My "Megadungeon"

[Howard Andrew Jones]

I always recommend writing your own material as opposed to stitching together pre-made products, just because that's far more rewarding and not that much more work. Pre-mades come in handy when you are pressed for time, but if this is a long-term project, why not go whole hog?

...of course, only hours after I wrote my first response my mind is overflowing with ideas to make it my own, which are really cool but then I'm also proving myself right, because I really do have a novel to be working on. Still, though, maybe I should re-read all this stuff, modify what I like best from other people's stuff and imagine the hell out of everything else, like I used to do. We shall see...

 

[Malrex]

Where can that be found? I'd love to see it.

Bah...I think he said he was working on Lake of Fire or something awhile back...
But the adventure I meant, which you probably have already is: The Lost Treasure of Atlantis - North Wind Adventures | DriveThruRPG

 

[squeen]

...of course, only hours after I wrote my first response my mind is overflowing with ideas to make it my own, which are really cool but then I'm also proving myself right, because I really do have a novel to be working on. Still, though, maybe I should re'read all this stuff, modify waht I like best from other people's stuff and imagine the hell out of everything else, like I used to do. We shall see...

"Roger that", on time conflicts...but sometimes that itch demands to be scratched.

I imagine book writing is less piecemeal than world-building which, as @Malrex says, can be ridiculously iterative. Small bites & a group to play with to drive you on with a real deadline helps too.

 

[Howard Andrew Jones]

"Roger that", on time conflicts...but sometimes that itch demands to be scratched.

I imagine book writing is less piecemeal than world-building which, as @Malrex says, can be ridiculously iterative. Small bites & a group to play with to drive you on with a real deadline helps too.

Absolutely. I jotted a few notes last night while I was inspired, so... maybe I'll get to it. Seems like maybe the way to start is with jotting down the ideas and encounters and monsters and doo-dads that are most interesting to me, and keep making notes as they come.

My new book series may have more in common with adventure writing than usual, because each book is made up of standalone stories that interconnect and build toward a kind of season climax by the book's end. It's like a modern TV series in that way with each episode starring the same character in different situations, with ongoing background arcs, although there are no angsty twenty-somethings and it's a sword-and-sandal Harryhausen/Rome kind of thing.

There are an awful lot of good campaigns floating around out there these days. I'm still finishing up running my wife through the Runewild (supplemented with other cool stuff I drop in -- recently this was Webs of Past and Present), and that is apt to take another couple of months. Since I don't want to rush myself designing something maybe I'll run Xyntillian or string together a variety of underworld scenarios (like the most interesting entries from The Darkness Beneath plus a few other goodies) since in all my years of gaming I've never sent anyone to exploring deep beneath the earth. That could be different and interesting. I'm a little tempted by trying to run Gygax's Giant series, but I'm not sure how much my wife would groove on assaulting a trilogy of lairs. One, maybe, but she's more into seeing neat things, meeting interesting characters, and unravelling mysteries.

 

[The1True]

Paizo also hugely expanded "Isle of Dread" in Dungeon 142-3 (and Dragon) Magazine. Here's a good chronicle of the various iterations of the Isle.
It's definitely a romp through the Isle 10 yrs ago that set me off on several Hexcrawl projects. I think you've got it right by not straining your imagination or precious time trying to create content, rather, dropping in prepared material. Especially since you've paid for all this stuff. It's ridiculous not to use it!
What won't drain you, and you may even find therepeutic, is setting out on a procedural project. Modify the Judges Guild Wilderness Hexplore tables to your own personal preferences, turn your brain off, and just roll up 7-21 hexes/night. Rearrange things to drop your various printed products in. Profit.
I sometimes help things along by generating a hex map first with one of a million online biome generators, and then drill down with my own procedural rolls at the 1,3, or 6 mi hex level. I'm (obviously) somewhere thoroughly on the spectrum about this shit though, so . If you hate yourself, DM me, and I will absolutely swamp you with hexcrawl resources.

