It was 3.5 not pathfinder, but a few years back I made some conversion notes for the first couple of levels of my Erylin's Dungeon 1e/2e megadungeon and ran it for a couple of one shots, it seemed to work out okay.
For me, Pathfinder's megadungeon will always be Kaer Maga's undercity.
Beyond that, I don't think the game needs any revisions. Part of the charm of a megadungeon is that it is tailored to the game rules in such a way as to enable its own existence. They usually function as weird alternate ecosystems, with occasional safe spots and windfalls that keep the PCs going.
There is a continuing allure to megadungeons, be it from nostalgia or just the fact they can be really fun and challenging.
I haven't done one in PF yet, but I think it is only a matter of time before either Paizo or a 3PP puts a good one out. And I'll probably buy it. Some of my best gaming memories are from Temple of Elemental Evil, Tomb of Horrors, Castle Greyhawk and Undermountain in the FR
WotC released an Undermountain book for 3.5, I found it complete garbage. However I own all the old Undermountain Material and would Love to run a party through it using Pathfinder.
I am running my Family through Keep on the Borderlands and Im using very little conversion and some DM fudgeing, but thats Old school to me any way.
So far my family has had to return twice to the keep to heal up and resupply and that was only in the Kobold A section of the Caves of Chaos.
Yes It might be argued that the Keep is not a Megadungeon but its a experiment I decided to do with my family since they will be far more forgiving than a standard group of players.
So far the Keep has required me to adjust for skills and some of the encounters have been very difficult with 1 near TPK in the first room the party came into.
The group consists of a Fighter, Witch and a Druid, the Party is in the process of haggling with the Halfling Theif in the Keep to help out.
Eric
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There is a continuing allure to megadungeons, be it from nostalgia or just the fact they can be really fun and challenging.
I haven't done one in PF yet, but I think it is only a matter of time before either Paizo or a 3PP puts a good one out. And I'll probably buy it. Some of my best gaming memories are from Temple of Elemental Evil, Tomb of Horrors, Castle Greyhawk and Undermountain in the FR
I wouldn't count the Tomb of Horrors as a mega-dungeon...it's actually on the smaller size of medium. Deadly as hell, yes. Mega-dungeon....no.
I wouldn't count the Tomb of Horrors as a mega-dungeon...it's actually on the smaller size of medium. Deadly as hell, yes. Mega-dungeon....no.There is a continuing allure to megadungeons, be it from nostalgia or just the fact they can be really fun and challenging.
I haven't done one in PF yet, but I think it is only a matter of time before either Paizo or a 3PP puts a good one out. And I'll probably buy it. Some of my best gaming memories are from Temple of Elemental Evil, Tomb of Horrors, Castle Greyhawk and Undermountain in the FR
True, but it is still a complete dungeon crawl adventure quite a bit larger than anything in your typical adventure path. I guess I was evoking style more than size.
An AP that consisted of a new level of the dungeon each book!
...
...Nah, maybe not.
-The Gneech
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$2.99 per encounter/room? For a megadungeon, that's going to be costly.I haven't done one in PF yet, but I think it is only a matter of time before either Paizo or a 3PP puts a good one out. And I'll probably buy it.You can get in on the ground floor!
The rooms themselves will be free once the ransom is paid for each room. If you go to the Rite website you can get the first room now for no cost.
Dungeon A Day is a great Mega Dungeon. While it is primarily written for 3.5, the Super Genius crew is working on updating existing rooms to include Pathfinder stats. Also, all new room are getting dual 3.5/Pathfinder stats. It reaches 15th level already and new rooms are added every weekday. Not to mention all of the extra encounters and blogs and stuff.
It's also all hyper-linked, so it is really easy to run from a laptop. I'm a charter subscriber and I highly recommend it.
I'd like to see a mega-dungeon AP. Maybe 3 or 4 levels of the dungeon per volume, for a full 20 level mega-dungeon experience. Lots of monsters, lots of traps, lots of fun.
