I've seen a lot of negative response to many of the megadungeons that have been popping up lately, most notably dwimmermount; and a recent thread on the review of the latter has led me to this question: is there someone, an RPG writer or blogger, who you really WOULD want to see producing a megadungeon? And why?

note: for the purpose of this thread, please don't post impossible candidates (ie. someone who's dead) as suggestions; only real and currently living RPG-hobbyists.


RPGPundit

None.

I honestly just don't think the concept has legs.

As a product that is, as a campaign premise it's cool. Something to buy? Meh.

I'll never know someone else's dungeon as well as my own and I thing that shows in a game, and not in a good way.

I'd rather see more tool-kit like products.

The only one that pops right to mind for me is James Raggi... just out of curiousity to see how he'd expand his style of dungeoncrawl to such a large expanse.

Oh, and perhaps Zak S., Jack W.S. (Tales of the Grotesque and Dungeonesque) and Jeremy Duncan (Dandy In The Underworld) who both have all written loads of things with distinctive styles that I enjoy.
Again, more out of curiosity and idea mining that something I'd run as-is.

Agreed with Piestro that I'd rather see toolkits that ready-mades though.

Zak S of dnd with pornstars.  Courtney of hack & slash.

Zak for the gonzo and keeping things interesting.  Courtney for the solid commitment to old school play, but pushing it through to interesting via complexity rather than getting stuck at the vanilla, reading-the-text level.

I think megadungeons are getting an unfair wrap. I have run stonehell for some time now and while it errs on the side of vanilla it is easy to use and my players have had a blast. Other great megadungeons which earn a lot of online goodwill include anomalous sub surface environment and burrowmaze. I think dwimmermount has unfairly tarnished the megadungeon. After looking through the draft I think dwimmermount will turn out fine.

I would be interested in David Bowmans dungeon. His work on a select few levels in fighton where full of character and memorable foes and he pioneered the easy to use format that stonehell makes use of.

I also would be interested in a zak s megadungeon. He isnt all random tables as his adventure sites in vornheim can atest.

Jeff Reints would be my final pick. His Wessex vampire dungeon sounded great. It would be interesting to see the Gonzo he'd bring even if I would probably tone it down at the table.

Yeah. Bowman and Rients, with it skewed heavily towards Bowman.

Bowman has produced several levels of VERY high quality. So high that I'm willing to say he has produced the best dungeons ever to see publication. Better than G1/S3. Better than Kuntz. Better than Jaquay. Several of his levels have been megadungeon levels so we can get an idea of what he'd produce. [And if he's not the best then it's at least so close that I can argue the point.]

Rients is more of a wild card. We've seen less of his work. I did get to play in his megadungeon at GaryCon last year and he does bring the strange.

The thing I would want to see most would be a classic mega dungeon, without a lot of gonzo, preferably by people who aren't doing a lot of publishing already.

My dream team would be...
Ben - I think he's leading the pack with ideas and philosophies about what a mega dungeon is as a thing unto itself with it's own logic and rationale as well as it's use as a campaign locus.
Vreeg - A world builder and "world in motion" setting specialist to rationalize the mega dungeon within the larger context of a world.
Melan - A module specialist with a very keen eye to structures of modules as pathways and processes.

Put these guys in charge of a boxed set megadungeon, you're gonna get something epic if they ever had time to do it.

the mega-dungeon always seems to be better in theory than in practice. i have not played through or read too many that weren't boring as hell or incomprehensibly stupid with regard to ecology. that said, if either calithena or david johansen wrote a mega-dungeon, i'd at least give it a look.

I'd like to see a megadungeon at least in the spirit of the original Castle Greyhawk, where as Mike Mornard has put it, the real fun was in the lower levels. Stonehell and Dwimmermount are more or less "standard" dungeons with lots of levels, rather than getting into the weird and esoteric stuff that existed for Greyhawk - both the published (EX1/2, WG6, Bottle City, Living Room) and that which is mostly rumored like the Black Reservoir and the Machine Level.  See Allan Grohe's site for more detail on exactly what I'm talking about.

