Mega dungeon story ideas.

[Mathius]

My players are tired of plot and stories and just want to focus on combat and comedic role play. We have also chosen to use E6. Big 6 bonus are baked into leveling. As such I plan to make it hard for them to accumulate large amounts of wealth. They will have to pay for their lifestyle and pay the interest back on the loans they needed to take out to get an adventures license. The will eventually get a chance a big score that can get them ahead and from their get rich like their idols (the 6th level delvers)

dungeon setup:

I am using a hex grid for the overall map of the dungeon. The far farther from center the more dangerous the hex. The hexs are not in the real world. Only the the center hex is the real world and it is the only way into the dungeon (except when it is not). A hex is filled with all kinds of monsters and even if you kill them they eventually respawn. The city over the dungeon pays adventures to help suppress the monster population. The dungeon walls often contain gems and valuable metals so teams are sent in to mine those. Also with in a given hex are doors that lead to demiplanes. Each demiplane is a nice convenient self convenient adventure site of any type imaginable. Site must be cleared quickly because mook level bad guys respawn fairly quickly (hours to days). If the high end monsters a dealt with the whole area resets. The theme stays the same but the maps and monsters may change around. This exploited because the loot also resets. Hexs can also reset witch shifts the map and may take away some sites and make others available. It is also dangerous since every monster in the zone re spawns all at once. basically the hex needs to be explored and tames all over again.

Given the above I am looking to create a job board the the PCs to pick from. I have 14 potential jobs for them to pick from but each one just few words at this point. I could use more job ideas (for 1st level PCs) and to flesh each one out into paragraph of to.

This first six involve traveling to door in the dungeon and entering a site to hunt a creature and harvest something form it. I think any of the following would be neat. Ankhek, Dire ape, Cockatrice, Giant scorpion, minotaur, or yeti.

The next to involve escorting a wagon to a door. They will get gaurds for so we can focus on the site but an attack or two on the way back might spice things up if they site was to easy. The first is a winery complete with already aged wine and the other involves harvesting water melons (they grow no where else). The both benefit form being heavy and fragile.

The next task is being the wagon guards for a more experience team while the go and clear a zone and bring the loot out.

Mining draws monsters in like nothing else so for this one you are part of team and assigned a zone so that you can intercept the baddies before they get all the noise.

Speaking of zones I was thinking they could take job manning a strong point so that those who get in over their heads (most adventures are warrior 1 or 2) can train their monsters into the PCs. They could also be given a zone to patrol and be asked to run towards the sound of screams.

Lastly they could escort a mapping or reading team around a hex. Reading involves lots of bulky fragile eq used to determine the true nature of the dungeon.

I know I am bad a presentation. Sorry about wall of text.

[Mathius]

Any thoughts by anyone?

[Otherwhere]

Since your players are not interested in any plot or story, why are you trying to justify their adventuring?

They just want a tabletop version of a video game. They simply want to jump in and fight things. I mean, the old D&D format of randomly generated encounters solves your design right there!

In fact, that might even be more fun for you as well since neither you nor they know what to expect! You're freed from any constraints about: "That doesn't make sense" since there's no plot or story to worry about.

[hiiamtom]

I would not make the hub-world/job list/escort humdrum, because that's neither funny nor results in good moments.

With the creatures you want to use, here's what I would do. A crazy Dr Monroe type vivisectionist or wizard creates a Zootopia meets Jurassic Park wonderland for tourists to experience the daily lives of awakened animals. Obviously things go wrong and the wizard/alchemist is trapped in an Animal Farm take-over and have to travel around the different environmental zones and the downtown area to reach city hall/laboratory where they save the NPC and extract him from the animals.

There are, of course, peaceful NPCs and such as well as shops to loot/buy from and monorails. The different city wards are like "desert", "artic", "jungle", "Pacific Northwest", etc. and they have to make their way through all of them by the least guarded routes - which conveniently leads them through each part and fighting a bunch of different creatures for that type of terrain.

[Goth Guru]

Mission:Bring a Sphinx back alive. She can answer any question with a riddle. It's like a portable Oracle of Delphi.

At E6 you can't have high level monsters and rewards. You can't have time stop in one of the bricks in the Mario zone.

[Mathius]

The Dr Monroe idea is quite neat. I need some plot. That is why I am doing the job board bit.

[Goth Guru]

Subplot. The external game world has bad humanoids such as goblins.
Dr. Monroe wants the creatures to act more and more like people, while the authority figures want them to fight the evil monsters tooth and nail. For example, High Gnolls have a plus to intelligence and favored class necromancer. Dr. Monroe keeps telling them to not play with dead things.