Would these maps make for a fun dungeon adventure?

[grodog]

I'd need to see them up close and/or in person to make a strong judgement call. Otherwise meh.

I'll ask Rob if it's OK to scan these and share them in low-res versions.

My hunch is that he would say No since he's planning to publish at least some of his original maps and keys as part of his Lake Geneva Castle & Campaign (TM) series of products; you can check out the first two products in theis series on the PPP site: The Original Bottle City (TM) and The Original Living Room (TM). The Original Machine Level (TM) is one of the likely releases next on the slate.

 

[grodog]

Thaks for the info, grodog! It kinda dispells the "it is only random encounters on a random map" idea a lot of people had...

Yeah, there's a lot of good stuff in those maps. Getting some more details on the encounter keys will further help to diffuse those notions, too, I think.

 

[T. Foster]

I would love to play in those maps, but not run in a room-by-room basis. Draw big areas and make that an encounter area, or have encounters spaced out by "you pass down a few large stone hallways, hewn with images of some forsaken god" instead of "Door 287, Search for traps."

To be fair, I think your second example represents how these maps were mostly used in actual play. Accounts of play in the Greyhawk Campaign (backed up by Gygax's "Successful Dungeoneering" advice in the back of the 1E PH) suggest that the typical MO was to have a set goal destination within the dungeon (either from a map, research, or following up on something from a previous expedition) and to hurry past the intervening areas as quickly (and, hopefully, uneventfully) as possible to get to that area. Random aimless wandering and/or attempting to sweep out and secure every room like a police SWAT team were never encouraged -- the former is bad play, the latter only became feasible in a later era when dungeons grew much smaller.

Another key point to keep in mind when looking at these maps is that they weren't designed for a single group of players/characters, like most dungeons are today. By the time Rob was made co-DM (and these maps were drawn) the campaign had something like 50 regular players with multiple sessions a week (small groups (1-4 players) during the week, large groups (12+ players) on the weekends), plus one-off forays at conventions and such. Celebrim's previous observation that these maps represent "60-80 hours of dungeoneering" is probably about right, but that's not 60-80 hours for a single party/player group, its 60-80 hours total split among 3 or 4 (or more) parties/groups.

Gygax's original 1972 Greyhawk Castle had 13 levels (IIRC) and was played in primarily by about a dozen players, usually operating in small sub-groups of 1-4 players. By the time Rob was brought in as co-DM in 1973 (as a "reward" for "defeating" the original Castle -- being the first player to meet Zagyg on the "bottom" level) the campaign had grown so in number of players that the Castle also had to grow to accomodate all of them and was redesigned from its original 13 levels to its eventual size of 40 or more levels.

 

[Lanefan]

The maps - or what I can see of 'em - look like fun.

As for "justification", who cares? If I'm in a party wading through the place, I'm not going to stop and ask "Why is this place so big?" or similar...though I might wonder why all the twisty tunnels when a straight one would have done...I'm just going to make a map and look for the secret doors. If I'm getting my nose bent into my face by a Giant, I'm not going to stop and ask "How did it get in here through that little tiny door?"; I'm just going to kill it, loot it, and move on!

And that's what dungeon crawling is all about! As long as there's some vague reason for us to be there at all, let's get at it!

Lanefan

 

[grodog]

I would love to play in those maps, but not run in a room-by-room basis. Draw big areas and make that an encounter area, or have encounters spaced out by "you pass down a few large stone hallways, hewn with images of some forsaken god" instead of "Door 287, Search for traps."

To be fair, I think your second example represents how these maps were mostly used in actual play. Accounts of play in the Greyhawk Campaign (backed up by Gygax's "Successful Dungeoneering" advice in the back of the 1E PH) suggest that the typical MO was to have a set goal destination within the dungeon (either from a map, research, or following up on something from a previous expedition) and to hurry past the intervening areas as quickly (and, hopefully, uneventfully) as possible to get to that area. Random aimless wandering and/or attempting to sweep out and secure every room like a police SWAT team were never encouraged -- the former is bad play, the latter only became feasible in a later era when dungeons grew much smaller.