 

[The1True]

which may go hand in hand with insane ramblings as there may only be one word written down.

Oh MY GOD! THIS! Who here has a notebook beside their bed with utterly enigmatic words scribbled in the dark over other cryptic phrases.
Like who the fuck is "THE OPENER OF WINDOWS"?!!! This shit is haunting me! I need to know...

There's an adventure writing contest: We all trade our most insane midnight eurekas and see who comes up with the most coherant adventure. The prize will be a grudging nod from someone vaguely adjacent to this forum's absentee overlords, and a somewhat patronizing hug from an immediate family member.

 

[Howard Andrew Jones]

Paul McCartney wins. The first time he got high (with Dylan and the other Beatles) he was desperate for a piece of paper. Mal Evans finally found him some paper and a pen and he jotted down the eternal truth he understood. When he came down and looked at the paper the next day it read: There are seven levels. He had no idea what that meant..

 

[Beoric]

Oh MY GOD! THIS! Who here has a notebook beside their bed with utterly enigmatic words scribbled in the dark over other cryptic phrases.
Like who the fuck is "THE OPENER OF WINDOWS"?!!! This shit is haunting me! I need to know...

There's an adventure writing contest: We all trade our most insane midnight eurekas and see who comes up with the most coherant adventure. The prize will be a grudging nod from someone vaguely adjacent to this forum's absentee overlords, and a somewhat patronizing hug from an immediate family member.

Wait, you can read your handwriting when you jot something down in the middle of the night?

I cleverly resolve this issue by immediately and uncontrollably having my brain fixate on the idea, and being unable to think about anything else (except how much I desperately need to get back to sleep) for the rest of the night.

 

[grodog]

I think it's telling @grodog reacted above. If anyone knows how some of the greats ran dungeons it's him.

That’s very kind, but in terms of first-hand mega-dungeon-delving at-the-table experience, there are plenty of other folks who’ve got more time logged than me: while I have co-DM’d with Rob Kuntz and played in his Castle El Raja Key, and played in Barker’s Jakallan Underworld as DM’d by Victor Raymond, I’ve never played D&D with Gary, Ernie, Greenwood, or the rest. And plenty of folks still alive and kicking have.

Often they were not completely flashed out! And in the words of Gabor getting caught up in complete keys hampers the "spark of invention" that makes DND great. Creation through play!

I think that's why we never saw Gygax's Greyhawk.

Agreed completely on this: the difficulty of translating improvised/semi-continuing campaign-play elements into stand-alone, contiguous, stand-alone encounters that make sense is the core challenge, and also why we’ve not seen the classic mega-dungeons in printed form, for the most part.

This is also a topic that Victor Raymond has been researching; he held a seminar on it at GaryCon and is holding another session at NTX in June too: https://tabletop.events/conventions/ntrpgcon-20231/schedule/95 (we’ll try to record the June one successfully this time).

There are some error bars on those percentages, but you are right on target in the observations about what makes it hard to publish home-brewed content.

Agreed, those are most of the major hurdles!

Allan.

 

[grodog]

I always recommend writing your own material as opposed to stitching together pre-made products, just because that's far more rewarding and not that much more work. Pre-mades come in handy when you are pressed for time, but if this is a long-term project, why not go whole hog?

Agreed, but players also want to test their mettle against the classics too, in addition to defining their own classics of course!

My son Henry commented that he doesn’t really know anything about the modules of Greyhawk, which definitely makes me want to include some in our solo campaigns, at least, so that he has that baseline lingua-Greyhawk under his belt.

Allan.

 

[grodog]

Bah...I think he said he was working on Lake of Fire or something awhile back...
But the adventure I meant, which you probably have already is: The Lost Treasure of Atlantis - North Wind Adventures | DriveThruRPG

Yep, that’s Chainsaw’s Lake of Fire’s final title/form.

Allan.

