Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Gus L" data-source="post: 9785626" data-attributes="member: 7045072">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 publicationB) 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.</blockquote>

Verification