So I made a megadungeon 1/2way through my current campaign. I kind of like it though and want to develop a whole campaign around it now, for future use. My current game the players came to know about it organically as they got to the end of 3rd level and one adventure into 4th, but if I start over a 1st level, how much info/backstory do I hand out?
The dungeon is like this: there is a noble house in a large town (1 of 8 Houses) that got their fame and fortune by siding with an imprisoned fey Eldest. She's trapped in a mirror and needs a vessel to ride around in; said vessel needs to be one of the "fairest of them all." Long story boring...its been over a century and she STILL isn't free from her prison.
Over all this time she, her minions and other groups have built down into the surrounding underground, carving out a dominion of halls and chambers for the queen. When she gets one of these vessels she likes to have balls, feasts, and other debauched revels where she can be adored. She can't get topside because her sister and tons of fey under her sister's control are on constant alert for her and her minions.
Meantime the noble family has had a sort of Lovecraftian existence: they are good breeders and have lots of fortune, but have to sacrifice many of their members or others to the queen. One guy a generation ago finally put together a plan to end it all and then got iced and re-animated by a hag coven in the queen's employ. Some heroes got called in and blew up the nobles' castle, sparing only a penitent changeling witch and the youngest son of the noble.
So my idea for the campaign starting over again from 1st level is that since the castle got demolished the ruins have been inhabited by random evils as well as some fey watcher types. The town has come to find out about the megadungeon under the ruin and the one little noble boy has grown up. The party meets him at 1st level as an eccentric noble who pretends he knows very little about the place, so he sends in adventurers to make connections and gather info.
That's a pretty hefty backstory. How much (if any) should the party know before they get sent in on their first mission?
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Let them find out as they adventure. Notes and scrawlings on pieces of paper IF they look with the history of the place. Make the place seem like it was once alive. Don't make it a monster hotel. Have different tribes, factions, food sources, multiple ways in and out, maps that take up more than one piece of paper. Many levels deep! Other mysteries that the diggers of the dungeons found that were already there underground!