I played most of the early variants of D&D, and I consider that I grew out of Keep on the Borderlands style games, just one room after another, filled with monsters hitting each other, with no rhyme or reason as to why they were there.
Hi Motorskills. Just noticed your comment!
In this particular case, there is a rhyme and reason for everything that's going on inside the Marmoreal Tomb, and everything that's happened before. There's a reason for the existence of the ancient Hearth of Chaos, a reason why the Stone Giants' burial vaults are built on top of the Hearth of Chaos, and a reason why Nester pointed this particular location out to the Stone-Cutter dwarves. And so on.
The dungeon also makes sense from a structural standpoint. Including for those corridors neatly aligned north and south.
Don't get me wrong, I had a blast at the time, and wouldn't change a thing.
I also totally get why people 'grew out' of the bloat that affected (D&D) things down the line, resulting in a return to the good old days in the OSR.
I like reading the rulesets, and I enjoy looking at the retro dungeons people have created over the past few years, even if I haven't rushed out to play them.
Excellent. So you can both mix that interest that makes you get the "old school" with what it is you want out of the game now, and bring that to the table for other people to enjoy. The Marmoreal Tomb should help you do that.
My question to you Benoist, other than this just being a big map with lots of monsters, what would you say is the appeal to someone like me, that would likely DM it for folks that HAVEN'T had those prior experiences?
Well, first, to me, saying that, generally speaking, from a structural standpoint, a dungeon is just a big map with lots of monsters is like saying that a city map is just a big map with NPCs on it. It's technically true, and for some offerings that might summarize them well enough, but a properly done dungeon to me feels more like a microcosm where there are inhabitants, threats, challenges, and things happen around the PCs as they explore that huge labyrinthine place.
Now, if you are running the thing and get excited about it, you shouldn't worry about those folks who haven't had those experiences before, because ipso facto it'll all be new and exciting to them. So right then and there, provided you are yourself excited about the game, that excitement will shine through, and the newbies will plug onto that and enjoy the game.
It seems to me the real potential issue is you not getting excited about the setting, and I get that. I think there's a very, very strong, enduring appeal to the basic conceit of the game, which is the exploration game, where you go down the dungeon, the unknown, have total liberty of choice between turning left and right, and the goal of the game is to find treasure and survive. That's a very strong, simple premise that just works for millions of people, judging by the reach the D&D game had at one point.
Now, what you get with the Marmoreal Tomb Campaign Starter, the complete offering with the main module, the wilderness expansion and the underworld expansion is not 'just' a dungeon, no matter how lively and immersive the dungeon is. As I pointed out, we see the dungeon as a microcosm where things happen and the GM basically "role-plays the world", literally so, and under these conditions the dungeon shines through the GM.
What you get with the whole package deal is the dungeon AND the hex map of the entire region around, including descriptions of all the landmarks, potential adventuring locations, political areas, factions, etc etc, AND the village that can serve as the home base of the PCs between their exploration. If you remember Hommlet, you'll know a lot of role-playing can happen with that as well, and the Wilderness Expansion will describe that village, Crom Caemloch, thoroughly in order to role-play the NPCs in the village and so on.
What you get from the whole deal is this:
I can probably sell it to those folks just with the huge grin on my face and my bubbling enthusiasm. But what's putting the grin on my face in the first place about this particular outing?
See the Campaign Starter as a toolkit that presents the region (Wilderness), with a basic module (Main Module), and an expansion to that module (Underworld). Now imagine you can use it however you want. You can run the original exploration game if you want. Or you can plug it into a general campaign arc that fits your vision for the game. You can use the whole, or its different parts separately from one another. You can drop the Marmoreal Tomb Main Module somewhere on the hex map, and then the Underworld Expansion somewhere else as a different adventure location in the campaign. You can use the hex map, but use a village of your own making, or dump the hex map, and integrate the village and dungeon(s) inside your own campaign world. Or you can use the general area of the Duinnsmere as a parallel material plane connected to your own, home-brew or published setting, via the area of the Wild, which is imbued with Chaos and blends between realities, connecting worlds with the substance of entropy.
You can do all of those things.
Does that address your question?