Duke Bushido Posted January 13, 2019 Report Share Posted January 13, 2019 Yep. I just picked up the current BOH for nostalgia. Not that I have ever even _heard_ of this Dungeon Under the Mountain, the whole "mega dungeon" thing brought back memories of the seventies, when all the nerdy kids were going through entire tablets of graph paper to create "the ultimate dungeon" or just outdo each other with size and complexity. Though some good came of them, too. My original Champions GM kept lot of the ones he had made, as had a couple of other friends. When we first figured out that Champions could be used for any genre, and when 2e came out and I bought my own boxed set, I bummed a seventeen-page super dungeon map from my buddy Jay G, who was an avid D&D junkie, and after a great deal of folding (he had taped it together) I finally got it all copied at the library, for the princely sum of eighty-five cents. I gave Jay back his map, went home and laid out my copy of it. I applied white-out here and there, drew some lines here, here, and over here, upped the scale from one square = ten feet to one square = twenty miles, and boom! My entire continent-under-the-surface-of-the-earth was roughly mapped. As you have probably noticed from other conversations, I love Pulp adventure stories, and for many, many years hollow earth stories were absolute favorites. I still enjoy them, to the point that I believe I have read or watched every variation on the original Journey to the Center of the Earth story, including that awful comedy one with Will Ferrell. I had so much fun, planning the entrance, picking the chambers, and creating the sub-maps for each chamber.... I don't think I ever finished even a tenth of the chambers in detailed maps.... Of course, I didn't really have to: we spent a year and a half (real world) adventuring in the first three rooms.... Curse you, BOH! Curse you, Nostalgia! I hope you are each enjoying your respective share of my hard-won dollars! Duke Doc Democracy and pinecone 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brian Stanfield Posted January 15, 2019 Report Share Posted January 15, 2019 I have never heard of this. Fill me in on some details. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Duke Bushido Posted January 15, 2019 Author Report Share Posted January 15, 2019 I will, but not tonight. I've got to start running kids through the tub in a few minutes, and I have a few more posts to read still. But I will. I promise. Duke Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Duke Bushido Posted January 24, 2019 Author Report Share Posted January 24, 2019 Sorry it took so long, Brian! "Mega Dungeons" -- , well I'd like to say that they grew out of D&D, but I honestly can't remember D&D _before_ them. In the early days, the game was all about the dungeon crawl; there just wasn't really anything that _wasn't_ in a dungeon, except of course "you're all in a tavern, hearing rumors about a dungeon." And every GM had a pet project: some kind of perfect dungeon he was working on. It was _always_ huge. Not the ones he ran, mind you: the perfect dungeon was almost never finished. The problem with taping graph paper sheets together seems to be that you increase the size of the perimeter of the map, making _way_ more room to tape more sheets. Sometimes a group could be talked into (or forced) playing through a megadungeon, and those fortunate enough to actually finish might have gained thirty levels in the doing. (my own thoughts were always along the lines of "you have seven of these things you're been working on. Who was digging these things?!") Evidently (and I was really unaware of it; I quit with D&D _decades_ ago, and pretty much all fantasy with it. I dabble, but never D&D, and usually something a bit different (occult western, for example; gothic sci-fi, but not much else) the megadungeon blew up big again, and someone was publishing the rascals. When the BOH alert hit my e-mail, I looked, and was immediately hit with a wave of nostalgia for the very early days of gaming. In my time, as I noted above, I never actually made a megadungeon (they just don't make sense to me; it's too massive for me to maintain my suspension of disbelief. I did eventually use one, though, as noted above. That help any? To give you an idea of what I mean, one of the ones in the Bundle is called "Dungeon Under the Mountain." Level 10-- that's right: there are at _least_ nine others (don't know how many; haven't done more than look at them purdy pitchers....)