Back about 5 years ago when we were first talking megadungeons and discussing what the OSR should do, my feeling was that if we were focusing on megadungeons the thing that made the most sense was to put out individual levels that could be worked into a referee's megadungeon. Just because you have 10 or 16 levels with various sub-levels doesn't mean that each level is actually interesting enough to publish by itself; you need some fairly "standard" levels to balance out the weird and the wacky content unless you're just going full-bore gonzo. But despite what people seem to think, not every standard laid-out dungeon that you populate with giant rats and goblins and rooms with such non-fantastic treasures as "2000 cp" is inherently worth publishing.

So what I'd really want is for someone to put out something like a "megadungeon kit." Maybe some really interesting entrance points for the dungeon, oddities to mix into the early levels to keep them going, and some of the deeper secret levels that have hidden treasures and ancient arcane knowledge to give the characters some motivation to actually plow through the maze of deathtraps and antagonists. In other words, focus on the good stuff and leave the standard parts to the individual DM, and assume that the rest of the megadungeon probably looks like somebody just used "Dungeon Geomorphs" and "Monster & Treasure Assortment" to fill things out.

I'm hopeful that Rob Kuntz will put out more pieces in this vein, as I want as much of Castle Greyhawk as I can get, and I'm more optimistic that Allan Grohe will release his version of the Black Reservoir that he ran for some of us here in NJ at the end of last year. Keeping on the Greyhawk thing, I think it'd be absolutely brilliant if someone could put out the Machine Level or any of Gary's more unique levels, as opposed to the Store Rooms that were actually published in Castle Zagyg. If Mike Mornard published anything I'd have it in a heartbeat. And I'd buy the same from anybody else who had a good idea for a megadungeon. But I think the idea of "let's put out a ton of megadungeons" has been a bit, ah... suspect, much as I may support them from the start. For me I'll probably buy them - I have Stonehell and ASE and will have Dwimmermount whenever that comes out - but I think the special parts get lost when your focus is on quantity over quality.

I really rate the following people's work and hence would be very interested in a mega dungeon by them:

* Kevin Crawford - the best bet for someone to build concise rules for running a mega dungeon

* Melan - he brings the awesome to everything he writes

* John Turcotte (Gnarleybones from DF) writes modules with amazing atmosphere.

Quote from: RPGPundit;622849I've seen a lot of negative response to many of the megadungeons that have been popping up lately, most notably dwimmermount; and a recent thread on the review of the latter has led me to this question: is there someone, an RPG writer or blogger, who you really WOULD want to see producing a megadungeon? And why?

What I want from a megadungeon is so different from what most people seem to want that it would probably be pointless for me to say. For example, I look at the brief room/monster descriptions in Dwimmermount draft and see pretty much what I want. I don't want every room to be a half page or longer of description complete with author provided plots and interaction. Dwimmermount looks like a more boring example of a megadungeon than I was expecting, but it has the info level and the basic format right for me. I don't want info at the level of The World's Largest Dungeon (or whatever the name of that 3e megadungeon disaster was) -- but level seems closer to what others want/expect.

Quote from: CRKrueger;622873My dream team would be...
Ben - I think he's leading the pack with ideas and philosophies about what a mega dungeon is as a thing unto itself with it's own logic and rationale as well as it's use as a campaign locus.

I must admit having looked over some of his threads for ideas, he has produced stuff I could actually see myself having fun running.

Gusty's HMS Apollyon

It's a very cool concept - dungeon as giant cruise liner.

On the other hand, writing megadungeons is a sucking timesink of horror, so it's not for people who value their free time.

I would be down for something like "Underheim: The Complete Dungeon Kit"

I'm not too keen on OSR megadungeons, but only because I haven't even begun to scratch the surface of old TSR modules (and dungeons).

As a side note, I would shell out cash money for Gib's Metal Earth stuff. A megadungeon, even.

Quote from: Cadriel;622884Back about 5 years ago when we were first talking megadungeons and discussing what the OSR should do, my feeling was that if we were focusing on megadungeons the thing that made the most sense was to put out individual levels that could be worked into a referee's megadungeon.

You mean like the Geomorph meme started by Dyson Logos, but with full(y statted) megadungeon levels instead?

Quote from: The Were-Grognard;622900I would be down for something like "Underheim: The Complete Dungeon Kit"

Zak, there's your perfect follow-up project.

That, and "Outdoorheim: The Complete Wilderness Kit".