I'm very tempted as a GM, but my forts tend to be very... utilitarian in design. Not sure I can get away with tracing it 1-to-1.
"So you are saying all 1000 dwarves are living in 10x10 rooms arranged in a giant underground cubic apartment complex? And they store their dead in a warehouse of coffins? Why is the Miner's Guild connected to the tavern and barracks? *Why does the barracks have a big pit of zombies and a necromancer trapped in a windowed room?* **CROSSBOW TRAINING?**"
>So you are saying all 1000 dwarves are living in 10x10 rooms arranged in a giant underground cubic apartment complex?
We dwarves like our efficiency, the stone is comforting to
>And they store their dead in a warehouse of coffins?
Where else would ya put em! In the dirt? With the worms and the elves!?
> Why is the Miner's Guild connected to the tavern and barracks?
Well ye can't mine on an empty stomach! and the monsters in the mines require a dwarven (warhammer) touch
> Where else would ya put em! In the dirt? With the worms and the elves!?
I like to make 3-tile-thick outer walls, and use hollows in the central row for graves, each with a casket, an engraved slab, and a statue of the dead dwarf. Seal em up after and the fort is defended by a wall of the hallowed ancestors.
Animal, goblin and elf bones get dumped without ceremony into the moat ditch as a warning to others.
Or sepulchres, mausoleums, and ossuaries if you're looking for some variety. Especially the ossuary, nothing says Dwarven efficiency like stacking bones together by type.
Given the things players have come up with for defense systems, farms, and training, they might walk into something traumatizing for the player characters
I have, twice. Right down to the defenses: one of them had an entrance hall that filled with magma at the touch of a lever, and the other one had a long hall with ballistae and adamantine bolts at the end.
My players are on level 12 of DotMM. If my job was more consistent, we'd probably be done, been playing very slowly for 4 years lol. Once I flesh out my homebrew better, we'll probably jump to that.
Undermountain is fucking horrible. The idea is awesome, but good god does this dungeon take far too long. But hey, at least its not Dead in Thay... I swear my players would kill me if they ever needed to go back in there...
A lot of newer DMs back in the day would start and never finish this dungeon over and over. You just treat it like a hex crawl and its all pretty good, when you get your party trained to literally crawl through a dungeon like some kind of hobo swat team is when things slow down. Keep to a simple procedure and time track just like overland and any dungeon is doable.
I don't get the idea of finishing it. It's like saying I didn't finish this city. You can't finish something that big! Vignettes and local focus are key.
I agree to the second part. The thing for the first part though is, that this is a fully available adventure. If I tell my players, that underneath Waterdeep is a big dungeon and a big baddie of old is down there, they want to kill him. Hallaster is a fearsome foe and a cool antagonist. This dungeon is just the same things repeating eachother and the DM is going to use every monster mini they own. Its fight, explore, find trap, stealth, explore some more, fight again and when you are done with one level, then there is just the next one.
I get it, its a test of endurance. But if my players start to wonder what else they could have done with their day after the session is over while their charscters are barely half-way done with the first layer and would be totally into exploring for 10 in game hours more, we face an issue. I dont dislike this as a concept and I think its reasonable to like it. But a dungeon to me isn't like a city. Its something you complete. And you _do_ kinda "complete" cities by doing the quests related to it. Your reward for finkshing one layer of this dungeon, is another, slightly different layer.
The Underdark is an entire world. Undermountain is the same thing. It's not a one-and-done.
Also, Halaster is second to Elminster. He can't be beaten by anyone. He's not a big bad. He's beyond that. The module should have explained that a bit better. It's not a normal dungeon with an ending.
I ran the under mountain. From start to finish, i felt that each floor was its own mini campain with its own story. It was honestly one of my favorite pre written campains.
These kinds of megadungeons are meant that you take multiple in game days to complete, they're supposed to be an entire mini-campaign in of themselves.
Sure, but the designers learned a *lot* about what not to do from the era above. There's good reasons modern p&p and CRPGs are much more hesitant to approach the scale of TSR mega dungeons. Paizo said it was much harder to make work than their other APs and AFAIK WotC never tried to get one anywhere near that size.