+1!!!
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First off, my gaming group's preferred adventure type is the dungeon crawl. We're really hoping for a dungeon crawl heavy AP in 2012.
Second, for those who are looking for what is, in my opinion, the ultimate dungeon crawl experience, check out Rappan Athuk Reloaded from Necromancer Games. I can unequivocally state that this raised the bar for us on dungeon crawls, after we had assumed that Temple of Elemental Evil would forever remain the champion in this area.
Its not cheap, nor is it easy to find anymore (I don't think), but Rappan Athuk Reloaded has no equal (imo) in the dungeon crawl category.
Good gaming to all,
DJF
Here's a new copy up for auction by a German seller on eBay:
Bidding starts at only $222.00! Wow!
Yorgi
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I think ToEE or Undermountain would work well with Pathfinder rules -- the key thing is that a megadungeon should include either "safe" areas where the party can rest or portals through which they can travel to safe locations.
I'm running a revised version of 'Haunted Halls of Eveningstar' for my group, and it's been really fun!
Running an ongoing, public sign-up dungeon campaign is an interesting idea, and something that I've been exploring as well. There are a few public or semi-private venues locally that support public sign-up games. Previously, LFR was very popular, but its now withering on the vine, and there's room for alternatives.
I am looking right now at dungeonaday.com. Which I only just subbed this past weekend, but so far looks pretty well done. The Dragon's Delve megadungeon is explicitly designed to be run as a vertical dungeon campaign, with only just enough surrounding setting to support ongoing delving.
I'm somewhat impressed with how the design attempts to keep interest in near continuous delving by using lots of hooks and recurring themes. The dungeon site has an elaborate backstory, which is revealed in drips and drabs to observant delvers. There are at least a few escalating threats that evolve depending on the actions of the players.
However, I've only read the first third or so of the so-far existing 15 levels (plus change). I'm still slightly concerned with deepest levels and Monte remaining active in the product (he's farmed out the daily work on the site to a 3rd party).
I'm also concerned that regular players may tire of the dungeoneering. There are a few encounters provided in the nearby wilderness, but not much. I'm thinking of including a modest hex-crawl option for the nearby wilderness, cribbing the highlights of the Kingmaker AP, recasting the Stolen Lands as the "Lost Duchy" setting used for Dragon's Delve. So most player's will have the choice of hex-or-dungeon-crawl on a session by session basis.
Regarding the PF/3.5 rules, I'm highly tempted to experiment a bit with some campaign table-rules. A public game should probably be run as close to RAW as possible, but I think there are things that can be done from the DM's end.
I'm highly tempted, for example, to only give out XP by treasure and exploration. This could be done by GP-derived value of treasure taken, old-school, supplemented with 'quest' XP for achieving objectives within the dungeon (such as discover bits of dungeon history, defeating specific choke-points, secret rooms, etc).
Living campaigns often hand out story-awards at the end a session, depending on how the party did. The same idea could be used to persist achievements within the campaign, and provide a substitute for the usual combat XP. I haven't tried doing the math on this yet, but I have hopes that this could spin the gameplay a bit, if the players buy-in.
Dungeon A Day is a great Mega Dungeon. While it is primarily written for 3.5, the Super Genius crew is working on updating existing rooms to include Pathfinder stats. Also, all new room are getting dual 3.5/Pathfinder stats. It reaches 15th level already and new rooms are added every weekday. Not to mention all of the extra encounters and blogs and stuff.
It's also all hyper-linked, so it is really easy to run from a laptop. I'm a charter subscriber and I highly recommend it.
I've been a charter subscriber from the beginning, too. I really like it. Can't wait til the secrets of the Prince of Dragons are revealed along with those of the Court of the Coil.
http://www.dungeonaday.com/categories/Howdoesthiswork
The site has gone through a transition as the Super Genius Games folks have begun writing for DungeonaDay.com. Also, SGG is dual statting everything in 3.5 and Pathfinder (as already mentioned).
