I am starting a World's Largest Dungeon PbP, and now recruiting brave heroes to enter the seemingly infinite depth. World's Largest Dungeon is a Dungeons & Dragons adventure set entirely in an enormous dungeon. It is over 800 pages long and was produced by Alderac Entertainment Group in 2004. It often receives compaints of dragging on and losing the interest of its players (which is completely understandable) because of a lack of story and variation. I hope to add my own role playing bits to add to the thrill of things, as I have found several opportunities to do so.
A note to the players: This is a dungeon where the only way out is forward. There are often periods of no safety, characters will probably die, and new ones will be written in. Much like the old Tomb of Horrors, this is not for the light hearted. I will probably monitor food, will definitely track light sources, and will house-rule some changes to resting to make it a little more comfortable for you. I would like for a minimum post of 1/day (Holidays and personal events of course are fine, this is just in general). I check often an always, so I will be able to update quickly.
Some basic history without spoiling too much - Millennia ago, the celestials built a great dungeon. Within it, the celestials erected mammoth walls, locks, doors, and traps. It warded off those who would enter, but also walled in those who would escape: it was a dungeon larger than any ever know. Within it, the celestials imprisoned hellish undead, demonic beasts, and fiendish monstrosities. Several earthquakes have torn the dungeon apart, letting in lava flows, water, and worst of all - new inhabitants.
Your mission: The scouts of Cleftwood Village have spotted a notorious wererat sorcerer who calls himself Longtail leading a frighteningly large army of kobolds, troglodytes, orcs, and even an ogre into a cave formed by the recent earthquakes. He has attacked the village before, and the elders fear what he could be doing with such a large army. They have sent out a call to all nearby cities and villages seeking five brave heroes to pursue the evil sorcerer and discover his intentions.
Cleftwood Village is a small town just at the base of the Stony Mountains and the cliffs of the Storval Plateau, in Varisia.
Level: 1
Races: All will be considered, but I am old school and prefer Standard and Featured (don't let that scare you though).
Classes: All except Gunslinger, Cavalier, and Antipaladin.
Ability Scores: 20 point buy
HP: Max starting, average+2 on level ups
Traits: 2 Traits
Starting Wealth: Average + 50gp. The elders of Cleftwood have provided an upfront reward for simply offering your services and want you to be well equipped. (It is advised to spend most of it, as there will be little opportunities to trade [although I will add merchants with story to back it up])
Skills: Of course all skills are available, but a few are discouraged as you will find little use for them: Disguise, Perform, Profession, Ride and Sleight of Hand.
Time: Having been built by Celestials to imprison evil, strange magic was implemented to speed time and allow for faster preparation of Celestial duties. A full night's rest is now 4 hours (down from 8). This applies to natural healing, recovering spells and the like.
Natural Healing: A full 4 hours rest restores 2 hp per character level (up from 1).
Wizards: You will be underground for nearly 2 game years, with no way of getting out in between. Meaning no studying new spells. To accomidate, there are several scrolls and some wizard's spell books throughout the dungeon. Adding these spells to yours is much easier thanks to having an enchanted spellbook that deciphers scrolls and spells to a language you can understand. No longer do you have to read the spells and perform a spellcraft check to understand, but you still have to spend an hour studying the spell.
Spell Components: I am not sure what to do about spell components yet. I am up for suggestions, but seeing as these could be hard to restock or find, some variant needs to be in place.
Level Progression: Level progression will run a little bit slower, otherwise you would reach level 8 before getting out of the first of 8 regions.
There you have it, World's Largest Recruitment begins NOW!
Can you give us some information on how and how often you plan on playing. Will this be interactive or everybody posts once per day? If interactive are you going to use one of the applications to assist play?
Depending on what kind of committment you are looking for, I would be willing to play a magus, bard, or cleric.
I will be on multiple times a day, posting updates to player posts. I will not be using an application, but I will post a map of the dungeon, revealing rooms as they explored. For combat, I will post a picture of the room with player and enemy markers, and a coordinate system to indicate movement. After everyone posts for a given round or scenario, I will post a summation of the events, as well as any new information. For combat, I will have each player roll initiative to for each round and post their actions and what they would like to do in a round. I will do my best to allow every player to commit to their actions, and use initiative to determine striking order as opposed to turn order.
Example: Player A declares they want to charge Orc A and attack. He rolls an initiative of 10 for the round. Orc A also wants to charge and attack, and rolls a 15 initiative for the round. Rather than having Orc A charge Player A and player A can no longer charge and has to choose a new action, I will simple have them both charge and meet in the middle. Since Orc A had higher initiative, he strikes first. This way, everyone can commit to their actions and speed up combat.
