Writing the (ongoing) World’s Largest Rewrite series has been fun, but I ultimately think it is better as a source of monster ideas than something that should actually be finished. But where to put those monsters? A prison megadungeon without the cumbersome "world's largest" trappings. Let's make a megadungeon.
Caverns of Thracia is the megadungeon I have run the most. Arden Vul is the megadungeon I have spent the most time thinking about recently, thanks to the 3d6 Down the Line podcast. Megadungeon guidance in the greater world of blogs is too vast and diffuse to cite fully, but I will credit a few inspirations.
Arnold K’s Lair of the Lamb. It is not a megadungeon, but it is quite strong in treating the prison not first and foremost as a place that adventurers will delve into, but as a place ordinary people will try to escape from. The very idea of doing a prison megadungeon like the WLD and not making it a prison escape scenario is a little strange, after all. I don’t think I even mentioned that in my first World’s Largest Rewrite post. We'll get into this more in future posts, but the concept of this megadungeon is that the PCs begin as prisoners.
The Two Week Megadungeon. I will not be following the steps here precisely, but like LotL, the TWM process emphasizes lean efficiency over exhaustive completeness. That will be important for, you know, actually making discernable progress.
Designing the Dungeon with Numbers. This post is specifically about the numbers one through five and how they imply different things when used in design. We’ll want to keep this in mind as a counterbalance against the sprawl of the megadungeon. That sprawl is, of course, part of the appeal; no adventuring party is going to explore all of Arden Vul, and no two parties are going to have the same experience there. But that sheer amount of content is overwhelming if we don’t carefully curate how choices are presented.
For example, we don’t want too many areas accessible to the players at first. If the PCs have more than five choices, it is probably more than they can really conceptualize meaningfully. More than five options becomes a list that has to be studied. And a list can easily become a chore.
But a choice between three to five options – with perhaps three to five decision points within each of those initial options – is much more digestible. The PCs will eventually have many more choice points, but these will be presented fractally, as the PCs engage with the dungeon; not all at once, and not too much, too soon.
Landmark, Hidden, Secret. This is one of those great blog posts that can inform all kinds of adjudication and design. We need to make sure that LHS design is baked into the megadungeon. You know how modern-style players are always talking about how the "exploration" pillar feels underrepresented, relative to the "combat" and "social/roleplay" pillars? LHS design, in conversation with strict time records, random encounters/events, and other procedures, helps deliver that exploration aspect of fantasy dungeon games.
The Lost Art of Getting Lost. It is fine to say the dungeon will be lethal, but players are smart and good at playing conservatively. They will probe carefully and back away from the unknown. Doors that slam shut and force the PCs to find a new way back to where they started really test those skills. The same is true of dungeon features like pits, portcullises, and sliding walls. The humble iron spike becomes a lifesaver when it can guarantee a path backward. But, of course, the noise from hammering in a spike triggers a wandering monster check. And when time passes, that faction you offended before starts removing your spikes… oh crap…
Because our PCs are prisoners, we can also address some of the obstacles noted in the post. We can control the “economy” in a way that is not possible for “open-world” adventuring, so we don’t have to worry as much about torch supply trivializing light. Our PCs will begin with plenty of candles, and no other source of light. Imagine a simple torch as an exciting “treasure."
Metroidvanias and Megadungeons and Information Architecture in the Castle Automatic. Two posts from the excellent Rise Up Comus blog. The first post creates a taxonomic framework for understanding megadungeons, and why some fantasy adventure game features and character abilities do or do not work within that context. The second is on information design. We don’t strictly need to worry about information design, as we are designing this as an experiment, and maybe to run someday, not to publish (haha… unless?) But good information design is its own reward. Every DM can get by with their own chickenscratch notes and kludged together prep process, but it’s worth interrogating how we could do better and make things clearer, even if that just transmits a clearer picture to players.
The Monster Overhaul. I have cited this so many times during the WLD series. A good monster manual is much more than stat blocks; it is a worldbuilding and session-planning tool. And the Overhaul is not a good manual, it is a great manual.
Make RPG history and look insane while doing it. Blades of Gixa is one of the successful projects that emerged from the Dungeon23 movement. Indexing location and history in the way this video demonstrates is an awfully interesting idea, and is something we can mess around with for bridging the ancient-lore-to-current-events gap, and avoiding the dreaded “this room used to be…” problem that plagues many dungeon products.
Various Cryptic Keyway posts and projects. Of course I can also take from things I’ve already done, whether iterating on a good idea or salvaging a half-finished thing for parts. Even before the WLD series, previous posts have suggested a similar concept to this one. This experiment will keep some of those ideas. And if it fails, it will be the fuel for something else in the future.
I’m not interested in turning the WLD posts into a dungeon itself. I ultimately think the “world’s largest” conceit is a mistake that undermines good dungeon design. But working through those posts has been useful for generating ideas, and I like (with credit and thanks to OSE and the Overhaul, of course).
I can also scrape content off of my aborted Dungeon23 project, as well as several other dungeons started and left unfinished over the years. Those could even still turn into their own things someday, but a currently active project (like this megadungeon) always gets to steal ideas from projects that are dormant.
We’ll add to this list of influences as we go.
