The Alexandrian

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DELVE FIVE

The first four passes through this section of the dungeon had completely cleared out the anubian outposts on Level 1 and heavily decimated their forces on Level 2. I made the decision to allow this section of the dungeon to be temporarily cleared and dropped the chance of random encounters to one check per three turns.

This allowed the next group to pass through relatively quickly through largely abandoned chambers. They were once again tempted by the plaster-chipped door, but decided to pass it by when one of their veteran party members explained what the inscription said. Passing down to area 42 they encountered an ochre jelly (random encounter) who had taken up residence in the rubble pile and grown to a rather impressive size as a result of feasting on the dead rat corpses left behind by the last expedition. (This encounter nearly resulted in intra-party homicide when a particularly dim-witted knight couldn’t figure out that he was not helping matters by constantly hitting the ochre jelly and splitting it into smaller-yet-equally-vicious portions.)

They then continued south of this area, had several other adventures beyond the scope of this section (including rescuing an amazon warrior who had been frozen in ice for a thousand years), and then left.

(Nothing too exciting about this. If there is a lesson to be learned, it’s that you don’t have to cram in fresh content all the time. The importance of negative space — the absence of something to contrast its presence elsewhere — can’t be dismissed as a design principle.)

DELVE SIX

There was then a lengthy break in the campaign, which was marked in the game world by the pollen monsoon. When the PCs were able to return to the Thracian ruins, I spontaneously decided that an elementalist had moved into this vacated upper level. Accompanying him would be a number of lesser elementals.

And then, when the PCs kicked down the door to area 5, I found myself saying, “… sheets of malevolent flame dance around hearts of molten magma.” When the elementals died, they left behind smoldering, blackened pyrites. If they were struck with cold-based spells, I decided there would be a percentile chance that their magma hearts would explode from the sudden contraction (killing the elementals, but peppering the room with shrapnel).

So, those were pretty cool.

I also knew at this point that the anubians had re-fortified the guardpost in area 43, but the PCs didn’t make it that far during this session.

(This is our first major re-population of a deserted section of the dungeon. Couple things to note: First, I didn’t consult any repopulation tables. Why? Because I was struck by a cool idea. Random tables are tools, but I feel that you shouldn’t feel enslaved by their results.

Second, I’m not spending any time outside of the game prepping this repopulation. At the beginning of a session, I’m jotting down a few notes on how the dungeon has changed during the same time that the players are rolling up new characters, shopping for supplies, and the like. Of course, nothing says you can’t spend some time doing detailed prep work between sessions. But preserving the “I can play this any time” nature of your megadungeon means that you never want to feel like you need to do that kind of prep work before you can play the next session.)

DELVE SEVEN

When the PCs next returned to this section of the dungeon, I decided that the elementalist had been killed. (They discovered his flame-scorched body jamming the door to area 5 shut.) The reasons for this aren’t really important (and would be spoilers for my players), but this meant this section of the dungeon (along with 3 others) were depopulated.

I decided arbitrarily to check repopulation for each section by making a single 1-in-10 wandering monster check for each “section”. (The determination of “section” was essentially arbitrary on my part.) The check in this section came up positive, and I rolled on the Level Two wandering monster table (on the theory that some group from deeper in the dungeon had moved up to occupy these chambers).

The result was “giant spider”. There’s a minor spoiler here that I’m going to put into black text. My players shouldn’t highlight it, but the rest of you can do so to read it:

(On the second level of the dungeon there is a Shelob-sized spider that is described as having an egg sack of young spiders that’s ready to hatch. I decided that the egg sack had hatched, and some of the young spiders had migrated to this upper level.)

In any case, I decided these giant spiders had moved into the bat chambers. They had strung their webs and were basically feasting on the bats (whose population had been significantly depleted).

The PCs’ first inkling that something was wrong came when they found the giant spiderweb draped across the staircase leading down to area 2. After they had cleared out the spiders, they found the elementalist’s scorched body, verified that the rest of this section was still deserted, and then moved down to the second level where they engaged in multiple, semi-futile skirmishes with the anubian guardpost (which I had repopulated before the previous session).

