Another Megadungeon is Getting Published!

Maybe you missed this, as I did because of a bad combination of computer issues and flu, but Patrick Wetmore @ Henchman Abuse has just released the first of a series of modules that will detail his crazy science fantasy Megadungeon! If you follow his blog (and if you don't, you really should), you already know what it's all about. I haven't bought it yet, but it's definitely on my buying list of this year's best OSR products. The price may look quite high for a single module, but considering it's self produced stuff and that Patrick had to pay on his own for art (which is terrific – check his blog for previews), it's honest.

Also, I suggest you to check it out even if you think gonzo science fiction is not your cup of tea, for Patrick has really done some nice city and dungeon design, and you can easily modify some of the stuff to turn it into swords & sorcery or even gritty classic fantasy. So go on, check it out, and maybe buy it: here's the lulu storefront.

Zordaz, the Surrounding Wilderlands

It's a shame to waste a good wilderness map, so I converted one of the many maps I have for use as "standard" surrounding wilderness for the Tower of Zordaz megadungeon. You already saw this one, so nothing really new.

I'm going to rewrite everything, but this map really is a beautiful piece. The Temple of the Toad Demon, the Black Ziggurat, Smorgh's Lair, the Den of the Bandits, the Ettin's Cave, the Forgotten City, Tomochan, the Mi-Go's Outpost and, possibly, the Monastery, will turn into adventures if and when the party decides to have a closer look at them. Castle Bélial is the adventure they're actually playing, and is very likely to end during the next session (which is damn close!)

Monsters Under The Tower

When I started this Megadungeon project back at the end of April, one of the things I really wanted to do was to take advantage of the opportunity of using many iconic monsters I've never used. The list includes, oddly, even Beholders, Dragons and Trolls, so this is something I should really do! I tried to turn the list into something more usable, dividing them between Bosses and Una Tantum monsters, trying to think also about minions, champions and things like these. This list is nothing but a guideline to use during the Ecology fleshing part of the work.

Dragon

• Minions: Stirges, Vermin, Morlocks.
• Champions: Gelatinous Cubes, other various molds, Basilisks.

Giant

• Minions: Kobolds, Goblins, Orcs, Hobgoblins, Bugbears, Worgs.
• Champions: Ettins, Hydras, Trolls, Ogres, Ogre Magi.

Vampire/Crypt Thing/Lich/Mummy/Necromancer

• Minions: Skeletons, Zombies, Giant Scorpions, various Beetles, Wraiths, Ghouls, Carrion Crawlers.
• Champions: Death Knights, Giant Skeletons, Skeleton Champions, Flesh Golems, Living Walls, Wights, Wraiths, Spectres, Ghosts, Ghasts, Nagas, Invisible Stalkers, Shadows.

Medusa

• Minions: Snakes, Vermin, Harpies.
• Champions: Minotaurs, Cyclops.

Mind Flyer

• Minions: Drow, Derros, Duergars, Giant Insects.
• Champions: Aboleths, Basilisks, Shelob-like Spiders (ach).

Balrog/Pit Fiend

• Minions: Lemures, Imps, Bone Devils, Gargoyles.
• Champions: Demon Types I-V, Lamia, various other demons and devils.

Other Monsters

• Shoggoth
• Remorhaz
• Flail Snail
• Purple Worm
• Hook Horror
• Umber Hulk
• Beholder
• Bulette
• Lizard Men (this could be a category apart)
• Wererats
• Otyugh
• Roc
• Rust Monster

A Dungeon Needs Levels

And a Megadungeon needs plenty of them! Here are some thoughts I had tonight while driving back home from the girlfriend's house:

• From Beyond: This is very likely to be the first level. Once upon a time it hosted some of the most gifted apprentices of Zordaz, but they eventually had a misadventure with some weird experiments they were working on. The majority of this level has been destroyed or otherwise ravaged, and the creature responsible is very likely to be still dwelling in the darkness.
• Torture Garden: The classic magician's garden. As the name implies, by the way, the groovy feature of this level are Killer Vineyards, as well as the obvious collection of psychedelic fungi and creepy vermin.
• In Their Darkened Shrines: This is not properly part of the Megadungeon, but rather a tomb situated in another dimension/time Zardoz somehow linked to his lair. It's the sepulcher of a Mythos worshipping pharaoh, who was mummified at the end of twisting corridors and mad traps. Undead will abound there, as well as The Mummy style beetles.

