Would these maps make for a fun dungeon adventure?

[grodog]

Given Melan's hints, if Quasqueston doesn't let the cat out of the bag, someone else will have to soon, I think, if only to be fair to the rest of the posters.

 

[Umbran]

Given Melan's hints, if Quasqueston doesn't let the cat out of the bag, someone else will have to soon, I think, if only to be fair to the rest of the posters.

What "fair"? They're maps. Maybe there's an adventure attached to them. Big fat hairy dieal. Even if that adventure were written by Gygax, it isn't exactly hype-worthy.

 

[Psion]

I voted no, but me and my guys don't do mega-dungeons. That looks like a mega dungeon.

I said maybe, for similar reasons.

Mega dungeons are cool, and I like them, but they seem less and less practical considering them in hindsight.

(See this thread for more on this topic.)

 

[grodog]

"Fair" only in the sense that folks have been asking for the details, and they haven't been provided yet, that's all.

 

[Quasqueton]

I'm not going to tell the origin/creator of the maps. Such information is completely irrelevant to the discussion at best, and can bias the voting at worst.

If I said the maps were my own [they're not], some folks would say, "No, those maps look stupid, and I'd look for a new DM if you forced me to explore them," merely because of a personal bias against me. I've seen such reactions here before (not just against me).

If I said the maps were created by E. Gary Gygax [they're not], some folks would say, "Hell yes, those maps look fantastic, and I bet the adventure would be great," merely because of a personal bias for EGG. I've seen such reactions here before (not just for EGG).

I offered up the maps for the reasons I've already stated:

I’m using the image as an example because it is that image that sparked my thinking on this. That image shows what I’m talking about better than I could explain it (picture = 1,000 words).

I was hoping no one would recognize the image, and the poll would be unbiased and honest. [I expected grodog would recognize them, but I also expected he wouldn't comment on them.] But now the discussion has turned to the creator more than the maps.

But since I never intended this discussion to be about the original creator, I'm still not going to identify him. Doing so would just read like I was pulling a trick or deception from the beginning. I was not, although at least three people have accused me of it already.

Quasqueton

 

[Quasqueton]

In general, would we make the same assumptions about the AoW maps as we did about the ones Quasqueton posted?

The maps you link to look very different than the maps in the OP (and not just in the artistry/technology of their cartography). The maps linked look like straight-forward adventures -- no unnecessary rooms, tunnels, etc. It looks like every hall on the maps takes the adventurers directly to a room, and each room has some encounter (not necessarily a combat).

The OP maps have lots of winding tunnels with dead ends and loop backs.

Like I said earlier, the OP maps look like they were designed for a group of Players with lots of time to "waste" wandering about without any real direction or agenda. The maps you link to look like they were designed for a specific direction and agenda (plot).

Melan makes a good point:

Observe: they are built for continuous and repeated forays by multiple groups of explorers. <snip> No two expeditions into the dungeon would need to be the same, the experience would be individual for every seaparate group, unless they shared and compared notes.

That is very different than the AoW adventure path. Note that AoW is even called an "adventure path". The maps in the OP would be called simply a "dungeon". Both could have the same amount of fun and excitement for a D&D group, but it is likely that each would be fit for two entirely different kinds of groups -- those who enjoy the adventure path style probably would get bored and annoyed with the dungeon style, and those who like the dungeon style probably would get bored and annoyed with the adventure path style.

I think I fall somewhere in the middle. I think the adventure path style might start feeling like a railroad pretty quick (as I've experienced with one "modern" adventure path series), but the dungeon style I think would wear soon enough too, just because I don't want to waste time wandering around in a maze for my D&D gaming.

Quasqueton

 

[Templetroll]

Way back, it was common to have a large dungeon that could be entered, and sometimes exited alive, by parties of adventurers. Most dungeons in our group's games were not explored completely; they were explored until we found something cool and then we went back to town, celebrated and went someplace else to kill things and take their stuff.

Within this behavior pattern the various DMs worked in storylines about the world or about the characters. It made the world feel alive and gave continuity that some older adventurer (he is still alive after a near-tpk) can tell all the new adventurers where there are some unexplored areas in a nearby dungeon. In one campaign we had, there was a path, via some broken walls and stairway that was cut off from the rest of the dungeon, to a room on the 5th level that was 'safe'. That meant the party could retreat there and rest so long as they were smart enough to not allow things to follow them back. When playing that campaign we went to that dungeon once or twice a year, just to kick around and explore a little bit more of some level.