(Here we can see how random tables can provide the raw seeds that you can riff off of to develop the megadungeon in interesting ways. This kind of improvisational extrapolation from a simple table entry of “giant spiders” is what makes the campaign come alive.

The wandering monster table is like the audience members who yell out suggestions on an improv show: Simply yelling out “mime” and “airplane” doesn’t make for a comedy show; it requires the improv actors to create a sketch about a mime pilot making an announcement over the plane’s intercom system for that. Similarly, just having random “giant spiders” attack the PCs because the table says so doesn’t make for an adventure; what you need are giant spiders in a particular place for a particular reason and doing a particular thing.

Why use the table at all? For the same reason the improv actors use audience suggestions: It keeps you fresh. It forces you to think outside of your comfort zone. It can give you an idea where you’re drawing a blank. Perhaps most importantly, it’s fun.)

A FEW FINAL THOUGHTS

At several points during the writing of this essay I found myself thinking, “This is really boring. This is just me giving a litany of fairly simplistic events.”

But maybe that’s the point: There really isn’t any magic here. You keep the dungeon alive by using wandering monster encounters to simulate the activity of the complex. You partially repopulate the dungeon inbetween sessions to keep it fresh. The result is that you can take 10 encounter areas, a couple of tables, and get dozens of hours of play out of it.

With that being said, if these 10 areas were the only section of the dungeon available none of this would work. First, the PCs would be able to “clear” the dungeon and there would be no immediate motivation to return. I could, obviously, repopulate such a dungeon and remotivate them to come back (“the draconian scouts have established their advance base in the same abandoned mines used by the orcish raiders!”), but there would be a greatly reduced sense of building on past successes or contributing to a single, larger goal.

Second, in the megadungeon the PCs aren’t being forced to go back over the same ground. They’re choosing to come to this entrance of the dungeon instead of another. This is important for both tactical and psychological reasons.

But, laying those caveats aside, my biggest point here is the ability to effectively reuse and refresh the megadungeon. This material can be used and re-used many times over without becoming stale. And if it ever starts to become stale, it’s a relatively trivial matter to freshen it back up again: Lizardmen invade the complex from the nearby swamplands. In a mighty, magical earthquake a new ziggurat pushes its way out of the earth leading to an entirely new complex connected in yet unknown ways to the caverns beneath. The black-eyed cultists approach some of the heroes to form an alliance against the aggressive anubians. And so forth.

In many ways, I feel like a megadungeon becomes the DM’s character. And I play my megadungeon much like I would play a PC. Before play begins, I don’t really know what my megadungeon is going to do: But my random encounter tables generate 2d4 anubians just after the PCs raid the depths, and I know the anubians have sent a team of assassins to hunt them down. Black-eyed cultists are holding a ritual on Level 2 and I suddenly know the sin day they’re celebrating. Lizardmen show up in the anubian sections of the dungeon and I know tensions are erupting between their tribes. Then the minotaur shows up to determine why tribute is not being paid and… and… and…

And a story gets told.

Go to Part 3: The Players Take Charge

6 Responses to “(Re-)Running the Megadungeon – Part 2: Restocking the Dungeon”

  1. Justin Alexander says:

    ARCHIVED HALOSCAN COMMENTS

    jdh417
    This is really a great series.

    Another way to mix up old, familiar levels is to say that the dungeon is magical and prone to random rearrangement. (Who’s responsible for it? Perhaps somebody living in the bottom level.)

    My main question about megadungeons is how the characters get out, especially when they get into the lower levels. It doesn’t seem practical to come running out of the dungeon for dinner every night.
    Monday, January 24, 2011, 6:48:38 PM


    Justin Alexander
    Practical experiment: OD&D says there’s a 1 in 6 chance of a wandering monster every 10 minutes in the dungeon. There’s only a 1 in 6 chance chance per day outside of the dungeon. Try following those rules strictly for a few sessions. You don’t even have to tell your players what you’re doing: They will find a way to get out of the dungeon.

