World's Largest Dungeon

[Psion]

World's Largest Dungeon

World's Largest Dungeon is a huge dungeon crawl style adventure/setting, very much in the tradition of Ruins of Undermountain and Greyhawk Ruins. The setting is published by AEG, and headed up by jim pinto. Contributing authors include Michael Hammes, Chris Burns, jim pinto, Jeff Stolt, Richard Farrese, Robert J. Schwalb, Lee Hammock, Jennifer Baughman, Mark Carroll, Jeff Dohm, Patrick Kapera, Dana DeVries, Ari Marmell, and Jeff Ibach.

This review is written with the benefit of having run some characters through some sections of the dungeon.

A First Look

World's Largest Dungeon is an 840-page hardcover book, with an additional pack of 16 poster maps. The package comes at a price of $100 US.

All of the book's art is by William O'Connor. The cover has a depiction of a number of familiar D&D creatures (such as dragons and rust monsters) emerging from a arched gateway. The interior art is black-and-white. Interior artwork is somewhat sparse. There are some creature illustrations, but most interior illustrations are objects or architecture.

The interior text is dense, which makes the size of this tome all the more impressive. The book does, however, include statistics blocks for all creatures (all of which are drawn from the SRD), which in the eyes of some is squandered space, but is a convenience in they eyes of others. However, many of the stat blocks are not generic, featuring many templated, classed, or advanced creatures.

The book comes with a shrink wrapped package of 16 full color poster sized maps. The maps are by Chris Dornaus, who did many of Necromancer Games' maps. The maps have letter and number location keys; the letter defines the map region and the number defines the specific room description in that region. Except for one region which covers two maps, most regions cover a single map. The maps make sparse use of symbols.

For a book this size, you might think that the publisher would pad with wide margins or large fonts. This is definitely not the case here. The text density is the highest I have seen in a third party product for some time.

A Deeper Look

The World's Largest Dungeon. Where to begin?

Well, how about the back cover. It proclaims that there are over 1600 encounters herein, featuring collectively every creature in the SRD. That's the driving concept. A huge dungeon with every monster. Well every core monster they can legally put in. They fess up that they cheat by only including one or some creatures in some categories like dragons, but still, that's a pretty impressive goal. (Also, this excludes the epic and psionic creatures, which probably weren't in the SRD when the mission statement was laid down.)

So what brings all these beasties together under one roof? Well, the backstory is that the dungeon was built by Celestials to contain evil. Over eons, the wards that held it fades, and earthquakes opened fissures through which other creatures slipped in. But many wards are still in place. But evil is trying to get out. It's only a matter of time...

The dungeon is arranged into 15 regions. One region covers two of the packaged poster maps, the remainder of the regions cover one map each. Most of the maps are more or less drawn in blocks connected by hallways. This should make it easier to section off pieces of the dungeon and use them independently. This is fortunate, as even the existing 200+ page dungeons have a reputation for being two much of one thing. It seems quite likely that a dungeon crawl of this magnitude is even more likely to fall into this trap if you try to run it as one block.

The maps are laid out in a 4 x 4 block. Which means, yes, the dungeon is (for the most part) on a single level. Play is presumed to start in section A, which lies in the bottom left corner of the level, and is designed for character levels 1-3. The final region, region O, is in the top right. As the characters proceed up and to the right on the map, the design levels that the regions that they find themselves in progressively increases. The final map is noted as being for levels 16 to 20.

Supporting material in the opening section of the book includes ideas for player hooks (in a d20 table reminiscent of AEG's Toolbox), conditions in the dungeon, default structural statistics, and special rules. One of the neatest and most useful sections of the introductory material is a set of encounter conditions. These are definitions that can be called out in the room descriptions, each providing one of a variety of interesting complications to spice up encounters. Some can be called out with a number which further defines the mechanics to handle the condition. For example, for the condition hazardous footing X, the X is the DC of the reflex save that characters trying to move quickly through the area have to make.

As part of the backstory of the dungeon, the walls of the dungeon are warded against extraplanar travel or teleportation. That makes sense. But the book recommends you ban monster summoning spells on the presumption that this restriction would trap any summoned creature in the dungeon. As summoned creatures under 3e are more or less projections of the real creatures, this makes little sense, as the creature never really left its home plane. I recommend that this guideline be judiciously ignored.

Other that special conditions, there are a few recommendation the adventure provides. The most compelling is the recommendation to eschew the standard experience scale. This is pretty compelling if you plan to run the same party through the whole dungeon, as to use the standard experience scale given the number of encounters herein would have the PCs quickly exceeding the recommended levels.

