Welcome, have a seat and get comfy. Today I am going to show you how to and try to convince you to try running a mega dungeon campaign (also known as a super dungeon). It's the style of campaign that I specialize in, so here we go. I'm not going to get into how to create an individual dungeon level, if you are interested in seeing how to do that check out my thread here. Rather this thread will focus on how to connect these levels into a mega dungeon.
For those of you unfamiliar with the term, a mega dungeon is exactly what it sounds like; a single gigantic dungeon complex in which an entire campaign takes place. Now don't let that though scare you, because the first rule of a mega dungeon is DO NOT think that you need to create the entire thing before starting. Do not do that, it is crazy to attempt such a thing and you will inevitably become frustrated and give up.
Instead, the key is to take it one level at a time and utilize a queue system and egress placeholders. What I mean by that is when we finish a level of a dungeon, take for instance the catacombs level that I finished recently, what we want to do is add 1-3 egress placeholders to it (indicated by the red arrows).
The trick is that when the players arrive at an egress placeholder, it makes no difference which one it is. The next one in the queue is what spits out. It could be a "dried well descending 300 ft to area 2C of level 6, for instance. Conveniently (yes, "conveniently") that is the next dungeon level that we have ready to go. We only need to make enough dungeon between sessions to keep pace with our players in this manner and are not overwhelming ourselves. The players however, are under the illusion that you have some grand mega dungeon here and where they go actually matters. In reality they are being railroaded to the next level but it doesn't FEEL that way. They will never know the difference. If the players find and egress placeholder, then back off and find another in the same session, just remove it from the game and stick it somewhere they haven't explored yet until you have some time to get the next level queued up. Either that, or that egress loops back to one that they have not discovered yet on a level that is already in play.
Using this method we can layer the mega dungeon as deep as we want. As deep as we care to. A bit of creativity will allow you to tie everything together and run an awesome mega dungeon for a group of lucky players! Give it a shot!
Since all roads lead to Rome, an the players are likely to explore the full level before descending, and you remove the second arrow marked exit as soon as they discover the first, why not just place a single level exit? Coincidentally I did this trick with towns in one campaign. The players could travel east or west, and each direction there was a swamp, a river, a bridge, a wood, and a town (in different orders). The same town lay at the end of each path.
My main question for this type of campaign though is how you keep things varied when everything happens in enclosed stone rooms. Presumably there are combat encounters, traps, and maybe puzzles to solve but I guess this is essentially a hack'n'slash dungeon romp rather than a campaign with a storyline?
My main question for this type of campaign though is how you keep things varied when everything happens in enclosed stone rooms. Presumably there are combat encounters, traps, and maybe puzzles to solve but I guess this is essentially a hack'n'slash dungeon romp rather than a campaign with a storyline?
When I ran the mega-dungeon that was Dungeon of the Mad Mage, I did two things to keep things interesting for my players.
First, I gave them a real reason to be there and continue diving deeper. It was a bit more involved than I have the time to explain fully here, but there was an "a plot" for the player that styled herself the party leader that involved a scavenger hunt of sorts for the parts of her brother's body, who was murdered by a named villain on one of the earlier floors. There was also a "b plot" for one of the other players involving an entity from deep inside the dungeon making repeated mental contact with a child NPC that player had sort of adopted early on. Between the two plots, I was able to keep them digging deep into the mega-dungeon, even through floors that they might not find as interesting, because they had a reason to be there instead of just being treasure-wanting visitors.
Second, I kept a personal log about how they left each floor behind as they passed through. At the end of the session I would make notes and spend the time between sessions considering how the remaining denizens of the floor might expand and alter the floor to their liking. Usually there were a couple of factions vying for control of the floor and the party tended to influence which side was in ascendance (by killing large swaths of the other side). Depending on the deals that were struck and/or the survivors that were left, I made goals for the floor monsters and extrapolated a rough idea of how things would look when next the party passed through the floor. Due to the various floor teleportation networks intrinsic to the dungeon, it was not like the party mopped up a floor and never came back through at some point. Each time they visited a floor got to be a somewhat fresh and new experience, but maybe with some familiar faces here and there.
Hope this helps.
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"The mongoose blew out its candle and was asleep in bed before the room went dark." —Llanowar fable
My main question for this type of campaign though is how you keep things varied when everything happens in enclosed stone rooms. Presumably there are combat encounters, traps, and maybe puzzles to solve but I guess this is essentially a hack'n'slash dungeon romp rather than a campaign with a storyline?
On the surface it comes off like that but if the DM plans ahead there are a lot of chances for social encounters. on one level you could four-to six groups of beings living there they could be segregated by race and it could be The enemy of my enemy is my friend situation or it could be a mixed settlement where people come trade the things they find deeper in the dungeon
Since all roads lead to Rome, an the players are likely to explore the full level before descending, and you remove the second arrow marked exit as soon as they discover the first, why not just place a single level exit? Coincidentally I did this trick with towns in one campaign. The players could travel east or west, and each direction there was a swamp, a river, a bridge, a wood, and a town (in different orders). The same town lay at the end of each path.
My main question for this type of campaign though is how you keep things varied when everything happens in enclosed stone rooms. Presumably there are combat encounters, traps, and maybe puzzles to solve but I guess this is essentially a hack'n'slash dungeon romp rather than a campaign with a storyline?
An excellent question Sanvael. The reason that we want more than one egress option per level generally speaking is because we are adding a lot of depth and character to our mega dungeon by doing so. You see, the dungeon is far less linear and predictable when there are 3 egress options on floor one. For example, on floor 1 there is the dried well going to level 6, a staircase descending to level 3, and a hidden trapdoor accessing level 2 that is normally shut off from the dungeon.
This is a much more interesting dungeon than level 1 staircase to level 2. Level 2 staircase to level 3 sort of format.