You may have noted that the first level takes its name from the title of a famous (and great) horror movie, while second and third from two (amazing) albums, by Naked City and Nile respectively.

The Contemptible Zordaz

There are uncountable different legends about Zordaz, sometimes called The Merciless, other times The Great, according to the narrator. But all the legends agree on one point: Zordaz was the mightiest magician that ever lived. He mastered thousands of spells, many of which he had created himself, and the forces of the universe bowed before him. His powers could affect any living creature, as well as restore life in dead bodies, and bind the creatures of the Underworld to his own will. Not only he was immortal, but also invincible, or so the stories tell. At the peak of his reign, Zardoz conjured a horde of lesser demons from the Abyss, and impelled them to build him a tower of supreme magnitude. From his new den upon The Dale, the sorcerer inaugurated a new era of terror in the history of the Known World. His armies of dead reached even the most distant villages, forcing all men to submit to his will, or face a painful death. For hundreds of years Zordaz ruled the The Kingdom, expanding the dungeons under his tower until they reached cyclopean proportions. If you wonder what has become of Zordaz, the legends just don't tell. As time passed, he started to become less and less concerned about his reign on earth, retiring more and more to the dungeons beneath his tower, until he was never heard of again.

I'll Not Surrender

As you may noticed, I've been a little "away" during May. The reason for that is I'm experiencing perhaps the worse writer's block in a year or so. Every idea I have, looks goofy and rough once I write it down. Everything I write, I delete a little later. On the one hand, I do enjoy very much the idea of "one page dungeons", although on the other it proved not to work for me at all. This doesn't mean I will surrender and abandon the project of writing my own megadungeon, but I have to change the mode. Since lately I seem not to be able to work on the same thing for two consecutive days, I will try to draw and fill a small dungeon level every day I work on the project. As with many of the things I write, and the projects I endorse, this is totally not an original idea, but something derived from the great Mines of Khunmar, by S. Poag. I hope that this will work, at least.

Regarding the theme/background, I will still work on the Huge Ruined Pile. Specifically, the megadungeon will be a great complex, carved in the stone by the great sorcerer Zordaz the Unctuous under his tower, during the course of many eons. Down there Zordaz conducted many unspeakable experiments, acquired forbidden knowledge, and came to terms with such powers men seldom allude to, since they believe simply saying their name aloud can condemn their souls to an eternity of damnation. The only problem is I still need a good and evocative name for the project, as Amen-Rha really sucks. (Not my own, as always.) (I saw them live at the MiOdi festival in Milan, and they were pretty good, except for the singer who looked like a screamo singer who had taken the wrong tour-bus; I bought their album and t-shirt, anyway.) (And really, the only acceptable screamo or whatever you call it album I've ever listened to is Converge's Jane Doe, and that guy is no Jacob Bannon.) That is to say, if you have a good project name for me and you're willing to give it to me, just write it in the comments.

Uh, and for the ones who have no idea of who Converge are...

Dying in Darkhorn

Last night I drew the surface and first level of a hypothetical megadungeon, which I temporarily named Darkhorn. The place is supposed to be the lair of a very powerful necromancer (perhaps a lich?), who expanded the underground of his tower (precisely, Darkhorn Tower) for hundreds of years. The Necromancer now dwells in the deepest levels, regardless of what happens in the higher ones. To spice up things a bit, I decided to introduce a special rule for the adventurers who may die in Darkhorn.

