D&D General Thoughts on running Rappan Athuk (and deadly megadungeons in general) [SPOILERS]

[MNblockhead]

I've been running Rappan Athuk for 4 years and 4 months. I should wrap it up by the end of the summer. I'm running the 5e version and most of the characters are at level 17 and will likely level to 18 by the end of the next session. Rappan Athuk, and megadungeons in general, are not everyone's cup of tea. But I wanted to start a thread for those who do like it and share thoughts on what worked and didn't work in the adventure. How their campaigns (or even brief delves) played out, and lessons learned and tips for running Rappan Athuk and deadly megadungeons in general.

I am not a fan of plus threads, because I find I learn a lot from peoples' negative experiences, but I don't want this to be another thread on why you like or don't like megadungeons. There are other threads on that. But if you really hated Rappan Athuk, I'd be interested in reading why, as long as it is focused on specific features of Rappan Athuk, rather than "RA is a megadungeon and megadungeons suck." If you've never played Rappan Athuk but have run other megadungeons, I will be interested in what worked and didn't work for you. My posts will all be RA specific.

Rather than making a massive post, I'll make a series of posts, each focused on a different thought or example. And I'll continue to post as continue down the final stretch of the long campaign.

WARNING: This thread will have A LOT of spoilers. It will be too cumbersome to have the discussion I want having to constantly review and edit my posts with spoiler tags. If you are going to be a player in a Rappan Athuk game, best not to participate in this thread. I'm assuming those reading this are GMs who have run, or plan to run, RA; players who have already played in RA; or people who do not intend to ever play in RA but are interested in talking about running deadly megadungeons.

 

[MNblockhead]

Thoughts on Session Zero, Setting Expectations, and Getting Buy-in

When are started to think of running RA, I already had a group of players I'd been playing with for several years. Our first campaign was a large-world sandboxy homebrew. Are second campaign was Curse of Strahd. At the time we were playing in person. I floated the idea of playing a massive, old-school, deadly megadungeon.

Place the Megadungeon in a Larger Setting, tie it to lore of the setting, and give natural "outs" if the players want to quit or get a break from the dungeon
They were all interested. We, or at least I, had some concerns that a megadungeon could get old fast. But I had a lot of Lost Lands material and made it clear that the party was free to go and explore other areas of the world and pursue other quests and adventures. We always had an "out." More important the "out" was organic. Rappan Athuk is part of a much larger world with a lot of published material. Initially, my thinking is that this would give an "out" while still feeling natural in game. No need to kill the campaign and start a new, just move on to another part of the world.

But a secondary benefit is that it helped bring Rappan Athuk to life having it placed within a much larger setting. I didn't realize it at the time, but Frog God Games have threads sewn all throughout RA linking it to other locations, adventures, and lore. It is easily ignored if you don't want to invest in the Lost Lands setting, but if you like having the support of massive amounts of setting material, lore, and other adventures, it is there.

Also, this was my first "kitchen sink" campaign for 5e (and I hadn't played any TTRPGs from the very early 90s until 5e came out). The Lost Lands is such a massive world that you can have very thematic and tightly focused campaigns, but you can also fit about any race, class, or background you want and find a place for it in the world. Generally, I let players use any official WotC options and build their characters in D&D Beyond. Those players that were into detailed character backstories would write their ideas and I would find ways to tie it into the canonical Lost Lands lore, occasionally homebrewing to fill gaps or teak things to make their backstories work within the setting. But...

We started with a session 0 funnel...
I encouraged the players to not invest a lot of time into character backstories before our first session. Each player rolled up four characters using the level zero rules from the Adventurer's League adventure, DDAL-ELW00 What's Past is Prologue.

• The character has chosen a name, race, and background.
• The character has NOT chosen a class.
• The character has gear plus weapons, up to one common magical item, and proficiencies granted by their race and background.
• A level 0 character has 6 + their Constitution modifier for hit points, 1d6 hit dice, and no proficiency bonus.
• Weapon and armor proficiencies may be granted by race and background; those are fine!

