Would these maps make for a fun dungeon adventure?

[Celebrim]

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

Bullgrit

They never tried really until 2nd edition and in my opinion when they did they proved to be not very good at it.

Gygax was good at it, but his work never really got into print probably because a true mega dungeon would have been so expensive to publish. The closest they ever came was WGR1 which was notable in the absence of Gygax on the credits (He'd already left the company).

 

[Dice4Hire]

No.

I think a good dungeon is at most 12-15 rooms, and then the group gets a break.

One reason I hated the whole World's Largest Dungeon was the oodles of empty space in the dungeon.

 

[The Shaman]

Maps like those are the only reason I would consider playing D&D again.

 

[Vorput]

Wow! I remember voting in this thread over 3 years ago...

That really puts things into a perspective of sorts...

 

[grodog]

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.

I think that there are subtleties to Gygax's and Kuntz's and Jaquays' (among others') map designs that were not noticed, glossed over, or intentionally ignored, during the first years of post-Gygaxian publishing at TSR. Some of that was quite likely intentional, in order to put a different stamp on the game, and some of that was likely the result of a catering to the market that they built: a generation of D&D gamers who were raised on modules rather than on mega-dungeons, and who were taught to purchase designs rather than to create them. (I'm painting in broad strokes here, so no slurs are intended regardless of when you started to play nor whether you never DM'd or played a published module in your entire life).

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?

Other good examples of the open-ended design approach from the Gygax era include: B2, D1, D3, G1, G3, I1, L1, S4, T1, and WG5. Each of these modules feature areas for the DM to build further from the module's foundation, and in some cases the modules practically demand that the DM expand the module in order to manage play (B2, D1, D3, S4, and WG5).

 

[Bullgrit]

D1, D3, G1, G3, I1, L1, S4, T1

I don't have my modules at hand to double check (packed up for a move in a couple weeks), but:

G1 and G3 (and G2) -- aren't they pretty much missions? Not dungeons for free roaming.

S4 -- This is Tsojcanth? (Arcaeum is down tonight, apparently.) That's also a mission adventure. Not a free roaming dungeon.

The D modules are part of the high level series (GDQ). They really aren't much for free roaming either.

L1 -- free roaming wilderness with some small to tiny dungeons.

T1-4 -- can be a free roaming dungeon. The PCs invade the dungeon on their own choice and time, and nothing really happens if they leave.

Bullgrit

 

[Jhaelen]

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

Because they were no longer en-vogue?

I remember having created and used similar maps in the early days of my rpg career. I started to dislike that kind of thing about twenty years ago. I vastly prefer adventures with an interesting plot and a good story over a random conglomeration of corridors and rooms that just sit there, waiting to be explored.

Actually, these days I think, adventures are best if there isn't any map at all. Having an event-based, decision-tree structure is all that is needed for a great adventure (well, for D&D in it's later incarnations, I'd also add some encounter 'maps').

 

[Chainsaw]

Actually, these days I think, adventures are best if there isn't any map at all. Having an event-based, decision-tree structure is all that is needed for a great adventure (well, for D&D in it's later incarnations, I'd also add some encounter 'maps').

To each his own.

I definitely prefer maps. I like drawing them as a DM and I like the challenge of mapping a good DM's descriptions as a player. In our old games, knowing you needed to map so that you didn't become hopelessly lost made the adventure feel more dangerous and mysterious. Again though, not everyone gets the same thing out of the same thing. Your sense of adventure and danger may have nothing to do with maps.

I use to map out video games like Wizardry and Dragon Warrior though, back before the "automap" features became common, so I grew up with mapping as a basic characteristic of RPGs.

 

[grodog]

I don't have my modules at hand to double check (packed up for a move in a couple weeks), but:

G1 and G3 (and G2) -- aren't they pretty much missions? Not dungeons for free roaming.

[list snipped]

I guess I was tacking a bit differently than what you were asking, Bullgrit: I was thinking that each of the above adventures are good examples of modules that have expansion built into them at a fundamental level, to the point that they almost demand that the DM takes up pen and graph paper to add their own material to the published content (which, in my mind at least, makes them more of a free-roaming environment; that doesn't make them as free-roaming as a mega-dungeon but they're more free-roaming than say, B1 which is quite self-contained):

- G1 has collapsed corridors and other areas that lead off the map, suggesting additional encounter areas and/or levels may exist
- G3, D1, and D3 are all part of the interconnected drowic underworld: if the PCs stray off the narrow path of defined encounters, the DM has to design something (or can leverage the massive Drowic Underworld design project over on Dragonsfoot, in the Workshop thread)
- B2 offers the Caves of Chaos, but they have connections to the Caves of the Unknown (which need to be designed by the DM)
- I1 and L1 are much more sandbox-like environs, quite open ended (although, yes, with small dungeons)
- S4 like the G/D modules in particular, names or hints at various additional levels in the environment that aren't detailed; it also has a wide-open wilderness exploration set of encounters, too (which can be expanded by adding in WG4, if so desired)
- T1 offers many suggestions on how to expand the scenario beyond what's present in terms of defeating Lareth; while waiting for it, it certainly screamed "design T2" to me
- WG5 (and its modern successor, the Maure Castle levels from Paizo's Dungeon era) is probably the closest of the modules I named to what you're thinking of as a free-roaming mega-dungeon

All that said, while most of the above modules are mission-driven, their backgrounds are pretty lightweight, so that it can easily be discarded if so desired, without impacting the overall play of the scenarios.

 

[renau1g]

So who brought this back to life? Weird....