-- Level 10, by itself, is 12 pages of graph paper. There are also sub-levels and hidden areas off of those pages. I mean, your party will have _birthdays_ while trying to clear this thing..... Brian Stanfield 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brian Stanfield Posted January 24, 2019 Report Share Posted January 24, 2019 Thanks! Now I want to do a ten-levels dungeon crawl! We’re both cursed by nostalgia! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cancer Posted January 25, 2019 Report Share Posted January 25, 2019 My own megadungeon was among the things destroyed in the fire in my apartment back in 1983. 30 levels sounds about the right scale, though it was "only" 16 levels deep, with multiple chunks (not connected to the others of the same "floor" directly but you could move between them via a detour going up then down, or vice versa) comprising "floor levels", if you see what I mean. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Old Man Posted January 25, 2019 Report Share Posted January 25, 2019 On 1/23/2019 at 2:45 PM, Brian Stanfield said: ten-levels dungeon crawl Only ten? Amateur. It's sad but I spent a lot of time using the random dungeon generator in the back of the DMG. There's a point at which it becomes entirely ludicrous, and I just kept on going. Duke Bushido and Brian Stanfield 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Duke Bushido Posted January 25, 2019 Author Report Share Posted January 25, 2019 I never said it was sad, Sir. The vast majority of conversations on this very board demonstrates that there are those for whom the act of creating is its own joy. Nothing wrong with that, at least not from where I'm sitting. You know: me. The nearly full-time GM who has a stack of over four hundred "player characters" that will never see the light of day unless I'm in a pinch for a new villain..... Brian Stanfield 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brian Stanfield Posted January 25, 2019 Report Share Posted January 25, 2019 8 hours ago, Old Man said: Only ten? Amateur. It's sad but I spent a lot of time using the random dungeon generator in the back of the DMG. There's a point at which it becomes entirely ludicrous, and I just kept on going. I had these cardboard geomorphology tiles that I could lay out for dungeon levels in minutes, and then rearrange them and create new levels. It was crazy fun for a 15 year old D&D nerd. Probably still is. I still have ‘em, so maybe I should . . . No, no, No! I can’t do that to myself. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Greywind Posted January 25, 2019 Report Share Posted January 25, 2019 You can. You will. The only real question is "when". Duke Bushido and Brian Stanfield 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brian Stanfield Posted January 25, 2019 Report Share Posted January 25, 2019 44 minutes ago, Greywind said: You can. You will. The only real question is "when". I know you’re right. I’ve always been partial to tile-placing games, and I hadn’t made the connection why until just now. Seriously. At this very minute I was already working on getting some people together to play Betrayal and the House on the Hill, which I love, and it dawned on me that it’s because it is a tile placing game where you randomly draw rooms for a haunted house as you explore. Sort of a Gothic mansion crawl! pinecone and Duke Bushido 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Old Man Posted January 25, 2019 Report Share Posted January 25, 2019 Note that many online dungeon generators exist, such as the one at https://donjon.bin.sh/5e/dungeon/ . I apologize for destroying your productivity. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
death tribble Posted January 26, 2019 Report Share Posted January 26, 2019 I have the dungeon under the mountain. It is brilliant. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Duke Bushido Posted January 27, 2019 Author Report Share Posted January 27, 2019 On 1/25/2019 at 9:48 AM, Brian Stanfield said: I know you’re right. I’ve always been partial to tile-placing games, Funny you should say that. The _only_ CCG I ever got into was based on the Tomb Raider games. The whole reason I got into it was because the cards were simply terrain, corridor, obstacle, trap, and monster cards. You were building the map as you played, both trying to get yourself to the goal and stymie your opponents. It didn't last long (most people seem to prefer "Pokei-o" type card games, which I detest for personal reasons), and I never did manage to get a full set of cards, but we had a lot of fun on game breaks using what we had. Dammit, I think Nostalgia is is going to raid my wallet again.... 5 hours ago, death tribble said: I have the dungeon under the mountain. It is brilliant. Huge, isn't it?! Duke Brian Stanfield 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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