Undermountain Begins! (And DMGII Tidbit...)

[Ankh-Morpork Guard]

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ru/20050309a

An introduction there and then a first room. A small start room wise, but lots of information in that intro.

Noteable is this little thing about the DMGII:

Dungeon Master's Guide II: Chapters in this book include advice about running a game and designing adventures. Ready-made game elements include instant traps, pregenerated locations, and treasures.

Its also interesting to see a short thing on "Using Undermountain in Other Campaign Settings"

 

[Arcane Runes Press]

Undermountain just doesn't move me anymore. I hope people enjoy it, and I hope it does well for Wizards, but the magical conceits built into the dungeon just smack of non-3E design principles.

I really do understand why it would be tempting to counter teleportation, and I do understand that's a feature of Undermountain that goes back a long time, but it's still smacks of the easy way out.

Particularly when you start considering some of the other suggestions in that article: divination spells might not work, passwall and stoneshape (and other, similar spells) might not work, detect magic might not work for finding traps - it points towards a design expectation of slogging through endless rooms, which 3E has done much to get away from (for good and bad)

I dunno, we'll see, but I'm not too hopeful.

Still a good map, though.

Patrick Y.

 

[hero4hire]

I am not into dungeon-crawls anymore..."The World's Largest Dungeon-Crawl" certainly doesn't have the appeal it once did.

 

[ThirdWizard]

Sweet mercy of Pelor!! That's a map?? Are you sure that it isn't a diagram of the human nervous system? Come on, stop kidding...

I knew there was a reason I had never bought a module...

 

[pogre]

I think it's pretty neat - I look forward to seeing more of the same. The quote from the DMGII sounds very promising - just the kind of extras called for. This is the only product coming out of WOTC I foresee buying in 2005.

 

[BobROE]

Sweet mercy of Pelor!! That's a map?? Are you sure that it isn't a diagram of the human nervous system? Come on, stop kidding...

I knew there was a reason I had never bought a module...

It's not a map to be used in one sitting so to speak. Repeated deleving would be required to clear it out (if such a thing were possible, and being Undermountain it's not but that's neither here nor there).

I wish the large maps were numbered though.

 

[Cthulhudrew]

Its also interesting to see a short thing on "Using Undermountain in Other Campaign Settings"

Yes- though I wish they'd included some of the "dead" worlds- I've always thought Undermountain would be a perfect setting for the ruins beneath Citadel, on Mystara.

 

[Dog Moon]

Did they say how often they were going to update the Undermountain thing, or did I miss it? I thought they were going to do like a section a week or something, not a single room. A single room a week might not be worth it, IMO.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

Well, at least it's free.

I've got WLD, and were I to run an Undermountain/Waterdeep campaign, I'd probably used WLD instead, since it's a little more ecologically and thematically balanced (at least by subsection) than the original Undermountain.

 

[diaglo]

Well, at least it's free.

I've got WLD, and were I to run an Undermountain/Waterdeep campaign, I'd probably used WLD instead, since it's a little more ecologically and thematically balanced (at least by subsection) than the original Undermountain.

well what do you expect from the Mad Chosen Mage, Halaster Blackcloak?