Dungeon part 5: Mega Dungeon Initial Idea.

So over the month of March, I am planning on creating a mega dungeon and writing out my design process here on this blog. This is largely what the last dungeon posts have been building towards, as I wanted to talk about the more theoretical side of dungeon making, to show what basis I am coming from when building a dungeon. I will upload the full keyed dungeon at the end of the month and I will be trying to make most of the maps on Dungeon Scrawl https://probabletrain.itch.io/dungeon-scrawl, so its pretty to look at.

I'm going to aim to do at least 3 level with 20-40 rooms per level. In terms of inspiration I wanted to do something based off the adventure The Lost City as well as the story "The Lords of Quarmall" by Frits Leiber, both of theses focuses heavily on human factions in a subterranean city and I feel is a great basis for faction play and role play.

For the system I'm going to be using Swords and Wizardry complete, and I will be levelling to around character levels 1-5. Since I am using a system that uses gold for XP, there will be a conscious effort to include more than enough gold and treasure items to appropriately level up over the Course of the dungeon.

I will be using the basic structure of the B/X dungeon stocking tables to determine the main content of a room, this table could be summarised as 1/3 Empty, 1/3 monster and 1/3 tricks or traps I like using this table because I think it gives a good spread of different types of encounters.

The starting hooks could be multiple things. Either the dungeon is a site that outside forces wish to infiltrate or the players are captured or hired by one of the internal factions. The addition of magical knowledge among the inhabitants could add to either possibility, this knowledge developed separate from the outside world may be an object of envy for a number of powerful wizards, or a means of trapping the party in the first place. Magic users also add a number of possibilities to the environment within the dungeon, illusions to hide secrets from rivals, magic traps to deter intruders and spells that improve the conditions in certain parts of the dungeon are all possibilities. It might also be an idea to group the factions based on what style of magic they prefer.

I'm probably going to write the next post in this series fairly soon and hopefully keep regular posts over the next mouth.

M.C.