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I'm looking to make up a mega-dungeon for the Cult of Razimir going from around 9 to about 15 or so. My real concern is how to keep it interesting so it isn't just "room, monster, room, monster, hallway, random" etc.
The idea is for them to briefly encounter Razmir himself at the end of the mega-dungeon, discover he isn't from this world and take off after him on a world hopping chase using the Distant Worlds book.
Any suggestions?
Best advice I know: Don't think of a mega-dungeon as one homogeneous area. Think of it as a collection of mini-dungeons, connected at a few obvious choke points - each one maybe 10-40 rooms each and holding its own themes and stories. That way its easy to tell when you are going to a very different area, and the number of possible directions is too low to feel overwhelming when you prep it.
I posted about pretty much this in another thread last week. You might find some of the advice useful.
I don't know what any of the spoiler means. I see however that Razmir in Golarion isn't really a deity - he just plays one on TV. He's also searching for immortality.
If you're really thinking megadungeon, then what's the backstory to the actual dungeon? One suggestion could be: Razmir himself erected a gargantuan power plant in an attempt to simulate the Starstone's power. There are dozens of levels of access tunnels, magical conduits and exhaust vents along with a number of specific chambers to control, monitor and administer the energies being harnessed. You could set this all in an active volcano, the heart of a glacier, the eye of a perpetual storm, or even in an elemental plane itself.
Think Bruce Banner's early attempts to re-create the gamma event that made him the Hulk; there's all this energy being utilized, changed and warped to then be hurled at Razmir's mortal form once it's finally perfected. The intended use of all this is: immortality w/out divinity or the frailty of Undeath.
Now This experiment began a while ago; it was not Razmir's brainchild. The Cradle of Nevermord is ancient as it's weird metal and flexible black hosing indicate (missle silo?) but it has ever been a crux of unimaginable power. The cult is scattered throughout the place, fighting to take control of various chambers needed to harness the spark of immortality their deity needs ("what would GOD...need with a starship?") for his continued awesomeness. There are older things here; dark creatures from the void who need this energy to feed upon. They and their corrupt gods hurl back the cult and rebuke their control of the Cradle.
Still other groups seek specific lairs for specific reasons: the fey work to sow mischief from several bases amid levels 1 and 3 to end this place once and for all; the duergar on level 4 entered through one of their mines and found the wierd energies in the reactor here infused their weapons with devastating but chaotic powers which is why they've built a temple around it; the coolant generators on level 7 have cracked and leaked, mingling this stuff with foul exhaust and liquid waste - the resultant oozes are being studied by a corpulent wizard who refers to himself as the Slimenreicht and he's found a way to implant these in mortals to control them.
Just a first pass.
Hoovers got the goods, here.
I'll put in a couple of other ideas that will shake things up:
1) Use all three dimensions. Have a part of the dungeon be a HUGE vertical climb, with all sorts of small environments or situations on various cliffs jutting out during the ascent. (this area's "rooms" are the cliffs, caves, and ledges associated with the ascend/descent, whatever. Thwart fly with anti magical fields, or just have the cliff opposed by a massive abyssal darkness -- with collasal nasty predators that make a quick meal of anything that spends too much time falling or flying away from the surface. Vertical fights while everyone is spiderclimbing (against waves of nasties like spiders, no less!) could be really interesting. Another take to shake up the three-dimensions is have them come into an area of the megadungeon in the base of a huge cavern, on the street level of a huge city that slipped into the earth in a cataclysm long ago. They have to find a way out of the city, but they must go UP, to do it... seeking out the highest buildings in the ruins, and crossing walkways ever higher to get to buildings only the tops of which protrude from silt and rock, Winding ever upwards in structures where the stairs are always out and vast sections are flooded with sand, searching not for the obvious means of ascent they might find on any tattered map but for cracks and holes in ceilings, or build the map of a tower, but it's fallen on it's side and the trick now is for the party to pick through this weird environment that is basically a huge cylinder of ruined floors (now walls) in a configuration that makes the best sense at 90' to how it's presently justified. Why not throw in a huge creature at the end, and when they fight it, it's movement causes the tower to roll... basically turning the final fight in the area into a battle in a rock-tumbler, with acrobatics checks to keep running along the floor, and OF COURSE the monster is not nearly as put out by this (or maybe it's much tougher than the party, but the fact it's now flopping around chaotically with the rest of the mess makes is within range to be defeated or eluded) Holes in the side of the rolling tower (or parts of the walls that break away) threaten to eject the party from the tower (and into the path of a deadly avalanche rolling behind the tower) as well as basically becoming moving, spinning pits. Elaborate on the type of terrain the tower is barrelling through (and perhaps occasionally falling) and you have an adventure setpiece that rivals most move chases.
2) Think ECOSYSTEM. Whenever you consider an area and what populates it, determine for yourself -- Why are these creatures here? What do they eat, and where do they get food and water? Do they trade or have any symbiotic relationships? What is the flora and air and temperature like here? Who's in charge? Who are their rivals? What sorts of routines do these creatures I'm populating the area with have? When I start thinking about questions like these, my dungeons start populating themselves with runaway ideas.
3) Go underwater. Underwater adventures are less popular than a lot of tired concepts, and if done well can wreak havoc on business as usual. Fire spells and lightning can other elemental damages can play out differently, concealment with floating mud or silt and threats from all directions, light from algae and plants (or lack of any light, with party light being a DINNER BELL for predators and blowing any hope of stealth) -- not to mention the whole "oh god I'm underwater I'm gonna drown" thing. Consider it, if even just to have a familiar area flood, or have an area of the dungeon only be accessable by submerged areas.
4) Don't be ENTIRELY married to your concept -- maybe half these areas are just places they need to get through to GET to Razimir's domains.
5) Have a leg of the journey be a caravan, even if it's an unlikely venture like a trade or supply shipment through the underdark. Make the players responsible to protect less sturdy VIPs and beasts of burden, and or have to race against some other entities competing venture, and you have the players out of their comfort zone again.
Just throwing those out.