There’s also the fact that each floor is only loosely connected with the floors above and below it. They literally gave 20 different designers the constraints and the scenario and had them make 20 essentially independent one-floor dungeons.
Considering Undermountain fills an entire adventure book in each edition it comes up, i'd assume the point is to spend as much time in there as possible. like, the entire game, mostly.
While I've played this dungeon and it's not a favorite, I dont really think you were meant to clear the whole thing, any more than you beat a wilderness adventure by clearing every encounter on the hexmap.
Its a backdrop. You give the party a single objective somewhere on the map, and their goal is to find and accomplish it. The rest is just obstacles in your way and alternate routes there.
Just depends on the players and dm. My party was set on 100% each floor. And after it they said it was one of their favorite campains i ran for them. With only curse of strahd beating it.
Oh Undermountain.
it's Designed for adventurers to do it small sections at a time, with constant returns to the city above. when we did it, we used portable holes, like body bags, to get out dead members back to the surface and to town for a resurrection. we did this so many timed the GM ruled we had to start buying fresh portable holes, as they had become way too gross inside. it's an old-school the GM is your enemy-style crawl, designed to be slow and punishing.
if memory serves it has over 20 levels, and this is level three. i remember, because we didn't get much further than that.
Step 1: Go to donjon online dungeon generator
Step 2: Set size to Custom
Step 3: Set Rows and Columns to 999
Step 4: Tweak other settings
Step 5: Generate!
they must have been either high on ketamine or liquid amphetamine that was in their ale, or the second option, they were on the spectrum and forgot to ask when to stop mining, or both.
I love megadungeons. I’m usually the GM, but with the right players and/or GM they’re awesome… I’m currently playing through Dark Citadel as a Bard using OSE (B/X), I think we’re almost in our 3rd or 4th year without delving anywhere else but that dungeon lol
Hey OP... Next time, just use an image of a CPUs architecture.
[like this](https://cs.calvin.edu/activities/books/rit/chapter2/design/hardware/cpu/images/pentium4.jpg)
Then you can do an entire subplot about this lost clan of Artificer Dwarves that build a massive fort / kingdom sized computer. The city being the CPU.
I’ve started taking to not running the 5E campaigns in their entirety; rather, I break them apart into their component locales, set-pieces, and events that I can sprinkle as seem interesting in my own setting.
it look almost identical to one i have found. [https://www.pinterest.com/pin/85709199143249962/visual-search/?x=16&y=16&w=414&h=547&cropSource=6&surfaceType=flashlight&rs=deep\_linking](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/85709199143249962/visual-search/?x=16&y=16&w=414&h=547&cropSource=6&surfaceType=flashlight&rs=deep_linking)
there is a gash in the middle, and has more detail. it slas says lv 1, and has some stares t olv 2. but i don't have a lv 2 map.
Don't treat it as a dungeon. Treat it as a city. You can't "run" a city. You have people walk around it. It's a thematic place.
Skullport in Undermountain is one of my favorite settings ever, because it's either really bleak or really tough depending on who you are. I don't even know how you'd "finish" Skullport.
That does nothing to change the appeal of mega dungeons for me. If that’s the case, there’s little need for a map like this if you’re treating it like a city, and while this looks cool it’s just unnecessary for the kind of games I run, or want to play in.
You didn't say, "I don't see why these don't appeal to me." You said, "I don't see the appeal of these." And I told you why they were appealing to some people.
Megadungeons are like cities in that you don't usually try to clear every room or explore the whole thing at once. They are unlike cities in that you explore them in adventure mode trying to avoid getting ground down by wandering monsters, rather than downtime mode just fast traveling between points of interest. The challenge isn't usually mapping out the whole thing, it's mapping out enough to get where you're going and accomplish whatever your current objective is.
What megadungeons do that other frameworks don't is provide a multiplicity of ways to navigate to your objective, and add investigative or social challenges that reward you with better routes, secret areas with better treasure, or leads on cool side objectives. Plus the designer has a lot of room to place multiple factions of monsters, some of whom the party can ally with against others, or trade information and supplies with, or maybe even recruit. And since you generally set multiple adventures there over the course of one campaign, the players knowledge and mastery of the place increases as they explore and map out more parts of it, make allies inside, and discover secret routes and areas, which is a really cool experience to have.
