Beneath the Ruins and my other megadungeon (thread by monk)
Oct 3, 2016 1:00:13 GMT -5
hengest, mormonyoyoman, and 1 more like this
Post by monk on Oct 3, 2016 1:00:13 GMT -5
[Cross posted from my WMLP! ad thread...]
My players have found two megadungeons over the course of the last 6 years or so of Lost Continent gaming. The first was Kihago and was never fully explored. It came up numerous times across two campaigns, however, and became a legendary location that the players entered with trepidation. Being an extra-dimensional location, there was one physical entrance and many portal/phase/arcane entrances. The players would pass through a magic door or get caught in a summoning circle backfire, find themselves in a strange dungeon and someone would say, "Sh*t, I think we're in Kihago again." Then they'd try to find their way to someplace familiar and find some old allies.
My intention with Kihago was always that it could support a campaign completely, meaning no leaving to go to "town". For that reason, there are lots of factions that PCs can make allies of, locations that can be turned into safe rooms or headquarters, etc. There are inns and shops and craftsmen hidden away in safe(r) areas. In the actual game, that's not quite how my players used it, though. They tended to want to accomplish a goal and get out fairly quickly, and embarked on quite a few adventures outside of the dungeon.
The other megadungeon, which we played much more, is a bit different than most published ones. Our longest running campaign was set in/on it and it's actually just on temporary hiatus. I started calling it my "mega-mini-dungeon city sandbox campaign" because it's essentially a very modular, or nodal, sandbox in a city with a massive honeycomb of interconnected mini dungeons below it. I really enjoyed the way it worked in a campaign both from my side of the DM's screen and from the players'. The entire sprawling, ancient city is filled with known and unknown entrances to countless locations in the underworld--some large dungeon levels, other tiny lairs, catacombs, etc. Leaving the underworld via an unknown exit might have you popping out in a sewer or in an aristocrat's kitchen. The city is full of factions that concern themselves somehow with all that's below, hoarding secrets about the underworld, seeking power there to overthrow political rivals, etc. Lots of opportunity for short capers and long, complicated adventures. My players, dubbing themselves Los Lobos, are heavily involved in the trade of a psychedelic used by wizards for divination and they own a tower with a restaurant at street level (run by ex-slaves they freed from an evil alchemist).
I've completed 95% of a manuscript to be used as a toolkit for creating and sustaining one of these "mega-mini-dungeon city sandbox campaigns". A true "creativity aid" that I'm pretty proud of. Here's the intro:
Zhul, the First City. Perched atop salt blown cliffs, sprawling along the shore and spilling down into the dusty valleys. Always has it shone in the darkness by the sea, a vast hive of life and death, pulsing with deep energies and strange vibrations. On any night the streets are filled with human traffic, a million feet tread its alleys and lanes, scrambling over its cobbles like ants over the hide of a giant beast. But beneath these crowded streets, just below that dingy crust, lie passageways and chambers older than the dawn of man. The brave and the foolish, the ambitious and the clever, only they seek to go below into the labyrinthine corridors—the common man, perhaps the wiser man, contents himself to ignore the rhythmic drumming from below, to double-bolt his cellar door and leave a candle to burn throughout the night.
My players have found two megadungeons over the course of the last 6 years or so of Lost Continent gaming. The first was Kihago and was never fully explored. It came up numerous times across two campaigns, however, and became a legendary location that the players entered with trepidation. Being an extra-dimensional location, there was one physical entrance and many portal/phase/arcane entrances. The players would pass through a magic door or get caught in a summoning circle backfire, find themselves in a strange dungeon and someone would say, "Sh*t, I think we're in Kihago again." Then they'd try to find their way to someplace familiar and find some old allies.
My intention with Kihago was always that it could support a campaign completely, meaning no leaving to go to "town". For that reason, there are lots of factions that PCs can make allies of, locations that can be turned into safe rooms or headquarters, etc. There are inns and shops and craftsmen hidden away in safe(r) areas. In the actual game, that's not quite how my players used it, though. They tended to want to accomplish a goal and get out fairly quickly, and embarked on quite a few adventures outside of the dungeon.
The other megadungeon, which we played much more, is a bit different than most published ones. Our longest running campaign was set in/on it and it's actually just on temporary hiatus. I started calling it my "mega-mini-dungeon city sandbox campaign" because it's essentially a very modular, or nodal, sandbox in a city with a massive honeycomb of interconnected mini dungeons below it. I really enjoyed the way it worked in a campaign both from my side of the DM's screen and from the players'. The entire sprawling, ancient city is filled with known and unknown entrances to countless locations in the underworld--some large dungeon levels, other tiny lairs, catacombs, etc. Leaving the underworld via an unknown exit might have you popping out in a sewer or in an aristocrat's kitchen. The city is full of factions that concern themselves somehow with all that's below, hoarding secrets about the underworld, seeking power there to overthrow political rivals, etc. Lots of opportunity for short capers and long, complicated adventures. My players, dubbing themselves Los Lobos, are heavily involved in the trade of a psychedelic used by wizards for divination and they own a tower with a restaurant at street level (run by ex-slaves they freed from an evil alchemist).
I've completed 95% of a manuscript to be used as a toolkit for creating and sustaining one of these "mega-mini-dungeon city sandbox campaigns". A true "creativity aid" that I'm pretty proud of. Here's the intro:
Zhul, the First City. Perched atop salt blown cliffs, sprawling along the shore and spilling down into the dusty valleys. Always has it shone in the darkness by the sea, a vast hive of life and death, pulsing with deep energies and strange vibrations. On any night the streets are filled with human traffic, a million feet tread its alleys and lanes, scrambling over its cobbles like ants over the hide of a giant beast. But beneath these crowded streets, just below that dingy crust, lie passageways and chambers older than the dawn of man. The brave and the foolish, the ambitious and the clever, only they seek to go below into the labyrinthine corridors—the common man, perhaps the wiser man, contents himself to ignore the rhythmic drumming from below, to double-bolt his cellar door and leave a candle to burn throughout the night.