon campaign, because writing published work is far harder then writing and designing for your own game - the level of detail, clarity and results are all radically different. However, especially for Mega Dungeons - running the adventure and designing it for your home game (likely over a multi-year/month campaign for Mega Dungeons) is part of the process. For Mega Dungeons design is often (as instructed in OD&D even) to design as you go - no referee should wait to come to the gaming table until they have a 1000 room dozen level dungeon ready to go. Even on the Mega Dungeon proper, start with the first couple levels (maybe 50 rooms) to see how things work and then see what evolves in play. Mega Dungeons are especially about repeats delves, multiple entrances and faction conflicts (both in and out of the dungeon) and a lot of this starts making sense more while its being play tested.

What I'm saying is - if you want to publish a Mega Dungeon, start small and stay focused, growing the setting (because a Mega Dungeon is a setting) through iterations, addition, and lessons learned in play. No one sits down and just writes out a good Mega Dungeon... Again look at Henchman Abuse and note how many sessions of ASE are documented there with play reports before even the first book came out. I assure you that those games were how the project evolved and a good part of how the author stayed focused on the project.