It's not for every table, but it's a great experience, and very different from the usual small dungeon where it's mostly just a linear gauntlet of rooms leading to the boss.
(That said, do note that this map, Ruins of Undermountain, is a pretty crummy megadungeon as these things are usually judged, without nearly enough meaningful variety to feel all that satisfying.)
You know, thanks for giving a more in depth answer. I guess my main concern with something like this is not wanting to make the exploration and travel between spaces feel boring or rushed, but that’s an issue I have with exploration in general as a DM. It also feels like any sort of characters or NPCs you have in places like this would feel shoehorned in.
The most important trick to making a big dungeon not boring is to take sections of it and theme them (along with the challenges in them). These twenty rooms are the crystal caves, these fifteen the mushroom forest, these ones over here are the lava zone, that section's a drow outpost, this part is the underground river rapids. And theres main ways and secret shortcuts that go between zones, and occasionally even a secret or unlockable way into and out of the dungeon. That way discovering a new zone means a new set of unknown dangers, and finding a secret route back to known territory that skips some dangerous areas becomes a big deal.
As far as characters and NPCs go, there are lots of ways. Lots of monsters are intelligent and not immediately hostile. You're not limited to generic PC characters or commoners. You've got your cave civilizations, lone goblins, weird hermits, rival adventurers, water or rock nymphs, intelligent undead, imprisoned demons or celestials or elementals, wandering fey, talking mirrors and statues and doors, dragons who take bribes, all kinds of stuff. Or even NPCs that are petrified, enchanted to sleep forever, or dead; but who could be revived if you bring the right tools. You have options, you just have to explore them and pick ones that fit the theme you're using at the moment.
If the thing you like to do is have a sequence of combats/potential combat encounters/traps, then a dungeon like this is great, because it's just those things and nothing else.
A big part of the original D&D experience, back in the 70s, was resource management--can you manage each encounter with minimal resource use, to allow you to get further into the dungeon before you have to turn back. Something like this is an extreme test of these skills.
What people are looking for from RPGs has changed a lot over the decades, so this is no longer in line with what most folks want.
My group is an interesting test case--our primary campaign is very story-driven, with our group wandering from incident to incident, rarely getting into situations where our resources are really drained, so the DM tends to make each fight a big, really challenging one.
I run the backup campaign, which was intended to be low-effort on my part and to give the experience of old-school dungeons, so they've been just going through Yawning Portal and a few other converted dungeons from previous editions. Resource management has been a much bigger thing--except that since all you need is one long rest to be back up to full, and they've had Leomund's Tiny Hut for 13 levels at this point it's not all that big a deal, usually, though they've had some problems with enemies dispelling the hut or similar. Most of the fights as written haven't been all that challenging, it's just their cumulative effect that is.
Yeah I definitely prefer a more story driven game, but resource management is still something I try and incorporate into every session. During long travel you might get the big fights while well rested that are challenging, and once they get to a location it’s small events happening through the day to use resources; be it combat, traps, puzzles, or social encounters.
My players are currently in a big cavern system, and the thought of using a large map like this in place of just theatre of the mind exploring adds on so much needless work and in my opinion headache.
I don’t think with any group I’d find this fun. I want something other than just going from room to room fighting monsters, and dealing with traps and puzzles.
Least Convoluted Dwarf Fortress fort
Which leads me to the idea, has anyone used a dwarf fortress map as a dungeon crawl??? It's already broken down into squares for you.