There's so much going on the Dragon's Delve (the megadungeon of dungeonaday.com). More than anyone could describe in a single post.
First off, my gaming group's preferred adventure type is the dungeon crawl. We're really hoping for a dungeon crawl heavy AP in 2012.
Second, for those who are looking for what is, in my opinion, the ultimate dungeon crawl experience, check out Rappan Athuk Reloaded from Necromancer Games. I can unequivocally state that this raised the bar for us on dungeon crawls, after we had assumed that Temple of Elemental Evil would forever remain the champion in this area.
Its not cheap, nor is it easy to find anymore (I don't think), but Rappan Athuk Reloaded has no equal (imo) in the dungeon crawl category.
Good gaming to all,
DJF
+1
Rappan Athuk Reloaded is amazing. A dead tree copy is going to cost, but the PDF is available and relatively cheap.
Not to be too big of a shill for our own products ... but back in September, Super Genius Games took over production of daily content for Dungeonaday.com (the mega-dungeon created by Monte Cook that has been being revealed one encounter per day for more than two years now). There were already Pathfinder conversions for many of the lower levels, and as of December we began including Pathfinder stats to all the new entries. Now we're just working on filling in the middle bit.
Dragon's Delve is about as "mega" as a dungeon gets ... and when it finishes (which should be sometime around the middle of this year) there will be 20 levels of dungeon plus another 4 or 5 related smaller sites ... PLUS a slew of bonus encounters.
The even BETTER news is that we're currently at work planning out what the site will feature AFTER Dragon's Delve is done. I can't say much about it yet, but I CAN say that it will be a Pathfinder-focused project that will suit your purposes even closer.
Right now, we're getting ready to start Level 16 ... so there's still time to jump on and see Dragon's Delve through to its epic conclusion ... and then be there on the ground floor of an all new, Pathfinder-specific mega-dungeon.
Sorry again for the blatant plug, but if I didn't tell you, who would?
There was annother thread about this here. James Jacobs has some comments.
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Not to be pedantic, but ToEE isn't a megadungeon. It is an expansive lair, and very cool to boot. Undermountain and Castle Greyhawk are megadungeons.I think ToEE or Undermountain would work well with Pathfinder rules -- the key thing is that a megadungeon should include either "safe" areas where the party can rest or portals through which they can travel to safe locations.
I'm running a revised version of 'Haunted Halls of Eveningstar' for my group, and it's been really fun!
I'd hardly call it an "expansive lair", because the original ToEE is a megadungeon by my standards -- if I recall correctly, it has eight underground levels plus several extradimensional ones.
T1-4 The Temple of Elemental Evil has 4 underground levels (the first three fairly large and the fourth on the small side of medium) and 4 extraplanar elemental nodes (none of which were that huge) (not counting the moathouse and the small dungeon under it which is not part of the temple complex, and the above ground level of the temple itself which is basically just a large empty room).
It is not a mega-dungeon when compared to Undermountian or Castle Greyhawk... but it is certainly far larger than most 'modern' dungeon designs, and could probably fit the definition of a mega-dungeon at the smaller end of the scale.
I do a megadungeon on occasion, typically some evil magic user or magical critters lair. I like putting the my PCs in situations where there are 20+ encounters to complete without rest. Cleaver planning and trapsetting by the PCs. Keep in mind at 20+ encounters they are not all CR (PC level) encounters. But I still make it a stretch.
Ah I miss the days when it was 4 to 8 adventures to level instead of 4 to 8 encounters <grin evilly>. Okay not all the time, I do like being able to play more than 1 PC a year.