    (In practice, my OD&D game has dropped back to a 1 in 10 chance per turn. And, as I noted, this will drop even further if they’ve cleared a section of the dungeon. I’ll also reduce check rates if they’ve secured themselves or hidden themselves in some way, allowing for potential “camp in the dungeon overnight” scenarios. But I think the only way for a megadungeon to work is if the players can never feel completely safe while they’re inside it.)

    But in looking back over my rulebooks, I’ve just noticed something fascinating about OD&D’s wilderness wandering monster rules. So I’m off to write a full post about that.
    Tuesday, January 25, 2011, 1:30:03 AM


    Andrew
    One more question for now: how would you compare the balance of a mega dungeon with the balance of many side-by-side dungeons, like the Caves of Chaos in the Keep on the Borderlands? Could you compare and contrast them from your perspective?
    Monday, January 24, 2011, 4:54:43 PM


    Andrew
    This is profoundly inspiring. I have some questions as I work on my own version.

    * How do you deal with a situation where the characters are past initial efforts, able to push deeper? If some of the party are getting levels added, do you allow multi-leveled characters to be generated so they are in the right range? Who drives that process by setting the appropriate levels to go in?

    * How do you deal with the Gygaxian Naturalism of knowing that events on the surface or less deep levels will change dynamics in lower levels? I mean, does it make sense to map out the whole complex and stock it, then go back and revisit what has been static for months only when characters get close to those areas? I am thinking it may be good to have a general sense of size, shape, and occupants (and treasure) and not flesh out deeper (or more distant) levels until they are approached. How would you respond to that balance of preparation and fluidity? Especially in light of the “playing catch” low-prep requirement approach.

    Anyway, as always I really enjoy you sharing your reflections on the literal roots of role playing. Your reflections and sharing experience on the roles of wandering monsters, importance and structure of layout, and interface between player and dungeonmaster efforts are very well thought out and valuable.
    Monday, January 24, 2011, 4:53:14 PM


    David
    I really enjoyed this series, and as I’m working on my megadungeon, it’s good inspiration.

    Cheers!
    Friday, January 21, 2011, 5:39:34 PM

  2. cr0m says:

    Great series, Justin. One of the things you mention that can’t be emphasized enough is this style of game gives a sense of discovery back to the DM. You have a general idea of what’s out there, but you don’t know how it’ll all play out.

    Contrast this with a more heavily plotted adventure or tightly linked series of encounters, where your goal as DM is to see that the players follow the script, and thus you are rarely surprised. And if you are, it’s a cause for distress–witness the mountain of “help, my players did X” posts on various forums.

  3. Paul Goodman says:

    One thing I’m trying to get a better handle on as I prep my own game, how do you handle treasure, and the in-world justification for it? If it’s the first time PCs are exploring an area you can say it was left in the ruin by the original owners or whatever, but that doesn’t work in the case of wandering monsters, restocking, and so on. Saying the enemies brought their own valuables the PCs can loot works some of the time, but not usually for non-sapient monsters.

    Any thoughts?

  4. Akavakaku says:

    Paul, perhaps the monsters themselves are the treasure. I can imagine rare monster parts being worth high prices and/or useable as magic items.

  5. Kaique says:

    @Paul
    Some things that came into mind:
    – You can always expand the dungeon.
    – Monsters running business can have their own gold.
    – Monsters launch raids at the outside world and bring treasure to their lairs in the dungeon.
    – Unfortunate adventures may lost their treasure.
    – Treasure may be magically created or brought from other planes.
    – New organizations (like a humanoid warband or a cult) may base themselves in the dungeon and bring treasure.

  6. Alexander_Anotherskip_Davis says:

    Perhaps the Wandering Monster table allows for the GM to explore the area of the dungeon anew, which can be fun?

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