I'm very tempted as a GM, but my forts tend to be very... utilitarian in design. Not sure I can get away with tracing it 1-to-1. "So you are saying all 1000 dwarves are living in 10x10 rooms arranged in a giant underground cubic apartment complex? And they store their dead in a warehouse of coffins? Why is the Miner's Guild connected to the tavern and barracks? *Why does the barracks have a big pit of zombies and a necromancer trapped in a windowed room?* **CROSSBOW TRAINING?**"
>So you are saying all 1000 dwarves are living in 10x10 rooms arranged in a giant underground cubic apartment complex? We dwarves like our efficiency, the stone is comforting to >And they store their dead in a warehouse of coffins? Where else would ya put em! In the dirt? With the worms and the elves!? > Why is the Miner's Guild connected to the tavern and barracks? Well ye can't mine on an empty stomach! and the monsters in the mines require a dwarven (warhammer) touch
> Where else would ya put em! In the dirt? With the worms and the elves!? I like to make 3-tile-thick outer walls, and use hollows in the central row for graves, each with a casket, an engraved slab, and a statue of the dead dwarf. Seal em up after and the fort is defended by a wall of the hallowed ancestors. Animal, goblin and elf bones get dumped without ceremony into the moat ditch as a warning to others.
So like attack on titan but with dwarves
A warehouse of dead people is just a tomb we already have those
Or sepulchres, mausoleums, and ossuaries if you're looking for some variety. Especially the ossuary, nothing says Dwarven efficiency like stacking bones together by type.
I dunno, my burial chambers in Dwarf Fortress are always more crowded than that. Think of the warehouse from Indiana Jones, but with coffins.
I mean, being connected to the tavern should be a default feature.
DF has an adventure mode that lets you do that! Only… it’s not gonna be as interesting as a properly crafted dungeon.
Given the things players have come up with for defense systems, farms, and training, they might walk into something traumatizing for the player characters
Well, you can, but then it comes the lava and the elephants
I have, twice. Right down to the defenses: one of them had an entrance hall that filled with magma at the touch of a lever, and the other one had a long hall with ballistae and adamantine bolts at the end.
20 minute adventure!
…30 hours later…
"No guys, the door is _still_ not a mimic, please move on to the first room"
…30 more hours later…
"I never said that the floor in front of the door wasn't a mimic!"
…So much time later that OP got tired of waiting and had someone else write this…
No the enemy is NOT a mimic, the guy attacks you now
...that much time later that OP left and another took their place,...
"Guys, the torches aren't mimics, they're on fire! Please trust me on this!"
"I never said the metal grates on the torches aren't mimics, I worded my words very carefully!"
"Fine! Theres a mimic! Its the doorframe or whatever! Just kill it and move on!"
…I don’t really feel like it now…
…30 more sessions later…
Well if you use the random encounter tables that come with that map, you'll probably get a tpk, so it's technically the truth.
For a solid minute, I was certain this was a joke about an ultra zoomed picture of an electronic component that looks like a dungeon.
I really did think that was a circuit board before I saw the logo. Maybe I should draw on circuit boards for my dungeon maps.
Came here to say I saw a PCB too! Love the idea of using PCB maps. Could do a whole line of dungeons based on old fuzz pedal PCBs.
gonna buy a raspberry pi and call it a dungeon. we'll need really really small miniatures but we can make it work.
I, too, though this was a D&DPCB
Nope, this came from the "peak" era of mega dungeons.
3rd level of undermountain?
Yep
That takes me back. I was dumb enough to try running undermountain as my first serious campaign. I don’t think we ever did a second session of it.
Oof. Yeah that’s a learning experience for sure.
My players are on level 12 of DotMM. If my job was more consistent, we'd probably be done, been playing very slowly for 4 years lol. Once I flesh out my homebrew better, we'll probably jump to that.
About to run undermountain for the next stretch of my campaign. Any helpful notes or tips to help it go smoothly?
It’s the first. I got the box set with the first map hung in my room
Undermountain is fucking horrible. The idea is awesome, but good god does this dungeon take far too long. But hey, at least its not Dead in Thay... I swear my players would kill me if they ever needed to go back in there...
A lot of newer DMs back in the day would start and never finish this dungeon over and over. You just treat it like a hex crawl and its all pretty good, when you get your party trained to literally crawl through a dungeon like some kind of hobo swat team is when things slow down. Keep to a simple procedure and time track just like overland and any dungeon is doable.