The first session started with the second-most trite setup in D&D after "you meet in a tavern." They were all members of a caravan travelling down the Coast Road on their way to the wilderness settlement of Zelkor's Ferry. One of the wagons broke down about a day or two's journey from their destination. The caravan stopped for repairs and maintenance and it was decided to camp for the evening and push on to Zelkor's Ferry in the morning.

In the evening they were approached by the Felthane, a group of fey (sprites, pixies, etc.) and were invited to a celebration. There were a variety of social challenges. The fey were threatened by a deadly creature called the bone crusher and were hoping that perhaps this large group of big folk would be able to destroy it.

The bone crusher is a custom RA monster that is quite deadly for low-level PC, much less level-0 PCs who don't even have a class yet. My players a long-time gamers and highly tactical. There were a lot of NPC caravan guards. They focused on protecting themselves and the non-combatant NPCs. Still, it was a meat-grinder. They ended up damaging the bone-grinder enough that it retreated, they did not follow. The surviving PCs received some rewards from the Felthane, treated the wounded, and buried the many dead. All of the players had at least two PCs that survived.

In the morning they pushed on to Zelkor's Ferry, where they gathered rumors, found a mentor/trainer, and leveled up to level 1.

The names of the dead PCs and NPCs were added to the obituary poster hung on the wall behind my DMs seat and expectations were set!

 

[Lanefan]

I've never been in RA specifically as either player or DM (but I own the 3e version and want to convert and run (bits of) it someday), but I've both run and played/am playing in other megadungeons.

They're a tricky beast. The biggest headache, unless the party is high enough level to have easy access to long range transport, is that there needs to be a city or similar somewhere the PCs can access for supplies, training (if used), new recruits, and so on; yet having that city be located close to a megadungeon makes no narrative sense. So, the PCs are either going to be stuck in the dungeon until they run out of resources and-or characters, or are going to be doing a LOT of travelling back and forth.

I tried running the old (late 1e/early 2e) Temple of Elemental Evil, and the travel killed it - they had no long-range transport so had to ground-pound through a few hundred miles of dangerous country to get from city to dungeon (or back), and the trip to-from town was ultimately found to be more deadly than the dungeon itself. Got me fired as DM of that group, that one did.

The other thing with megadungeons is timing: if the party stays in there, you'll likely go through very few game days but take a lot of sessions doing it. Two weeks of game time can take a year in real time. What this means is that anything going on in the outside game-world effectively grinds to a near-halt, and as DM you have to remember it all 6 months or a year later when the party finally comes up for air. (this is even more of a female-dog when you're running more than one party side-along in the setting; the one in the megadungeon more or less stops in time while the other(s) advance, knocking them way out of synch). However, if they have to travel for weeks each way to get from dungeon to town and back, suddenly you're leaping ahead through game time which can raise its own issues.

And the megadungeon has to have some means of maintaining long-term player engagement. The one I'm playing in, on bi-weekly online sessions we've been in that thing for (looks it up and says "Yikes!") a bit over 2 real-world years with no end in sight. I-as-player have long since forgotten our initial reason for going there; what keeps me engaged in the moment is that my (current) character is a greedy little thing and this place is loaded with "nick", as she calls it.

 

[MNblockhead]

They're a tricky beast. The biggest headache, unless the party is high enough level to have easy access to long range transport, is that there needs to be a city or similar somewhere the PCs can access for supplies, training (if used), new recruits, and so on; yet having that city be located close to a megadungeon makes no narrative sense. So, the PCs are either going to be stuck in the dungeon until they run out of resources and-or characters, or are going to be doing a LOT of travelling back and forth.

Very true. This is even more the case with the Lost Lands. Travel distances are rather insane compared to typical D&D. But, when done right, it adds to the challenge, and getting access to magical travel become a huge milestone.

I tried running the old (late 1e/early 2e) Temple of Elemental Evil, and the travel killed it - they had no long-range transport so had to ground-pound through a few hundred miles of dangerous country to get from city to dungeon (or back), and the trip to-from town was ultimately found to be more deadly than the dungeon itself. Got me fired as DM of that group, that one did.