Sorry, but something with only twenty encounters or a little more than that does not in any way qualify as a megadungeon. A megadungeon should have something like twelve levels or so, which probably have a minimum or twenty encounters each and sometimes many more.
i don't think Temple of Elemental Evil counts as a megadungeon. Really it's an expansive lair. It's home to an organized group of monsters that control the place {albeit divided into four factions), which doesn't happen in proper dungeons. Groups may control part of a dungeon, but not the whole thing. Furthermore, it's pretty self-contained. When you defeat Zuggtmoy that's pretty much it. A DM could theoretically expand on it,but... A megadungeon is designed so it can always be expanded onto with new sections, levels and sublevels. Furthermore, it pretty much can be cleared, albeit with a lot of work, a big no no for a megadungeon. Furthermore it's too small, a megadungeon requires somewhere like twelve levels downward at least.
Just before Pathfinder came out, I was running a 3.5 dungeon crawl so old school I actually was using one of those dice with stairs and doors and corridors marked out on it, to decide where the map would go.
It just went on and on and on...
I think a megadungeon can be had with any version of the game, really. Because the level of old school in these sorts of things is not something that relies on game mechanics.
Rather, it relies on how much of the mechanic you are willing to set aside or flub, and how much realism, or total lack of it, you are prepared to handle.
The best, most old school of these feature portals that allow you in and out without any explanation of what spells were used to create them, traps and features that are totally random and appear even as non-sequitors, and creatures with no relationship to one-another, that just happen to seem like fun to fight at the moment.
Not much of the mechanic involved in any of that.
Kaer Maga definitely fits the bill here. The overview map on page 52 of City of Strangers has a dozen marked areas that each should contain a 20+ encounters...
Getting tougher as you go deeper.
With the stipulation that this map has only the "known" regions.
In the thread that got linked upthread, Mr. Jacobs seems intrigued by the notion of a Megadungeon AP. I would like to vote that if it should ever be done, Kaer Maga's the place to do it. Moreso than the other potential candidates, the citizens of Kaer Maga know they live over a megadungeon that constantly threatens to spill into their streets.
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Sorry, but something with only twenty encounters or a little more than that does not in any way qualify as a megadungeon. A megadungeon should have something like twelve levels or so, which probably have a minimum or twenty encounters each and sometimes many more.
i don't think Temple of Elemental Evil counts as a megadungeon. Really it's an expansive lair. It's home to an organized group of monsters that control the place {albeit divided into four factions), which doesn't happen in proper dungeons. Groups may control part of a dungeon, but not the whole thing. Furthermore, it's pretty self-contained. When you defeat Zuggtmoy that's pretty much it. A DM could theoretically expand on it,but... A megadungeon is designed so it can always be expanded onto with new sections, levels and sublevels. Furthermore, it pretty much can be cleared, albeit with a lot of work, a big no no for a megadungeon. Furthermore it's too small, a megadungeon requires somewhere like twelve levels downward at least.
Er, twenty encounters? We surely hacked through a lot more critters than that; if I recall correctly, it was definitely something like a 100+ encounters at least, and wandering monsters on top of that. Besides, a DM can easily expand on it by adding new levels/sublevels, or more portals. That is exactly what I've done with Haunted Halls, which is more or less a pretty standard and self-contained dungeon if you're running it "by the book".
Where does is say that a "proper" megadungeon cannot be controlled by a single organization or ruler? Or that it must have 12 levels? Although it mentions other levels, the original Undermountain boxed set has maps only of three, and levels 2 and 3 are pretty sparsely populated.
One more thing; we never had any impression that we could clear the whole complex in ToEE. The DM running the module used wandering monsters and NPC parties pretty often, plus he repopulated areas with new planned encounters. For example, a room filled with corpses might lure carrion crawlers, or a group of wererat bandits might have followed us from town to see if they could settle in one of the "cleared" areas, and so on.
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T1-4 The Temple of Elemental Evil has 4 underground levels (the first three fairly large and the fourth on the small side of medium) and 4 extraplanar elemental nodes (none of which were that huge) (not counting the moathouse and the small dungeon under it which is not part of the temple complex, and the above ground level of the temple itself which is basically just a large empty room).