I like the adventure paths, but I think the best paths are those that are developed from the characters backgrounds, personalities and actions. Sometimes published work can be developed into something relevant to the characters. That map that was in the 1e DMG is an example. How many have used the dungeon under the ruined monestary for an adventure? I think I've used it with three different groups of players, with really different encounters each time. The OP maps are kind of like that, a great place to vist but I wouldn't want to live there. The OP maps look like opportunities for enterprising parties to sell maps when they get back to town, or as they run away through town... .

Another concept is to put an adventure path scenario into the midst of the OP maps. Characters that follow the clues go through the dungeon but only explore the relevant parts, kind of like going through the Underdark from the Giant lair to the Kuo-toa area. Lots of Underdark, but only this 'bit' is of interest right now. I think that fits in with Quasqueton's middle of the corridor thought.

 

[grodog]

I'm not going to tell the origin/creator of the maps. Such information is completely irrelevant to the discussion at best, and can bias the voting at worst.

A good point!

But since I never intended this discussion to be about the original creator, I'm still not going to identify him. Doing so would just read like I was pulling a trick or deception from the beginning. I was not, although at least three people have accused me of it already.

FWIW, my intent with my "coy" comment wasn't to be accustatory, I just thought you had some secondary motives that weren't present. My apologies if I've derailed your thread more than I'd intended (which wasn't at all).

The maps you link to look very different than the maps in the OP (and not just in the artistry/technology of their cartography). The maps linked look like straight-forward adventures -- no unnecessary rooms, tunnels, etc. It looks like every hall on the maps takes the adventurers directly to a room, and each room has some encounter (not necessarily a combat).

The OP maps have lots of winding tunnels with dead ends and loop backs.

True, however, taken as a full unit across the two sets of maps (which are linked), the kinds of challenges presented by the AoW maps struck me as more indicative of the style of the original maps than most 3.x maps in general do so. Whlie the AoW maps are more stretched out, they feature a lot of vertical challenges, hidden sublevels, etc., like the OP maps when taken as a whole. That said, in execution the AoW maps also take up a lot more horizontal space (they're not sized to 1 sheet of graph paper each), they are pretty much numbered with one challenge/encounter in each room, and they aren't designed to foster exploration in which wandering mosters will play a sizable role (they're still pretty linear).

I think I fall somewhere in the middle. I think the adventure path style might start feeling like a railroad pretty quick (as I've experienced with one "modern" adventure path series), but the dungeon style I think would wear soon enough too, just because I don't want to waste time wandering around in a maze for my D&D gaming.

That's one of the things I've appreciated most about Necromancer Games' Tomb of Abysthor and Rappan Athuk serieses: in the intros, Clark and Bill comment that one of the main drivers for play in a dungeon is to provide the players with goals. Players don't willingly enter RA, they are sent there to retrive X from evil temple Y on level Z; or the PCs must secure the services of alien wizard A on level B in order to accomplish unrelated-to-this-present-dungeon-environment goal C; etc. In OP map play, the players' piecemeal exploration of the map over several expeditions would likely provide those kinds of tactical goals directly.

 

[T. Foster]

I'm not sure I see the OP's point of not revealing the origin of these maps (which, I must admit, I also instantly recognized) but I guess I'll respect his wishes...

I've always wanted to play in the style of campaign epitomized by these sorts of maps; where the multi-level megadungeon essentially is the campaign world, and characters can spend their entire careers exploring the place and still never exhaust its potential. And I'll go a step further and admit something that you're not likely to see too often on ENWorld -- I like making maps. I think it's fun to try to make an accurate map and feel that sense of accomplishment when different sections line up, to deal with the DM's attempts to thwart mapping (via teleporters or shifting rooms or just weirdly shaped rooms and corridors). I'd go so far as to say that for me exploring the dungeon and drawing a map is more fun than fighting monsters (especially when careful mapping can uncover hidden areas that wouldn't otherwise have been discovered). This is an element of the game that I think has been too downplayed over the past 20 or so years, due to the ingrained conventional wisdom that nobody likes mapping and everybody just wants to cut straight to the fights.

I could go on much longer about what appeals to me about the dungeon-centric exploration-based style of play exemplified by these maps (and I have at various other times on various other sites if you care to do some digging around...) but it's getting late here, and besides, if I say too much I'll risk giving away the OP's little secret

 

[Matafuego]

I like dungeon crawling as a player.
I LOVE it.
And i love wandering around for hours.
As a DM I also enjoy it veeery much, but I'll have to ask my players their feeling about exploring such a large dungeon (we all said we were going to try it once but never got the time for it).

My fondest memories of my early years of RP are from exploring lost HUGE dungeons. I never got to DM one though