I'm not sure that I understand the distinction that you're making Trent. It sounds like you're saying "yes, it was like 'Door 287, Search for Traps'" but then you also seem to be supporting Gygax's advice that the DM should penalize PCs that spend too much time dithering around while searching every wall for secret doors, listening at every door, checking for traps every square they enter:

Assume that your players ore continually wasting time (thus making the so-called adventure drag out into a boring session of dice rolling and delay) if they are checking endlessly for traps and listening at every door. If this persists, despite the obvious displeasure you express, the requirement that helmets be doffed and mail coifs removed to listen at a door,
and then be carefully replaced, the warnings about ear seekers, and frequent checking for wandering monsters (q...), then you will have to take more direct part in things. Mocking their over-cautious behavior as near cowardice, rolling huge handfuls of dice and then telling them the results are negative, and statements to the effect that: "You detect nothing, and nothing has detected YOU so far - ", might suffice. If the problem should continue, then rooms full with silent monsters will turn the tide, but that is the stuff of later adventures.

??

 

[T. Foster]

What I mean is that even though these maps show a lot of rooms, presumably not every room was of equal importance or interest. Look at Gygax's level-stocking advice from OD&D vol. 3:

In laying out your dungeons keep in mind that downward (and upward) mobility is desirable, for players will not find a game enjoyable which confines them too much. On the other hand unusual areas and rich treasures should be relatively difficult to locate, and access must be limited. The layout of a level will affect the route most often followed by players. Observation of the most frequently used passages and explored rooms will guide the referee in preparation of successive levels, which, of course, should be progressively more dangerous and difficult.

and

As a general rule there will be far more uninhabited space on a level than there will be space occupied by monsters, human or otherwise. The determination of just where monsters should be placed, and whether or not they will be guarding treasure, and how much of the latter if they are guarding something, can become burdensome if faced with several levels to do at one time. It is a good idea to thoughtfully place several of the most important treasures, with or without monstrous guardians, and then switch to random determination for the balance of the level. Naturally, the more important treasures will consist of various magical items and large amounts of wealth in the form of gems and jewelry. Once these have been secreted in out-of-the-way locations, a random distribution using a six-sided die can be made as follows...

Taken together, these quotes say to me that the majority of each level will be empty rooms and/or randomly-assigned "filler" encounters, that only a relatively small fraction of each level will be the truly interesting/rewarding areas, and that those areas will be remote and/or hard to locate/access. So for skilled players dungeon expeditions will consist of searching out and going to these "areas of interest" while spending as little time and as few resources as possible dealing with all the "filler" stuff in-between. So yeah, "Door #287" is there, but only inferior players will waste a lot of time and resources on it, because their more skilled brethren will be in (or at least on their way to/from) the interesting/unique/rewarding areas.

I've described this idea elsewhere with the shorthand of "dungeon-as-wilderness" -- just like a wilderness-based campaign has various areas of interest (lairs and mini-dungeons) secreted away in the midst of an expansive (and generally not all that interesting) wilderness full of wandering monsters which players will generally seek to cross as quickly and uneventfully as possible, "campaign-dungeons" (i.e. so-called megadungeons) are the same way -- small areas of interest (rooms and sub-levels) surrounded by and hidden amongst lots of generic/filler areas which smart players will seek to avoid as much as possible. Instead of traversing the Devil's Woods and Howling Hills to get to the Tower of Woe, the characters will be traversing Dungeon Level 4 to get to the Chapel of Dalt, but the dynamic of play is essentially the same. Just like characters in the former can choose to loiter in the Woods going from hex to hex having random encounters, but doing so is generally a boring waste of time and resources and a distraction from the stuff that's actually interesting (the tower), characters in the latter can loiter on Dungeon Level 4, searching every door for traps and every room for secret doors, making sure their map is completely accurate and that they've rousted every roomful of giant rats and spiders, with the same result -- they will have wasted all their time and resources on boring/rote/routine stuff instead of what's actually interesting and unique (and fun) -- the special areas.

In a module-sized dungeon where there are likely only 30 or 40 rooms in the entire dungeon and every one of them has been designed to have something interesting and unique and potentially challenging and rewarding about it, it makes sense to be thorough in exploration, to visit every room, kill all the monsters, find all the secret doors, recover all the treasure, etc. But in a "campaign-dungeon" where there are likely hundreds, or even thousands, of rooms and 80% or so of them by design are at best empty and uninteresting and at worst deliberate time and resource wasters, a different approach is required as a matter of simple expediency -- you'll never be able to thoroughly explore the whole thing, so it only makes sense to spend as little time and resources as possible on the filler and focus as much as possible on the "good stuff."