It is not a mega-dungeon when compared to Undermountian or Castle Greyhawk... but it is certainly far larger than most 'modern' dungeon designs, and could probably fit the definition of a mega-dungeon at the smaller end of the scale.
Yeah, thanks for correcting me; it's been a while (20 years, or even more?) since we played that module. :)
As I said in my reply to lordzack, Undermountain had maps and written encounters for three levels, plus Yawning Portal and those miniadventures; those levels were pretty large on the map, but consisted mostly of empty rooms (once we spent a whole day without finding or fighting anything). And here's the thing: I'd categorize any campaign that is mainly based on events happening in and around a large dungeon complex as a megadungeon; however, ToEE -- just as Undermountain -- was meant to be expanded on by the DM.
The first part of my post wasn't responding to you, it was responding to Arnwolf's post.
As for Undermountain, hell yeah that's a megadungeon. However, the original source for the Megadungeon is "Dungeons and Dragons Volume 3 The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures". It declares "a good dungeon will have no less than twelve levels down, with offshoot levels in addition, and new levels under construction so that players will never grow tired of it." That's not the Temple of Elemental Evil. The temple has but four levels and four sublevels (the elemental nodes). It also has a clear cut off point. Zuggtmoy is imprisoned on the final level and the goal is to defeat her. After that there's not really any point. You could expand it, but it's meant to have an end point.
Ugh, not really. I'd like even less dungeons in Pathfinder ( hey, the title of the game isn't even anymore "Dungeons and Dragons"! ^^ ).
The upcoming Tiang Xia AP, which apparently has much more NPC interactions than normal ones, is more to my liking. Roleplaying over rollplaying!
In fact, my players tend to roleplay MORE in a dungeon situation, because they know their actions may kill their characters!
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I chimed in my thoughts above about dungeon-a-day but one of the above posters reminded me of two blog posts there that I thought would be helpful to anyone interested in a megadungeon, not just dungeon a day.
Assumptions of Dungeon Design An excellent read giving some insight into Monte(and most megadungeon's authors) expectations on what is common among this type of campaign.
Dungeon as a campaign Talks about using the dungeon as a full campaign, how to incorporate everything into more or less a single linked location and the benefits, drawbacks and things to be wary of associated with it.
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This thing is printed on 100 sheets of printer paper, double sided. So, really 200 sheets of printer paper.
This drive is already fully funded and finished, BUT, it should be out on shelves and available to buy within a couple months, I believe. Those who pledged should be getting it by next month, possibly along with up to 4 adventures to go with it.
Also, if your interested, Christopher West is the artist for the map.
Also, apparently they are thinking about doing more of these.
Dungeon as a campaign Talks about using the dungeon as a full campaign, how to incorporate everything into more or less a single linked location and the benefits, drawbacks and things to be wary of associated with it.
+1.
This is how I see the megadungeon: a single complex around which an entire campaign can be run. Many expeditions are required to plumb its depths. Full of mystery and wonder, and a "focal point" for all the story and role-playing stuff that normally goes into the fantasy RPG.
Interesting development: after looking around Dungeon-A-Day and then having a separate, unrelated conversation with my FLGS owner about things like D&D Encounters, it looks like I am going to be running an open ended bi-weekly exploration campaign of The Dragon's Delve...
Awesomeness! Have you thought about doing a little campaign journaling on Obsidian Portal/microblog/etc? I'd be interested in hearing of your experience with this project.
I ran a group through the Worlds Largest Dungeon, using PF rules. At the time, only the first Bestiary was out, so I spent a little time (not a lot) converting some monsters, but other than that, it worked fine.
I ran a group through WLD using 3.5 rules a few years ago, and now I'm running them through several XCrawl crawls converted to PF. Given both WLD and XCrawl are based on the 3.5 SRD, I don't think that there'd be a significant difference in converting them.
Given that, I think running a pathfinder WLD would work perfectly well as a PF megadungeon. Assuming you're willing to put up with all of WLD's massive number of editing errors, I say go for it. I certainly had fun running it.