Why doesnt Maure Castle start at 1st level?

As far as I understand things, Maure Castle was developed from Rob Kuntz's personal dungeon, El Raja Key. However as I understood it most, if not all, dungeons back then were what we call megadungeons or campaign dungeons. The highest levels would be suitable for low-level characters and get more difficult as you went deeper. I'm actually running this sort of campaign right now (well almost, the first session is on the 16th), using maps I bought from Rob Kuntz!

However, Maure Castle isn't like this. It starts at mid levels. Why? Was El Raja Key like this, or did it have upper levels that weren't adapted into Maure Castle? As I understand it Rob was co-DM of the Greyhawk campaign before creating El Raja Key, so maybe it was exclusively for veterans of the Greyhawk dungeons? However, it seems unlikely that Rob wouldn't have some material for low-level characters. Any one able to shed some light in this? (Maye Rob himself?, since I know he posts here sometimes?

As it states in Mordenkainen's Fantastic Adventure, the module was intended for players used to low level characters to have the opportunity to play a higher magic higher level game (and step into the shoes of some of the greatest wizards of Greyhawk).

El Raja Key was created before Rob began to co-DM Greyhawk, and does feature dungeon levels designed for low-level PC play. Maure Castle, while loosely based on and associated with El Raja Key, is in fact a separate collection of castle ruins and dungeon levels.

Not sure if that helps?

Allan.

Whilst not in a position to give an authoritative answer, I've always thought that Maure Castle as written started in the middle, as it were, with dungeon levels above that were suitable for lower level characters, and others below that were for higher level characters.

I'd like to think that had Dragon kept going under Paizo, these would have all been fleshed out and published.

Now we will just have to do it ourselves.

Reggie.

Now we will just have to do it ourselves.

i suggested this a few months ago, but no takers so far. :-(

Reggie wrote:

Now we will just have to do it ourselves.

i suggested this a few months ago, but no takers so far. :-(

Yes you did, and even before then I've been looking at my accumulated notes on Maure, kicking around how I'd go about this in my homeworld campaign.

I've already started using an old copy of Tegel Manor for the castle itself, as it fits nicely and is twisted enough to not need a lot of changes, apart from names.

I've got some ideas sketched out for the contents of the various levels, but the problem is that whilst it's reasonably straight forward to cobble together an entertaining evening's dungeon crawl for my players, Maure has a series of associated mysteries whish I cannot completely solve, let alone expand on throughout 15 or so levels.

Reggie