Dungeonsong

[Spuddles]

I've always thought the World's Largest Dungeon was a cool concept, but executed terribly. It doesn't make consistent sense, it's horribly put together, and it has stupid rules.

For years, I've been kicking around in my head a setting that takes place entirely within a dungeon. All of reality is a dungeon. Something like Cube meets Bastion meets Gygaxian baroque and Ravenloft.

The place was built, and is continued to be built, by a mad bard, long since undead, condemned to play his Lyre of Building forever (except it's a super duper mega uber major artifact, of course). He's forced to spend eternity building his own prison.

What mechanics need to be nailed down first? Planar travel in and out of the prison should be via DM fiat, imo. This means summoning & calling spells don't work (oh no, poor wizards and druids). Teleportation still works within the dungeon, but this place has a lot more walls to get stuck in.

Cosmologically, no gods can interfere here. Yes, divine spellcasters can still pray for magic, but no one really knows where the spells actually come from.

What does a dungeon city look like? What about dungeon ecology- a forest, a sea, miles of inky black, labyrinthine tunnels, a starless void, bottomless pit.

Should creatures have to eat or drink? Do they age? Or is this really hell, where you exist to be hunted by the thousands of weird D&D monsters?

[Kuulvheysoon]

Might be worth checking out the book Waterdeep: City of Splendors.

IIRC, it has a whole section on Undermountain, which has a lot of similarities to what you're trying to build here.

[Spuddles]

Might be worth checking out the book Waterdeep: City of Splendors.

IIRC, it has a whole section on Undermountain, which has a lot of similarities to what you're trying to build here.

I think my buddy has the old school undermountain module. I'll have to check that out. It is FR, though, right? I think FR has some of the stupidest cosmology out there, and generally fails at being a coherent setting. I'm a much bigger fan of the tippyverse as an approach to anything that allows high(isn) level casting.

[Tesla_pasta]

First thing that comes to mind is how natural cycles works here. Is there day and night? do vampires run free without fear of sunlight?
Seasons? Tides?

I would love to come up with some massive clockwork system that changes time of day globally that can be manually manipulated.

[Kuulvheysoon]

I think my buddy has the old school undermountain module. I'll have to check that out. It is FR, though, right? I think FR has some of the stupidest cosmology out there, and generally fails at being a coherent setting. I'm a much bigger fan of the tippyverse as an approach to anything that allows high(isn) level casting.

The Realms are definitely not for everyone - but you should find Undermountain interesting. There's a random teleportation effect if you try to 'port out, it was built by the insane (and possibly immortal) wizard Halaster, and there's an entire mini-ecology going on there too.

[ArcturusV]

Honestly the first thing that jumped to mind for me was Phillip Jose Farmer's "The Dungeon". Which if I recall has more in common with Castle Greyhawk (Though a bit more sinister, less silly) as a module than it ever would with World's Largest Dungeon.

Wouldn't be a bad way to go, with each "Level" effectively being a worldscape, rather than just stone corridors and rooms.

[Spuddles]

First thing that comes to mind is how natural cycles works here. Is there day and night? do vampires run free without fear of sunlight?
Seasons? Tides?

I would love to come up with some massive clockwork system that changes time of day globally that can be manually manipulated.

It really depends on where you are. If it's hell, then there's no need to eat, so light isn't necessary for plants, but I don't like that idea. I like having Murylond's spoon being important if you don't have a cleric, for instance.

But one cavern might have light for growing so that's where humanoid races settled. Vampires are of course drawn to these settlements. I imagine there are many such former settlements completely over run by the dead, while there are others that are huge hive worlds ruthless patrolled by an Inquisition or policed by a cabal of magi & their iron golems.


Honestly the first thing that jumped to mind for me was Phillip Jose Farmer's "The Dungeon". Which if I recall has more in common with Castle Greyhawk (Though a bit more sinister, less silly) as a module than it ever would with World's Largest Dungeon.

Wouldn't be a bad way to go, with each "Level" effectively being a worldscape, rather than just stone corridors and rooms.

I will also look into that. Not everything would be corridors and rooms- it'd basically be every dungeon environment imaginable, from dank prison cells to catacombs to corridor after corridor of heavy wooden door, pointless traps, inexplicably lit torches, to underwater caves, lava tubes in an active volcano, twisted metal ruins, tombs, crypts, the petrified innards of a dead god, the seething organs of a colossal burrowing worm, labyrinthine forests, goblin warrens, hive cities, floating platforms over a bottomless pit. If it's a dungeon, it's there somewhere.

[Jett Midknight]

This seems like a cool idea. Very Sword Art Online esque. Like Kuulvheysoon said, the Undermountain is really similar to what you have in mind so it might be a good idea to look into it. Also I'm not certain it's a good idea to limit calling and summoning spells. I agree you shouldn't be able to get out, but things still have to get in somehow, or else how would everyone get inside in the first place? Also you don't want to totally eliminate certain playstyles such as summoning. Just my thoughts.