# Would these maps make for a fun dungeon adventure?



## Quasqueton (Jun 16, 2006)

Do the attached maps look like they'd be a fun dungeon to explore?

Quasqueton


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## Yellow Sign (Jun 16, 2006)

I would have to say no. Unless the DM is going to fudge a little bit and just use them as a guideline for the adventure. Mapping those as a player would be a nightmare. 


They look cool but not practical. 


YS


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## Dog Moon (Jun 16, 2006)

I'd of course modify the tunnels a little bit if I were going to use them.  Just too many weird things going on with the tunnels, IMO.

It's also hard to judge any of the others not on top since we can only see a part of them.

Voted maybe/other.


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## Old_Man_Fish (Jun 16, 2006)

They look pretty good to me.... Mapping? you don't have to hit every dimension... Doesn't have to be concise. Is your character surveying the dungeon or exploring it?


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## jsewell (Jun 16, 2006)

also voted Maybe/Other

It's too difficult for me to tell - low resolution, and only one you can see.  I don't think dungeon crawls that confuse players are necessarily bad, but I do know they cause _you _problems: 'OK, now what are the dimensions of this room again?!?!?!?'


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## jsewell (Jun 16, 2006)

Old_Man_Fish said:
			
		

> Mapping? you don't have to hit every dimension... Doesn't have to be concise. Is your character surveying the dungeon or exploring it?




Fish beat me to the punch!!!!


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## Shadowslayer (Jun 16, 2006)

I voted no, but me and my guys don't do mega-dungeons. That looks like a mega dungeon.

Also, I've seen that pic before...Im curious where you're going with this.


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## Umbran (Jun 16, 2006)

Dungeon that big needs a really good explanation for existing.  My group doesn't like dungeon-crawling for the sake of dungeon crawling.  Justifiying the existance of that monstrosity wouldn't be easy.  Even harder to give the characters a good enough reason to go through all that.


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## KB9JMQ (Jun 16, 2006)

As a player I would love it. I like a huge ol slash and hack once in a while.
As a DM - maybe - Filling out a dungeon that large takes forever to come up with a good story, theme and reason for each of the things that might be there.


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## Kid Charlemagne (Jun 16, 2006)

That top map looks a little over the top, but what I can see of some of the others doesn't look too bad.  As others have said, they don't look like published maps - so its not terribly important.


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## lukelightning (Jun 16, 2006)

I say yes, if you're in the mood for a good old classic dungeon crawl.  You' might have to be careful about mapping; It might be best to give the players a partial copy of the map (perhaps the party found a treasure map of the complex).


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## Gwaihir (Jun 16, 2006)

My players are crazy nuts about mapping. They have this notion that the can find secret doors by having a perfect map.

So I long ago gave up drawing complex and confusing dungeon layouts because the night degenerated into five guys poring over graph paper.

In one campaign, I even gave out magical boot that identified the exact dimensions of any room they entered.


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## Rhun (Jun 16, 2006)

I think it looks fun, but I love large dungeon crawls. As for mapping...who cares? I prefer getting lost in dungeons myself. It just adds to the fun.


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## D'karr (Jun 16, 2006)

A map, for its sake, does not a fun dungeon make.  Its what occupies that dungeon that will determine if this is fun or not.

Those are pretty big maps, so I'd imagine that this dungeon is setup as a "mega-adventure" of some sort.  There would have to be a compelling reason to explore it.  Maybe this is a dwarven underground city and the tunnels that lead to the surface and deeper below.  Reminds me a bit of the underdark trek during the classic Descent/Shrine/Vault of the Drow adventures.

The maps look imaginative, there are a lot of details.  This has the potential to be a fun dungeon.  What you populate it with will really determine that.


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## Quasqueton (Jun 16, 2006)

> Im curious where you're going with this.



I like/prefer dungeon adventures, both as a DM and as a Player. As a DM because it is generally easier for me – fewer options for direction, less to keep track of and juggle, easier to “plot”. As a Player because it takes me back to the reason I fell in love with D&D – exploring strange, unknown places, meeting monsters and killing them, and discovering treasure.

I would love to adventure through a mega-dungeon. These maps look like my early experiences with D&D. But something struck me about them – all the maze-like corridors of 3 of them (top, fifth, and sixth) with no encounters (maybe some wandering monsters) and dead ends that just waste time. 20 years ago, I would have thoroughly enjoyed such dungeons. Finding our way through the labyrinth, hoping (or fearing) running into wandering monsters, and generally just fooling around in the dungeon would have been fun.

Now, though, those labyrinthine dungeons would annoy me. I don’t think I’d enjoy the “plotless” navigating and mapping. The second, third, and fourth maps look like they’d be more fun – plenty of actual rooms with potential encounters (monsters, or traps, or tricks, or something other than just empty dead-end tunnels).

Quasqueton


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## Heathen72 (Jun 16, 2006)

As a player I think I may have once enjoyed such a dungeon, but then, once I had an inexaustible thirst for all things role playing, and some damn good GM's. Nowdays, I would find the experience interminable, and rather pointless. Nothing against dungeons per se,  as long as they are themed or there is a reason for going in I can still enjoy them, but mega dungeons just don't do it for me. Certainly, I would get no joy being the mapper.

IMHO this style of game has been done better by computerised RPGS for some time now.


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## grodog (Jun 16, 2006)

You're playing coy, Quasqueton, but I won't spoil your fun


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## Mycanid (Jun 16, 2006)

Sure - why not? But I agree with Umbran in the sense that as a player OR as a DM I would have not find some sort of reason why such a thing would exist. Dungeon crawl for the sake of dungeon crawl always kinda puzzled me. I like some rhyme or reason behind things.  It doesn't take much rhyme or reason ... I'm willing to stretch my imagination for the sake of the game, after all. But the more of it there is I generally find the more I enjoy the game - again as either the player or the DM.


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## D'karr (Jun 16, 2006)

Quasqueton said:
			
		

> I like/prefer dungeon adventures, both as a DM and as a Player. As a DM because it is generally easier for me – fewer options for direction, less to keep track of and juggle, easier to “plot”. As a Player because it takes me back to the reason I fell in love with D&D – exploring strange, unknown places, meeting monsters and killing them, and discovering treasure.
> 
> I would love to adventure through a mega-dungeon. These maps look like my early experiences with D&D. But something struck me about them – all the maze-like corridors of 3 of them (top, fifth, and sixth) with no encounters (maybe some wandering monsters) and dead ends that just waste time. 20 years ago, I would have thoroughly enjoyed such dungeons. Finding our way through the labyrinth, hoping (or fearing) running into wandering monsters, and generally just fooling around in the dungeon would have been fun.
> 
> ...




There are a few questions I ask myself as a DM when I design an "adventure".  These are the two that seem relevant in this case.  "What am I trying to accomplish with this _section_?"  The other one that dovetails off is, "Does this _section_ accomplish that effectively?"  The second question is much more important.

In your example you mentioned there are many dead-ends, empty areas, etc.  If what I'm trying to accomplish is to make an underground trek a long and arduous event, then that does accomplish it.  However, does it accomplish it effectively?   I'd have to say no.

The game is really only propelled forward by action.  Action on the part of the DM or on the part of the players.  If as a player I spent a substantial amount of real time just dragging on through an *empty* dungeon, I'd probably get pissed.  Why not just say, you've gone through the dungeon for 7 days and you found nothing?  That would take 15 seconds and then we can move on to more "adventuresome" things.  There is no sense of wonder in empty tombs.

So the action could be "encounters", "natural hazards", "traps", etc.  If there are little, or worse no, encounters in a whole section of map then I've wasted a lot of real time and not propelled the game forward one bit.  For sections like that I can create the same sense of long arduous travel by my simple statement above, having the players decrease rations for that period and maybe applying some circumstance modifiers like fatigue, etc.

As a DM I would not spend any significant (over 15 minutes) amount of time in empty rooms.  Just state that the adventuring party explored the caves of doom and found nothing.  Be generous, give them a map of the area, as it would be assumed that they explored it, and move on.  In the empty caves of doom they found a note leading them to the real action, the caves of chaos, just a few miles north, near the Keep...

For a player, what does spending 4 hours or more just stumbling around in the dark and finding nothing but dead-ends accomplish?  Probably just frustration.


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## Quasqueton (Jun 16, 2006)

> You're playing coy, Quasqueton, but I won't spoil your fun



Well, no, and yes. But I understand why you’re thinking what you’re thinking.