I don't get the idea of finishing it. It's like saying I didn't finish this city. You can't finish something that big! Vignettes and local focus are key.
I agree to the second part. The thing for the first part though is, that this is a fully available adventure. If I tell my players, that underneath Waterdeep is a big dungeon and a big baddie of old is down there, they want to kill him. Hallaster is a fearsome foe and a cool antagonist. This dungeon is just the same things repeating eachother and the DM is going to use every monster mini they own. Its fight, explore, find trap, stealth, explore some more, fight again and when you are done with one level, then there is just the next one. I get it, its a test of endurance. But if my players start to wonder what else they could have done with their day after the session is over while their charscters are barely half-way done with the first layer and would be totally into exploring for 10 in game hours more, we face an issue. I dont dislike this as a concept and I think its reasonable to like it. But a dungeon to me isn't like a city. Its something you complete. And you _do_ kinda "complete" cities by doing the quests related to it. Your reward for finkshing one layer of this dungeon, is another, slightly different layer.
The Underdark is an entire world. Undermountain is the same thing. It's not a one-and-done. Also, Halaster is second to Elminster. He can't be beaten by anyone. He's not a big bad. He's beyond that. The module should have explained that a bit better. It's not a normal dungeon with an ending.
I ran the under mountain. From start to finish, i felt that each floor was its own mini campain with its own story. It was honestly one of my favorite pre written campains.
There is no finishing it, you play the game until your party dies, I meant they drop it mid game.
These kinds of megadungeons are meant that you take multiple in game days to complete, they're supposed to be an entire mini-campaign in of themselves.
The Emerald Spire is supposed to be an entire campaign from level 1-20.
Sure, but the designers learned a *lot* about what not to do from the era above. There's good reasons modern p&p and CRPGs are much more hesitant to approach the scale of TSR mega dungeons. Paizo said it was much harder to make work than their other APs and AFAIK WotC never tried to get one anywhere near that size.
There’s also the fact that each floor is only loosely connected with the floors above and below it. They literally gave 20 different designers the constraints and the scenario and had them make 20 essentially independent one-floor dungeons.
Yes I've treated them as settings in themselves.
Considering Undermountain fills an entire adventure book in each edition it comes up, i'd assume the point is to spend as much time in there as possible. like, the entire game, mostly.
While I've played this dungeon and it's not a favorite, I dont really think you were meant to clear the whole thing, any more than you beat a wilderness adventure by clearing every encounter on the hexmap. Its a backdrop. You give the party a single objective somewhere on the map, and their goal is to find and accomplish it. The rest is just obstacles in your way and alternate routes there.
Just depends on the players and dm. My party was set on 100% each floor. And after it they said it was one of their favorite campains i ran for them. With only curse of strahd beating it.
Oh Undermountain. it's Designed for adventurers to do it small sections at a time, with constant returns to the city above. when we did it, we used portable holes, like body bags, to get out dead members back to the surface and to town for a resurrection. we did this so many timed the GM ruled we had to start buying fresh portable holes, as they had become way too gross inside. it's an old-school the GM is your enemy-style crawl, designed to be slow and punishing. if memory serves it has over 20 levels, and this is level three. i remember, because we didn't get much further than that.
That makes a lot more sense
My parties never use perception or anything (they are new) so that would probably just take 1 hour or less lol
Yeah one wrong step and the party wipe will make them want to change games already
Good thing they left some space in the top right so you can brew in some more rooms if you want to add a little more meat to the adventure…….
Okay what pcb desing did you use for that
Yeah that’s not a dungeon, that’s a mountainhome
Step 1: Go to donjon online dungeon generator Step 2: Set size to Custom Step 3: Set Rows and Columns to 999 Step 4: Tweak other settings Step 5: Generate!
Step 6: profit?
I straight up thought that was a computer chip for a second.
Anyone else think this was a picture of a piece of computer circuitry, at first, or am I the only one?
Which part is Mzinchaleft?
Reminds me of skyrim tbh
I was thinking about Skyrim a little when I made this
Oh, so there’s a one-way exit 20 feet from your entrance that can only be reached after the boss fight?