 

[grodog]

maybe I'll run Xyntillian or string together a variety of underworld scenarios (like the most interesting entries from The Darkness Beneath plus a few other goodies) since in all my years of gaming I've never sent anyone to exploring deep beneath the earth. That could be different and interesting. I'm a little tempted by trying to run Gygax's Giant series, but I'm not sure how much my wife would groove on assaulting a trilogy of lairs. One, maybe, but she's more into seeing neat things, meeting interesting characters, and unravelling mysteries.

Her play preference sound hand-picked for exploring the drowic underworld, to my ear at least. Lots of deceit and intrigue, double- and triple-crossing and fractious faction alliances! Solid fodder for a year or more of game play!

Allan.

 

[grodog]

Paizo also hugely expanded "Isle of Dread" in Dungeon 142-3 (and Dragon) Magazine. Here's a good chronicle of the various iterations of the Isle.
It's definitely a romp through the Isle 10 yrs ago that set me off on several Hexcrawl projects. I think you've got it right by not straining your imagination or precious time trying to create content, rather, dropping in prepared material. Especially since you've paid for all this stuff. It's ridiculous not to use it!

Some other good resources:
- https://greyhawkonline.com/greyhawkwiki/Isle_of_Dread (with index references particularly useful)
- the Lost Temple of Demogorgon from Dungeon 120
- various OSR sequels/prequels/side adventures to I1, X1, etc. from casl Entertainment, Pacesetter, Badmike, etc., as well as the Greyhawk fan community (see REM’s Amedio Jungle in Oerth Journal #4 and his House on Summoner Court too)

Thinking through whether you want to connect all of this to the slavers from the A-series, or to the pirates from U1 (or both!), “Can Seapoint be Saved?”, etc. is worth pondering too.

Allan.

 

[squeen]

Her play preference sound hand-picked for exploring the drowic underworld, to my ear at least. Lots of deceit and intrigue, double- and triple-crossing and fractious faction alliances! Solid fodder for a year or more of game play!

Allan.

Great suggestion Allan. I whole-heartily second it.

To your point on playing classic dungeons---it's that shared experience that knits us together as a hobby. We all know B2 inside and out. The G-series too, to a lesser extent. It's nice to have some common ground to discuss.

I purposely tried luring my kids into playing some of the classics because I wanted to run them, but only had success with B2, T1, Pod Caverns and G1. For the most part, they were too hooked into the home-brewed campaign to want to be distracted. One-shots also fell flat with them, as they preferred their continuing PCs over new ones.

 

[Osrnoob]

Seconded on Allan!

Side bar Allan, do you have recordings of some of these folks you mentioned running games? This one goes out to @robertsconley as well as I know they have played with the greats

When are we playing this megadungeon OP?

 

[The1True]

When are we playing this megadungeon OP?

You gonna help me write this behemoth?

 

[Osrnoob]

I can help!
I think others here would too, back me up others

One idea to incorporate grodogs thoughts of creation through play is:
We play
Rooms explored are labeled on the map
We help fill in or expand the key after playing on a share doc

 

[The1True]

ah Noob. I've been hurt once already. Look at me lost in the ruins of the Vanished Wastes, carrying the tattered flag on alone. I'm going to finish those books, because they're largely done and fleshed out. something something sunk cost.

You want to muck around in my 100 Years War, Post-apocalyptic Fantasy Heartbreaker; I need dungeons that aren't procedurally generated (the code inexplicably leaves 10' gaps between all the tunnels leading to a distinctive look).

Also, I'm evaluating crunch for a low-magic world that doesn't nerf clerics and magic-users as viable character classes.

 

[Beoric]

ah Noob. I've been hurt once already. Look at me lost in the ruins of the Vanished Wastes, carrying the tattered flag on alone.

Vanished Wastes was a group project that lacked a common vision. A project centered around a single person's vision wouldn't be so directionless.

You want dungeons? I dunno about that, maybe the odd dungeon room, or dungeon fragment. What sorts of monsters/elements are iconic to the setting, and what level range are you looking at?

 

[grodog]

One idea to incorporate grodogs thoughts of creation through play is:

Was that my suggestion??

Allan.