No – My question is straight and honest. My follow up post is straight and honest. I’m using the image as an example because it is that image that sparked my thinking on this. That image shows what I’m talking about better than I could explain it (picture = 1,000 words). [That is not just a representation of an old-school dungeon, it *is* an old-school dungeon.]

Yes – If someone decides to rag on me about *my* dungeon-creating ability based on that image, I can pull out the secret and shut them up. [I’m pleasantly surprised it hasn’t come to that.] I purposely am not using a map of my own old-school days as the illustration of the concept.

Quasqueton


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## Dracorat (Jun 16, 2006)

I would say a good map is maybe 5% of what qualifies as a "fun adventure".

The map is a tool, just like the dice, the characters, etc. The fun is in implementation, and you don't need a cool map for that.


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## Voadam (Jun 16, 2006)

If I found that as a treasure map then I would enjoy going in. Lots of twists and dead ends on that top one which would be hard to describe as a DM or map as a player, unless we were playing with done out terrains and minis.


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## tzor (Jun 16, 2006)

WOW.  I can't shake the feeling that I've seen those maps somewhere before.

Or it might just be that every map in the old days had to have a =< room in the upper left corner and a () room in the exact middle of the map.   

I miss the old days.


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## Maldin (Jun 16, 2006)

I would say no. And thats despite (or maybe its because of) the fact that I know what those maps are and who drew them (and I won't spoil your fun either, Quasqueton). Its old school, absolutely, in the same sense that a random dungeon filled with random creatures, without rhyme, reason or theme, is "old school". I moved past that style of adventure-creation 25 years ago.

Denis, aka "Maldin"
============================
Maldin's Greyhawk  http://melkot.com
Loads of edition-independent Greyhawk goodness... maps (good ones!), magic, mechanics, mysteries, and more!


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## cildarith (Jun 16, 2006)

Hmmm.  I fail to see how one can judge the quality of an adventure simply by the maps (and yes, I also recognize those, Q...    )  What the GM chooses to do with those maps will have much more bearing on the fun factor than the actual layout of the place IMO.

It does not look like it would be an easy task to map the top page, but again, that may be intentional and it _might_ be a lot of fun to find ones way out of that maze, or not depending on how the GM handles the situation; but the maze itself does not automatically equal unfun...


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## Uder (Jun 16, 2006)

Hell yeah. I'm assuming of course that a DM that took time to make such intricate maps would also take time to make fun stuff to put in the maps.

Mapping them might be a pain, but imagine the sense of accomplishment if you "finish" a level!


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## Kafkonia (Jun 17, 2006)

I put "maybe" because it's just a map. It's like handing someone a map of New York City and saying "Do you think you'd like to visit?" without telling them anything about the place.

They're pretty to look at, and it gives me a sense more of being a setting than a single adventure. But it's all about what you do while you're there.


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## DragonLancer (Jun 17, 2006)

Too big and unweildy for my DMing tastes.


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## pogre (Jun 17, 2006)

Were these on ebay? They look familiar. I assume they are one of the early adventures from D. Arneson or G. Gygax or some such lore.

I think the maps look like fun, but as for the twisting corridors etc. I'm squarely in agreement with Q.


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## Olgar Shiverstone (Jun 17, 2006)

It depends on what's in the dungeon.  Were that set of maps DM'd by its original creator, I'd probably enjoy the adventure, since I know the adventure would be wild and wonderful ... but the average Dm might just make a hash of them.



Spoiler



Those _are_ the original Greyhawk Castle maps, aren't they?


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## Enkhidu (Jun 17, 2006)

I thought for sure this thread was going to be about this.


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## Uder (Jun 17, 2006)

lukelightning said:
			
		

> I say yes, if you're in the mood for a good old classic dungeon crawl.  You' might have to be careful about mapping; It might be best to give the players a partial copy of the map (perhaps the party found a treasure map of the complex).



This is good advice. I usually make an outline of the dungeon (no interior details) to give to players as a clue at some point within the first couple of sessions.


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## TheAuldGrump (Jun 17, 2006)

*Shrug* No where near enough information to judge. The best map in the world can have a crappy adventure set in it, and a rough pencil sketch may be enough to run a great game.

Looks a tad large, assuming a single dungeon, to match my tastes, but then they aren't my maps either.

The Auld Grump


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## Hussar (Jun 17, 2006)

I love me the crawl, so, a groovy map is very important.  These look like they have lots of possibility, so, yeah, I could easily work with these.

C'mon, let the cat out of the bag.  Where are these from?


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## arwink (Jun 17, 2006)

I'd use them. I develop a hankering for the relatively non-sensicle mega-dungeons of my youth from time to time, and the maps are just the kind of of layout I prefer.


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## Mark Hope (Jun 17, 2006)

Sure, I'd use those.  Classic maps from a classic dungeon .  You should put all your cards on the table, though, Quas - it might make for a more informed discussion once the context is made clear...


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## Man in the Funny Hat (Jun 17, 2006)

Maps in and of themselves can both be conducive to certain kinds of fun and certain kinds of frustration given their layout.  They cannot, however, utimately determine if the adventuring that takes place within them is actually fun.  That depends much more upon the encounters and how the DM runs them.  These maps are certainly chock full of real, old-school goodness with not a square of the graph paper left uncontaminated by SOME element of the dungeon, populated or not.  It'd be a fun project to redraw them in Campaign Cartographer.

I can tell you that todays 3E adventures just don't need or want the kitchen-sink style of dungeon excepting the mega-dungeons which I learned to despise since first trying to run Undermountain in FR.  Some people seem to like them but I haven't yet gotten into them no matter how hard I want tolike them.  Part of the problem with that, however, has been that they have never suited my games since they first began to appear.  I might take the adventure key and maps and redraw the dungeon to suit my own more modern, refined, and superior tastes  but just as-is would almost certainly pass on these maps in favor of something with more unique style and less "busy".  However, running a genuine old-school campaign set someplace like JG's Wilderlands a mega-dungeon or two is almost a requirement.  Because they then exist SOLELY for the old-school flavor they impart they need not justify their existence in any other fashion.  One does not question how or why Undermountain/Moria/WLD/Rappan Athuk/the RTTOEE exists - it simply IS.


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## genshou (Jun 18, 2006)

And I vote yes to swing it back to a tie. 

That's something a significant amount smaller than the WLD, and I enjoyed the short time I played in a WLD game before the DM (*Elephant*) lost access to the book.  I hope to run a WLD game of my own someday.


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## Thornir Alekeg (Jun 18, 2006)

I think they look like fun as a player.  As a DM, I think I would be hesitant.

The key is the DMs ability to decribe the dungeon without bogging it down.  It is not a simple thing to do.  I would probably have difficulty as a DM and would therefore be anxious that the players are getting confused/bored.


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## KingCrab (Jun 18, 2006)

Weren't those sold on e-bay as originals of some early D&D game Gary was in?  

They look like a pain in the a**.


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## Buttercup (Jun 18, 2006)

My players have no interest in extended dungeon delving.  And honestly I have no interest in DMing a large dungeon.  Hack & Slash for it's own sake is boring to me.


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## grodog (Jun 18, 2006)

I find it interesting all of the positive and negative assumptions being made about what style of encounters these maps seem to imply, since most of us don't actually know anything about the encouters that take place on these levels, at this point: 



			
				Umbran said:
			
		

> Dungeon that big needs a really good explanation for existing. My group doesn't like dungeon-crawling for the sake of dungeon crawling. Justifiying the existance of that monstrosity wouldn't be easy. Even harder to give the characters a good enough reason to go through all that.






			
				KB9JMQ said:
			
		

> As a player I would love it. I like a huge ol slash and hack once in a while.






			
				arwink said:
			
		

> I'd use them. I develop a hankering for the relatively non-sensicle mega-dungeons of my youth from time to time, and the maps are just the kind of of layout I prefer.






			
				Man in the Funny Hat said:
			
		

> I can tell you that todays 3E adventures just don't need or want the kitchen-sink style of dungeon excepting the mega-dungeons






			
				Buttercup said:
			
		

> Hack & Slash for it's own sake is boring to me.




While to some degree I agree that a map can suggest a certain style of play (I didn't highlight generic "dungeon crawling" or "mega-dungeon" comments above, for example), if you compare the complexity of these maps to those from Erik Mona's "Whispering Cairn" in Dungeon #124, you'll see that the maps in "WC" are designed to be more complex:  WC has lots of vertical challenges, and hidden sublevels accessible from only a single point of entry.  "A Gathering of Winds" is an even better example of a complex, extensive map from the Age of Worms AP (issue # 129).  Both sets of AoW maps are available on Paizo's site at http://paizo.com/dungeonissues/124/DA124_Supplement_LRes.pdf and http://paizo.com/dungeonissues/129/DA129_Supplement_low.pdf (both files are about 5 MB FYI).

