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

[jim pinto]

Hey, it's great to see that I inspired a bit of work. Yay!

BTW, jim, I have Secrets and it really is a great book. Never could get my players to test drive it too much, but, it was a pretty solid book.

thanks, hussar

a totally underrated read in my opinion

sadly it was one of the last we did and it wasn't marketed at all.

when it came out, it should have sent gamers into a tailspin, the amount of "options" we handed out.

sigh.

 

[erucsbo]

shaking the house

What I *would* like to do is nerf the fighters instead of the clerics. I want the clerics to be the ones that the party is relying on to "keep the dark away". I want to be able to build pressure with the odd safe room providing them just enough breathing space before they have to keep going.

I agree with you about turning though - would rather see a mechanism that sends a blast of positive energy out that requires a save from the undead, damaging them if they fail, or forcing them back.

Turning has now been tweaked.
I have removed the "fearless" condition.
A successful turn will hedge undead 60' away, causing them HP damage per cleric level until they get that far away, rather than fleeing. Undead that would have been destroyed are incapacitated for 10 rounds or until a negative energy wave hits, and then they start recovering from 0 HP.

The character who drew the Void from the Deck of Many things is back after the party finally found his soul in one of the stone pillows in the Crypt of the Lustful, and rejoined his soul with his body.

The party dealt with one of the fireball traps in one of the arches that couldn't be disabled by Wall of Stone across the top of the room. This means that the trap is now going off every round, and while it won't break the Wall of Stone, I've made it have other consequences ...

The party had just entered room 51 (which I gave a description of having scenes of judgements of all the sins, Judge aspect of Death being paramount), when there was an earthquake and the ceiling fell in, blocking any further progress and trapping the NPC paladin on the other side (she was stealing the limelight from the party members - under directions from the party - but still I needed to stop the party relying on her). There was then another cavein at the entrance that the party had entered the tomb. Since all the other main entrances were still locked they are effectively sealed in ...

Almost all of the players have seen the movie Pitch Black

 

[rvalle]

Yeah. Kinda anticlimactic way to handle an otherwise fun battle. There are all kinds of "cheats" you could have used to stall this "fish in a barrel of force" but the end result would have been the same… PCs win.

This is the sort of thing that we tried to avoid in writing the adventure in the first place… This just doesn't sound like a found outing for the DM. You know?

Btw… had any group ever uncovered the crypt that lies UNDEAD region J?

Just curious.

Hmmm, thanks for the write up erucsbo. I'll have to watch for the Wall of Force trick by them. There is something that drops those right? Disruption or Disjunction or something? I'll have to make sure Tyrus has it around.

Jim, you mean the one with the Vamp in it? Yeah, my group hit it. They were over powered for it at the time and it was a cake walk for them.

So far the Boss fights in N have been good each taking more then 1 attempt to finish. I made the Mummy Cleric and Lich tougher via the suggested power up. The Cleric one almost turned into a TKP and I had to fight hard to make sure it didn't.

The Lich fight is going to be interesting. Since he can cast quickened WoF as well as Time Stop he is going to be hard to pin down and kill.

rv

 

[rvalle]

p677 - Horde Traits - first paragraph says that Hordes cannot grapple opponents, yet just after the next paragraph it says they have a +4 bonus for grappling others.

which is it?

Also - given the conditions of Desecrated 4 and Unhallowed 6 - that's -10 on turning checks and with the Horde providing an additional -4 circumstance penalty that makes -14 penalty for Turn checks yes?
(unless conditions are specified otherwise) - and given the Fearless condition does this make the journey much more of a slog?

Plus - the edict against extra-dimensional spaces. I've allowed Handy Haversacks and bags of holding to be used up to now (as they are non-dimensional rather than extra-dimensional spaces). I know that BoH etc are not supposed to work in the dungeon but it made bookkeeping and encumberance tracking a nightmare without them. Has anyone else found issues either for or against ignoring this rule - specifically in N?

And am I reading it right that the party will need to go through each of the gates (and therefore defeating all of the guardians) before being able to progress further in to the tomb?

Any other gotchas to look out for?

Sorry, been away from Enworld for a while. Its not gotten any faster while I've been gone.

I think hordes can grapple someone but they can't be grappled.

I think you are right about the -s to turn. My group has mostly given up on even trying.

I never allowed the extra dimensional spaces items in.

I didn't make the group open each and every door. In fact, they found the Lantern in the... second door up on the West side and he freely lets them in as he needs someone to 'fix' the problem inside. He also lets them back out again though keeps asking them if they fixed the problem yet.

As mentioned before, I'm not having the undead spawn every night but every week.