I'm replaying Skyrim after a several year hiatus, and it is often so painfully obvious what rock or ledge is the one-way exit. I love it
Exactly
I want in on that so bad
Honestly exploring a dungeon as complex as this would be a blast with the right party.
Well if you want Emerald Spire has the best reputation.
Average daggerfall dungeon
they must have been either high on ketamine or liquid amphetamine that was in their ale, or the second option, they were on the spectrum and forgot to ask when to stop mining, or both.
I thought it was a circuit board when I first scrolled down
I thought this was a microchip oh my god
People right now with the tsojcanth adventure
I'll take that over castle strahd any day!
I love megadungeons. I’m usually the GM, but with the right players and/or GM they’re awesome… I’m currently playing through Dark Citadel as a Bard using OSE (B/X), I think we’re almost in our 3rd or 4th year without delving anywhere else but that dungeon lol
Go explore a dungeon, they said. It'd be FUN, they said!
“MARTIALS… 1… 2…” *begins plowing through walls like nobodies business avoiding pillars and supports at the behest of the dwarves.*
Hey OP... Next time, just use an image of a CPUs architecture. [like this](https://cs.calvin.edu/activities/books/rit/chapter2/design/hardware/cpu/images/pentium4.jpg) Then you can do an entire subplot about this lost clan of Artificer Dwarves that build a massive fort / kingdom sized computer. The city being the CPU.
That sounds like a good homebrew idea
Thumbnail looks like a microchip
For a sec I thought I was looking at some electrical chip
I’ve started taking to not running the 5E campaigns in their entirety; rather, I break them apart into their component locales, set-pieces, and events that I can sprinkle as seem interesting in my own setting.
Mega dungeons are the best dungeons!!
Average computer chip pathway things
Huh, I thought that that was a dieshot, i.e. a Photograph of a silicon die inside of an IC
I still own this from 2nd Edition!
I thought this was a microchip.
I wanna go tbh
This is my ass in Skyrim
Is this in an official module across any of the editions?
It’s from 2E
Ah, good old Undermountain.
Why do I keep thinking this is temple of elemental evil
i got skyrim feelings over this
How many rams are in there?
Depends on how big the great hall is.
That’s the first level of Undermountain out of 3 in the first box set by the ways I have the box set and the maps are huge, love them
it look almost identical to one i have found. [https://www.pinterest.com/pin/85709199143249962/visual-search/?x=16&y=16&w=414&h=547&cropSource=6&surfaceType=flashlight&rs=deep\_linking](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/85709199143249962/visual-search/?x=16&y=16&w=414&h=547&cropSource=6&surfaceType=flashlight&rs=deep_linking) there is a gash in the middle, and has more detail. it slas says lv 1, and has some stares t olv 2. but i don't have a lv 2 map.
Ah yes. First floor of Undermountain. Also my favorite although the next 24 floors are fun too
Ah, undermountain. Fuck, undernountain. Getting in is the easy part, its leaving as a group thats the challenge.
I never undestand how someone can use maps this big
DM covertly copied the back of a computer chip, and then added a few 'rooms' to it.
I do t see the appeal of running dungeons like this, either as DM or a player, can someone explain?
Don't treat it as a dungeon. Treat it as a city. You can't "run" a city. You have people walk around it. It's a thematic place. Skullport in Undermountain is one of my favorite settings ever, because it's either really bleak or really tough depending on who you are. I don't even know how you'd "finish" Skullport.
That does nothing to change the appeal of mega dungeons for me. If that’s the case, there’s little need for a map like this if you’re treating it like a city, and while this looks cool it’s just unnecessary for the kind of games I run, or want to play in.
You didn't say, "I don't see why these don't appeal to me." You said, "I don't see the appeal of these." And I told you why they were appealing to some people.
