World's Largest Dungeon?

[johnsemlak]

I would imagine that they would need to break it up into seperate volumes. 4 200 page books or something. It would be nice if all maps were included. I am not a big fan of essential info being offered only as a web enhancement.

What would be even better is if they could include counters for all the battles sort of like Fiery Dragon's counter collection. And of course include enough counters. If there is a battle with 20 orcs, you need to include 20 orc counters.

But now I'm just dreaming....

Breaking it into separate volumes tends to be a bad concept, from what I've read. A lot of products done that way sold badly.

Anyway, I'm definitely looking forward to this.

 

[Bauglir]

Could be fun, but it's been my experience that you can only spend so much time in any given dungeon before the endlessness of it drives you nuts.

Breaking it up into smaller sub-adventures within an underlying dungeo-campaign might solve that - it's all about a sense of progress I think.

 

[drnuncheon]

I think I'm most worried about the "every monster from the SRD" ad copy. If that's not a recipe for "gotta shoehorn stuff in" I don't know what is.

DM: OK, level 9, wandering monsters...(dice clatter) As the thief -

Thief: Rogue.

DM: Sorry, rogue. As the rogue kneels in front of the trap, disarming it, you hear a scraping sound of claws on stone.

Ranger: I turn and nock an arrow to my bow.

Wizard: I ready a fireball.

Cleric: I have the worst initiative ever, so I do nothing.

DM: Around the corner comes...a roc!

Ranger: Something just kicked that rock, be ready.

DM: No, no, not a stone. A roc.

Ranger: The giant bird? Here on the ninth level of the dungeon?!

DM: Er...yes. Says here it was trapped here as an egg when the ogre mage colony wanted an omelette...

 

[Dragonblade]

Could be fun, but it's been my experience that you can only spend so much time in any given dungeon before the endlessness of it drives you nuts.

Breaking it up into smaller sub-adventures within an underlying dungeo-campaign might solve that - it's all about a sense of progress I think.

This is a very good point. It would be nice if different levels of the dungeon had little self-contained story arcs. Or different areas of the dungeon were sort of mini-campaigns in and of themselves. Even better if each of those little story arcs tied into a bigger whole.

This is what they do in Diablo, D&D Heroes, and various other dungeon crawl PC and console games and it works well. A seemingly endless dungeon is much more enjoyable when the PC's can get a sense of accomplishment by resolving different story arcs once in a while.

And of course it helps to have safe areas, little underground enclaves, or a nearby town that the PCs can return to, sell off some of their loot, and get a little R&R once in a while.

 

[Dana_Jorgensen]

Yeah, that will be one drawback. After all, the Accordlands books will cost a cool $160 (4 at $39.95 each) for that complete campaign.

However, I don't mind paying a higher price for an 800-page "world's biggest dungeon" if it comes off well, especially since no one has really done anything like it before.

That's only half the drawback. One thing I've noticed over the last two years is the fact that most of the larger D20 publishers have reached a point where they are charging as much for "house" content as they are for licensed content. Within a couple months of B5 coming out from Mongoose, all their house material (Armaggedon, the OGL stuff, etc) started selling at similar price points. AEG now does the same thanks to Stargate SG-1. And once they did that, the SRPs for quite a few other publishers started increasing, as well.

Now we have the Arduin Guide, World of Khaas, coming out at $60 for an 800 page book, This "world's biggest dungeon", and a few other rumored high page count projects, which are going to continue pushing MSRPs to ever higher amounts. It's almost like they're saying "screw the high school and college students where the player community begins, and just focus on the well paid former nerds turned professionals that started the hobby to begin with". I would have thought everyone learned their lesson from the Dragon Magazine Archive and that Silver Anniversary boxed set that WotC did a few years ago...

 

[Orius]

Two things come to mind:

First, this thing sounds insane! 1600 encounters? Every monster in the SRD? And I thought I used everything, including the kitchen sink!

Second, it does sound kind of cool. I've always wanted to stat up a huge, totally illogical, old-school D&D dungeon and run it just for fun. I like making dungeons.