In general, would we make the same assumptions about the AoW maps as we did about the ones Quasqueton posted?


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## the_dwarf_is_drunk55 (Jun 18, 2006)

*well........*

well... what if we did a rp session?

then wed know


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## Melan (Jun 19, 2006)

These maps, unsurprisingly given their origins, exhibit a lot of the characteristics of "proper" old school dungeon map design. Observe: they are built for continuous and repeated forays by multiple groups of explorers. Instead of presenting a "straight line" the player characters must walk to get to an "objective" (as found in many contemporary dungeons, as well as some tournament modules such as Tomb of Horrors and the first two Slaver adventures), they are chock full of mazes, circular routes, presumably inter-map connections (grodog, care to verify? ) as well. They collectively form an open environment for dungeoneering. The maps also present an answer to another one of your threads (about dungeon mapping): in this case, mapping is required since the chances of getting lost are great otherwise, unless you have a photographic memory (as a famous explorer of this dungeon demonstrated).

I like these maps because they could concievably hide a lot of cool secret stuff without getting ridiculous like the late Dave Hargrave's dungeons, where there were literally *hundreds* of secret doors. No two expeditions into the dungeon would need to be the same, the experience would be individual for every seaparate group, unless they shared and compared notes.

What we don't know about these maps are the encounters they were populated with. Are they good? Are they engaging? Or are they just 2d12 gnolls with a class B treasure? Who knows!


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## Melan (Jun 19, 2006)

Mycanid said:
			
		

> Sure - why not? But I agree with Umbran in the sense that as a player OR as a DM I would have not find some sort of reason why such a thing would exist. Dungeon crawl for the sake of dungeon crawl always kinda puzzled me. I like some rhyme or reason behind things.  It doesn't take much rhyme or reason ... I'm willing to stretch my imagination for the sake of the game, after all. But the more of it there is I generally find the more I enjoy the game - again as either the player or the DM.



I think it makes sense when you look at the game from the following viewpoint: dungeon crawling for the sake of dungeon crawling is a great idea when the group likes dungeoneering. The campaign should satisfy the wishes of the participants; if they prefer a game of weird and improbable challenges, there is no overwhelming reason to "ecologize" or provide justification. A big dungeon just is. It is there because the people sitting around the table like to crawl dungeons. Not their PCs, not the inhabitants of the fictive world surrounding the dungeon.


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## Hand of Evil (Jun 19, 2006)

Maybe, dungeon crawls have issues, level of monsters in an area, types of monsters, and the explaining of it all; things like why did the gaint spiders of this area attack those wounded ork that ran this way or how does a gaint get here with only 10x10 hallways. 

I just think there is a lot of work yet to be done.


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## Ravellion (Jun 20, 2006)

Mark Hope said:
			
		

> Sure, I'd use those.  Classic maps from a classic dungeon .  You should put all your cards on the table, though, Quas - it might make for a more informed discussion once the context is made clear...



Seconded. The curiosity is killing me.

Rav


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## Melan (Jun 20, 2006)

To stimulate further discussion, here is another dungeon map from a previous auction (same authors). It is clearer to see what it is about. It depicts the sewers and other mazes below a large city.


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## Arnwyn (Jun 20, 2006)

Quasqueton said:
			
		

> I would love to adventure through a mega-dungeon. These maps look like my early experiences with D&D. But something struck me about them – all the maze-like corridors of 3 of them (top, fifth, and sixth) with no encounters (maybe some wandering monsters) and dead ends that just waste time. 20 years ago, I would have thoroughly enjoyed such dungeons. Finding our way through the labyrinth, hoping (or fearing) running into wandering monsters, and generally just fooling around in the dungeon would have been fun.
> 
> Now, though, those labyrinthine dungeons would annoy me. I don’t think I’d enjoy the “plotless” navigating and mapping. The second, third, and fourth maps look like they’d be more fun – plenty of actual rooms with potential encounters (monsters, or traps, or tricks, or something other than just empty dead-end tunnels).



Oh. Were we supposed to look at those maps with that much detail, and make some unfounded assumptions? If so, my answer on the poll might have been "no".

But I don't think that's reasonable. By giving those maps a quick look-over and not making any other assumptions, those maps looks pretty darn cool. I'm a fan of dungeon-crawling, so what I see there looks like it could be pretty fun.

So my vote is a definite "yes". It looks like a blast, to me.


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## Joshua Randall (Jun 20, 2006)

As others have said, maps alone do not make for a fun adventure. Perhaps some really extreme maps can make an adventure more or less fun on the margin, but it's the DM and players who really create the core of the fun.

Umm, did that make any sense?


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## grodog (Jun 21, 2006)

Given Melan's hints, if Quasqueston doesn't let the cat out of the bag, someone else will have to soon, I think, if only to be fair to the rest of the posters.


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## Umbran (Jun 21, 2006)

grodog said:
			
		

> Given Melan's hints, if Quasqueston doesn't let the cat out of the bag, someone else will have to soon, I think, if only to be fair to the rest of the posters.




What "fair"?  They're maps.  Maybe there's an adventure attached to them.  Big fat hairy dieal.  Even if that adventure were written by Gygax, it isn't exactly hype-worthy.


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## Psion (Jun 21, 2006)

Shadowslayer said:
			
		

> I voted no, but me and my guys don't do mega-dungeons. That looks like a mega dungeon.




I said maybe, for similar reasons.

Mega dungeons are cool, and I like them, but they seem less and less practical considering them in hindsight.

(See this thread for more on this topic.)


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## grodog (Jun 21, 2006)

"Fair" only in the sense that folks have been asking for the details, and they haven't been provided yet, that's all.


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## Quasqueton (Jun 22, 2006)

I'm not going to tell the origin/creator of the maps. Such information is completely irrelevant to the discussion at best, and can bias the voting at worst.

If I said the maps were my own [they're not], some folks would say, "No, those maps look stupid, and I'd look for a new DM if you forced me to explore them," merely because of a personal bias against me. I've seen such reactions here before (not just against me).

If I said the maps were created by E. Gary Gygax [they're not], some folks would say, "Hell yes, those maps look fantastic, and I bet the adventure would be great," merely because of a personal bias for EGG. I've seen such reactions here before (not just for EGG).

I offered up the maps for the reasons I've already stated:







			
				Quasqueton said:
			
		

> I’m using the image as an example because it is that image that sparked my thinking on this. That image shows what I’m talking about better than I could explain it (picture = 1,000 words).



I was hoping no one would recognize the image, and the poll would be unbiased and honest. [I expected grodog would recognize them, but I also expected he wouldn't comment on them.] But now the discussion has turned to the creator more than the maps.

But since I never intended this discussion to be about the original creator, I'm still not going to identify him. Doing so would just read like I was pulling a trick or deception from the beginning. I was not, although at least three people have accused me of it already.

Quasqueton


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## Quasqueton (Jun 22, 2006)

grodog said:
			
		

> In general, would we make the same assumptions about the AoW maps as we did about the ones Quasqueton posted?



The maps you link to look very different than the maps in the OP (and not just in the artistry/technology of their cartography). The maps linked look like straight-forward adventures -- no unnecessary rooms, tunnels, etc. It looks like every hall on the maps takes the adventurers directly to a room, and each room has some encounter (not necessarily a combat).

The OP maps have lots of winding tunnels with dead ends and loop backs.

Like I said earlier, the OP maps look like they were designed for a group of Players with lots of time to "waste" wandering about without any real direction or agenda. The maps you link to look like they were designed for a specific direction and agenda (plot).

Melan makes a good point:







			
				Melan said:
			
		

> Observe: they are built for continuous and repeated forays by multiple groups of explorers. <snip> No two expeditions into the dungeon would need to be the same, the experience would be individual for every seaparate group, unless they shared and compared notes.



That is very different than the AoW adventure path. Note that AoW is even called an "adventure path". The maps in the OP would be called simply a "dungeon". Both could have the same amount of fun and excitement for a D&D group, but it is likely that each would be fit for two entirely different kinds of groups -- those who enjoy the adventure path style probably would get bored and annoyed with the dungeon style, and those who like the dungeon style probably would get bored and annoyed with the adventure path style.

