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

[Hussar]

From what I hear, there's no plans on making it pdf either. Although, I would almost consider buying it again if they did. It would make it so much easier to play.

Heh. Had a fantastic session today. The party has entered D and met the Derro. Turned into a lengthy RP session with the insane Derro. When I get home tonight, I'll post the conversation. It was bloody hillarious. God I love the WLD.

/edit - Now at home.

I guess a bit of setup is in order. The party crossed over to the main island where the wailing golem and hidden Derro were. The golem didn't spark up until the very last player crossed (six d20 rolls, 5 under 8, the last one an 18). The golem starts wailing and beating on the party. Or at least trying to. Pretty inneffectively, but, fun. The party whacks the golem and the derro proceed to rain fire down on them from their arrowslits. The cleric finally makes a spot check and figures out where they are and nukes the hidden area with a flamestrike. Scratch eleven Derro with only one making his SR check. Lone Derro, choking from the smoke, exits the tower and is promptly captured by the party, who then toss a Charm Monster on top for good measure. What follows is something I'm pretty proud of, if I can toot my own horn for a second. Inspired by Steven Erikson, I modelled the insane derro after the character of Iskarl Pust (if you've read the books). Take a look at the conversation.

 

[chrisheff]

Session 14 updated:

http://www.geocities.com/cptzaphod/wld.htm

 

[erucsbo]

Preparing for the jump to M

first up - any tips from those who have DMd region M would be appreciated. It looks like the party is headed there next.

Recap:
The party had defeated Madness - calling the in the wandering NPC paladin at the end.
The party members had just made level 9, and now had some magical goodies to distribute, including a swag that the paladin had picked up along the way. They were planning on "burning" many of the items to allow them to make items that they could use - I implemented a house rule to allow those with craft item feats to not feel shafted. One of the items that they were intending to "burn" was Eight-Strike-Fang!

Well - after the battle they discovered that the drow NPC rogue had disappeared. They figured that he had just gotten scared and thought that Madness would win, so had taken off. Later they discovered that Eight-Strike-Fang had also gone missing.

A fair amount of time was spent creating items etc, so the NPC paladin left - heading east to the other garrison - and the party was joined by a new rogue (this one a PC).

Newly equipped they headed north again and discovered that using Arcane Lock on the door behind which Madness had been "killed" did not keep Madness locked away. The door was warped and broken and Madness was gone. (3 weeks while the party creates items in the Garrison is just too long to expect Madness to regenerate and remain in the same place - imho). Fearful of another run-in they kept heading north and ran in to the Drow rebels.

Therein followed a discussion where the party discovered that they had been duped by the NPC drow, had inadvertantly given Eight-Strike-Fang back to the Spider Kings (after all the effort that the rebels had gone to to steal it in the first place), and therefore had tipped the balance of power back to the Spider Kings - who now had a weapon (they believed) that could deal with Anguish and therefore allow them to more fully dedicate themselves to wiping out the rebels and the Green Death.

The rebels told the party that they would provide safe passage through their area to the north to the Spider Kings, but they were not to kill harmless drow, ensure that any drow that did attack them were killed (so as to avoid the punishment for failure - being used for experiments) and were to ensure that in the fights with the Spider Kings that they were not seen to be working with / for / or on behalf of the rebels. They also mentioned the open caverns and possible exit to the north.

The party seemed quite open to the idea (and I think are anxious to splat some spiders).

So - they'll miss Anguish and the Green Death, but will also no longer be in a position to run back to the Garrison in E for rest. recuperation, creation of items, and help!

Has anyone had a group go from M (levels 9-12) to N (levels 14-18) without hitting J (13-15) in between?
Has anyone had a group seriously try to scale the mountain in M as a way out (I can see my group trying this)?

 

[Ogg]

A

My group just faced off the kobolds in A. Worked out well. I rolled the random encounter from A69 just as they approached the door to the hall leading to A69. They chased the rider into the room he ran back into & faced the full kobold force. The groups necromancer's skele & the group's tank dropped in the first round & things were looking fierce.

The jermaline rogue slipping into enemy lines & the cleric getting gutsy & running into the middle of the room & using her profane life leech (Libris Mortis) ended up swinging the balance & saving the almost party wipeout. Good battle & what I thought was a good lesson in tactics verses kick in the door method.