The book points out that it may be difficult to justify a wizard's free spells and recommends just giving the wizard a full spellbook or the ability to easily add scroll to their books. Reasonable, but nothing I would sweat. The book also recommends against allowing entangle and web, explaining that these spells are very potent in a dungeon; this I am not so sure about.

The roughest recommendations that the book gives is basically to eschew the take 10 and take 20 rules, as if they make things too easy. This goes a bit far. Encounters can be used to regulate excessive search (as can rations), and even if you allow take 20 for search checks, you can't really get away with that for disable checks. I feel that this set of recommendations is unnecessary and the problems it purports are easily managed.

Each of the dungeon sections are assigned a letter from A to O. V, W, X, Y, and Z are used to describe special locations (V is the singular area beneath the main floor of the dungeon, W is a miscellany of empty room descriptions that can be happen in any section, X is a lava flow flowing through the middle of the dungeon, Y describes the exits, and Z describes the entrance.)

Each room description is given a number tacked on the letter of the area, such as A1, A2, etc. Each room has a standardized format, with a description, (mercifully brief) boxed text, initial attitude, encounter, encounter conditions, tactics, treasure, EL, and scaling (scaling notes are given for each encounter, allowing the GM to make it tougher or easier.) During my test run, this layout proved very convenient. It is very easy for the GM to absorb the information on the fly (which is fortunate, as absorbing every detail of a book of this size is out of the question.)

Stat blocks are fully detailed in the text. The stat blocks are verbose and repeat information. This does consume a bit of space, but many of the stat blocks are for advanced, classed, or templated creatures that you can't just look in the MM for. While it does consume some space, it does make it so you don't have to take time out to flip through a different book.

The creatures are not just sprinkled in totally randomly. Each region has a character and backstory, with multiple dominant creature types. For example, the first section features warring troglodytes and orcs as well as fiendish creatures like fiendish-template darkmantles and rats. Later sections feature an undead section, a goblin city, and celestials fighting a holding action against the evil of the dungeon. Though much of the dungeon is classical chambers and corridors, a large section is water and another is open to the sky.

The appendix contains a variety of useful references, such as an attitude summary, condition summary, diseases, encounter conditions, poisons, and traps. A new monster type is presented here as well, the horde, which is similar to a swarm, but composed of larger creatures.

Conclusions

The most distinctive attribute of the World's Largest Dungeon is it's sheer scope. That alone made it the talk of the show at GenCon. But how does it fare, once you start to use it?

From my experience, pretty good, actually. The presentation is very friendly for jumping right in and playing, which makes it great for an "off nite dungeon" or pickup games, and the inline scaling notes are likewise very convenient. The major stubling block of super-dungeons is addressed by the fact that it is designed to be fairly easy to tear apart, though more scenarios for supporting the section in a stand alone scenario would have been nice (though editor jim pinto has been adding notes for such to a thread here on ENWorld.)

It's not quite the same feel as prior super-dungeons like Greyhawk Ruins and Ruins of Undermountain in that it doesn't feel as much like it is almost a setting in and of itself. But for what it is, a mega dungeon crawl, it does a great job.

As mentioned, I have a few minor sticking points with the recommendations provided in the beginning, but for the most part, those are easily ignored. Some of the early section suffers from some redundancy as well.

Perhaps the biggest drawback of the book is that for it's audacity, it's somewhat impractical. I find that being stuck in the same dungeon for consecutive weeks somewhat tedious. When I first wrote this review, I was thinking this is a somewhat personal nit and didn't mention it, but as time went by, I saw many tales of groups giving up the course when it came to WLD. Unless you and your group are really determined, perhaps the best course of action with this book is to tear its peices apart. To this effect jim pinto was posting conversions to adapt the individual sections for stand-alone use, but as he has quit AEG, it is doubtful we will see more of these.

Overall Grade: B+

-Alan D. Kohler (review and score edited 8-28)

 

[Messageboard Golem]

By John Grigsby, Staff Reviewer d20 Magazine Rack

Initiative Round
The World’s Largest Dungeon is a Dungeons & Dragons adventure from Alderac Entertainment Group. This massive 840-page black & white hardcover is based on an original concept by John Zinzer and authored by Jim Pinto, Michael Hammes, Chris Burns, Jeff Stolt, Richard Farrese, Robert J. Schwalb, Lee Hammock, Jennifer Baughman, Mark Carroll, Jeff Dohm, Patrick Kapera, Dana DeVries, Ari Marmell, Jeff Ibach, Alexander Freed, Sean Holland, Kevin Millard, Aaron Rosenburg, and F. Wesley Schneider. It features artwork by William O.Connor and cartography by Chris Dornaus. The World’s Largest Dungeon retails for $99.95.

