World's Largest Dungeon, Is it fun?

[HeathcliffeSlocumb]

I recently purchased the World's Largest Dungeon from AEG and have been reading through it. I am considering DMing it for my group as an "old-school" alternative to our main campaign. I have read through Regions A & B, and like much of what I see. I am disappointed that very little dungeon ecology was considered by the writers, and will have to add that on my own.

Has anybody run through any of the Regions? How did it go? I would like to hear from anybody who has played or DMed in the WLD... Thanks.

PS: Amazon now has the WLD for ~ $70...

 

[fredramsey]

I tried DMing it; the first level bored me to tears. So I gave it to one of my players who is a DM, and he began running it. As a player, it's ok, especially since he is spicing up the 1st level a little bit.

After the 2nd or 3rd fiendish darkmantle, you start to yawn. I understand wanting to make it a little more "realistic" than a standard dungeon crawl, but come on, only 5 or 6 different monsters in an area as large as the first level? Man, that's dull.

I recently purchased the World's Largest Dungeon from AEG and have been reading through it. I am considering DMing it for my group as an "old-school" alternative to our main campaign. I have read through Regions A & B, and like much of what I see. I am disappointed that very little dungeon ecology was considered by the writers, and will have to add that on my own.

Has anybody run through any of the Regions? How did it go? I would like to hear from anybody who has played or DMed in the WLD... Thanks.

 

[HeathcliffeSlocumb]

I thought the same thing while reading through Region A, too many fiendish rat swarms and fiendish darkmantles. I'll definitely swap some different creatures for some of those encounters.

 

[Ghostwind]

I'm running it for a beginner's level group at the game store where I work. So far, they have been having a blast. The necromancer wasn't too happy getting nailed in the back with a trap, but he'll get over it.

 

[HeathcliffeSlocumb]

Ghostwind, did you start in Region A?

 

[GlassJaw]

I tried DMing it; the first level bored me to tears

I was bored out of my mind with the City of the Spider Queen and RttToEE too so I can only imagine what this thing is like. Yikes.

Although hacking it up for ideas is probably the way to go.

 

[fredramsey]

The first level has a lot of empty rooms. And I do mean empty. Not even any carvings on the walls. And the monsters are very repetative. For $100? Geez. You could have taken the Fiendish thing a long way, and made it a lot of fun. Fiendish elves, anyone?

I was bored out of my mind with the City of the Spider Queen and RttToEE too so I can only imagine what this thing is like. Yikes.

Although hacking it up for ideas is probably the way to go.

 

[dagger]

Go here for some more region A encounters to spice it up. Look under downloads.


http://www.brandonsplace.net/wld/index.php

 

[DaveMage]

The writers have said that they had the most difficulty with Region A because (IIRC) the original writer(s) of the area backed out late into the design process so the region had to be finished by new authors hastily.

If you find that reading/playing through it gets tedious, I would suggest blocking access to certain (repetitive) areas, do experience normally, and then once the PCs reach 4th level, move them to another region ASAP.

Since parts of the region are unstable, an earthquake blocking access would not be inconsistent with the area.

Or use some of the alternate monsters as pointed out by dagger above.

 

[HeathcliffeSlocumb]

The new monsters highlighted above look good to me. The maps provided at http://www.brandonsplace.net/wld/index.php are also nice additions.