Dying in Darkhorn
Down in the underworld of the dungeon of Darkhorn proliferates an awful fungus, created by The Necromancer himself Orcus only knows how long ago. The fungus is invisible, odorless and tasteless, and fills each room and corridor of the entire complex. Each time a humanoid dies in Darkhorn, the fungus immediately attacks his dead body, taking control of its vital functions. Thus, the dead body rises again as a fungus-controlled avatar for a certain period, according to the type of undead it rose as. Check the table below to find out:

d20 Undead Type Period
1-10 Control Fails –
11-14 Skeleton* 1-6 months
15-17 Zombie 1-6 years
18-19 Ghoul 1-6 decades
20 Ghast** 1-6 centuries

You find this idea stupid and unrealistic? Well, check out this:

Click on the image to learn more about fungus controlled zombie ants

___________________________________
*Flesh gets consumed during the process
**In levels below 5th change Skeleton to Zombie, Zombie to Ghoul, Ghoul to Ghast and Ghast to Minor Vampire (lasts eternally)

Possible Main Themes for The Huge Ruined Pile

Dwellers Beneath The Pile

• Underground Forgotten City: populated by nuclear/zombie fallout survivors, drow, dwarves, Snake Men, and so on...
• Collapsed Underground Civilization: once populated by [see above].
• Sorcerer's Domain: name level Magic-users should be really building dungeons instead of strongholds/towers.
• Fallen Starcruiser: the original crew may or may not be still onboard, but The Mad Computer is of course still working. Perhaps he has killed all the people onboard while they were cryogenically hibernating.
• The Reversed World: the entire world is underground, with no passages to the surface.
• Buried Temple: you know, something between Dante Alighieri's Inferno and Rappan Athuk.
• The Black Ziggurat: A truly expanded and re-designed "Lost City" from module B4.
• Other? Feel free to submit further ideas!

Right now I quite favor the Sorcerer's Domain. The idea of the identification between the Dungeon Master and the truly Mad Sorcerer who built the megadungeon in order to contain his very unspeakable secrets sounds just pretty cool to me.

The Megadungeon's Magnetism

Down in The Megadungeon

What makes the Megadungeon so central in a campaign? Obviously, the fact that you're gonna spend tons of time working on it, both before and during the course of the campaign. Still, you may have to deal with not so inclined to endless dungeon crawling players. Assuming that Knowing Your Party is a consolidated notion, if you still want to run a Megadungeon Campaign you should consider the Megadungeon's Magnetism. In short, the Megadungeon around which the campaign evolves should not just be the central feature, but also a catalyst for adventure. That means that most encounters should be (at least in the long run), related to the Megadungeon itself.

Rather than telling dozens stories and rumors to the players, I think it would be better to just get their mouths watering by allowing them to find links and connections to the Megadungeon in almost every other place they explore. It's not a question of illusionism: rather it's a question of implicit conditioning. Perhaps the players exploring the Sorcerer's Tower discover that the sorcerer worships a powerful demon that dwells in the darkness beneath the Megadungeon. Perhaps they find a map to one of the Megadungeon's entrances in the loot of the Goblin King. Perhaps the players find a letter in the Giant's house, sent from his cousin that lives on the third level of the Megadungeon.

A Megadungeon has the potential to perturb events in a very large region (perhaps even a small Country), and that should be evident to the players. One of the things I really disliked playing The Temple of Elemental Evil is that our DM never focused on how much the Temple affected everyday life for miles. The Megadungeon should work just like a cancer: it's a continually expanding living organism that rots everything it touches, thus attracting more and more weird and chaotic creatures and NPCs.

The Huge Ruined Pile

This is D & D

First, the referee must draw out a minimum of half a dozen maps of the levels of his “underworld”, people them with mon- sters of various horrid aspect, distribute treasures accordingly, and note the loca- tion of the latter two on keys, each corresponding to the appropriate level. This operation will be more fully described in the third volume of these rules. When this task is completed the participants can then be allowed to make their first descent into the dungeons beneath the “huge ruined pile, a vast castle built by generations of mad wizards and insane geniuses”.

There's something magical in the very concept of The Huge Ruined Pile. All in all, what do we know about megadungeons? I think basically three things:

1. They're big, so much so as to be virtually endless.
2. They're old, so that each and every level has been colonized by dozens of different civilizations.
3. They're dynamic, so much so that levels are never the same whenever you enter them.