No doubt about it. This is the world’s largest dungeon. If the 840-page tome doesn’t offer proof, then the 16 full-color poster maps that come with it should. AEG claims that it contains every monster in the SRD, has over 1,600 rooms and encounters, provides unique encounters with tactics and advice for keeping PCs on their toes, and is more gaming than you’ll ever need. In a manner of speaking, every claim they make is true.

First, it needs to be understood that while every monster from the SRD is represented in this adventure, every monster from the SRD is not actually found herein. That is, you’ll find giants, but not every giant type from the SRD. Yes, there are dragons, but not a dragon of every single color and every age category. There is a dinosaur, but not a dinosaur of every species. Underhanded? Sneaky? Maybe, but consider this. There is plenty here to keep your adventurers busy, and more than enough room for DM expansion, so if your favorite monster didn’t make the cut, you should have no problem inserting them.

What about the rest of the hype? It does amount to well over 1,600 rooms (though a good many are empty), there are some very unique encounters and every encounter is well supported by tactics and advice (including scaling it up or down). Is it more gaming than you’ll ever need? I think that’s a judgment call. Certainly, it’s more gaming than you’ll be able to use for a long while, at any rate. If your PCs explore each and every room and every nook and cranny, then they can expect to be busy for anywhere between two and five years of game time. On the other hand, it is possible that, with a little luck, a party could breeze right through in as little as six to eight months of game time. In any case, it should keep you busy for quite a while, and there’s more than enough adventure here to take your characters from 1st to 20th level (or beyond).

Okay, now there’s an issue of price. $100 is a lot of cash for a (typically) poor RPGer to lay out for a single adventure. True, but look at it this way; with this adventure, you may never need another one. If the idea of exploring a mega-dungeon doesn’t appeal to you, then it’s easy enough to break it into smaller chunks. Each poster map represents a section of the dungeon, but each is perfectly capable of standing on its own. If necessary, you could even break it down into smaller pieces to use as mini-adventures. Versatility is the key with this product. If your PCs are as excited as you are about playing through it, you could even go in as a group on the purchase (after all, they’re going to be getting as much use from it as you are!).

As noted above, the dungeon is broken in 16 sections, each covered in a chapter of the book and mapped out on a single poster-sized map. Though the sections connect to one another, each is also unique to itself, with its own subplots. Ah but what, you may ask, is the overriding plot of this adventure? That’s easy; to get out. You see, this dungeon has a unique property. Getting in is easy, but getting out is darned near impossible. Yes, that means that once they enter, the PCs are going to be on their own for a duration between one and five years of game time.

This presents a number of unique situations, many of which are covered in the introduction of the adventure. For one thing, a party that knows what they’re getting into may balk at the thought of a multi-year expedition underground in the same dungeon. The most obvious solution is, don’t tell them where they’re going. In fact, that’s the most desirable solution. However, if they know that you’ve purchased this product (and believe me, you aren’t going to hide it behind your DM screen), then the introduction offers a random table that you can roll on to find a reason for them to delve into its depths. These reasons range from the ubiquitous fortune and glory to “you’ve just spent a bundle on this book and you’re going to play it, whether the PCs like dungeon crawls or not!”

Other niggling problems are handled more blithely. Take the issue of food, for example. The designers simply assume that dire rats, dire boars, goblins, and lichen make for a stable food chain. In case that isn’t good enough for you, they also offer up some “magical” reasoning to help you explain the apparent lack of ecology.

The system does break down on a few points, however. First is experience. If the party receives due experience (that is, by the book) for everything they meet in this dungeon, they’re going to be about 8th level before they ever make it out of the section that is designated for 1st-3rd level characters. The authors offer a few solutions, the easiest of which is to simply allow the PCs to advance only twice per map. For my money, I’ve used the other option presented here; cutting the reward in half for monsters they’ve met previously. After all, how much can you learn from killing orcs after you’ve slain your 20th one?

There are other little issues, such as the problem with taking 10 and taking 20 on Search checks (which, let’s face it, is a cop out), replacing equipment, and the acquisition of new spells by wizards. Again, the introduction offers some logical solutions for all of these difficulties, though it may mean bending a few rules here or there. Overall, just tell your players that it’s for the best and that these changes will enhance both their enjoyment of the dungeon, and yours.