Perhaps skill monkey rogue to deal with all them traps?
I would be interested in either a Bard or Cleric. Do you want us to submit a character with background?
Yep. Just put it in your profile and let me know and I'll read up.
I will put together a cleric then. Thanks.
I love a good dungeon crawl. This sounds fun.
My first thought is to submit a wizard. Unfortunately the next few days are pretty busy for me, so Sunday is the earliest I'll be able to have a submission up.
I had an idea a while ago regarding a twist on the "mega-dungeon" idea though. I figured I'd run it by you in case it sparked your intrest-
Goblins! What if a tribe of goblins was displaced, and their chief decided that the mega-dungeon would be the bestest new lair ever? The PCs would be the brave goblin heroes blazing a trail for the tribe, who would settle in cleared areas and begin setting up goblin towns.
Dead PCs could be quickly replaced by the chief ordering the "next most bravest" hero to join the vanguard, and resting would be a little easier because the party could retreat back a ways to the (relative) safety of the goblin front line.
Feel free to say no and stick with your original plan. I just figured there was no harm in mentioning it in case it sounded fun to you.
I would like to stick with the World's Largest Dungeon, but I might think more on that and do a second campaign. I have wanted to run a goblin campaign before (I've done hobgoblins with 4e which was fun).
I am starting a World's Largest Dungeon PbP,[...]
I would be interested; a friend of mine tried (unsuccessfully) to run this as a tabletop game a decade ago and I thought the concept was cool.
Do you need an(other) archer, perhaps?
Will there be opportunities to purchase and/or craft magic items?
How about Master Summoner? And possibly an Oracle of Nature dip for healing and buffy goodness?
Are variant tieflings from Bastards of Erebus allowed?
Orfamay: An archer would be useful as a skill character, or simply for damage. And yes, there will be opportunities to buy and craft magic items. As well as finding some from the enemies you'll face.
Drake: Both of those would be fine, although the Master Summoner may be a little more complicated to manage over PbP. But it could work.
Fnord72: From my point of view, I saw most of the classes skill progression being obtained from "practice on the job", learning new tricks and such. But that would be much harder for a Wizard, seeing as they actually need to study spells to understand how to use them. It is a valid point though, and there's no reason I couldn't just retract that rule and allow the standard progressions. That may be easier and more promising for players, after all. The point on components makes sense, for sake of ease, I think I'll just assume that components are carried and added as needed.
W Canepa: Yep, just mention which variant in your character info.
Baaaah. I told my self I wouldn't join another campaign! I lied to myself! I'm definitely making a char for this.
May I ask why no Cavalier, though?
Crustypeanut: Only because I did not want players to get disappointed with the poor functionality of a mount in a dungeon with many small rooms and corridors. However, if you choose a variant that doesn't use a mount, that would be fine.
Orfamay: An archer would be useful as a skill character, or simply for damage. And yes, there will be opportunities to buy and craft magic items. As well as finding some from the enemies you'll face
Awesome. A proposed Dwarven archer is up on my profile. I dunno how complete it needs to be....
What about a small character with a medium mount? I was thinking of doing a mounted barbarian possibly.
Figured as much. But, small Cavaliers (on medium mounts) should be able to do fine in a dungeon :P
However, I will be going Dwarven Trap Breaker (Alchemist). :D
Question, MoD: Are there any traits specifically not allowed?
Small character on medium mount should fine. I can see that being a bit more practical.
So far I haven't seen any traits that should be a problem. For now, all should be fine. If something appears out of place I may ask to change it.
Basically I'm just looking for Character background/summary and Character sheet.
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I'm always interested in WLD stuff since I've been running it for four years. If it's of any use to you, here are a few suggestions I can make about dealing with supplies, reagents, components, spells and the like. I'll spoiler-tag them just to be safe.
It's a ways off from the entrance, but there's a big garden and a few other plant-filled chambers that can also be used to provide hundreds of rare plants and herbs for use in spellcasting and alchemy.
The text says the dungeon's magic could optionally sustain creatures who have to eat and drink, but I didn't use that. Instead, the tunnels and caves are rife with edible fungus and plants, small animals and insects that have taken up residence in the dungeon since it fell into disrepair. With those and the four enchanted fountains in Region A, food and water requirements can be met even without a cleric to create food and water.
Another way for the party to get supplies would be to put some stuff in the larders of any allies they might make. The few remaining celestials might be open to trade from their armory for instance.