 

[Orius]

But they should do several things:

First avoid unnecessary rooms. The thing about Dragon Mountain and even Undermountain is the sheer number of repetitive and boring empty rooms. A couple here and there are ok, but generally if a room serves no purpose other than wasting the parties' time, it should not be in the dungeon.

I definitely second this, given the sheer size of this sucker. Pointless empty rooms is padding, and a waste of paper with something this size. Not to mention time. I would imagine that running this thing would take like a year in real time. Empty rooms would suck.

Second, I expect the whole dungeon to be completely statted out with realistic story reasons for monsters to be where they are. No monsters just hanging out in rooms with nothing to do but wait for adventurers. I expect a realistic dungeon ecology where monsters live, hunt, and sleep. And they don't necessarily get along with each other unless there are story reasons for that. The same goes with traps. Intelligent monsters are not going to build random traps in every hallway unless there are specific story reasons why they might do so. Do you boobytrap your house? Stepping ever so gingerly across the pit trap when you go to the bathroom in the night? I didn't think so. So why would monsters?

I don't even think that's likely given the scope of this. I can't possibly see how they could wring a logical adventure out of something that shoehorns every last SRD monster into it.

I'm not even sure we should expect this. This seems like it should read "Old-School Dungeon Fun" all over it.

Third, I don't want a product that expects me to do all the work. Undermountain only statted out a small section of dungeon and expected you to populate the rest. No thanks. This 800 page monster dungeon better have done all the work for me.

Agreed. Blank stuff is good in some ways, for example, allowing a DM to integrate a dungeon more fully into his personal campaign, or as a way of providing novice DMs some practice in fleshing out a dungeon. But given the sheer size of this thing, I sure as hell wouldn't want to write enough material to have to fill an average sized-module or two either.

Fourth, no fair nerfing PC abilities unless there are good story reasons to do so. For example, Dragon Mountain had several spells blocked for contrived reasons that basically amounted to the designer being too lazy to actually think of challenges allowing for PC party's full range of abilities. If my high level sorcerer has teleport, I expect to be able to use it without half the dungeon suddenly developing an anti-teleport field. And from the DM side, its more fun to challenge players without nerfing their hard-earned abilities.

Definitely.

I'd also add:

Fifth, no cheesy traps or hazards that allow absolutely no saving throw, a al the old Tomb of horrors. That's just as bad as nerfing.

 

[Orius]

I've noticed recently a number of posts in which the decline of the one dungeon per campaign phenomenon has been lamented, albeit out of nostalgia rather than any other reason. Those posts struck a chord with me. This project may well scratch that particular nostalgic itch.

Well, I think it has something to do with the fact that one can easily get the dungeon-crawl kick by playing a computer game that handles the numbers a lot faster than a human DM can. People want more from D&D.

I haven't abandoned dungeons completely, though. I like statting them up, drawing the maps, creating devious traps, and so on. It's just that D&D can do a hell of a lot more than dungeons, and I think a lot of people recognize that.

Of course, this only uses every creature from the SRD. If you're going to run a game of D&D with this, you might as well crowbar in all the WotC IP entries.

Certainly would be a good way to use any empty rooms!

 

[Ranes]

Well, I think it has something to do with the fact that one can easily get the dungeon-crawl kick by playing a computer game that handles the numbers a lot faster than a human DM can. People want more from D&D.

Of course they do, most of them, most of the time. I do. However, I've played (I'm not actually proud to admit this) every D&D computer game ever published (part from the new D&D Heroes, BG Alliance and the NWN expansions). None has delivered as good a dungeon crawl as the real thing. In other words, I'm not sure if I agree with you.

I haven't abandoned dungeons completely, though. I like statting them up, drawing the maps, creating devious traps, and so on. It's just that D&D can do a hell of a lot more than dungeons, and I think a lot of people recognize that.

I'm certain of it. I like designing dungeons, sometimes. This book could mean not doing that for - a while.

Certainly would be a good way to use any empty rooms!

Good point! They should have as many empty rooms or areas as there are WotC IP monsters they can't use.

 

[d4]

First, this thing sounds insane! 1600 encounters? Every monster in the SRD? And I thought I used everything, including the kitchen sink!

this dungeon better darn well have a kitchen sink in it.

maybe a mimic in kitchen sink form?