I think I fall somewhere in the middle. I think the adventure path style might start feeling like a railroad pretty quick (as I've experienced with one "modern" adventure path series), but the dungeon style I think would wear soon enough too, just because I don't want to waste time wandering around in a maze for my D&D gaming.

Quasqueton


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## Templetroll (Jun 22, 2006)

Way back, it was common to have a large dungeon that could be entered, and _sometimes _ exited alive, by parties of adventurers.   Most dungeons in our group's games were not explored completely; they were explored until we found something cool and then we went back to town, celebrated and went someplace else to kill things and take their stuff.

Within this behavior pattern the various DMs worked in storylines about the world or about the characters.  It made the world feel alive and gave continuity that some older adventurer (he is still alive after a near-tpk) can tell all the new adventurers where there are some unexplored areas in a nearby dungeon.  In one campaign we had, there was a path, via some broken walls and stairway that was cut off from the rest of the dungeon, to a room on the 5th level that was 'safe'.  That meant the party could retreat there and rest so long as they were smart enough to not allow things to follow them back.  When playing that campaign we went to that dungeon once or twice a year, just to kick around and explore a little bit more of some level.  

I like the adventure paths, but I think the best paths are those that are developed from the characters backgrounds, personalities and actions.  Sometimes published work can be developed into something relevant to the characters.  That map that was in the 1e DMG is an example.  How many have used the dungeon under the ruined monestary for an adventure?  I think I've used it with three different groups of players, with really different encounters each time.  The OP maps are kind of like that, a great place to vist but I wouldn't want to live there.  The OP maps look like opportunities for enterprising parties to sell maps when they get back to town, or as they run away through town...   .

Another concept is to put an adventure path scenario into the midst of the OP maps.  Characters that follow the clues go through the dungeon but only explore the relevant parts, kind of like going through the Underdark from the Giant lair to the Kuo-toa area.  Lots of Underdark, but only this 'bit' is of interest right now.  I think that fits in with Quasqueton's middle of the corridor thought.


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## grodog (Jun 22, 2006)

Quasqueton said:
			
		

> I'm not going to tell the origin/creator of the maps. Such information is completely irrelevant to the discussion at best, and can bias the voting at worst.




A good point!



			
				Quasqueton said:
			
		

> But since I never intended this discussion to be about the original creator, I'm still not going to identify him. Doing so would just read like I was pulling a trick or deception from the beginning. I was not, although at least three people have accused me of it already.




FWIW, my intent with my "coy" comment wasn't to be accustatory, I just thought you had some secondary motives that weren't present.  My apologies if I've derailed your thread more than I'd intended (which wasn't at all).



			
				Quasqueton said:
			
		

> The maps you link to look very different than the maps in the OP (and not just in the artistry/technology of their cartography). The maps linked look like straight-forward adventures -- no unnecessary rooms, tunnels, etc. It looks like every hall on the maps takes the adventurers directly to a room, and each room has some encounter (not necessarily a combat).
> 
> The OP maps have lots of winding tunnels with dead ends and loop backs.




True, however, taken as a full unit across the two sets of maps (which are linked), the kinds of challenges presented by the AoW maps struck me as more indicative of the style of the original maps than most 3.x maps in general do so.  Whlie the AoW maps are more stretched out, they feature a lot of vertical challenges, hidden sublevels, etc., like the OP maps when taken as a whole.  That said, in execution the AoW maps also take up a lot more horizontal space (they're not sized to 1 sheet of graph paper each), they are pretty much numbered with one challenge/encounter in each room, and they aren't designed to foster exploration in which wandering mosters will play a sizable role (they're still pretty linear).



			
				Quasqueton said:
			
		

> I think I fall somewhere in the middle. I think the adventure path style might start feeling like a railroad pretty quick (as I've experienced with one "modern" adventure path series), but the dungeon style I think would wear soon enough too, just because I don't want to waste time wandering around in a maze for my D&D gaming.




That's one of the things I've appreciated most about Necromancer Games' Tomb of Abysthor and Rappan Athuk serieses:  in the intros, Clark and Bill comment that one of the main drivers for play in a dungeon is to provide the players with goals.  Players don't willingly enter RA, they are sent there to retrive X from evil temple Y on level Z; or the PCs must secure the services of alien wizard A on level B in order to accomplish unrelated-to-this-present-dungeon-environment goal C; etc.  In OP map play, the players' piecemeal exploration of the map over several expeditions would likely provide those kinds of tactical goals directly.


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## T. Foster (Jun 22, 2006)

I'm not sure I see the OP's point of not revealing the origin of these maps (which, I must admit, I also instantly recognized) but I guess I'll respect his wishes...

I've always wanted to play in the style of campaign epitomized by these sorts of maps; where the multi-level megadungeon essentially _is_ the campaign world, and characters can spend their entire careers exploring the place and still never exhaust its potential. And I'll go a step further and admit something that you're not likely to see too often on ENWorld -- I like making maps. I think it's fun to try to make an accurate map and feel that sense of accomplishment when different sections line up, to deal with the DM's attempts to thwart mapping (via teleporters or shifting rooms or just weirdly shaped rooms and corridors). I'd go so far as to say that for me exploring the dungeon and drawing a map is more fun than fighting monsters (especially when careful mapping can uncover hidden areas that wouldn't otherwise have been discovered). This is an element of the game that I think has been too downplayed over the past 20 or so years, due to the ingrained conventional wisdom that nobody likes mapping and everybody just wants to cut straight to the fights.

I could go on much longer about what appeals to me about the dungeon-centric exploration-based style of play exemplified by these maps (and I have at various other times on various other sites if you care to do some digging around...) but it's getting late here, and besides, if I say too much I'll risk giving away the OP's little secret


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## Matafuego (Jun 22, 2006)

I like dungeon crawling as a player.
I LOVE it.
And i love wandering around for hours.
As a DM I also enjoy it veeery much, but I'll have to ask my players their feeling about exploring such a large dungeon (we all said we were going to try it once but never got the time for it).

My fondest memories of my early years of RP are from exploring lost HUGE dungeons. I never got to DM one though


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## Bront (Jun 22, 2006)

Any map can be made into a good adventure with some work.


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## Melan (Jun 22, 2006)

grodog said:
			
		

> That's one of the things I've appreciated most about Necromancer Games' Tomb of Abysthor and Rappan Athuk serieses:  in the intros, Clark and Bill comment that one of the main drivers for play in a dungeon is to provide the players with goals.  Players don't willingly enter RA, they are sent there to retrive X from evil temple Y on level Z; or the PCs must secure the services of alien wizard A on level B in order to accomplish unrelated-to-this-present-dungeon-environment goal C; etc.  In OP map play, the players' piecemeal exploration of the map over several expeditions would likely provide those kinds of tactical goals directly.



Allan's observation about Necromancer's dungeons is spot on, and highlight a difference between "archetypal" 1st edition AD&D and Original D&D dungeons. In the former case, much more attention seems to be given to populating the whole complex, and sort of "compressing it" to focus on the "meat", so to speak. TSR's modules tend to emphasise this style*, I guess primarily for considerations of available space and company resources. Necromancer's Rappan Athuk and Tomb of Abysthor and the (freely available) Mines of Khunmar by Stefan Poag all embody the 1st edition approach.
In the OD&D case, as T.Foster pointed out, the dungeon can be *the* game (although as Judges Guild's early products demonstrate, the same philosophy can be applied to wilderness and city adventures); there is no overarching objective apart from having fun in a dungeon-type environment.
As a personal note, I always wanted to do an OD&D style megadungeon, but the lack of time, creative energy and attention span means the AD&D approach works better for me in practice. When I was a teenager, I sort of approached the large megadungeon campaign with the first Ruins of Undermountain set by using the maps only and making up rooms and encounters on the fly, but I don't believe I will ever do a "real" megadungeon on my own. I will probably buy and run Castle Zagyg or Blackmoor Castle when/if they come out.
___________
*  D1: Descent into the Depths of the Earth may be an exception, although it is a tricky case... it may be thought of as a dungeon, but also as an "underground wilderness".


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## Melan (Jun 22, 2006)

Also, as yet another contribution to the present discussion, here are links to dungeon maps released by Judges Guild in the mid 1970s. These maps came with City State of the Invincible Overlord, and were unkeyed - basically blank maps you could fill in yourself. I find it significant that although they are much smaller than the ones attached in the OP, similar stylistic features are found in them. I also suspect that they *might* be more popular with a modern audience, and represent a compromise between classic dungeon design and lack of time/similar concerns.
Maps I 1-5


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## grodog (Jun 30, 2006)

Additional JG dungeons maps can be downloaded from the NG/JG site at http://www.necromancergames.com/pdf/csio_4lvld.pdf and http://www.necromancergames.com/pdf/csio_5lvld.pdf  Details about the maps are on the page at http://www.judgesguild.com/downloads.html (scroll down about 40% of the page to the City State of the Invincible Overlord section).