Most people (including illustrious ones), tend to bother about the megadungeon's background, treating it as an unicum. Think about Moria, Dwimmermourt, Rappan Athuk, and others. So what about the ruined pile?

Let's say no one in particular has built The Megadungeon. Perhaps a Mad Archmage started to build the first levels, and eventually abandoned the project to leave the Multiverse for more interesting places. Then the dwarves came, and found the work half started. Great! The dwarves decided to dig a little more and renovate the architecture. Then, after hundreds of years of reign, a dragon came and claimed the pile for himself. Cool one. The dragon eventually destroyed much of what the dwarves had done, except for the very secret tunnels. Then the dragon hibernated. Some dozen years later, the Drow found the dungeon while digging some tunnels to expand their city. Look at that, now you have an entire new dungeon to merge! Then eventually the Drow found a secret chamber buried a dozen miles beneath the surface, and actually opened it. Bad choice, there was a Balrog in it! Thus the Balrog devastated some of the lower levels, and various demons took possession of them. In the meantime, a new powerful sorcerer has arrived in the realm, and building his own dungeon (I'll never understand why sorcerers bother so much with dungeons) (no wait, now I get it: because is fun, that's it!) eventually found the one built by his predecessor and owned by the dwarves. And so on, ad infinitum.

So why even bother with background?

On the other hand, there's the other kind of megadungeon: the one where there actually is a goal. Or prize, if you prefer. Perhaps the dungeon was built by a single mad wizard, who has buried the secret for immortality in its deepest recesses. Weirdly enough, no actual example of this kind of megadungeon jumps into my mind when I close my eyes. And this is strange, since this is the way pop culture often represents dungeon crawling. Understandable, by the way: who can believe D & D players delve into dungeons just for the sake of killing monsters, taking their stuff, solving mysteries and gaining more and more power and loot? And, even worse, that the game has no such thing as an ending? This would pretty much scare the hell out of me if I wasn't introduced to D & D when I was still a young and impressionable kid.

Having never played in a megadungeon campaign, I couldn't really say which of these would work better in actual gaming. Perhaps I'm a little more inclined to The Pile, but maybe it is just because it sounds so cool?

Dungeons uh uh!

I love dungeon design! It is by far The Reason why I love to DM. As the Birthday Party is approaching (one week, ugh!) I find myself in the middle of the quest to construct at least the first three levels of a simple megadungeon I may reuse in other campaigns (perhaps Yaqqothl?) Damn you The One Who Told Us Megadungeons Must Have Multiple Interlevel Connections! Sssshit. By the way, thanks to Gary G. and Kellri I'm keying the dungeon at the speed of light: it took me about a day to design the first level, and only an hour to fill its 40 rooms. Awesome.

I'll post some pictures and maybe also some notes ASAP. Fight on!

The Ultimate Megadungeon Designer Kit

This evening I came across this post on Terminal Space. Linear, simple, genial. A couple of months ago I was thinking of starting a free project, in which to collect all the dungeon-oriented random tables and rules I could find needed to create a massive Megadungeon Designer Kit. There is tons of really useful stuff out there, the only problem is that it is not organized. Say you want to design a dungeon, and eventually run out of ideas for traps. What to do? Well, the OSR surely has you covered, somewhere. But where? That's kind of a problem, you are designing stuff, and design takes time, let alone digging through the blogosphere in search of something useful. So the idea was to have something very edition free, organized exactly as an Appendix of the DMG, something like an expansion. Eventually I abandoned the project, due to a) too much work in research and b) I already have Courtney C. Campbell's Tricks, Empty Rooms & Basic Trap Design, the best from Beyond the Black Gate, so much awesome Jeff's stuff and the new G's amazing tables (FUNK-YA). Perhaps one of these days I will try to collect them all into just one booklet. By the way, if you have suggestions on something I have missed, point me there! Only rule is: no blah blah, only actual content.

Different Editions, Different Dungeons?