Another option is to just give each wizard a book that has the spells they'd get from level 1-20 already in the book. You could either handpick, have the players pick or do a combination of spells they get as if they were leveling to 20 (i.e. 2 level 1s at CL 2, a level 1 and level 2 or 2 level 2s at CL3, and so on.) Handpicking a few might help you ensure they get a couple useful spells they might otherwise overlook.
I nixed summoning and teleportation magic from my dungeon due to the bit in the text about the nature of the dungeon itself. The place was built to imprison creatures capable of Summoning hundreds of buddies and teleporting or even Plane Shifting at will. It makes sense to me the celestials would build the place to inhibit all summoning and teleportation magic so they wouldn't be overwhelmed by thousands of free-roaming demons and devils. You could just say that magic is broken now if you want to keep the Summoner a viable class option, but just be ready with a reason why someone can't just teleport or plane shift out of the dungeon.
Also, I know the first region involves portals to hell. I got around this by saying it was basically a momentary lapse in the dungeon's security system.
Hope this stuff helps. Feel free to message me if you get stuck for ideas.
Velcro Zipper, Thanks for the advice. That all sounds quite reasonable and good way to work around the pitfalls of a never-ending dungeon.
To all who are looking to recruit. Some changes:
Wizards spells will be obtained like normal.
Spell Components will be assumed.
Cavalier class should be small with medium mount.(since it's a dungeon with small rooms and narrow corridors, big is bad)
Summoners, probably going to say no. You can blame Velcro for that suggestion, but lore wise, it makes sense.
Definitely want in on this! Will have a character up in a couple hours either Ranger or ranged Fighter.
Sefra the Cleric of Desna, for Paxs
Ingred the Stout ready to go!
Ive played WLD before, but it stalled at 12th level due to players wanting to play other stuff.. It wasnt me but u know how that goes..
Anyways id like to see there rest, so here's my attempt at a melee bruiser.. FYI i came in late at ard 7th level, so no ooc knowledge, not that i would use it anyways.. Enjoy!
Aasimar would be fine.
Would you allow me to play a Wayang without any of the shadow stuff attached to it?
Ie. No shadow magic, no Shadow resistance
Wayang would be fine with the shadow stuff. I don't know why you would want it without them.
I like that way of handling combat. I will definitely come up with someone for this.
Wayang would be fine with the shadow stuff. I don't know why you would want it without them.
Okay, thanks! :D
And I've known a few GMs to be picky about shadow stuff, so I figured I might head it off just in case.
Sefra: Did you not want any gear?
Ingred: Looks good.
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Here is my submission. Let me know if you want me to change anything. If you dont allow pre-game crafting, i will downgrade his armor adequatly.
Krieger of the Shiktuk clan
Male Aasimar Paladin (Warrior of the Holy Light) 1
LG Medium Outsider (native)
Init +1; Senses darkvision 60 ft.; Perception +3
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Defense
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AC 21, touch 11, flat-footed 20 (+7 armor, +3 shield, +1 Dex)
hp 12 (1d10+2)
Fort +4, Ref +1, Will +3
Resist acid 5, cold 5, electricity 5
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Offense
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Speed 20 ft.
Melee Heavy Shield Bash +3 (1d4+2/x2) and
Javelin -1 (1d6+2/x2) and
Silver Shortsword +3 (1d6+1/19-20/x2) and
Warhammer +3 (1d8+2/x3)
Special Attacks smite evil (1/day)
Spell-Like Abilities Daylight (1/day), Detect Evil (At will)
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Statistics
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Str 15, Dex 12, Con 15, Int 10, Wis 13, Cha 15
Base Atk +1; CMB +3; CMD 14
Feats Shield Focus
Traits Adopted, Guardian of the Forge (engineering), Tunnel Fighter
Skills Acrobatics -7 (-11 jump), Climb -6, Craft (armor) +2, Diplomacy +8, Escape Artist -7, Fly -7, Knowledge (engineering) +5, Perception +3, Ride -7, Stealth -7, Swim -6
Languages Celestial, Common
SQ aura of good
Other Gear Banded mail, Heavy steel shield, Javelin (4), Silver Shortsword, Warhammer, Artisan's tools, masterwork (Craft [armor]), Backpack (empty), Bedroll, Belt pouch (empty), Blanket, Candle (5), Chalk (5), Crowbar, Flint and steel, Grappling hook, Torag, Ink, black, Inkpen, Manacles, Parchment (10), Piton (5), Pot, Rope, Saw, Scroll case (10 @ 0 lbs), Soap, Trail rations (5), Waterskin (2), Whetstone, 1 GP, 1 SP, 7 CP
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Special Abilities
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Aura of Good (Ex) The paladin has an Aura of Good with power equal to her class level.
