Zardnaar
Legend
Waterdeeps easy or a starter set.
I'm thinking newbie campaign they all picked dungeon hack. Not awful is bar to clear.
D&D 5E Waterdeep - Dungeon of the Mad Mage
- Thread starter Spellslinging Sellsword
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Waterdeeps easy or a starter set.
I'm thinking newbie campaign they all picked dungeon hack. Not awful is bar to clear.
I'm curious if those who enjoyed this have DMed or played other large dungeon adventures or mega dungeons? If so, where do you rank it? How well do you think it holds up to being mostly complete without a lot of DM customization?
I compare it to Caverns of Thracia, Rappan Athuk, Barrowmaze, Lost City of Barakus, and Tomb of Abysthor. I don't find it as interesting or flavorful as any of those.
I compare it to Caverns of Thracia, Rappan Athuk, Barrowmaze, Lost City of Barakus, and Tomb of Abysthor. I don't find it as interesting or flavorful as any of those.
LordEntrails
Hero
I ran parts of it and my players enjoyed it.
As written, it's a mediocre source and probably a disappointment as an adventure if run RAW.
In short, it is a decent attempt at a mega-dungeon written to fit into the page requirements of a print product. And that means it's incomplete, poor and half-assed.
But, you can easily take parts of it and add them to an existing campaign for parts of a plot or object. i.e. the simplest is "divination reveals that the McGuffin was last in the possession of BBEG on the tenth level of Undermountain".
Or you can put a lot of work into it to flesh out the factions and their motivations and make DoMM a living and dynamic setting.
As written, it's a mediocre source and probably a disappointment as an adventure if run RAW.
In short, it is a decent attempt at a mega-dungeon written to fit into the page requirements of a print product. And that means it's incomplete, poor and half-assed.
But, you can easily take parts of it and add them to an existing campaign for parts of a plot or object. i.e. the simplest is "divination reveals that the McGuffin was last in the possession of BBEG on the tenth level of Undermountain".
Or you can put a lot of work into it to flesh out the factions and their motivations and make DoMM a living and dynamic setting.
LordEntrails
Hero
3 on a scale of 10. It's just barely a mega-dungeon as written. (The original Undermountain was a mega dungeon, this is not even a Reader's Digest version).
Sure, it's 'complete' as written, if you want a boring kick in the door hunt a bunch of McGuffins adventure. But as a rich dynamic setting? No, it fails.
I found it on par with Rappan Athuk, and way better than any of the Temple of Elemental Evil adventures (original, 3rd edition, and Princes of the Apocalypse)
MonsterEnvy
Legend
My group I DMed it for mostly enjoyed it. But there was a bit too much Dungeon for me and not enough anything else. I started to feel burnt out by level 13, and fully burned out at level 19 of the dungeon.
pukunui
Legend
One thing I will say is that, especially in the deeper levels, it felt like some of the big scary monsters were just chucked into random corners with no real build-up to them.
Take the 20th floor (the Runestone Caverns) for example. The main baddie on this floor is the lich, Ezzat. He's got a lair in a stalagmite, and there's a quest the PCs can pick up from the genies on a higher floor to steal the lich's phylactery. He wants to replace Halaster, and so Halaster wants to get rid of him. The players are likely going to confront Ezzat with some purpose.
Incidentally, my group found Ezzat too tough, and they never found the secret room where he hides his phylactery, so they weren't able to complete that quest.
But then, during a later session when I only had two players, they randomly stumbled into the duergar mummy lord's area down in the corner of the map. Yeah, the mummy lord gets to count that area as its lair, but even so, it's separated from its eight mummy minions by a fair distance. One random mummy lord was no match for two high-level PCs, and its lowly mummy minions took too long to come to its rescue. That particular encounter felt kind of anti-climactic - like it was more of a random encounter with a monster that ought to have been the central figure on a floor of its own.
There are a few other instances like that - whether its a behir there or a beholder here or a dragon over yonder.
I think if I were to run this again, I'd put more effort into ensuring that these encounters with classic high-level D&D monsters don't come off feeling like random encounters.
Take the 20th floor (the Runestone Caverns) for example. The main baddie on this floor is the lich, Ezzat. He's got a lair in a stalagmite, and there's a quest the PCs can pick up from the genies on a higher floor to steal the lich's phylactery. He wants to replace Halaster, and so Halaster wants to get rid of him. The players are likely going to confront Ezzat with some purpose.
Incidentally, my group found Ezzat too tough, and they never found the secret room where he hides his phylactery, so they weren't able to complete that quest.
But then, during a later session when I only had two players, they randomly stumbled into the duergar mummy lord's area down in the corner of the map. Yeah, the mummy lord gets to count that area as its lair, but even so, it's separated from its eight mummy minions by a fair distance. One random mummy lord was no match for two high-level PCs, and its lowly mummy minions took too long to come to its rescue. That particular encounter felt kind of anti-climactic - like it was more of a random encounter with a monster that ought to have been the central figure on a floor of its own.
There are a few other instances like that - whether its a behir there or a beholder here or a dragon over yonder.
I think if I were to run this again, I'd put more effort into ensuring that these encounters with classic high-level D&D monsters don't come off feeling like random encounters.
pukunui
Legend
Yes, we had our first PC death of the campaign on the first floor as well - an intellect devourer got the fighter, so the other PCs killed the fighter to get rid of it. Then they hauled his body back up to Waterdeep to get him resurrected.
I’ve skimmed it a few times. It seemed like a hugely boring slog with little point as written. Not a bad dungeon map wise, but lame story/population wise. There were reasons to do it, but those reasons didn’t much persist, little compelling reason to keep doing it. It’s not constantly drawing you deeper, one more turn like. And that’s what a good dungeon does, keep giving you reasons to be curiouser and curiouser risking more and more to go deeper and deeper. This doesn’t do that. So it’s not good. I think there’s too much tolerance for, well you can fix that, for WoTC product, you can for sure, and ther’s some good DmsGuild stuff for this. But, meh, probably some better Dungeon out there.
And as an aside, Rappan Athuk is not that better dungeon. It’s a much more massive place that has cool stuff in it but also similarly lacking in a reason to bother or any draw to go deeper. Sport dungeon. Unless you add a rabbit to follow down the hole.
Would be curious about recommendations for big dungeons that are good at keeping up a steady supply of reasons to want more and go deeper.
Edit: and just to add, a princess to rescue at the bottom is not a compelling reason to continue going deeper. The whatever starting reason needs to be resolved in level one or two, the interest for one thing can’t sustain ongoing encounters for very long, there has to be more and new developing reasons emerging to explore one more level. And the cheat code, start them at the bottom and explore out is not compelling, it’s even more unfun, I have to do this crap. Needs to be some, I WANT to do this fluffery.
And as an aside, Rappan Athuk is not that better dungeon. It’s a much more massive place that has cool stuff in it but also similarly lacking in a reason to bother or any draw to go deeper. Sport dungeon. Unless you add a rabbit to follow down the hole.
Would be curious about recommendations for big dungeons that are good at keeping up a steady supply of reasons to want more and go deeper.
Edit: and just to add, a princess to rescue at the bottom is not a compelling reason to continue going deeper. The whatever starting reason needs to be resolved in level one or two, the interest for one thing can’t sustain ongoing encounters for very long, there has to be more and new developing reasons emerging to explore one more level. And the cheat code, start them at the bottom and explore out is not compelling, it’s even more unfun, I have to do this crap. Needs to be some, I WANT to do this fluffery.
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