At Shadomain we love having discussions with anyone interested in games and having more fun. We’ll suggest interesting topics for discussion in our groups and publish comments here and talk about them in our YouTube channel. If you want to add some comments to our discussions, join our private email group by sending an email to sh**********@***il.com or join our Discord.
The Topic: Mega Dungeons —Yes or No?
Gary Gygax—co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons—famously created a 30 level dungeon called Castle Greyhawk. This was in the very early stages of TTRPGs back when a “campaign” was often a giant dungeon, with little or no activity outside of the dungeon. Let’s flash forward to today. It sounds like a cool idea, but would you enjoy playing through a mega dungeon where you might be in a single dungeon for months or even years? A modern example would be Dungeon of the Mad Mage for 5e. And… when did you start playing TTRPGs? I’m curious how that impacts people’s opinions on mega dungeons, if it does?
Some Cool Responses
I actually don’t mind mega dungeons or doing a good dungeon crawl. While I appreciate the nuance of lots of the game play, sometimes I like just the basics of exploring and fighting.
GamerMomLuna
I haven’t played one, but it might be hard to remain interested after a while. If someone proposed 3 ideas, that would not be my selection. And I started in the 70’s, but quit and went back about 5 years ago
Mama Strange
I’m not a fan of the mega-dungeon. It brings up a lot of verisimilitude questions for me, as usually you have factions essentially living on the same block, as well as all matter of practical questions. I think it makes much more sense for the “mega-dungeon” to be a geographical area, which may provide a lot more variety in terms of terrain, and resolves the problem of treading over the same ground frequently, or the game becoming repetitive.
The Merlitron
I’ve never run or played a mega dungeon, but I like the idea of them in theory. I’ve read a mega dungeon setting where the entire setting was a dungeon built under an island and the town on the lake shore. The idea of PCs discovering new entrances and exits allowing them to return to specific sections of the dungeon were cool, especially with mechanics for how the dungeon would change in the PCs’ absence. I don’t know that I would enjoy this in practice however.
Crazy Weazel Gaming
I generally do not like “mega dungeons”, partially for the whole question of “why does it exist?”. And the whole bit of various factions — basically, if the mega-dungeon is an underground city, then treat it as a city. You have a living, “breathing” thing—it should not be static. If there are populations down there, how do they live? The idea of “every room is a stasis chamber until opened”… even a wizard won’t do that. But, I do like how it happened in the Paris arc of Girl Genius. Yes, there’s all these underground civilizations, all next to each other, all their politics; the occasional breech to the surface, and the master of paris shoots them back. You have dynamics, “static-ish” situation, everyone knows about the “lost” civilizations, trade, etc.
Keybounce
Wrapping It Up
We got lots of different opinions but we could summarize that most people are at least cautious that being in the same location for a long time might get boring. But there are still many people interested enough to check them out, based on the success of the recent Mega Dungeon Month on Backerkit. As a GM for life, I think about this, and I think most of my players would be bored by a mega dungeon. In my last D&D 5e campaign I ran a large dungeon which was a three level castle with a three level dungeon below, and each level was pretty large. Not a mega dungeon compared to Dungeon of the Mad Mage, but I was concerned they might be bored spending many sessions in the same place. I knew what they were looking for was at the lowest dungeon level, so when they started exploring the castle I made sure they found a map to the castle with notes that the objective was in the lowest dungeon level. It was sort of an in game warning that exploring the whole place would take a long time. But they went through everything and seemed ok with it
What do you think? Let us know.
And if you want to join our discussions, join our private email group by sending an email to sh**********@***il.com or join our Discord.
About the Author