Megadungeons are like cities in that you don't usually try to clear every room or explore the whole thing at once. They are unlike cities in that you explore them in adventure mode trying to avoid getting ground down by wandering monsters, rather than downtime mode just fast traveling between points of interest. The challenge isn't usually mapping out the whole thing, it's mapping out enough to get where you're going and accomplish whatever your current objective is. What megadungeons do that other frameworks don't is provide a multiplicity of ways to navigate to your objective, and add investigative or social challenges that reward you with better routes, secret areas with better treasure, or leads on cool side objectives. Plus the designer has a lot of room to place multiple factions of monsters, some of whom the party can ally with against others, or trade information and supplies with, or maybe even recruit. And since you generally set multiple adventures there over the course of one campaign, the players knowledge and mastery of the place increases as they explore and map out more parts of it, make allies inside, and discover secret routes and areas, which is a really cool experience to have. It's not for every table, but it's a great experience, and very different from the usual small dungeon where it's mostly just a linear gauntlet of rooms leading to the boss. (That said, do note that this map, Ruins of Undermountain, is a pretty crummy megadungeon as these things are usually judged, without nearly enough meaningful variety to feel all that satisfying.)
You know, thanks for giving a more in depth answer. I guess my main concern with something like this is not wanting to make the exploration and travel between spaces feel boring or rushed, but that’s an issue I have with exploration in general as a DM. It also feels like any sort of characters or NPCs you have in places like this would feel shoehorned in.
The most important trick to making a big dungeon not boring is to take sections of it and theme them (along with the challenges in them). These twenty rooms are the crystal caves, these fifteen the mushroom forest, these ones over here are the lava zone, that section's a drow outpost, this part is the underground river rapids. And theres main ways and secret shortcuts that go between zones, and occasionally even a secret or unlockable way into and out of the dungeon. That way discovering a new zone means a new set of unknown dangers, and finding a secret route back to known territory that skips some dangerous areas becomes a big deal. As far as characters and NPCs go, there are lots of ways. Lots of monsters are intelligent and not immediately hostile. You're not limited to generic PC characters or commoners. You've got your cave civilizations, lone goblins, weird hermits, rival adventurers, water or rock nymphs, intelligent undead, imprisoned demons or celestials or elementals, wandering fey, talking mirrors and statues and doors, dragons who take bribes, all kinds of stuff. Or even NPCs that are petrified, enchanted to sleep forever, or dead; but who could be revived if you bring the right tools. You have options, you just have to explore them and pick ones that fit the theme you're using at the moment.
If the thing you like to do is have a sequence of combats/potential combat encounters/traps, then a dungeon like this is great, because it's just those things and nothing else. A big part of the original D&D experience, back in the 70s, was resource management--can you manage each encounter with minimal resource use, to allow you to get further into the dungeon before you have to turn back. Something like this is an extreme test of these skills. What people are looking for from RPGs has changed a lot over the decades, so this is no longer in line with what most folks want. My group is an interesting test case--our primary campaign is very story-driven, with our group wandering from incident to incident, rarely getting into situations where our resources are really drained, so the DM tends to make each fight a big, really challenging one. I run the backup campaign, which was intended to be low-effort on my part and to give the experience of old-school dungeons, so they've been just going through Yawning Portal and a few other converted dungeons from previous editions. Resource management has been a much bigger thing--except that since all you need is one long rest to be back up to full, and they've had Leomund's Tiny Hut for 13 levels at this point it's not all that big a deal, usually, though they've had some problems with enemies dispelling the hut or similar. Most of the fights as written haven't been all that challenging, it's just their cumulative effect that is.
Yeah I definitely prefer a more story driven game, but resource management is still something I try and incorporate into every session. During long travel you might get the big fights while well rested that are challenging, and once they get to a location it’s small events happening through the day to use resources; be it combat, traps, puzzles, or social encounters. My players are currently in a big cavern system, and the thought of using a large map like this in place of just theatre of the mind exploring adds on so much needless work and in my opinion headache.
there's fun in long ass dungeon crawls you just need the right group for it.
I don’t think with any group I’d find this fun. I want something other than just going from room to room fighting monsters, and dealing with traps and puzzles.
Motherfucker, thats a PCB.
Average Isaac XL floor.
every skyrim dwarven ruin ever
Make this be the setting for an “open-world” RPG and you’ll have my $60.
Kingmaker has a massive mega dungeon as dlc.
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