Damage Resistance, Acid (5) You have the specified Damage Resistance against Acid attacks.
Damage Resistance, Cold (5) You have the specified Damage Resistance against Cold attacks.
Damage Resistance, Electricity (5) You have the specified Damage Resistance against Electricity attacks.
Darkvision (60 feet) You can see in the dark (black and white vision only).
Detect Evil (At will) (Sp) You can use detect evil at will (as the spell).
Guardian of the Forge (-Choose-) You receive a +1 trait bonus on Knowledge (engineering) and Knowledge (history) checks. One of these skills (your choice) is a class skill for you.
Shield Focus +1 Shield AC
Smite Evil (1/day) (Su) +2 to hit, +1 to damage, +2 deflection bonus to AC when used.
Tunnel Fighter +2 Initiative and +1 critical damage while underground.
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Krieger is a dwarf of aasimar descent. As such he is taller then most dwarves, his long beard seems to be made of wiry gold. His eyes are charcoal gray but sometimes in moments of righteous anger streaks of reds covers the pupils as if someone blew on hot coals.
At birth, because of his unusual size and appearance, Krieg was seen as a sign of portent by his clan and was taken to the temple by the elders. The temple refuted such claims but the clan would hear no such thing and decided to leav him in the care of the followers if Torag. Krieger spent his formative years at the temple where he learned the ways of the dwarves, the forge and Torag. Since he was a strong lad of fine wisdom and strength he was offered training to be one of the blessed warriors of the faith.
When Krieg heard of Cleftwood's plight, he did not hesitate. He grabbed his warhammer, the armor and shield he made at the temple and offered his service. With the 50gp he was given, he bought a silver sword and several supplies for his quest.
It is fixed now :), not sure why it didnt save the first time
I will stat up character and backstory when i get home from work in an hour. My premise is i am a tiefling mercenary, delving to learn about my grandfather who is rumored to be located within.
I have a special GM fiat request: in lieu of character Traits, may I instead be treated as having the Fiendish Heritage feat for better customizability? If not it is okay. The feat allows me to pick a variant ability score array and then roll 3x and pick my favorite darkness replacement ability.
I preset Aurora Silverbow, amnesiac Fighter (Archer) who volunteered to protect the only home she remembers since she was found near dead just outside of Cleftwood.
W Canepa: I will allow, so long as you put your rolls in the thread.
So far I have:
Submissions
Sefra Starchild - Human Cleric(desna)
Infred the Stout - Human Barbarian (Invulnerable Rager)
Krieger of the Shiktuk Clan - Aasimar Paladin
Ungrim Waspfeather - Dwarf Monk (Zen Archer)
Aurora Silverbow - Human Fighter (Archer)
Interest
Billybrainpan - Rogue (skill monkey)
Doomed Hero - Wizard?
Drake Somerset - Oracle (Nature)
Mark Thomas 66 - Ranger/Ranged Fighter
Tie My Shöelace - Wayang
Dreaming Dragon
Lots of ranged interest. If your character info is in your main accounts profile, it would be appreciated if you made a new alias of your character's name and copied the info in that profile. Just to make it easier to keep track =). Sent some of you private messages. Looks good so far.
Rolls
Which heritage were you looking at?
Onispawn. Probably go with #16 as my random roll. I am either going to go ranger or barbarian-or multiclass eventually. I'll roll him up in a few min. Just got home
Okay, character sheet is up except for equipment, which will be coming presently. Feels odd to be playing a clean-shaven dwarf.
dotting in don't know what to try.
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Hi Master of Dungeons:
There goes my proposal, hope you like it.
Magnitofera is a Female Dwarven Paladin that will volunteer to go into the Dungeon to protect the town that has been her home for all her life.
She likes Cooking, and secretly, to sing, which she does pretty good - for a dwarf - and with a lot of heart but without any training. Her family lives on town, a deeply religious bunch that approved her choice of "career".
I would love to tie up Magnitorera's background to the rest of the players.
Cha 16 (17 points, -2 Dwarf)
Wis 13 ( 1 point, +2 Dwarf)
Str 12 ( 2 points)
Con 12 (+2 Dwarf)
Int 10
Dex 10
Skills
Knowledge (Religion) (Int)
Diplomacy (Cha)
HP 11
Traits: Tunnel Fighter and Operatic (Thasillonian)
Feat: Power Attack
I would like to take the Oath of Chastity and/or Oath of Charity archetypes, but I will submit to the DM approval.