The Grim Megadungeon

 

The Grim Megadungeon doesn’t exist. This map, for instance, is Mapper’s Challenge II by Dyson Logos. He missed a trick, to my mind, by not calling it Mapper’s Delight but maybe he’s not that into the Sugarhill Gang. I’m not sure how I feel about Megadungeon as nomenclature or even a play style. I’ve run a megadungeon. The Anomalous Subsurface Environment, which is good (although unfinished) and read some others. Not all of them are good. 

When it’s done well, the megadungeon encapsulates the fantasy adventure game milleu. Everything that can happen in a game can happen in a dungeon. That term is not a great one though. 

I like underworld. That’s how Dragon Warriors does it, and before that (probably influenced by too) the Empire of the Petal Throne. 

Mega-Underworld isn’t a thing though. 

The Grim Underworld probably does exist. It’s down there. From the very first post of this blog, and before, I have maintained that the city is built on the ruins of a thousand civilisations. That sounds like a megadungeon to me. So the Grim Underworld is down there. Existing. It’s just not been transcribed to graph paper, the rooms stocked and keyed, prepped for play. However, I can feel it. Can you have an Old School setting that doesn’t contain a really fucking massive dungeon? 

So I was wrong. Every time I’ve tried to write the Grim Underworld, I’ve failed. It seems, well, a bit shit. However that’s more or less what I think about every published RPG product I read too. So it’s a bit rubbish. Most other things are too. I wouldn’t wipe my arse with The Curse of Strahd and people fucking love playing that. 

Ok, ok. The Grim Megadungeon does exist. Theoretically. I can feel it existing. I wish it would stop. 

The Anomalous Subsurface Environment

I have run this and it’s good. The Anomalous Subsurface Environment is a science fantasy megdungeon placed in a post apocalyptic world of crazy wizards, dinosaurs, ancient technology and magic. It’s a quintessential old school renaissance American D&D product. It borrows heavily from the aesthetic of Thundarr the Barbarian. Or so I’m told. I’m British and we never had Thundarr over here but chat with American OSRist and they’ll rave about it. Or it’s potential.  I don’t know many folks that still heavily rate stuff that was on TV when they were children. 

So ASE 1 is setting, gatehouse level and level 1. ASE 2-3 is, surprising no one, levels 2 and 3 of the dungeon. This is unfortunately where the science fantasy weirdness ends for now. My own players are on level 3 currently. While I have tried to piece together a level 4 of my own crafting for them to explore, it transpires that I suck at and borderline hate mega dungeon design. So that probably won’t be happening. I consider this a shame because if any more ASE was published I would lap it up and run it to death, like it was one of the many henchfolk who have met their demise in the dungeon and been unceremoniously thrown from a cliff, dubbed Fall-hala by the PCs. (Does waving a lighter around while you dispose of someone’s body in a local beauty spot constitute a ceremony? If so, unceremoniously is unfair)

Mega dungeon play in the ASE and of itself has a lot to recommend it. It’s episodic. We finish most sessions in town so if there’s a rotating cast of PCs then it doesn’t matter.  There are factions. The PCs can engage in all sorts of diplomacy or just exterminate them and take their stuff if they prefer. The trap and puzzle rooms have been a massive source of planning and scheming between sessions, in some cases for weeks on end. One particular room involved a large group of PCs and their small army of henchfolk barricading dungeon corridors and excavating a wall while fighting of legions of random encounters to get at an elusive pile of silver pieces. Good times. 

Henchfolk have played a pivotal role in the campaign for their valuable skills as hit point soaks for actual PCs. And also one player is now playing one of her former henchfolk after her first PC was eviscerated by a troglodyte matriarch with a double barrelled shotgun. There has been several dramatic henchfolk massacres, notably while fighting cornstalk mean on the mountain outside the dungeon; and battling the necromantic midgets, and their undead allies, in their tiny throne room.

This is not a dungeon of drow and orcs but of screeching eyeless freaks and cannibal morlocks. There are murderous clowns and towering great mushrooms. Strange oracles and synthetic life forms. There is a healthy dose of the weird. A PC has been turned green, one has had their gender altered multiple times and there is a whole load of stuff included because the designer thought it was cool. Flying head from Zardoz (I have his minions manifest as different aspects of Sean Connery) a weird robot Sasquatch thing (I don’t know what it is but there’s a mini of it,) Lion men from Thundarr and more crazy wizards than can easily be counted. This gonzo but done well. Bonus fact, PCs fear clowns. I don’t know whether it’s IT or the one out of poltergeist but middle aged nerds have absorbed enough negative clown media to be actively scared of them, when all they want you to do is attend the Anomalous Subsurface Circus and have a good time....

Preparation required to run this is limited. Just reading the module really. I did spend some time working on a party that the PCs were invited to which was well worth it. They hired a carriage, brought in a tailor to make their outfits, Stacy the halfling had her hair done. It was cool. However the low prep aspect is why I started running this. During the height of the pandemic with a lot of time on my hands I was able to maintain four games a week including two that I was running out of my own head. Having an already sketched out mega dungeon was a massive boon for Thursday nights as it required me to do very little other than show up on time with my dice, fully clothed and have my internet on.

I like it a lot and I wish Patrick Wetmore would write more of it.

The Tavern at the End of the Multiverse

This was an idea I had for a drop in or Flailsnails style of online game. The idea being a tavern that exists in every reality, or travels between them at random, and conveniently sits atop a mythic underworld of campaign spanning proportions. A megadungeon that exists simultaneously in every campaign world and none.

So we combine the well used tropes, or dare I say clichés, of starting in a tavern and it having a fucking massive dungeon beneath it to go and adventure in. Also by starting and finishing each session in the tap room we can accommodate a drop in style of play. The cross-reality nature of the place means it is flailsnails compatible.

I didn’t really get that far with developing this but what I did have follows..

It’s called the Purple Sloth Tavern. This is an unsubtle tip of the hat to an old T&T gamebook that partially serves as inspiration for the place.

Josh Kirby, ladies and gentlemen...

The barman is Stanley, an anthropomorphic sloth, he’s a lot quicker than you might imagine and also the source of rumours the party might gather before heading down into the depths.

There’s a market in the courtyard outside that will allow does a fine trade in adventuring equipment and the fencing of looted treasure.

The are stables and everything else you might expect to find in a regular tavern, after all you can spend the night, eat, drink and gamble there if you wish. Carousing is optional but encouraged.

The entrance to the mythic underworld is via the cellar. Because Cool, and also cliché. At least this is the one that everyone knows about and the one that Stanley will give you for free. There are rumours of entrances originating elsewhere in the tavern that lead to various different parts of the dungeon below. However this knowledge is not freely available to starting characters.

The dungeon follows standard old school conventions and has factions and “themed” areas and all that jazz. Or at least in theory it does as I only got as far as drawing a bit of the level one map and adding two or three potential factions for those areas. For although I like this idea as a set up, and while it is more realistic in terms of what sort of game I can actually play given time constraints and availability, drawing a huge, fuck off map and/or keying it is not an exciting prospect for me. 

Huge fuck off map by Dyson Logos

There are tricks and so forth available for faster megadungeon creation than the labour intensive “just get on with it” method but in a spectacular display of nose cutting to spite face, my sense of stubborn I-will-create-my-own-material-for-my-games-whether-it’s-achievable-or-not fails to permit such short cuts.

A seed for a style of play that I should probably do more with but in all likelihood will not.