Or so it seems. I know that when it comes to megadungeons, different referees can have really different points of view, regardless of what system they are using. Even so, I would like to spend a bit more time discussing the topic of my last post, examining two great examples of megadungeon design, both claiming to have a "First Edition Feel", but using really different rulesets. So in one corner we have Castle Greyhawk, and in the other corner we have Rappan Athuk Reloaded. No, wait: looks like Castle Greyhawk is missing! Fuck, how can I handle this problem?! Be cool, no panic. Breathe. Ok, let's say that Castle of the Mad Archmage will represent Castle Greyhawk in this match. I know that the old ranty grognards out there will turn up their noses, but who really cares? I definitely don't.

Note: I didn't chose the awesome grodog's Castle Greyhawk for mere reasons of easy comparison. I know his dungeon is probably the best available representation of how a megadungeon should look (in terms of notes and overall organization). So, here we go.

Castle of the Mad Archmage is really a bigass dungeon. With 13 levels and one sub-level, an average of more than 100 keyed rooms per level (except the very last one). With dozens of new monsters, magic items and spells, not to mention maps, it presents like a fucking heavyweight! I don't really know about the level span, but I think such a product can keep the characters busy from levels 1 to 15, or so. Yet, it is unlikely that characters will manage to "level in the dungeon", for the encounters are generally not worth enough XPs to attain third level when reaching "The Dungeons" (level 3). This is really an interesting feature to me, since I've always figured that a megadungeon, as the key feature of a campaign, should be the source of enough or "nearly enough" of the XPs needed to level up.

Rappan Athuk Reloaded is definitely a different creature. With its 15 levels and 16 sub-levels, an average of 15 keyed rooms per level, dozens of new monsters, NPCs and Magic Items, it presents like some sort of weird-weight. From a certain point of view, Rappan Athuk develops more "vertically" than "horizontally", while not being suitable for a complete campaign (an average level of 4 is suggested for a party entering Rappan Athuk). In this way, the "level number = monster level" rule of thumb is lost, and the encounters are scaled about right. Still, you have a wide range of encounter levels on each given level, which makes perfect sense from a relatively Old School point of view.

All in all, I think the real difference between Rappan Athuk and Castle of the Mad Archmage lies in the emphasis on themes. In Castle of the Mad Archmage, you have this labyrinthine dungeon with (literally) a thousand encounters, spread here and there with no real concern about "consistency" (please, don't take this the wrong way, for it's evidently perfunctory to my point). On the other hand, in Rappan Athuk you have a lot less encounters, each carefully placed and giving a lot of attention to the theme and ecology of the (sub-) level.

Given that both these dungeons were first designed for First Edition, it is obvious (at least, to me) that the Rappan Athuk approach works better with third/fourth edition rules. It's a fact that under that ruleset, encounters (and especially combats) tend to be way longer to handle, even at low level, and you need tons of information to run them. Still, I feel it lacks the "freedom of choice" approach of Castle of the Mad Archmage, in that you have more of a pre-written path for a) a general lack of connection between very high and very low levels (such as passages from first to sixth level) and b) the only choices you have are to explore that area/level/sub-level or not (in other words, to embrace a pre-ordered quest or not). In some ways, Castle of the Mad Archmage is more of a sandboxish environment than Rappan Athuk (of course, this is true only if you don't care about the wilderness surrounding the dungeon, which is well presented at least in the Reloaded version). The Mines of Khunmar by Stefan Poag also seems to follow the same method as Rappan Athuk, with lots of levels/sub-levels relatively small but written with a strong link to the theme that characterize each of them.

To conclude, my initial thought were that probably The Perfect Megadungeon would need both these elements (a link to the theme and a disturbing mazy look). At this point, however, I'm more inclined to consider the possibility that maybe an initial choice is necessary, whether to go one way or another. In most cases, I think the personal tastes of each Dungeon Master should be enough for him to make a decision. Aside from that, here is a list of features that I feel every well designed megadungon needs:

• Lot of empty space, serving two purposes: a) thrill the players ("What was the scary noise? There must be something here!" or "This room contains nothing? Are you kidding me? We must have missed something") and b) avoid the Continual Rolls gaming style;
• Massive connection between areas/levels/sub-levels of very different levels of difficulty;
• Wide range of encounter difficulties, for the players must never be cool thinking that you are not going to send a HUGE RED DRAGON against their shiny new first level characters;
• Room for freedom of choice, which makes the megadungeon really a sandbox. Perhaps the players may decide to help the goblins on level two to defeat the Mummy that hunts the lower chamber in exchange for some magical stuff, or maybe just because they are that way inclined. Perhaps the players are kidnapping the princess imprisoned by the ogres on level four just to ransom her to the king and finally have enough money to build that fucking stronghold. Note that alignment should have little to nothing to do with any of that.
• A living place. The players must learn quickly that those chambers they have explored and than not returned to for a long time (or even a short time) are going to be re-populated by even weirder creatures. Also, they should learn that their map is of little help whenever they return to a level, for new rooms may have been added, or perhaps the old rooms lost forever. Maybe the staircase that once led from third level to the first have been walled, and now the only way to get out is to take a long detour through the Labyrinth of the Mutated Minotaur on level four, or reopen the way with nothing more than the strength of their arms.
• Things that make no sense at all, for even if you are running your megadungeon with a strong link to the overall themes of each area/level/sub-level, you don't want your players to be aware of what they are likely to find in the next few rooms. Also, lots of wandering monsters tables may serve the same purpose.

And yo, as always following my stream of consciousness I forgot to ask the question: do you think that a given ruleset would influence the approach to dungeon design?

The Haunted Halls of Khuzud-dâm

Being on vacation (university will start again on march the 7th), I decided to take another look at the notes I've made during my sabbatical, last week. I came up with this sort of introduction to the concept of a Tolkien-inspired (although not in the way you would expect) megadungeon called Khuzud-dâm (yes guys, it's Khazad-dûm with the vowels switched).

PREMISE: Having spent much of my personal Old School Renaissance blaming Gary 'G for having included elves and dwarves and hobbits and clerics instead of barbarians and gritty science fantasy in D&D, and trying to find new ways to bring yog-sothothery and 70's science fiction into my games, I used to find a little "strange" my impulse to write a Tolkien-based Supplement for OD&D. Now, finally, I've found out what I love so much in the game that often prevents me in putting too much weird stuff in a campaign. Reading jamal's musings on Tolkien and D&D made it all clear. I love thinking about D&D as kind of a perverted, way humanized Middle-earth RPG. I really love those wonderful illustrations in my first edition manuals, where everything, from clerics to elves, is gritty and dirty. That's also why I don't like art in any of the newest editions: shining armor? C'mon, look at the amazing Paladin in Hell: shining a dick!

A Paladin in Hell

Therefore, I have decided to see what happens if I try to write up a dirty tolkienian campaign. One in which all character classes are pretty much out of the box (including clerics) and you have only tolkienian races plus half-orcs (which is, everything but gnomes). Something pretty easy, where you have some kind of proto-catholic religion, but it's still not that important. And having decided so, why not try to give a megadungeon a try? And what's better than a twisted and perverted view of Moria? Crazy! Let's call it Khuzud-dâm.

An Army of Goblins enters Khuzud-dâm

The history of Khuzud-dâm is ancient as the earth itself, and only a few people still remember it. Some call it The Lost Bastion of the Dwarves, others The Ancient Home of Tharànduil, but the original dwarven name of Khuzud-dâm is almost forgotten. It is told that Tharànduil and his folk arrived at the Grey Mountains aeons before the rise of the Empire of Men, when the mountains were young and the moon still unbroken. For five thousand years they delved into the mountain of Kardhass, creating the highest and brightest reign of the dwarves ever ever known. And then the darkness fell. Perhaps they had dug too much and too greedily into the heart of the Kardhass, perhaps a new Shadow rose from the depths of the earth: none dare to discover. The dwarves began to leave the upper levels, slowly losing interest in the affairs of the ground folks, until the gates of Khuzud-dâm were closed not to be opened again. During the following two thousands years, many things changed around the Grey Mountains. The Empire of Men rose, and great wars were fought. The Necromancer, the enemy of all the Free People of the Known Lands, was defeated, and the Empire declined and fell. A new age of order was yet to come, and the forgotten halls of Khuzud-dâm were still waiting in the dark. A hundred years ago, a great expedition of dwarves hailing from the north, under the leadership of Bjiør, returned to The Ancient Home of Tharànduil to found a new reign. At first, there were encouraging signs from the dwarves of Bjiør, then darkness fell again. Nowadays orcs are residing in the Grey Mountains again, and the King of the human city-state of Hârnstadt is growing increasingly worried about the future of his people. Now, in the darkest hour of the free city of Hârnstadt, a party of heroes will rise against the perils and the otherworldly creatures who haunt the forgotten depths of Khuzud-dâm, gaining priceless treasures and mighty powers, or die trying.

