Quote from: amacris;785039He and I have not spoken in over 18 months.

Damn.

I feel so conflicted over this whole fiasco; I learned so much from his blog.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;785055Damn.

I feel so conflicted over this whole fiasco; I learned so much from his blog.

JMals actions showed he was completely without integrity. He threw Autarch under the bus and never showed a shred of regret or sense of responsibility.

Seems like I have missed Dwimmermount actually coming out. (But neither was I a Kickstarter supporter - and in hindsight, fortunately so.)

I have just snatched the PDF from RPGnow. Curious if the final result will be worth the delay...

Quote from: Fiasco;785059JMals actions showed he was completely without integrity. He threw Autarch under the bus and never showed a shred of regret or sense of responsibility.

I guess if we were in an action movie I'd give him a twenty minute head start before calling the police.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;785070I guess if we were in an action movie I'd give him a twenty minute head start before calling the police.

He didnt steal money, just abrogated all responsibility and then bobbed up a few months later and resumed posting as if nothing had happened.

Quote from: Larsdangly;785051That may be true but I would say, if so, it is an unfortunate characteristic of the dungeon, and one that is out of step with some of its audience. The OSR crowd is relatively into molding their own settings. A dungeon that is only playable with a certain view of religion, races, classes, etc. is a pretty small tent.

The reason the setting details revealed on the lower levels of the dungeon are important is that, as some reviews have pointed out, the original Dwimmermount campaign was focused on exploration and discovery. This sense of amassing knowledge and uncovering secrets is key to maintaining interest over the long term in megadungeon play. Simply mastering the layout of the dungeon provides some of this fuel - it gave my Thracia players great pleasure when they figured out how to reach an area they had observed through an upper shaft - but Dwimmermount goes further by establishing deep questions about the setting that players can discover through exploration, like "where do gods come from?"

To get the benefit of this conceptual exploration, it's not necessary to use the specific details the book provides. The key design feature is the way the dungeon is structured to make unraveling secrets a central activity of play. If a mystery like the origin of demihuman species doesn't make sense for your setting, you could swap it out for another that does. Using the dungeon's system for rewarding characters for discovering pieces of the mystery would make it easy to see where you'd want to place your own pieces of the puzzle.

Here's an example of a blogger adapting Dwimmermount to the WFRP setting. He's just starting out but it's possible to see from the starting rumors how he's molding the details of race, religion, etc. to suit his campaign.

I agree that mystery is important to large dungeons and other adventures of extended exploration. I just find it tiresome to have over-long and overly detailed expositions on the answer to the mystery. I'ld rather the mystery just be cooked into the room descriptions and let the DM sort out whether there is a knowable back story and what it is. Sometimes the best explanation for something is '?!?'.

For example, the basic structure of Dwimmermount has certain things in common with B4 (Lost City). This is an exciting adventure with a slow 'reveal' of a mysterious cult-like community, but doesn't require tens of pages of back story.

So, I watched the whole Dwimmermount fiasco as it unfolded, an epic train wreck in the making. Here's my conclusions after looking at the just-released LL PDF:

1) JMal is a douche. Which sucks, because I really did like Grognardia; it got me back into Old School gaming. He's active on G+, but it's all private, which tells me he has no fucking balls and will never ever explain himself to anyone. Fuck that guy.

2) Autarch actually produced a quality product, which is quite amazing given everything that transpired. ESPECIALLY after seeing the original version. Chicken salad out of chicken shit indeed.

Quote from: Brad;785200So, I watched the whole Dwimmermount fiasco as it unfolded, an epic train wreck in the making. Here's my conclusions after looking at the just-released LL PDF:

1) JMal is a douche. Which sucks, because I really did like Grognardia; it got me back into Old School gaming. He's active on G+, but it's all private, which tells me he has no fucking balls and will never ever explain himself to anyone. Fuck that guy.

2) Autarch actually produced a quality product, which is quite amazing given everything that transpired. ESPECIALLY after seeing the original version. Chicken salad out of chicken shit indeed.