In Rappan Athuk, there is a small wilderness settlement called Zelkor's Ferry that gives a fairly safe place to retreat to and resupply at lower levels. There is lore and world building that helps it make some sense (if you don't think about it too critically).

But to get to larger cities is a major undertaking at lower levels. I handle that mostly at downtime and use a variety of downtime rules to handle how costly and time consuming the travel it. Downtime activity, especially in the first two tiers of play, are basically a subsystem that we play over e-mail between sessions.

The other thing with megadungeons is timing: if the party stays in there, you'll likely go through very few game days but take a lot of sessions doing it. Two weeks of game time can take a year in real time. What this means is that anything going on in the outside game-world effectively grinds to a near-halt, and as DM you have to remember it all 6 months or a year later when the party finally comes up for air. (this is even more of a female-dog when you're running more than one party side-along in the setting; the one in the megadungeon more or less stops in time while the other(s) advance, knocking them way out of synch). However, if they have to travel for weeks each way to get from dungeon to town and back, suddenly you're leaping ahead through game time which can raise its own issues.

In-game time play passes at a much more realistic rate because of all the downtime stuff, especially at lower levels. In addition to a mix of downtime rules from the PHP, DMG, and Xanathar's, I also use skill-type challenges for travel, rules for training to level up, GP for XP, and strongholds and followers rules. It creates more record keeping for me as a GM as I track time, events, costs, etc. on a spreadsheet, but we play for a long day (8 hours) once a month. So I enjoy the downtime stuff between sessions as a way to stay engaged with the campaign and players.

And the megadungeon has to have some means of maintaining long-term player engagement. The one I'm playing in, on bi-weekly online sessions we've been in that thing for (looks it up and says "Yikes!") a bit over 2 real-world years with no end in sight. I-as-player have long since forgotten our initial reason for going there; what keeps me engaged in the moment is that my (current) character is a greedy little thing and this place is loaded with "nick", as she calls it.

Agreed. But with RA, I let that develop organically. Some players built detailed backstories for why they are doing this, others its just for gold and power. Overall, the they grab on some plot threads and let other go, and I create new story threads based on the parties actions and how different factions in the dungeon are likely to react to those actions.

I also use the Strongholds and Followers rules from MCDM. They've taken over, repaired, and expanded Castle Calaelen (sp?) and over time an entire town has grown. They hire troops to protect and hold their progress.

With over 4 years running, the players have organically developed deep backstories and engaged in factional politics, built strongholds and a town, and in one case a new religious order. It help build engagement and on going interest in focus on one location. We've really enjoyed it. But after this campaign wraps up, we'll likely run a very different style of campaign, perhaps even in a different system than 5e (I'm leaning towards running DCC Dying Earth).

 

[MNblockhead]

Thoughts on Game Aids when Running a Mega Dungeon

A lot can change in four years. A new job requiring working overseas most of the time, a pandemic, and new technology.

Before our Rappan Athuk campaign, I was running Curse of Strahd in person. I printed all the Schley maps with a large-format printer and we played a mix of theater of the mind and printed battlemaps with minis.

With Rappan Athuk, that wasn't going to be practical. Especially since my father retired, sold his company, and his large format printer. Paying to print the 100+ maps in Rappan Athuk was beyond my budget and trying to create fog of war to keep the sense of danger in the dungeons of RA with physical battlemaps would have taken more work than I would want to deal with.

I started the campaign using RealmWorks, which is what I built and ran my first campaign in (which was homebrew). There was no way that I was going to do all the data entry of putting everything from a 660 page (they really should have added 6 pages to stay true to the setting ) book into RealmWorks. But I also bought there physical map pack, so I would just enter the maps and display them on a vertical display using RealmWorks manual fog-of-war features to reveal the map as they explored.

Then Lone Wolf Development stopped supporting RealmWorks. Also, it still required more prep to get the maps in RealmWorks. In RA you can move from level to level, map to map, and it was difficult to know where the PC may go and find themselves. If they go in a direction that I didn't have a map ready for, I would have to take a short break to get it into RealmWorks.