More to come.

Back Again

Whoa! I feel like I've been re-born. I have just spent a beautiful evening with my girlfriend, and I'm feeling really fine. We have had some pizza, hot chili nachos, beer (me) and martini dry (her), and a cheesecake (I can't tell you how much I love cheesecake). It's awesome to still be in love with a girl with the same intensity we used to have three years ago. By the way, I'm not coming back to bother you with my private life, so here's what has kept my mind busy over the last few days.

Ta-daaa!

Here is the first map of a possible megadungeon. I have spent a very long time on it, selecting the style, drawing it in pencil, inking it and then importing it in Photoshop to add some details (adjusting light/contrast and adding numbers and lettering). I like it very much, and it's been awesome to rediscover my love for hand-drawn maps again. I have some ideas for the background, and I'll post them in the next few days. I don't want to delay my work on Supplement VII, I just want to make some dungeon maps for the sake of it. If you're puzzled by a symbol, ask!

Special Encounters in Level 1

According to my Dungeon Stocking table I have about 7 Special Rooms to set up, considering an average of 50 rooms for this level (the first being smaller than the others). Therefore I'm starting to think about them in order to take 'em into account when designing this dungeon level. Here are the first five:

• The Vats: A big room near the Laboratory where the Mi-Go are keeping numerous living beings in big vats, filled with a weird radiant liquid.
• The Laboratory: A medium-sized room near The Vats where the Mi-Go conduct their experiments. Lots of the usual Fungi dressing here (ya know, brain boxes and so on).
• The Door to the Abyss: An über-tech door keeps the Shoggoths away from level 1. I figure this is like a decontamination room, eventually guarded by some seablood zombie slaves.
• The Prison: This is where the Mi-Go keep the prisoners they turn into mindless zombies. Here are a hundreds of seablood (including females and children), kept in four small cells behind shatterproof glass. Freeing the seablood will make the PCs heroes in the eyes of the people of Yusshut.
• Teleporting Gates: This room is similar to the transporter room of the Enterprise. There are two alien beings here like the one at this console:

Sorry, I couldn't find a better image

Beneath Kandahal, Ecology of Levels 1 to 4

The first level of Kandahal will be infested with Fungi from Yuggoth, there to extract minerals. The Fungi have turned many humans of Yusshut into mindless zombies to serve as slaves in the mines, and plan to use some of them for weird experiments (kept alive in vats filled with a strange radiant liquid). The Mi-Go are also having some problems with the Shoggoths that were imprisoned by the Elder Things in level two. Thus, they are trying to turn a bunch of Deep Ones into empowered zombies, to make their level safe.

The second level of Kandahal is infested with the above mentioned Shoggoths, who were isolated here, right after a bloody revolt, by the Elder Things that live in the third and fourth levels. This level has been devastated by the Shoggoths, who are trying to reach both the surface and the third level so to kill their one time masters.

Third and Fourth levels are the lair of the Primordial Ones. Those that live in the higher level are trying to keep the Shoggoths out, while the ones that lie in the lower one are working on a new species to supplant their old slaves. The Elder Things are well organized, but are not able to join forces with the Mi-Go that live in the first level to eliminate the revolting Shoggoths.

Stock that Dungeon!