And this, I think, is what Gygax is really talking about with his emphasis on setting specific objectives in the "successful dungeoneering" essay in the 1E PH -- that in a dungeon expedition players shouldn't be satisfied just going randomly (or even systematically) from filler room to filler room having what are effectively random encounters, they should have an objective of first finding and then exploring the interesting/unique/rewarding special areas. I suspect this grew out of frustration with running Greyhawk Castle for players who weren't part of the regular Campaign at conventions -- he knew there was cool stuff secreted all over the dungeon, but these folks weren't even looking for it because they were too busy going from one generic 20x20 room to the next rousting random groups of kobolds and centipedes. (That's what is so fascinating (at least to me) about that essay -- most of the advice he gives really isn't all that applicable to D&D the way most people play it (with a small player group and stable party, discrete module-sized "adventures," etc.); it's much more a guide to successful dungeoneering in Greyhawk Castle -- a campaign with a large and fluid player-base, a huge central campaign-dungeon, and near-total player freedom of action.)

 

[Geron Raveneye]

Well, one thing is for sure...this thread was a damn interesting read so far. Combined with my little reminiscing read of Blizzard Pass this morning, it woke up a desire to run a few players through a dungeon and see what happens.

Now all I need is those players.

 

[Celebrim]

...(That's what is so fascinating (at least to me) about that essay -- most of the advice he gives really isn't all that applicable to D&D the way most people play it (with a small player group and stable party, discrete module-sized "adventures," etc.); it's much more a guide to successful dungeoneering in Greyhawk Castle -- a campaign with a large and fluid player-base, a huge central campaign-dungeon, and near-total player freedom of action.)

Very interesting discussion.

Many of my first instincts as a young DM (like 12 or so) was to create these huge mega-dungeons with thousands of rooms. It never seemed to work out as well as imagined, probably because I had a small stable player group. On the other hand, years latter I ran a weekly dungeon crawl for a local game store and tired of the work that went into making a mini-version of my typical modules for an ever rotating play group I had no real attachment too, I created a huge bare bones mega-dungeon for the weekly forays almost on a whim and was somewhat surprised to discover that this worked as well or better than what I had been providing.

 

[+5 Keyboard!]

I'm coming very late into this since this thread was resurrected and at the top of the list. When I first looked at the thumbnail images my impression was, "Man, this looks really familiar. Either I've seen this before in an old AD&D module or the style is exactly like one I've seen." My next thought was that the OP had some kind of agenda and was up to something he was being less than forthcoming about. However, since the question had nothing to do with either of these thoughts, I'll say that at first glance I wondered what types of things would be lurking in those twisting tunnels and in the bigger areas and how long it would take to explore it. So, in answer, yes I think they would make for a fun adventure with the caveat that what was lurking in the areas on the map(s) were up to snuff.

Now that I know the origins of the map by reading the entire thread, I feel somewhat vindicated that my first impressions were correct. The OP obviously had some agenda or he would have never posted this poll. I'm not saying that he was trying outright to trick the rest of us, but he definitely had some personal experiment in mind to confirm or dispel some theory. Well, I hope that the feedback you got netted the results you were looking for.

As a side note, the maps were what stoked my curiosity about D&D from the very first module I owned (Keep on the Borderlands)) as well, if not more so, the second product I purchased (The Lost City). The maps have always been a big selling point for D&D products for me and probably will continue to be for as long as I play the game.

 

[Bullgrit]

These maps, unsurprisingly given their origins, exhibit a lot of the characteristics of "proper" old school dungeon map design. Observe: they are built for continuous and repeated forays by multiple groups of explorers. . . . They collectively form an open environment for dungeoneering.

I agree with this.

I wonder why didn’t TSR publish more dungeons like this? Such large dungeons designed for open exploration (like Keep on the Borderlands and In Search of the Unknown) were the rare exception compared to adventures with plots and goals for adventure.

Most published modules seemed to assume the first party sent will go through and “finish” the adventure/mission. Few seemed designed with the idea that multiple separate groups may go through it at different times without ever really “completing” it.

Why didn’t TSR give us more such open-ended mega dungeon crawls?

Bullgrit