World's Largest Dungeon in actual play [Spoilers!]

[chrisheff]

how come it's so quiet here?
Or am I the only one not seeing any new posts.

We had to take this weekend off as it was a long weekend and not many of us were available. I hope to run our 6th session on July 9 and the 7th session on July 16.

Chris

 

[Jim Hague]

how come it's so quiet here?
Or am I the only one not seeing any new posts.

Anyway - my players are about to start I this coming weekend. (and look like progressing from E without any rogues - should be interesting)
Any advice from those that have done it before to make it memorable, yet survivable?
Any gotchas or other problems I should be aware of?

I'd definitely throw a treacherous Drow rogue in there - maybe someone the Spider Kings have sent to suss out I. Sans a rogue, the players're likely to miss out on a lot of the content, and there's some extremely nasty traps that could catch them off-guard.

As for movies, I'd say watching the original Conan the Barbarian along with some nice body horror movies by David Cronenberg should help you get the feel down.

Ah, always good to see someone else venturing into Region I.

 

[thecelticking]

Needs More Monsters

The WLD needs more monsters/foes & it lacks a lot of depth as far as the lay of the land goes. There should be towers and Castles and motes with drawbridges and deep gorges that the PCs could explore. It gets prtetty monotous fighting the same old monsters again and again within the same old confines of a box. You need to spice up the dungeon.

 

[Max Rebo]

Actually, most people here would probably agree with most of that. I dont think a castle really belongs in a dungeon, but I did manage to put a small tower northwest of Region M to change things up a bit.
And I added a series of caverns over Region M to house the beholder overlord I added.
Switching monsters is easy and most of the people here do it on a regular basis. Region A in particular is rather repetitive but easy to fix.
And there is a canyon in Region M so theres your gorge (sorta).
I've never encountered an adventure I didnt have to tweek somewhat. That goes with the territory when you DM someone else's idea of fun. Everyones different.
Change away...

 

[Kafkonia]

The WLD needs more monsters/foes & it lacks a lot of depth as far as the lay of the land goes. There should be towers and Castles and motes with drawbridges and deep gorges that the PCs could explore. It gets prtetty monotous fighting the same old monsters again and again within the same old confines of a box. You need to spice up the dungeon.

A castle... in a dungeon?

Well, I guess if an owl can crossbreed with a bear, there are crazier things out there.

The designers made a point of limiting themselves to the SRD, which is naturally a constraint. But I think it was a great decision, because it provides plenty of jumping-off points to modify the dungeon yourself and doesn't require you to go digging through all sorts of products you don't have.

The best part of the dungeon, I think, is its customizability. For instance, I intend to incorporate a broken-down, subtly mad Hound Archon chained up in one of the unsafe sections of Region E; I'm also going to incorporate some puzzles of my own devising, and Region I will feature all manner of just-plain-wrong beasties and occurences. If the WLD had been tightened up, I wouldn't have room for those things.

There are a lot of hallways, though.

 

[erucsbo]

I'd definitely throw a treacherous Drow rogue in there - maybe someone the Spider Kings have sent to suss out I. Sans a rogue, the players're likely to miss out on a lot of the content, and there's some extremely nasty traps that could catch them off-guard.

As for movies, I'd say watching the original Conan the Barbarian along with some nice body horror movies by David Cronenberg should help you get the feel down.

Ah, always good to see someone else venturing into Region I.

Thanks Jim. Guess I better read up on M for my prep-work as well.

Our regular rogue (who had turned to the dark-side - taking levels in Assassin) is going on hiatus (too much work commitments and something had to give), and the ranger/rogue/horizon walker got nerfed by the shadows in E, so not only do they not have any rogue levels in the party, neither do they have anyone with much in the way of spot or search (having lost a monk and a bard as well). The treacherous rogue seems like the way to go - perhaps one who has been sent to find Jolinaar (the drow from H). I really want to avoid giving a boxy feeling to the dungeon. I want the players to be aware of things happening in other areas and that things that they do might affect more than just the area that they are in.