The first two levels of Kandahal will be filled with Shoggoths, Mi-Go, various undead and a couple of Elder Things (their level being 3rd). Mr. Moldvay suggests using this table to stock the dungeon:

Page B52

It is interesting to see how this table works. Around 33% of the rooms will have monsters, 50% of these will also have treasure. Around 16% of the rooms will have traps, 33% of these will also have treasure. Empty rooms (33%, like monster rooms) will contain treasure only 16% of the time, while special rooms are left completely to the DM to stock. Let's make some calculations:

Empty - around 28%
Monster & Treasure - around 16%
Monster Only - around 16%
Trap & Treasure - 5%
Trap Only - around 11%
Treasure Only - around 5%
Special - around 16%

With an error of 3%. Redistributing things a bit to make the table a bit easier to read we find something like this:

Empty - 30%
Monster & Treasure - 15%
Monster Only - 15%
Trap & Treasure - 5%
Trap Only - 10%
Treasure only - 5%
Special - 20%

Labyrinth Lord's table is very similar to this one, except for the fact that Daniel has apparently arranged things a bit differently, coming up with about a 25% chance of unique encounters (around 10% more than the original table):

Page 124

In any case, that's a lot of special rooms! I'd say you have about the same probability of entering an empty room as the room with the Radiant Pool of Horrible Mutations. I don't really like having so much free space in my dungeons (you know, players are all paranoid when I DM, and they can spend an hour in a room where is nothing but some dried blood), and I much prefer just a few empty but relatively safe spots, where the party can rest and lick their wounds. I mean, an empty room is not generally interesting to explore, and if it's difficult to defend it is pretty useless. On the other hand, I want special rooms to be way more special (thus less frequent), and a lot more monsters, because advancement in pre-3e D&D is pretty slow and I don't want to make things too easy by granting hundreds of XPs per session. So, I think my stocking table will look better like this:

Roll d% - Content
01-20: Empty (from 30% to 20%)
21-40: Monster & Treasure (from 15% to 20%)
41-55: Monster Only (15% fixed)
56-65: Trap & Treasure (from 5% to 10%)
66-75: Trap Only (10% fixed)
76-86: Treasure Only (from 5% to 10%)
87-00: Special (from 20% to 15%)

So less empty space, less special encounters, more monsters with treasure, more traps with treasure and more empty but with treasure. Why so much more treasure? Because the Isle is lacking a city to spend money in, and I plan to feed my players with equipment and with much more treasure. Also, consider Pavlovian Conditioning.

How to Build a Megadungeon the Moldvay Way

The Dungeon Master Information section of Moldvay's Basic is an amazing resource for anyone wanting to build a megadungeon. It is, somehow, definitive in its own right. Tom suggests that dungeon creation should follow these six steps:

• Choose a Scenario;
• Decide on a Setting;
• Decide on Special Monsters to be Used;
• Draw the Map of the Dungeon;
• Stock the Dungeon;
• Filling in Final Details.

I plan to follow this list for each and every level, except for the fact that I would prefer to plan the special encounters before drawing the map, so that I can design some rooms by first thinking about what they will contain.

The Secret of Kandahal, Concept

Moldvay's Basic has an interesting section named Choose a Scenario (page B51). It outlines different types of adventures, like Exploring the Unknown, Recovering Ruins or Finding a Lost Race. I always found that section very inspiring, and I think Tom was right in pointing to the necessity of having a simple, yet clear, concept before designing an adventure. This being my very first attempt to write a megadungeon (the first with more than two levels to be honest), I feel I should follow his wise advice.

The Nameless City by H. P. Lovecraft was the first lovecraftian story I ever read. Yes, even before The Call of Cthulhu, for some obscure reason I can't recall. Still, it is one of my favorites. That story could be classified as Finding a Lost Race, and is a clear example of what a cthulhoid dungeon may look like. However, I don't want the dungeon beneath Kandahal to be like that. What I want is a real R'lyeh, complete with the Great Cthulhu itself. It should be epic, with the players eventually facing the world's most famous Great Old One rather than merely trying to avoid its awakening. My motto is "X is for killing" after all, and I can see no reason why a fighter shouldn't be able to kill an Elder Red Dragon and then flee away from the Big Boss. This is what I really love in D&D: anything can happen! I will start posting stuff about the first three to five levels soon.