There are a lot of reasons for this but they are better explained elsewhere.
http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?t=24039
http://aldeboran.blogspot.com/2012/10/schroedingers-room-and-fuck-diddles.html
http://muleabides.wordpress.com/2012/10/09/in-defense-of-the-megadungeon/
http://wondrousimaginings.blogspot.com/2012/10/played-dwimmermount-last-night-sucked.html
http://warlockshomebrew.blogspot.com/2012/10/empty-room-syndrome.html
http://dreamsinthelichhouse.blogspot.com/2012/10/lessons-from-running-mega-dungeons.html
Me? I am not trying to stir up any shit. Here are my points of view.
- James is good guy. We don't see eye to eye on most things, but I enjoy his blog still. He will get done when he gets done.
- That being said, I hate to see the Kickstarter well poisoned or tainted. Delays are happening in about half of the kickstarters I have funded, while I am not mad or even irritated, I am getting a little anxious.
- Mega-dungeons are not my thing. Sure I get the appeal, but give me the outside or the city or the planes. One could argue that those are just different kinds of mega dungeons. One might be right.
So it's Friday and typically slow around here. So I wanted to capture your thoughts on this.
A couple more links that you might consider related:
ReplyDeleteErik Tenkar, talking about our experience in the Dwimmermount draft.
I just wrapped up a two-week series on building a building node-based megadungeon.
It seems to be the result of one group that was having a bad experience, then agreed to validate that bad experience in a certain way.
ReplyDeleteAnd just so you know, I've never been a big fan of running or playing megadungeons. They usually feel too big and contrived and too much work.
ReplyDeleteThe one I just built was primarily as an exercise in design... but I could see myself running it.
Just wrote a post about this from my experience playing in a Dwimmermount play by post game run by James M. in 2009 that was a lot of fun:
ReplyDeletehttp://backscreenpass.blogspot.com/2012/10/dwimmermount-doesnt-suck.html
I think there is something fundamentally flawed about the concept of "playtesting" a mega-dungeon "as written".
Even in a playtest, the factions in the mega-dungeon should be dynamic and reactive to the PCs. The dungeon shouldn't sit back passively while the PCs slowly bore themselves to death poking and prodding rotting furniture with 10' poles searching for a secret door that may or may not be there.
As a DM, you just look through the dungeon, pick a dungeon inhabitant that looks to be a fun encounter, and have it run into the PCs. Come up with an errand that it is running. Come up with some kind of strife between factions that forced it out of its home. Something. The PCs will interact with it, possibly become involved in its strife, possibly attack it and realize it is powerful and end up running from it, possibly befriend it and accompany it straight to the deep levels... good lord, anything but letting them beat their head into 10 more empty rooms!