BTW - I sold the party on going north rather than east by saying the choice was between CoC to the north and the movie "The Cube" plus monsters to the east

 

[Hussar]

The WLD needs more monsters/foes & it lacks a lot of depth as far as the lay of the land goes. There should be towers and Castles and motes with drawbridges and deep gorges that the PCs could explore. It gets prtetty monotous fighting the same old monsters again and again within the same old confines of a box. You need to spice up the dungeon.

Umm, considering the rather large number of terrains after the initial couple of regions, I'm not sure what the problem is. Regions G, H, I, J, K, L and M are all pretty unique terrains. Granted, some of the regions are pretty much straight up dungeon crawls, ok, well, half of them, but, there's still lots of other stuff as well. I will completely grant you that there could be some verticality added to the WLD. Towers and the like. YMMV and all that.

As far as monster variety - well, I always thought that there was more than enough. Region A needs more, that's true. Endless battles with darkmantles and rats gets old pretty quick. It really depends on the region.

Oh, and Gilladian, welcome to the party. Yeah, a couple of NPC's wouldn't be amiss. There's some serious nastiness in there.

 

[jim pinto]

The WLD needs more monsters/foes & it lacks a lot of depth as far as the lay of the land goes. There should be towers and Castles and motes with drawbridges and deep gorges that the PCs could explore. It gets prtetty monotous fighting the same old monsters again and again within the same old confines of a box. You need to spice up the dungeon.

it would have been nice to have more monsters to draw from, in some regards

but i think the moats and towers and castles angle has been covered in so many other products, i'm not sure how we could have thematically worked it into the story

BUT

essentially the lava is a moat
essentially the elves live in a tower-like citadel
essentially the island in region L is defensible like a tower
essentially regions D, J and K are nothing but crags and gorges
essentially the center of region G can be sieged like a castle

there's no hard and fast western european features/equivalents of which you speak, but the themes are there.

or were you just trolling for a heated debate?

 

[jim pinto]

region a

I do what to reiterate this one last time, because I'm not sure if it's gotten lost since the crash or its been so long (nearly 2 years since this book published) since I've said this.

But

Region A has to be boring in a lot of ways.

1. The SRD has a short range of low-level monsters.
2. Low-level characters cannot survive complicated encounters.
3. We could not predict at what point people would be reaching what parts of the Region.
4. Therefore, if 2 and 3 are true, the encounters must remain within a narrow range of possibilities.
5. Otherwise, everyone would complain that Region A was TPK-infested.
6. Someone already said it, but the dungeon is easily customized. I templated the book specifically to accomodate changes to any one single room without upsetting the balance of the entire book.
7. Even if you don't like Region A, there are 15 other places to start.
8. Okay 14.
9. I've run out of things to say.

Could the tactics have been varied to accomodate this? Absolutely.
Could I have predicted the level of commentary about this Region? No.

I've posted a considerable number of times trying to help and address this issues, because I think it's important enough to mention. And I don't want people getting stuck with a $100 paperweight.

Anyway.

Most everyone has been great on this thread, but I just wanted to post this and refresh this idea for new readers, so no one thinks they got shanked in the shower.

 

[Hussar]

Most everyone has been great on this thread, but I just wanted to post this and refresh this idea for new readers, so no one things they got shanked in the shower.

Y'know I've been reading too much internet when I misread "shanked" for "spanked".

To be honest Jim, I didn't mind A all that much. It was a nice starting region to work out all the kinks in the party to gear them up for such a massive dungeon crawl. Allowed us to work out the bugs in the party without dying all the time. I have no major complaints. And, the nicest thing about the region is that it is repetitive, which makes varying it up very, very easy.

I think the major problem comes when it sinks in just how big the WLD is and that there needs to be some adjustments in how people approach it. Some people get frustrated and stop and then blame Region A for the whole thing. I really don't think its fair to judge the whole product from one small part of it.

BTW, on a side note, if anyone reads 8-Bit Theater, the writer and his buddies are going through the WLD right now and he's plugging it on his site.