Every room in the dungeon, even the empty ones, has a unique feel to it, and most everything makes a degree of sense (that is, if you understand the origin of the dungeon, which I won’t go into here because it would reveal too much to potential players). Very few rooms are “just” empty rooms, most have at least something that will catch the PCs interests or present some kind of difficulty for them. Every room is described in detail with a description to be read to the players set off in grey text, the initial attitude of any encounter therein, notes that may alter the conditions of the encounter, tactics to be used by the creature(s), treasure, encounter level, and any special conditions that may effect combat (and there are plenty of them in this dungeon). In addition, the stat block for any creature encountered herein is included (a big plus), and there are notes for scaling an encounter to make it more or less dangerous.

What’s more, the dungeon feels alive. Instead of attacking intruders immediately, some creatures may ignore them, talk to them, or even try to recruit or join them. This is not a static, “open the door, kill the monster” adventure. It involves a fair degree of role-playing and interaction that you really wouldn’t expect in a huge dungeon. In fact, there are certain areas where the ability of the PCs to cajole and barter will be crucial to their survival!

Critical Hit
Definitely the fact that if you don’t want to use it all at one sitting, the dungeon is easily divided into smaller chunks to play through at your leisure. This make is much more useful to those who might otherwise want to purchase it, but don’t have plans to run it as one huge adventure. Cut it into bit-sized pieces. Let the PCs take on one section, but not another. When you’re dealing with a dungeon of this size and scope, versatility is the key to enjoyment.

Critical Fumble
I’m not really happy with some of the house rules. When I see statements like “wizards get hosed” or “we recommend that DMs simply ban druid PCs,” it makes me wonder what kind of thought went into this adventure. Okay, they’ve come up with some very creative ways of handling the problems, but are the problems really with the game mechanics or with the adventure itself? The experience problem I can be a little more lenient with. I mean, it’s true that in a dungeon of this size, letting the PCs level up according to rules will throw them into epic levels before they’re three-quarters of the way through.

Coup de Grace
There are a few new goodies in here (unique magic items and such, a new monster type), but overall, this is an adventure that is filled with pretty much stock monsters from the SRD. The Open Game Content is limited to game mechanics, and the artwork is passable. There is no table of contents or index, but it’s an adventure that is clearly divided by sections. How much indexing do you really need?

The sixty-four dollar question is, “Is it worth the $100 price tag?” Ultimately, that decision has to be made by the GM, based on whether he or she will make use of a mega-dungeon so large that it could take years of playing time to get through. I think that, given the versatility, most DMs will find it useful, if a trifle expensive.

Final Grade: B

 

[JediSoth]

Where to begin with this HUGE tome? Well, if you haven't heard, it's an 840-page, 1600+ encounter dungeon-crawl. It comes with 16 poster-sized maps, and contains encounters covering just about every creature-type (more on that later) in the SRD. I've had the WLD for about a week now, and I've read the introduction, lightly read Region A and skimmed Region B. So, this review will grow as I get further into it.

The book is hardbound and is very sturdy. It is bound in such a way that it will lay flat pretty much wherever you open it to. The layout is two column with pretty small text (I'd venture a guess and say around 6 - 8 pt.). Illustrations are grayscale and sparse. That is to say, you get an AWFUL lot of content in this book. The maps are very nice, color and are folded in such a way that each quarter of the map is 8-1/2" x 11"; perfect for scanning or copying.

The introduction spends a few columns going over the real-world whys and wherefores of the WLD. It then launches into a game-related backstory for the WLD. The backstory is important if you want to use it as a cohesive whole. The designers include notes at the beginning on alternate ways of introducing the dungeon, and there's a big thread here on ENWorld discussing alternate back stories for the dungeon. Plus, since it's modular (one of the designers describes it as a campaign toolbox), you can just leave out certain things that tie two areas together. I won't give away any plot details, but the WLD does go into reasons you might use to get the players to explore the WLD, both roleplaying and metagaming. It gives well over 20 reasons/hooks. It also has sections explaining terms used in the WLD like Encounter Conditions, and what skills are pretty much useless within the confines of the dungeon.

