I am cheating a bit and taking this from a post I made in a thread about megadungeons on Circus Maximus, but it’s late on Friday and I want to go home:
I am a big megadungeon fan. I ran an Undermountain campaign for over a year. The players would explore the dungeon, do city adventures in Waterdeep, get gated to somewhere else by a trap, come back, etc. There was politics, as various parties were at work in the dungeon and the city above.
Key to megadungeon success, I think, is keeping track of what happens and incorporating that back into the party’s exploration. I remember that a room in Undermountain had a trapped coin that would explode in fire when touched, then the coin would burn its way through the stone floor. The first time through the party cleric picked up the coin and was incinerated. Every time the group went through the room again, they’d see the hole in the floor and the charred stone around it. It became a landmark!
I’ve seen discussion on some old-school blogs that say the megadungeon doesn’t literally have to be a dungeon. That is, you can build a wilderness like a megadungeon, with some of the basic design principles involved in the construction and operation of the game.
Any megadungeon thoughts?
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