 

[erucsbo]

I've done up a DM Map for Region M in the same style as rvalle's and Hussar's.
Click here if anyone is interested (last one in the list of my maps) - along with the other images still waiting to be uploaded to James' site.

 

[Hussar]

Hey Erucsbo. Just sent you a map for Region D. Man, there are some serious issues with that map vs the text. About a dozen orphaned rooms, one room completely mislabelled and one 10x15 room with two gorgons in it. Didn't the writers ever bother to look at the maps before they stocked them with creatures?

 

[erucsbo]

Hey Erucsbo. Just sent you a map for Region D. Man, there are some serious issues with that map vs the text. About a dozen orphaned rooms, one room completely mislabelled and one 10x15 room with two gorgons in it. Didn't the writers ever bother to look at the maps before they stocked them with creatures?

cheers - up with the others (see link two articles up).

Seems that the "upper level" areas have all suffered.
Region O has references to P throughout, N had the missing rooms, and now D.

Oh - and the 10x15 room - are you using the 5' per square or 10' per square option, as that definitely has some effect on the larger creatures.
I'm using 5' per square just because it makes it that much harder for my players to outflank opponents (large party size - normally 6-8 characters), but there have been several times where doubling the scale would have made sense with the size of the monsters therein.
I get the feeling that some of the writers wrote with 5' squares in mind, while others opted for 10' and no consistency between that and final editting.

 

[Hussar]

Yeah, I can totally see that. Plus, I'm thinking that there may have been alterations to the maps during adventure writing that wasn't passed on to the adventure writers. I mean, look at the mess that B is. The way it is written, the Goblin Empire, despite controlling the southwest and northeast, cannot actually move from one section to the other. Pretty hard for the rebels to hide when the only way guards can shift from one area to the other passes right through their home.

C has issues as well. As written, Nardarik cannot actually leave his area of the map - he'd have to pass through too many nasty areas - including the hall of the Celestials which would pretty much kill him to do so. Even if he could open the secret doors, which he can't. I added a couple of passages to the map to fix that when I ran it.

 

[erucsbo]

Yeah, I can totally see that. Plus, I'm thinking that there may have been alterations to the maps during adventure writing that wasn't passed on to the adventure writers. I mean, look at the mess that B is. The way it is written, the Goblin Empire, despite controlling the southwest and northeast, cannot actually move from one section to the other. Pretty hard for the rebels to hide when the only way guards can shift from one area to the other passes right through their home.

C has issues as well. As written, Nardarik cannot actually leave his area of the map - he'd have to pass through too many nasty areas - including the hall of the Celestials which would pretty much kill him to do so. Even if he could open the secret doors, which he can't. I added a couple of passages to the map to fix that when I ran it.

do your players actually pick up on these inconsistencies - or is it only the "Huge creature in a 10'x10' room" that they notice? (caveat - I haven't been reading all your game logs - some, but not all)

my group focuses more on the micro-aspects than the macro, except for concepts and vagarities - so if they had been in B (which they haven't) they might have known that the Goblin Empire was both north and south, but not been concerned about how they got from one area to the other.

One thing that does frustrate me with the map, though, is that the ONLY ways in to G are via the single entrance in the NE of C (the expected way I assume - but also completely hidden by secret doors), through the lava from F (yeah right!) or from the north via K or east via H - both of which are areas which really need higher level PCs to get through. Region C seems geared up to finding the Kay in C105 to allow the party to go north from B (though C refers to the key belonging to B21, not B0) in to F, but from there you either have to go north to J, then K, backtrack south, or go in the wrong direction and end up west in E. It's a wonder to me that anyone would ever actually get to G without divine or DM intervention.

It is no wonder that the 2 celestial garrisons (in E and G) have lost contact with each other!

 

[BlueBlackRed]

do your players actually pick up on these inconsistencies - or is it only the "Huge creature in a 10'x10' room" that they notice? (caveat - I haven't been reading all your game logs - some, but not all)

Aaron in my group likes to sing the "Giant creature in a tiny room" song whenever something like that comes up.

In region N, the large mohrgs have been stuck for who knows how long in a 10'x10' room.

Kind of funny to me as it reminds me of the old 1E random dungeon generator where you could consistantly get 20'x20' rooms with multiple ancient red dragons in the deeper levels.