So, I moved to the open source software Map Tool. It was amazing. I could have my hundreds of maps and hundreds of tokens on my hard drive and easily search through them. I could find, load, resize a map, apply fog of war, and drop tokens in a couple of minutes at most. I didn't bother tracing walls for line of sight or anything like that. I just used the manual tools to reveal areas as the PCs explored. Very little prep needed.

Then I got a job that required me to live overseas for much of the year in an area with poor bandwidth. Trying to host games on Map Tool over the internet was more of a hassle than I wanted to deal with. I tried running the games using Google Meet, but need me to move all the PC tokens based on the players instructions wasn't fun for me or the players. So I spent many, many hours testing all of the major VTTs at the time, in particular: Roll20, Fantasy Grounds (classic and Unity), d20pro, and Foundry. Roll20s was great in terms of still being usable without great bandwidth, so long as I used something else for audio/video conferencing. But the space limits were too stingy, even at the highest subscription levels, to load all of the maps for RA. Loading them on the fly was not a great experience for me. d20pro I found clunky and limited in features. I really liked Fantasy Ground classic, which would have supported both in-person and online play. I didn't like that the players had to install software to use it, but the killer was bandwidth. It was almost unusable from the location I was at. Unity was too buggy in general at the time and suffered from the same bandwidth issue.

So I ended up selecting Foundry hosted by the The Forge. It provides an excellent online experience without players having to install anything. Performance offered by The Forge was also excellent. I was able to upload all 100+ maps for a reasonable hosting cost. The main downside is the manual fog of war in Foundry is not official supported. You have to use a community mod. The developer stopped supporting it and even though it was taken up by other devs, it has not been reliable. To good news is that the Foundry makes tracing walls and applying auto fog of war reveal and lighting and line of sight features easy. At least, easier than any other tool I used.

For a while prepping maps became a separate hobby between sessions. When working abroad, between sessions, on the weekend I would spend a few hours listening to podcasts and prepping maps. I now have all the maps prepped in Foundry. And for some of them I've taken time to apply some cool features to the maps that add to game. Lighting and sound effects. The most difficult to prep was the blood ways with its spagetti of maze-like passages that lead up and down levels constantly. I applied teleport tiles so that when they moved to an area that leads up or down a level or several levels, the character token is automatically moved to the right spot on the new map. It took a lot of time to prep but really made the Bloodworks easy to run. Plus I was able to add a red mist effect and limited sight ranges.

Dungeons are ideal for VTTs. A few years ago, I would have told you that I the time needed to prep a map wasn't worth it, but now that I've gotten quite efficient in map prep, I enjoy it, and it makes running the game easier. That said, most of play time takes place in VTT maps. For my next campaign, I want to move away from that somewhat and use the VTT just for set-piece battles. I am looking forward into injecting more theater of the mind back into my game in my next campaign.

 

[BookTenTiger]

I'm not too into running megadungeons myself BUT I find them fascinating! I'll be following along on this thread and enjoying the reflections. Thanks for posting!

 

[LordEntrails]

Not that it helps you now, or solves bandwidth issues, but RA was released on FG earlier this month. Rappan Athuk for Fantasy Grounds

Looking forward to more of your posts on this. Never run or played RA, but am a megadungeon fan

 

[GuyBoy]

There’s something special about RA.
Something that makes you feel like you are in the dark. And that the darkness is closing in on you. And within that darkness, something waits. Something hungry. Something evil.
Not felt like that since my earliest days of gaming.

 

[Nightfly]

Thanks for this thread. I'll be following it with in interest.

How do you feel about Rappan Athuk as an adventure? I read part of it, but got really turned off by the dung monster, which felt to me like Beavis and Butthead write a module. Given all the praise for RA, I assume other parts are better?

 

[Stormdale]

I have been trying to get my players back into RA since 2003. Managed it once or twice but the old adage of once bitten twice shy applies. They know it is lurking there daring them to return but have been too traumatized. I like it but think Tomb of Abysthor is a more manageable dungeon.