You know, that's actually one of the best compliments we've gotten thus far. Thanks very much!!

Quote from: wmarshal;785008I'm hoping that we can get some of the more known OSR folks on the web to give Dwimmermount some full reviews. Unfortunately, this might be hindered by the large page count. Also, some might be waiting for the ACKS version to be published. I'd like to hear some feedback (positive and negative) on this from someone not as invested as a backer, which I am (but won't be getting my books until the ACKS version arrives in the mail).

When the product has fully shipped I think it would also be useful if the Autarchs could make a short 'Lessons Learned' document/presentation so that others (creators, backers, etc.) could learn from this experience. Do this in a way that minimizes a flame war breaking out. I think many points have been brought up before, but they're scattered across the internet. Hopefully, the Autarchs will be able to find some time to do this amongst everything else going on.

I'm going to try and review it this fall when my roleplaying mojo is at full mast.

VS

Quote from: Larsdangly;785189I'ld rather the mystery just be cooked into the room descriptions and let the DM sort out whether there is a knowable back story and what it is.

Speaking as a GM, no thank you.

As a GM, I am not playing your adventure. I am not solving the mystery. I am trying to run the scenario. I don't want to have to read through your entire dungeon and solve the mystery for myself so that I can improvise material during play without contradicting the scenario. I particularly don't want to have to try to solve the mystery again (or figure exactly which three room descriptions you baked the information into) in the middle of play. So if you don't do your job by clearly and concisely summarizing the information the GM needs to run your scenario in a central and easy-to-reference location, the first thing I'm going to do in prepping your scenario is to create that reference.

Note that this central reference also makes it a lot easier to alter and customize the scenario.

Quote from: Larsdangly;785189I'ld rather the mystery just be cooked into the room descriptions and let the DM sort out whether there is a knowable back story and what it is. Sometimes the best explanation for something is '?!?'.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;785333Speaking as a GM, no thank you.

Sounds a bit like the RPGPundit vs. Geoffrey McKinney Isle of the Unknown fiasco.

Speaking strictly for myself, I'd rather have a backstory I can tweak, or ignore and replace, than nothing. But I don't mind cryptic open mysteries every now and then, especially for one-off games.

When I think about this issue, I recall classic adventures that contain weird societies and beings and complex plots, but don't clog the toilet with 50 pages of exposition. For example, the G and D modules for 1E. These are huge, far flung dungeons and mini-worlds filled with complicated societies and a big tie-together uber plot. But the page count for the whole thing is small and 90+% focused on room descriptions. I really don't need or appreciate something more elaborate than that.

Quote from: Larsdangly;785412When I think about this issue, I recall classic adventures that contain weird societies and beings and complex plots, but don't clog the toilet with 50 pages of exposition. For example, the G and D modules for 1E. These are huge, far flung dungeons and mini-worlds filled with complicated societies and a big tie-together uber plot. But the page count for the whole thing is small and 90+% focused on room descriptions. I really don't need or appreciate something more elaborate than that.

That's true.  

I'm also reminded of Masks of Nyarlathotep which only had a few pages of backstory upfront, the rest was doled out scene by scene and encounter by encounter.

Still... if it's engaging, an info dump right off the bat might not be a bad thing.  Will have to wait and see.

VS

Providing background history to a megadungeon and its inhabitants does not constrain a GM and may help a GM.  The GM may use the information as is, may adapt the information to a different setting or ignore the information (just flip those pages).  I have adapted Dwimmermount to my Known World/Mystara setting without difficulty.

In my opinion, there is sufficient weirdness in Dwimmermount that if no explanation were provided, at least some GMs would ask for, or discuss, possible explanations.  Autarch has done that work already, if you choose to use it.  Especially under the circumstances, I believe Autarch documented, indexed and, where needed, resolved Dwimmermount's mysteries with an extraordinary attention to detail, like cultist-craftsmen unraveling the mysteries of the Great Machine.