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## grodog (Jun 30, 2006)

Melan said:
			
		

> Allan's observation about Necromancer's dungeons is spot on, and highlight a difference between "archetypal" 1st edition AD&D and Original D&D dungeons. In the former case, much more attention seems to be given to populating the whole complex, and sort of "compressing it" to focus on the "meat", so to speak. TSR's modules tend to emphasise this style*, I guess primarily for considerations of available space and company resources. Necromancer's Rappan Athuk and Tomb of Abysthor and the (freely available) Mines of Khunmar by Stefan Poag all embody the 1st edition approach.




Yep.  They're also full dungeons, which is probably a subtle nuance to what you point out above.   The only AD&D module that I can recall which left rooms blank (without even a room number)---other than the B1 and B3 modules where all of the room challenges were  blank and the DM would select them from the lists at the back of the advnetures---is WG5, which left many rooms undescribed (the recent redux of these levels in Dungeon 112 followed the AD&D/3e format/approach, and keyed all of the rooms in the map).  Having those blank rooms encouraged me as a DM to further customize the module to my needs/tastes (beyond the usual admonitions for the DM to do so---this module really screamed out "Hey, Allan, you need to do some more work here"  ).  



			
				Melan said:
			
		

> In the OD&D case, as T.Foster pointed out, the dungeon can be *the* game (although as Judges Guild's early products demonstrate, the same philosophy can be applied to wilderness and city adventures); there is no overarching objective apart from having fun in a dungeon-type environment.




And the logical consequence of that is that groups would explore the dungeons; the limits of those explorations would then drive the next sessions' play:  that allows the DM much more flexibility in level design (i.e., if he doesn't think the PCs are going to find the stairwell entrance to level 8 from level 5's south western corner, he doesn't have to begin design of level 8 yet).  



			
				Melan said:
			
		

> As a personal note, I always wanted to do an OD&D style megadungeon, but the lack of time, creative energy and attention span means the AD&D approach works better for me in practice. When I was a teenager, I sort of approached the large megadungeon campaign with the first Ruins of Undermountain set by using the maps only and making up rooms and encounters on the fly, but I don't believe I will ever do a "real" megadungeon on my own. I will probably buy and run Castle Zagyg or Blackmoor Castle when/if they come out.




I'm revising chunks of my version of CG and will be working up additonal levels to fill it out, hopefully to begin play by around/after GenCon (which I still haven't completely written off attending, yet).  



			
				Melan said:
			
		

> *  D1: Descent into the Depths of the Earth may be an exception, although it is a tricky case... it may be thought of as a dungeon, but also as an "underground wilderness".




I tend to think of the edges of level 3 in G3 and all of D1-3 as an extended underground wilderness, too.  As such, they don't really follow the dungeon exploration model in my mind.


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## Clangador (Aug 12, 2006)

Well I love exploring old dungeons. back "in the day" my old DM use to say why spend your time in some musty old cave when you can get out in the fresh air. I still prefered the dungeons.
The game was named *DUNGEONS* & Dragons for a reason.


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## megamania (Aug 12, 2006)

Maybe....


I would need to know content, traps, theme, NPCs and reasons for it being.   Then what do your players enjoy?    I once ran Undermountain and after going from 1st level to fourth they said enough and we avoided dungeons for two years.

There is such a thing as too much of a good thing.


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## Kafkonia (Jan 8, 2007)

Given that it's been more than 4 months and the poll is closed, anyone willing to spill the beans?


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## Psion (Jan 8, 2007)

I know I am delving back in time here, but I just thought I'd respond to this...



			
				Melan said:
			
		

> Allan's observation about Necromancer's dungeons is spot on, and highlight a difference between "archetypal" 1st edition AD&D and Original D&D dungeons. In the former case, much more attention seems to be given to populating the whole complex, and sort of "compressing it" to focus on the "meat", so to speak. TSR's modules tend to emphasise this style*, I guess primarily for considerations of available space and company resources. Necromancer's Rappan Athuk and Tomb of Abysthor and the (freely available) Mines of Khunmar by Stefan Poag all embody the 1st edition approach.




Making missions to run in and do something and get to the "meat" of a large dungeon seems to be to be a hallmark of Undermountain, a 2e adventure.

I didn't initially think of RA or ToA in this light, though in the case of RA, perhaps I should have, as it's comparable to undermountain in size and deadliness. I don't really approach ToA this way at all and still probably wouldn't. ToA really has a goal/mystery too it. (Well, so does RA, but it's a bit more remote, and Clark professes you're not really supposed to be able to confront the BBEG.)


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## T. Foster (Jan 8, 2007)

Kafkonia said:
			
		

> Given that it's been more than 4 months and the poll is closed, anyone willing to spill the beans?



 Those maps are levels from the Greyhawk Castle dungeons drawn by Rob Kuntz (co-DM of the campaign with Gary Gygax) c. 1974. They were auctioned off on ebay around the time this thread was started.


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## grodog (Jan 9, 2007)

T. Foster said:
			
		

> Those maps are levels from the Greyhawk Castle dungeons drawn by Rob Kuntz (co-DM of the campaign with Gary Gygax) c. 1974. They were auctioned off on ebay around the time this thread was started.




For the curious, from the original auction description:  



> Description 	(revised)
> Original Greyhawk Castle Maps 6 Levels 1973!
> 
> LOT 306 Robert J. Kuntz Collection TSR
> ...


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## RFisher (Jan 9, 2007)

Quasqueton said:
			
		

> If I said the maps were my own [they're not], some folks would say, "No, those maps look stupid, and I'd look for a new DM if you forced me to explore them," merely because of a personal bias against me. I've seen such reactions here before (not just against me).
> 
> If I said the maps were created by E. Gary Gygax [they're not], some folks would say, "Hell yes, those maps look fantastic, and I bet the adventure would be great," merely because of a personal bias for EGG. I've seen such reactions here before (not just for EGG).




<Vizzini>

Except that you've just biased my vote by letting me know two people who the author _isn't_. So, I can _clearly_ not vote Yes.

But you did those in depth analyses of modules, so you have obviously analyzed the impact of your statements enough to know that the best way to avoid bias would be to _lie_. So, I can _clearly_ not vote No.

</Vizzini>



			
				T. Foster said:
			
		

> Those maps are levels from the Greyhawk Castle dungeons drawn by Rob Kuntz




_Vizzini suddenly falls over dead._


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## grodog (Jan 10, 2007)

Lol


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## Celebrim (Jan 10, 2007)

The maps show promise in that they avoid the flaws which I see so often from young dungeon masters.  These maps are not regular or symmetrical in any way.  And, there is alot of diversity as the map changes styles between areas.

But there is also about as much coherence as nethack, and it looks like just as much thought went into the layout.  I see only a few interesting features surrounded by alot of ho hum.  Things sit around waiting to be killed by the adventures who don't have anything better to do than loot cursed tombs and explore halls packed with lethal monsters from stem to stern.

Looking at the maps, those 5 levels alone could represent 60-80 hours of dungeoneering.  I might enjoy it for a while, but I'd get bored before I got through it.

The great thing about looking at these maps and reading Rob's descriptions of the levels is it makes me feel less bad about my own early dungeon making work.  If even the giants did this sort of thing, we mere mortals are excused of our folly.


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## Quasqueton (Jan 10, 2007)

I missed this resurgence.

Thanks, grodog, for the info on the dungeon. I had not seen that info (or I just don't remember it).

How old was Rob Kuntz at the time of early D&D (the time of this dungeon)? I think he was notably younger than Gary Gygax, but I've never read an age. [Edit: For that matter, how old was Gygax at the beginning?]

Quasqueton


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## T. Foster (Jan 10, 2007)

Gary's birthday is July 27, 1938; Rob's is September 23, 1955. So in the heyday of the Greyhawk Campaign (1972-74) Gary was in his mid-30s (with teenage children) and Rob was in his late teens.


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## Melan (Jan 11, 2007)

Thaks for the info, grodog! It kinda dispells the "it is only random encounters on a random map" idea a lot of people had...