Once the Ghost was aware of the party entering and leaving 'her' area I let her freely move Wraiths around to ambush the party, circle some around to hit from both sides ect. She is supposed to be 'tactical' so let her go to town. The party quickly hated the Wraiths spring attack. Note: The first round can be BRUTAL if they get to ambush someone. 2 or more Dread Wraiths spring attacking as an ambush and then going again after winning init with +13 to their role can will a character quickly.

Don't forget about the black wave of energy blasting though the area every now and then. I roll 3d10 to see how soon after the party gets there that the next one will go off. Though I'm now thinking its going to be every 20-25 min instead of every 30 and the pulses will get quicker, and quicker...

 

[rvalle]

In the style of Hussar's DM maps I have created one for Region N showing regions, monsters and traps, the lever rooms and the "kill switch" room.
And the more I read through Region N the less impressed I am with the traps and encounter conditions etc. A DC38 Fort save for half of 20d8 negative energy damage (Room 87 and others) and for merely standing within 10' of a wall! - I would be lynched and none of the players would return if I used that one.
I will probably ditch the vast majority of this section and try and recreate the feel of the movie Pitch Black , trap the party in the tomb, have a running war going on between the 3 Lords, throw in increasing tremors and waves of negative energy and find someway to make the lever room locations known so we don't devolve into an "open every door" routine.
Full list of maps on my site and link to James Lorimor's site here.

And if anyone has some answers to my questions above, I'd love to hear them.

Wow, that is one awesome map! Thanks for sharing.

You can have the Lever rooms marked on the Ghost's maps since she has some of the region.

Or... just make it so the wall drops when approached by someone carrying the key. If you don't like the idea of the bad guys having access to the door make it so it has to be a Garrison member (if you have some that became honorary members) or by someone that is LG.

rv

 

[erucsbo]

Hmmm, thanks for the write up erucsbo. I'll have to watch for the Wall of Force trick by them. There is something that drops those right? Disruption or Disjunction or something? I'll have to make sure Tyrus has it around.

from the srd:

A wall of force spell creates an invisible wall of force. The wall cannot move, it is immune to damage of all kinds, and it is unaffected by most spells, including dispel magic. However, disintegrate immediately destroys it, as does a rod of cancellation, a sphere of annihilation, or a mage’s disjunction spell. Breath weapons and spells cannot pass through the wall in either direction, although dimension door, teleport, and similar effects can bypass the barrier. It blocks ethereal creatures as well as material ones (though ethereal creatures can usually get around the wall by floating under or over it through material floors and ceilings). Gaze attacks can operate through a wall of force.

I figured that if Tyrus had access to disintegrate he could have escaped from the prison.
Disjunction is a 9th level spell, and having a sphere of annihilation around in Tyrus' control would be insane.
It was the combination of cloudkill (and associated CON loss) with the the WoF that was the major factor in them defeating Tyrus.

One thought I had after the event was to use spiderwebs:
"The caster can form the wall into a flat, vertical plane whose area is up to one 10-foot square per level. The wall must be continuous and unbroken when formed. If its surface is broken by any object or creature, the spell fails. "

If the place was overrun with lots of tiny fiendish spiders (which would keep clear of Tyrus because he could destroy them without thinking) it would nerf WoF unless the intervening spiderwebs were dealt with first.
Or perhaps some gemsect swarms (K74) could be among the scattered gems, getting kicked up to get in the way.

 

[twilko]

OMG! Still Going.

Gday All, I just going through my browser bookmarks and thought I'd drop in for a trip down memory lane. 'Thought the lane would be empty and a bit overgrown by now. But here the thread is still going, quietly perhaps, but still going with some familiar faces. Hooray! Tony.

 

[Hussar]

This thread more than anything else was probably my biggest motivator for playing the WLD. One of my most successful campaigns ever. Two years long, we kept 4 out of 5 players for almost the entire time. For an online game, that's bloody fantastic.

Now, that 5th player turned over more times that I care to count.

 

[erucsbo]

I'll keep posting here while I am running our group through the WLD and will probably keep an eye on things after that. This group has been helpful to me (and I hope visa versa) and for that I am grateful even though the frequency of postings has dropped right off.

 

[jim pinto]

I want to take time to thank everyone for the years of gaming and posting. It was around this time 5 years ago (or was it 6 years ago) that I was working so hard on the book that I never saw the sun. At this point, many writers had flaked or turned in subpar work and I was doing everything I could to replace it and/or make it work.

Hence certain Regions not as exciting as others.

I'd already been working in publishing for eight years when this project came along, but it was still one of the greatest teaching/learning experiences of my career.

That we even got it to press within a year of starting the project. I just don't know what to say.

The fact that it was a successful experiment… well… I'm still posting here aren't I?

Thank you, everyone.

Maybe if the Ultimate Toolbox is half as successful as this, I can justify spending time writing another book again in the future.