The key to combating players getting into the routine of sweeping out a level before going down is to add obstacles and very dangerous monsters they don’t want to tangle with yet to the mix. The average difficulty per level is increasing as we descend levels, but there are pockets of level 2 that are much more dangerous than level 5 for instance.
To your last point, I’m aware that folks unaccustomed to the mega dungeon campaign may falsely assume that there aren’t roleplay and storytelling elements, but I assure you that notion is nonsense. Adding neutral NPCs, monsters and factions to the dungeon that the players can negotiate with if they care to is the way to facilitate this.
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Welcome, have a seat and get comfy. Today I am going to show you how to and try to convince you to try running a mega dungeon campaign (also known as a super dungeon). It's the style of campaign that I specialize in, so here we go. I'm not going to get into how to create an individual dungeon level, if you are interested in seeing how to do that check out my thread here. Rather this thread will focus on how to connect these levels into a mega dungeon.
For those of you unfamiliar with the term, a mega dungeon is exactly what it sounds like; a single gigantic dungeon complex in which an entire campaign takes place. Now don't let that though scare you, because the first rule of a mega dungeon is DO NOT think that you need to create the entire thing before starting. Do not do that, it is crazy to attempt such a thing and you will inevitably become frustrated and give up.
Instead, the key is to take it one level at a time and utilize a queue system and egress placeholders. What I mean by that is when we finish a level of a dungeon, take for instance the catacombs level that I finished recently, what we want to do is add 1-3 egress placeholders to it (indicated by the red arrows).
The trick is that when the players arrive at an egress placeholder, it makes no difference which one it is. The next one in the queue is what spits out. It could be a "dried well descending 300 ft to area 2C of level 6, for instance. Conveniently (yes, "conveniently") that is the next dungeon level that we have ready to go. We only need to make enough dungeon between sessions to keep pace with our players in this manner and are not overwhelming ourselves. The players however, are under the illusion that you have some grand mega dungeon here and where they go actually matters. In reality they are being railroaded to the next level but it doesn't FEEL that way. They will never know the difference. If the players find and egress placeholder, then back off and find another in the same session, just remove it from the game and stick it somewhere they haven't explored yet until you have some time to get the next level queued up. Either that, or that egress loops back to one that they have not discovered yet on a level that is already in play.
Using this method we can layer the mega dungeon as deep as we want. As deep as we care to. A bit of creativity will allow you to tie everything together and run an awesome mega dungeon for a group of lucky players! Give it a shot!
Since all roads lead to Rome, an the players are likely to explore the full level before descending, and you remove the second arrow marked exit as soon as they discover the first, why not just place a single level exit? Coincidentally I did this trick with towns in one campaign. The players could travel east or west, and each direction there was a swamp, a river, a bridge, a wood, and a town (in different orders). The same town lay at the end of each path.
My main question for this type of campaign though is how you keep things varied when everything happens in enclosed stone rooms. Presumably there are combat encounters, traps, and maybe puzzles to solve but I guess this is essentially a hack'n'slash dungeon romp rather than a campaign with a storyline?
When I ran the mega-dungeon that was Dungeon of the Mad Mage, I did two things to keep things interesting for my players.
First, I gave them a real reason to be there and continue diving deeper. It was a bit more involved than I have the time to explain fully here, but there was an "a plot" for the player that styled herself the party leader that involved a scavenger hunt of sorts for the parts of her brother's body, who was murdered by a named villain on one of the earlier floors. There was also a "b plot" for one of the other players involving an entity from deep inside the dungeon making repeated mental contact with a child NPC that player had sort of adopted early on. Between the two plots, I was able to keep them digging deep into the mega-dungeon, even through floors that they might not find as interesting, because they had a reason to be there instead of just being treasure-wanting visitors.
Second, I kept a personal log about how they left each floor behind as they passed through. At the end of the session I would make notes and spend the time between sessions considering how the remaining denizens of the floor might expand and alter the floor to their liking. Usually there were a couple of factions vying for control of the floor and the party tended to influence which side was in ascendance (by killing large swaths of the other side). Depending on the deals that were struck and/or the survivors that were left, I made goals for the floor monsters and extrapolated a rough idea of how things would look when next the party passed through the floor. Due to the various floor teleportation networks intrinsic to the dungeon, it was not like the party mopped up a floor and never came back through at some point. Each time they visited a floor got to be a somewhat fresh and new experience, but maybe with some familiar faces here and there.
Hope this helps.
On the surface it comes off like that but if the DM plans ahead there are a lot of chances for social encounters. on one level you could four-to six groups of beings living there they could be segregated by race and it could be The enemy of my enemy is my friend situation or it could be a mixed settlement where people come trade the things they find deeper in the dungeon
An excellent question Sanvael. The reason that we want more than one egress option per level generally speaking is because we are adding a lot of depth and character to our mega dungeon by doing so. You see, the dungeon is far less linear and predictable when there are 3 egress options on floor one. For example, on floor 1 there is the dried well going to level 6, a staircase descending to level 3, and a hidden trapdoor accessing level 2 that is normally shut off from the dungeon.
This is a much more interesting dungeon than level 1 staircase to level 2. Level 2 staircase to level 3 sort of format.
The key to combating players getting into the routine of sweeping out a level before going down is to add obstacles and very dangerous monsters they don’t want to tangle with yet to the mix. The average difficulty per level is increasing as we descend levels, but there are pockets of level 2 that are much more dangerous than level 5 for instance.
To your last point, I’m aware that folks unaccustomed to the mega dungeon campaign may falsely assume that there aren’t roleplay and storytelling elements, but I assure you that notion is nonsense. Adding neutral NPCs, monsters and factions to the dungeon that the players can negotiate with if they care to is the way to facilitate this.