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## RFisher (Jan 11, 2007)

> Level 3 (split level, East): [...] a Giant's Pool Hall




Inspiration for Wormy's giant pool table, p'haps?


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## Nightfall (Jan 11, 2007)

Quasquestion,

I'd need to see them up close and/or in person to make a strong judgement call. 

Otherwise meh.


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## Ry (Jan 11, 2007)

I would love to play in those maps, but not run in a room-by-room basis.  Draw big areas and make that an encounter area, or have encounters spaced out by "you pass down a few large stone hallways, hewn with images of some forsaken god" instead of "Door 287, Search for traps."


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## grodog (Jan 11, 2007)

Nightfall said:
			
		

> I'd need to see them up close and/or in person to make a strong judgement call.  Otherwise meh.




I'll ask Rob if it's OK to scan these and share them in low-res versions.  

My hunch is that he would say No since he's planning to publish at least some of his original maps and keys as part of his Lake Geneva Castle & Campaign (TM) series of products; you can check out the first two products in theis series on the PPP site:  The Original Bottle City (TM) and The Original Living Room (TM).  The Original Machine Level (TM) is one of the likely releases next on the slate.


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## grodog (Jan 11, 2007)

Melan said:
			
		

> Thaks for the info, grodog! It kinda dispells the "it is only random encounters on a random map" idea a lot of people had...




Yeah, there's a lot of good stuff in those maps.  Getting some more details on the encounter keys will further help to diffuse those notions, too, I think.


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## T. Foster (Jan 11, 2007)

rycanada said:
			
		

> I would love to play in those maps, but not run in a room-by-room basis.  Draw big areas and make that an encounter area, or have encounters spaced out by "you pass down a few large stone hallways, hewn with images of some forsaken god" instead of "Door 287, Search for traps."



 To be fair, I think your second example represents how these maps were mostly used in actual play. Accounts of play in the Greyhawk Campaign (backed up by Gygax's "Successful Dungeoneering" advice in the back of the 1E PH) suggest that the typical MO was to have a set goal destination within the dungeon (either from a map, research, or following up on something from a previous expedition) and to hurry past the intervening areas as quickly (and, hopefully, uneventfully) as possible to get to that area. Random aimless wandering and/or attempting to sweep out and secure every room like a police SWAT team were never encouraged -- the former is bad play, the latter only became feasible in a later era when dungeons grew much smaller.

Another key point to keep in mind when looking at these maps is that they weren't designed for a single group of players/characters, like most dungeons are today. By the time Rob was made co-DM (and these maps were drawn) the campaign had something like 50 regular players with multiple sessions a week (small groups (1-4 players) during the week, large groups (12+ players) on the weekends), plus one-off forays at conventions and such. Celebrim's previous observation that these maps represent "60-80 hours of dungeoneering" is probably about right, but that's not 60-80 hours for a single party/player group, its 60-80 hours total split among 3 or 4 (or more) parties/groups.

Gygax's original 1972 Greyhawk Castle had 13 levels (IIRC) and was played in primarily by about a dozen players, usually operating in small sub-groups of 1-4 players. By the time Rob was brought in as co-DM in 1973 (as a "reward" for "defeating" the original Castle -- being the first player to meet Zagyg on the "bottom" level) the campaign had grown so in number of players that the Castle also had to grow to accomodate all of them and was redesigned from its original 13 levels to its eventual size of 40 or more levels.


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## Lanefan (Jan 11, 2007)

The maps - or what I can see of 'em - look like fun.

As for "justification", who cares?  If I'm in a party wading through the place, I'm not going to stop and ask "Why is this place so big?" or similar...though I might wonder why all the twisty tunnels when a straight one would have done...I'm just going to make a map and look for the secret doors.  If I'm getting my nose bent into my face by a Giant, I'm not going to stop and ask "How did it get in here through that little tiny door?"; I'm just going to kill it, loot it, and move on!

And that's what dungeon crawling is all about!  As long as there's some vague reason for us to be there at all, let's get at it!  

Lanefan


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## grodog (Jan 13, 2007)

rycanada said:
			
		

> I would love to play in those maps, but not run in a room-by-room basis. Draw big areas and make that an encounter area, or have encounters spaced out by "you pass down a few large stone hallways, hewn with images of some forsaken god" instead of "Door 287, Search for traps."
> 
> 
> 
> ...




I'm not sure that I understand the distinction that you're making Trent.  It sounds like you're saying "yes, it was like 'Door 287, Search for Traps'" but then you also seem to be supporting Gygax's advice that the DM should penalize PCs that spend too much time dithering around while searching every wall for secret doors, listening at every door, checking for traps every square they enter:



			
				GYGAX in DMG said:
			
		

> Assume that your players ore continually wasting time (thus making the so-called adventure drag out into a boring session of dice rolling and delay) if they are checking endlessly for traps and listening at every door. If this persists, despite the obvious displeasure you express, the requirement that helmets be doffed and mail coifs removed to listen at a door,
> and then be carefully replaced, the warnings about ear seekers, and frequent checking for wandering monsters (q...), then you will have to take more direct part in things. Mocking their over-cautious behavior as near cowardice, rolling huge handfuls of dice and then telling them the results are negative, and statements to the effect that: "You detect nothing, and nothing has detected YOU so far - ", might suffice. If the problem should continue, then rooms full with silent monsters will turn the tide, but that is the stuff of later adventures.




??


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## T. Foster (Jan 13, 2007)

What I mean is that even though these maps show a lot of rooms, presumably not every room was of equal importance or interest. Look at Gygax's level-stocking advice from OD&D vol. 3:


> In laying out your dungeons keep in mind that downward (and upward) mobility is desirable, for players will not find a game enjoyable which confines them too much. On the other hand unusual areas and rich treasures should be relatively difficult to locate, and access must be limited. The layout of a level will affect the route most often followed by players. Observation of the most frequently used passages and explored rooms will guide the referee in preparation of successive levels, which, of course, should be progressively more dangerous and difficult.



and


> As a general rule there will be far more uninhabited space on a level than there will be space occupied by monsters, human or otherwise. The determination of just where monsters should be placed, and whether or not they will be guarding treasure, and how much of the latter if they are guarding something, can become burdensome if faced with several levels to do at one time. It is a good idea to thoughtfully place several of the most important treasures, with or without monstrous guardians, and then switch to random determination for the balance of the level. Naturally, the more important treasures will consist of various magical items and large amounts of wealth in the form of gems and jewelry. Once these have been secreted in out-of-the-way locations, a random distribution using a six-sided die can be made as follows...



Taken together, these quotes say to me that the majority of each level will be empty rooms and/or randomly-assigned "filler" encounters, that only a relatively small fraction of each level will be the truly interesting/rewarding areas, and that those areas will be remote and/or hard to locate/access. So for skilled players dungeon expeditions will consist of searching out and going to these "areas of interest" while spending as little time and as few resources as possible dealing with all the "filler" stuff in-between. So yeah, "Door #287" is there, but only inferior players will waste a lot of time and resources on it, because their more skilled brethren will be in (or at least on their way to/from) the interesting/unique/rewarding areas. 

I've described this idea elsewhere with the shorthand of "dungeon-as-wilderness" -- just like a wilderness-based campaign has various areas of interest (lairs and mini-dungeons) secreted away in the midst of an expansive (and generally not all that interesting) wilderness full of wandering monsters which players will generally seek to cross as quickly and uneventfully as possible, "campaign-dungeons" (i.e. so-called megadungeons) are the same way -- small areas of interest (rooms and sub-levels) surrounded by and hidden amongst lots of generic/filler areas which smart players will seek to avoid as much as possible. Instead of traversing the Devil's Woods and Howling Hills to get to the Tower of Woe, the characters will be traversing Dungeon Level 4 to get to the Chapel of Dalt, but the dynamic of play is essentially the same. Just like characters in the former can choose to loiter in the Woods going from hex to hex having random encounters, but doing so is generally a boring waste of time and resources and a distraction from the stuff that's actually interesting (the tower), characters in the latter can loiter on Dungeon Level 4, searching every door for traps and every room for secret doors, making sure their map is completely accurate and that they've rousted every roomful of giant rats and spiders, with the same result -- they will have wasted all their time and resources on boring/rote/routine stuff instead of what's actually interesting and unique (and fun) -- the special areas.