The book also mentions that druids and wizards have it hard. In fact, it recommends just banning druids altogether, along with spells like Entangle and Web. The designers state that these spells are vastly overpowered in dungeon settings and they've designed the WLD so that none of the encounters use these spells. I suspect that the designers just don't like those spells (perhaps they have a campaign in which the players use those almost exclusively in conjunction with high-powered missile weapons). As for my players, I simply mentioned that the WLD was designed without those spells, and if they take them in there, then some of their opponents are likely to have them as well. The designers also recommend not allowing the Taking of 10s and 20s. They say it pretty much guarantees the finding of every trap and secret door without any chance of failure. I found that not to be the case. In my group, the rogue was taking 20s to look for traps, but the dwarven fighter got impatient and starting just kicking doors in. Naturally, he found the only trap that was in the area for them to find. Sweet sweet irony. I get the feeling by reading through the designers' suggestions that they play with a lot of meta/power-gamers. I don't think the typical group will need to worry about Entangle, Web, Taking 10, Taking 20, Druids and Wizards ruining the experience of The World's Largest Dungeon. I can speak with certainty that Taking 20 does NOT guarantee the finding of every trap. The group I'm taking through found one in Region A with a find/disable DC of 27, and the rogue had no chance even taking 20. They cleverly figured out a way to bypass it eventually, but I had the last laugh when they finally found the secret door that allowed them to avoid it all together after it had done some serious damage to them.

After all the introductory stuff is out of the way, a mere 12 pages, we get into descriptions of things that aren't on the map. These include empty rooms for when the DM doesn't want to use what's in the region, or when they want an extra room to customize the experience. There are also some above ground encounters describe that lead to the first room of Region A.

The room descriptions is where the WLD really shines. They include grey-box text for the DM to read aloud, information on encounter conditions, tactics (including stat blocks for every creature/NPC in the room), and scaling info for DMs who want to make the encounter more or less difficult.

The Regions of the WLD
As I mentioned earlier, the WLD is broken into 16 regions, each with its own map and storyline. The storylines of the 16 regions are all interconnected, but it is done so in such a way that you can take one region out and run it on its own. I think this is a very cool way to handle an adventure this large. DMs won't have to run the whole thing straight through if their campaign won't support such an undertaking; they can pick and choose parts of it.

In addition to areas controlled by monsters, there are also "safe" rooms buit in where the PCs can recuperate in relative safety. All of these are in the dungeon in a way that fits in with the logic of the location.

The 16 maps all connect and can be laid out and one giant, wall-sized map (here). The "outside" of the dungeon has passageways that lead off to areas not detailed, allowing creative DMs room to customize their WLD experience, or allowing them ways to get higher-level characters into regions built for more powerful characters, thus avoiding the regions for lower level characters (e.g. Region A, designed for levels 1 - 3). That's pretty good foresight on the part of the designers.

Anyway, back to the regions. So far, I've read Region A, and parts of Regions B & C. They're pretty trap intensive, with Region C have more puzzle traps. A party with no rogues probably won't survive. The creatures in the Regions aren't just there as dungeon dressing, either. They are there for a reason, and the WLD goes into details on why they're there and what they're going to do about encountering the party. Some, like the fiendish stirges, are just out to suck blood. Others, like the orcs in Region A, are trapped in the dungeon and will cooperate with willing parties to some extent, assume the PCs don't just slaughter them out of hand.

The idea of cooperation between humanoids and PCs is taken a step further in Region B, where rival faction of goblinoids are fighting for control and power. I look forward to seeing if my players will throw in with one of the factions, or just start killing them all.

Region C is looking pretty cool so far. I've only started to skim it, but I've already seen an area that was built by celestials to test one's rightousness as well as an encounter featuring two iconic creatures that reeks of coolness in a wicked, PC-surprising way. I won't give away any spoilers, though.

These are all the regions I've had the time to look at in depth. I've skimmed the rest of the book and have thus far, been satisfied that the way dragons are incorporated into the dungeon. Speaking of monsters, not every creature in the SRD is included, per se. They have every type represented. E.G. There is a dinosaur, but not all the dinosaurs. There's a few dragons, but not every dragon.

Conclusion
The WLD is a huge undertaking for any group. I did notice a few errors, particularly in some room descriptions where they've been written as though the PCs enter from one direction, but there are multiple entrances to the room. But, these errors don't detract much from the enjoyment factor of this product. As I've mentioned, it's mind-bogglingly huge, and I can only imagine the amount of effort editing this monster was. I've seen more errors in TSR products (during the lean years of the mid-90's) that are half the size of but one region. A lot of people will balk at the $100 price, but astute shoppers can get this at substantial savings from online vendors. If you look at it from the prospective of 16 different dungeons (since each region can be run as a stand-alone adventure), then $100 breaks down to a reasonable $6.25 per region. If you want to challenge your players with a good old-fashioned dungeon crawl, the The World's Largest Dungeon is a good investment and will keep you busy for several years.