In a module-sized dungeon where there are likely only 30 or 40 rooms in the entire dungeon and every one of them has been designed to have something interesting and unique and potentially challenging and rewarding about it, it makes sense to be thorough in exploration, to visit every room, kill all the monsters, find all the secret doors, recover all the treasure, etc. But in a "campaign-dungeon" where there are likely hundreds, or even thousands, of rooms and 80% or so of them by design are at best empty and uninteresting and at worst deliberate time and resource wasters, a different approach is required as a matter of simple expediency -- you'll never be able to thoroughly explore the whole thing, so it only makes sense to spend as little time and resources as possible on the filler and focus as much as possible on the "good stuff."

And this, I think, is what Gygax is really talking about with his emphasis on setting specific objectives in the "successful dungeoneering" essay in the 1E PH -- that in a dungeon expedition players shouldn't be satisfied just going randomly (or even systematically) from filler room to filler room having what are effectively random encounters, they should have an objective of first finding and then exploring the interesting/unique/rewarding special areas. I suspect this grew out of frustration with running Greyhawk Castle for players who weren't part of the regular Campaign at conventions -- he knew there was cool stuff secreted all over the dungeon, but these folks weren't even looking for it because they were too busy going from one generic 20x20 room to the next rousting random groups of kobolds and centipedes. (That's what is so fascinating (at least to me) about that essay -- most of the advice he gives really isn't all that applicable to D&D the way most people play it (with a small player group and stable party, discrete module-sized "adventures," etc.); it's much more a guide to successful dungeoneering _in Greyhawk Castle_ -- a campaign with a large and fluid player-base, a huge central campaign-dungeon, and near-total player freedom of action.)


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## Geron Raveneye (Jan 13, 2007)

Well, one thing is for sure...this thread was a damn interesting read so far. Combined with my little reminiscing read of _Blizzard Pass_ this morning, it woke up a desire to run a few players through a dungeon and see what happens.

Now all I need is those players.


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## Celebrim (Jan 13, 2007)

T. Foster said:
			
		

> ...(That's what is so fascinating (at least to me) about that essay -- most of the advice he gives really isn't all that applicable to D&D the way most people play it (with a small player group and stable party, discrete module-sized "adventures," etc.); it's much more a guide to successful dungeoneering _in Greyhawk Castle_ -- a campaign with a large and fluid player-base, a huge central campaign-dungeon, and near-total player freedom of action.)




Very interesting discussion.  

Many of my first instincts as a young DM (like 12 or so) was to create these huge mega-dungeons with thousands of rooms.  It never seemed to work out as well as imagined, probably because I had a small stable player group.  On the other hand, years latter I ran a weekly dungeon crawl for a local game store and tired of the work that went into making a mini-version of my typical modules for an ever rotating play group I had no real attachment too, I created a huge bare bones mega-dungeon for the weekly forays almost on a whim and was somewhat surprised to discover that this worked as well or better than what I had been providing.


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## +5 Keyboard! (Jan 13, 2007)

I'm coming very late into this since this thread was resurrected and at the top of the list. When I first looked at the thumbnail images my impression was, "Man, this looks really familiar. Either I've seen this before in an old AD&D module or the style is exactly like one I've seen." My next thought was that the OP had some kind of agenda and was up to something he was being less than forthcoming about. However, since the question had nothing to do with either of these thoughts, I'll say that at first glance I wondered what types of things would be lurking in those twisting tunnels and in the bigger areas and how long it would take to explore it. So, in answer, yes I think they would make for a fun adventure with the caveat that what was lurking in the areas on the map(s) were up to snuff.

Now that I know the origins of the map by reading the entire thread, I feel somewhat vindicated that my first impressions were correct. The OP obviously had some agenda or he would have never posted this poll. I'm not saying that he was trying outright to trick the rest of us, but he definitely had some personal experiment in mind to confirm or dispel some theory. Well, I hope that the feedback you got netted the results you were looking for.

As a side note, the maps were what stoked my curiosity about D&D from the very first module I owned (*Keep on the Borderlands)*) as well, if not more so, the second product I purchased (*The Lost City*). The maps have always been a big selling point for D&D products for me and probably will continue to be for as long as I play the game.


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## Bullgrit (Dec 1, 2009)

Melan said:
			
		

> These maps, unsurprisingly given their origins, exhibit a lot of the characteristics of "proper" old school dungeon map design. Observe: they are built for continuous and repeated forays by multiple groups of explorers. . . . They collectively form an open environment for dungeoneering.



I agree with this. 

I wonder why didn’t TSR publish more dungeons like this? Such large dungeons designed for open exploration (like _Keep on the Borderlands_ and _In Search of the Unknown_) were the rare exception compared to adventures with plots and goals for adventure. 

Most published modules seemed to assume the first party sent will go through and “finish” the adventure/mission. Few seemed designed with the idea that multiple separate groups may go through it at different times without ever really “completing” it.

Why didn’t TSR give us more such open-ended mega dungeon crawls?

Bullgrit


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## Celebrim (Dec 1, 2009)

Bullgrit said:


> Why didn’t TSR give us more such open-ended mega dungeon crawls?
> 
> Bullgrit




They never tried really until 2nd edition and in my opinion when they did they proved to be not very good at it.

Gygax was good at it, but his work never really got into print probably because a true mega dungeon would have been so expensive to publish.  The closest they ever came was WGR1 which was notable in the absence of Gygax on the credits (He'd already left the company).


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## Dice4Hire (Dec 1, 2009)

No.

I think a good dungeon is at most 12-15 rooms, and then the group gets a break.

One reason I hated the whole World's Largest Dungeon was the oodles of empty space in the dungeon.


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## The Shaman (Dec 1, 2009)

Maps like those are the only reason I would consider playing _D&D_ again.


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## Vorput (Dec 1, 2009)

Wow!  I remember voting in this thread over 3 years ago...

That really puts things into a perspective of sorts...


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## grodog (Dec 2, 2009)

Bullgrit said:


> I wonder why didn’t TSR publish more dungeons like this? Such large dungeons designed for open exploration (like _Keep on the Borderlands_ and _In Search of the Unknown_) were the rare exception compared to adventures with plots and goals for adventure.




I think that there are subtleties to Gygax's and Kuntz's and Jaquays' (among others') map designs that were not noticed, glossed over, or intentionally ignored, during the first years of post-Gygaxian publishing at TSR.  Some of that was quite likely intentional, in order to put a different stamp on the game, and some of that was likely the result of a catering to the market that they built:  a generation of D&D gamers who were raised on modules rather than on mega-dungeons, and who were taught to purchase designs rather than to create them.  (I'm painting in broad strokes here, so no slurs are intended regardless of when you started to play nor whether you never DM'd or played a published module in your entire life).  



Bullgrit said:


> Most published modules seemed to assume the first party sent will go through and “finish” the adventure/mission. Few seemed designed with the idea that multiple separate groups may go through it at different times without ever really “completing” it.
> 
> Why didn’t TSR give us more such open-ended mega dungeon crawls?




Other good examples of the open-ended design approach from the Gygax era include:  B2, D1, D3, G1, G3, I1, L1, S4, T1, and WG5.  Each of these modules feature areas for the DM to build further from the module's foundation, and in some cases the modules practically demand that the DM expand the module in order to manage play (B2, D1, D3, S4, and WG5).


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## Bullgrit (Dec 2, 2009)

grodog said:
			
		

> D1, D3, G1, G3, I1, L1, S4, T1



I don't have my modules at hand to double check (packed up for a move in a couple weeks), but:

G1 and G3 (and G2) -- aren't they pretty much missions? Not dungeons for free roaming.

S4 -- This is Tsojcanth? (Arcaeum is down tonight, apparently.) That's also a mission adventure. Not a free roaming dungeon.

The D modules are part of the high level series (GDQ). They really aren't much for free roaming either.

L1 -- free roaming wilderness with some small to tiny dungeons.

T1-4 -- can be a free roaming dungeon. The PCs invade the dungeon on their own choice and time, and nothing really happens if they leave.

Bullgrit


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## Jhaelen (Dec 2, 2009)

Bullgrit said:


> Why didn’t TSR give us more such open-ended mega dungeon crawls?



Because they were no longer en-vogue?

I remember having created and used similar maps in the early days of my rpg career. I started to dislike that kind of thing about twenty years ago. I vastly prefer adventures with an interesting plot and a good story over a random conglomeration of corridors and rooms that just sit there, waiting to be explored.

Actually, these days I think, adventures are best if there isn't any map at all. Having an event-based, decision-tree structure is all that is needed for a great adventure (well, for D&D in it's later incarnations, I'd also add some encounter 'maps').


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## Chainsaw (Dec 2, 2009)

Jhaelen said:


> Actually, these days I think, adventures are best if there isn't any map at all. Having an event-based, decision-tree structure is all that is needed for a great adventure (well, for D&D in it's later incarnations, I'd also add some encounter 'maps').




To each his own. 

I definitely prefer maps. I like drawing them as a DM and I like the challenge of mapping a good DM's descriptions as a player. In our old games, knowing you needed to map so that you didn't become hopelessly lost made the adventure feel more dangerous and mysterious. Again though, not everyone gets the same thing out of the same thing. Your sense of adventure and danger may have nothing to do with maps.

I use to map out video games like Wizardry and Dragon Warrior though, back before the "automap" features became common, so I grew up with mapping as a basic characteristic of RPGs.


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## grodog (Dec 2, 2009)

Bullgrit said:


> I don't have my modules at hand to double check (packed up for a move in a couple weeks), but:
> 
> G1 and G3 (and G2) -- aren't they pretty much missions? Not dungeons for free roaming.
> 
> [list snipped]




I guess I was tacking a bit differently than what you were asking, Bullgrit:  I was thinking that each of the above adventures are good examples of modules that have expansion built into them at a fundamental level, to the point that they almost demand that the DM takes up pen and graph paper to add their own material to the published content (which, in my mind at least, makes them more of a free-roaming environment; that doesn't make them as free-roaming as a mega-dungeon but they're more free-roaming than say, B1 which is quite self-contained):

- G1 has collapsed corridors and other areas that lead off the map, suggesting additional encounter areas and/or levels may exist
- G3, D1, and D3 are all part of the interconnected drowic underworld:  if the PCs stray off the narrow path of defined encounters, the DM has to design something (or can leverage the massive Drowic Underworld design project over on Dragonsfoot, in the Workshop thread)
- B2 offers the Caves of Chaos, but they have connections to the Caves of the Unknown (which need to be designed by the DM)
- I1 and L1 are much more sandbox-like environs, quite open ended (although, yes, with small dungeons) 
- S4 like the G/D modules in particular, names or hints at various additional levels in the environment that aren't detailed; it also has a wide-open wilderness exploration set of encounters, too (which can be expanded by adding in WG4, if so desired)
- T1 offers many suggestions on how to expand the scenario beyond what's present in terms of defeating Lareth; while waiting for it, it certainly screamed "design T2" to me 
- WG5 (and its modern successor, the Maure Castle levels from Paizo's Dungeon era) is probably the closest of the modules I named to what you're thinking of as a free-roaming mega-dungeon

All that said, while most of the above modules are mission-driven, their backgrounds are pretty lightweight, so that it can easily be discarded if so desired, without impacting the overall play of the scenarios.


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## renau1g (Dec 2, 2009)

So who brought this back to life? Weird....


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## Bullgrit (Dec 2, 2009)

I see what your meaning grodog. I was just thinking along "they are built for continuous and repeated forays by multiple groups of explorers. . . . They collectively form an open environment for dungeoneering," to quote Melan's description of the OP maps.

I think published dungeons like _In Search of the Unknown_ and _Keep on the Borderland_ match this (but on a necessarily smaller scale). Both of these dungeons kind of "just exist" -- a DM could run multiple adventuring parties (in the same world, in the same time period) through them like EGG did in Castle Greyhawk. They're sort of perpetual dungeons. 

But something like the G series, the PCs are on a mission to find information or kill the Big Boss. Once they fulfull their mission, they move on to the next, probably never to return to that dungeon. And the DM probably won't run that dungeon again for another party unless he "resets" it. (In that world, in that time period, that dungeon is "done.")

"Perpetual dungeons" vs. "mission dungeons"

Castle Greyhawk is probably the prime example of a perpetual dungeon. I think most such dungeons were left to individual DMs to create (now often referred to as "mega dungeons").

White Plume Mountain is probably a solid example of a mission dungeon. It seems that TSR chose to publish mostly mission dungoeons.

Am I explaining this well enough?

Bullgrit


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## grodog (Dec 3, 2009)

renau1g said:


> So who brought this back to life? Weird....




That would be me:  I like Melan's model a lot, and wondered if he has done any further maps analysis projects, since it's been awhile.  Edit:  erm, I was thinking of Melan's thread @ http://www.enworld.org/forum/genera...layout-map-flow-old-school-game-design-7.html sorry.



Bullgrit said:


> I see what your meaning grodog. I was just thinking along "they are built for continuous and repeated forays by multiple groups of explorers. . . . They collectively form an open environment for dungeoneering," to quote Melan's description of the OP maps.  [snip]
> 
> "Perpetual dungeons" vs. "mission dungeons" [snip]
> 
> Am I explaining this well enough?




Yes, I think that helps clarify the distinctions you're making, Bullgrit.  I guess what I'm saying is that some of the modules you're classifying as mission modules can transform easily, with some expansion on the DM's part (and as encouraged within the module's designs), from mission modules to perpetual modules---regardless of whether they're a classic mega-dungeon format like Castle Greyhawk.  

To expland on that a bit more:  the drowic underworld offered in G3 and D1-3 is a vast underground wilderness, through which the PCs will (usually) follow a narrow grey-shaded march from the SE to the NW; once they complete their mission to stop the giants and those behind them, or perhaps even during it, they may wander "off the path" of the published content, at which point they've entered the larger perpetual module environs of the drowic underworld.  The design of the underworld map fully-encourages this exploration, and the GDQ1-7 supermodule even provides sketch details for many other possible encounters in that underworld.  The DM has to design this content, of course, so that's part of what I feel like you're also calling out as a design flaw---that the module "ends" at the "edge" of the grey-shaded areas, whereas in a Castle Greyhawk or Maure Castle or other mega-dungeon, that there isn't really an undefined "edge" per se.  Am I characterizing that properly?

Relatedly, while I agree that a good mega-dungeon overall design isn't designed to be completed and should definitely support repeated forays into it, good players will set missions and goals within the scope of that perpetual dungeon environment, too:  "today we're back into the fortress to rescue the slave girls we left in the secret room when we had to bug out, then we'll try to capture/kill Cragen."  So the idea of "mission" strikes me again more as a trait that's set in the background or in PC goals rather than the mission being an absolute definition for any module, per se.  

Did _that _make sense?


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## Gentlegamer (Dec 3, 2009)

I'm pretty sure "perpetual dungeons" used to be called _campaigns_.

I'm all for bringing back this style of campaign.


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## Mallus (Dec 3, 2009)

While I can appreciate the time, effort, and, err, Cartesian creativity involved in making maps like those, I wouldn't let them within 100m of any campaign I had a say in. I prefer my dungeons to be _mini_ or _micro (pico?)_ rather than _mega_.

I like campaigns that are painted on a broader canvas.


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## Bullgrit (Dec 3, 2009)

> Did that make sense?






> I guess what I'm saying is that some of the modules you're classifying as mission modules can transform easily, with some expansion on the DM's part (and as encouraged within the module's designs), from mission modules to perpetual modules



I understand what you’re getting at, but when the transformation means/requires the DM to make all the expansion himself (even if suggested by the module author), does that really count as making the adventure a perpetual dungeon?

I mean, if I design the whole city of Highport (which I did) for the module _Slave Pits of the Undercity_, does that make the published module a city adventure? The module text suggested the DM do this, just like the G modules suggested the DM expand beyond the given lair map.

So I don’t think having a tunnel going off the printed map into darkness, and telling the DM, “Feel free to create more dungeon rooms off in that direction,” really counts to make something like the G modules, themselves, as published, into perpetual dungeons.

Doesn’t _Sunless Citadel_ and/or _The Forge of Fury_ have a similar spot on the map and direction in the text to expand into the underdark? Surely that doesn’t make them mega-dungeons or underdark-excursion adventures.

Bullgrit


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## grodog (Dec 4, 2009)

Bullgrit said:


> So I don’t think having a tunnel going off the printed map into darkness, and telling the DM, “Feel free to create more dungeon rooms off in that direction,” really counts to make something like the G modules, themselves, as published, into perpetual dungeons.




Point well-made, Bullgrit:  the distinction between the two dungeon formats (published S4 module as-is, vs., say, an expanded S4 or drowic underworld) remains.  

And---back to the maps:  few of the maps in the published TSR modules, even the eminiently expandable ones are part-and-parcel representations of the style of mega-dungeon map design that Castles Greyhawk, Blackmoor, and El Raja Key suggest.   WG5/Maure Castle, and the S4 maps are probably the closest, which only makes sense since the were excerpted from existing mega-dungeons in the first place.


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