100 level dungeon

[arixe]

So I've noticed that a lot of games have this 100 floor dungeon and was wondering if any dms out there have tried this. If so how successful was it what was the theaming of each floor or the dungeon overall.

[Anxe]

I tried it once. I had absolutely no theme to it. The dungeon was meant to be a mysterious challenge that revealed its nature after the first level. The players never got past the first level...

Themes might work better, but why is it one whole dungeon with different floors instead of a fire themed dungeon followed by an ice themed dungeon?

[arixe]

I was thinking a multi theam would probably work better any way. My players are new starting at first level so it would be probably for the best

[NichG]

I think the thing to ask is 'how does the fact that the dungeon is 100 levels (rather than 10, or infinite) influence the gameplay at every point in time?'.

E.g. if you want the thing to be cohesive, there should be some kind of recurring pattern that corresponds to the floor numbers so the players can work out what's up and project forward to envision what the hundred levels actually means. For example, older editions of D&D basically had a direct correspondence between number of levels below ground and expected level of the characters when it came to monster tables. So a 10 level dungeon would mean that you'd want to have 10th level characters before going that deep. In that case, if you said 'this is a 100 level dungeon' it gives an idea ahead of time of the scope of the campaign and what it'd mean to go too deep or stay shallow.

You could also do something where, e.g., every 5, 10, etc levels there's an opportunity of a specific kind, so the players can think 'we have to push - if we make it one more level during this run, we can get this special thing we've been trying to get all this time'. This particularly works well with dungeons that don't stay cleared out, and where there's some kind of slow resource attrition elements to the game. So if the players have a lucky run of it and get three levels down without using as many resources as they normally would, they might say 'its dangerous, but lets push to see if we can get all the way to the elevator chamber which occurs every 5 levels so that we can skip these in the future.' Things like that.

One problem is that '100 levels' is a very large number for a tabletop game. A lot of these ideas work in computer games because a given combat might take anywhere from 5 seconds to a couple of minutes. In a tabletop game, if you had one fight per level and four fights per night, it'd still take you 25 sessions (half a year, playing once per week) to get through everything. And generally I'd expect there to be more than one fight per level.

[arixe]

I agree it's time consuming but there's a reward in a difficult slog thru a challenging dungeon. As long as I keep the theam fresh I don't see why a 100 floor dungeon with various motifs is different than 100 separate dungeons also 4 fights a night? what is your time frame per fight and how hard are you fights

[JAL_1138]

You could just run the old Ruins of Undermountain from 2e.

[Blake Hannon]

One hundred levels is an arbitrary and silly amount, for reasons that others have pointed out.

But megadungeons in general? Those I like. The Angry DM has an excellent homebrew system (http://theangrygm.com/schrodinger-chekhov-samus/) for creating and running a campaign-sized dungeon. I've used it on a smaller scale to great effect.

[Anxe]

I agree it's time consuming but there's a reward in a difficult slog thru a challenging dungeon. As long as I keep the theam fresh I don't see why a 100 floor dungeon with various motifs is different than 100 separate dungeons also 4 fights a night? what is your time frame per fight and how hard are you fights

Why does a 100 floor structure of any kind exist in a fantasy world?
Why do various themed monsters live within it and not wipe each other out?
How does food and water get into the dungeon from the outside to feed the inhabitants? How does waste leave?
Why don't the inhabitants leave the dungeon? What draws them to stay?
Why are your players going to the same dungeon over and over again? Mine got bored within two sessions when I presented this idea to them and left. They got bored because there aren't any good answers to the above questions that I could think of that weren't, "Magic!" or, "Because the plot demands it."

If you can answer those questions then its worth it to start designing a hundred floor dungeon. You might want to design it more in the style of the old Lufia games though where the dungeon is a game or challenge set up for adventurers. That type of design makes some sense and works, but your players aren't necessarily going to want to spend the entire campaign there. I'd still encourage you to explore other options for the players in case they don't want to keep doing the megadungeon.

[Maglubiyet]

The theme I would run would be that the PC's are the dungeon building managers working for the psychotic archmage that built the place. They respond to plumbing and ventilation issues, of which there would be many. The denizens mostly just want to be left alone to ply their trade of monstering, but the whole place is too buggy. Leaks from the floors above, clogged sewage systems, one too many adventurers' bodies lodged in the air ducts.

The place is a mess.

[arixe]

I will work on answering those questions I didn't consider it. Normally I do large scoped campaigns and my players us ally skip the fluff and kick that door right down so I'm trying to readjust to my players.

[Anxe]

I will work on answering those questions I didn't consider it. Normally I do large scoped campaigns and my players us ally skip the fluff and kick that door right down so I'm trying to readjust to my players.

Well if they're looking for something simpler then maybe you don't need to answer them. I'm starting to get into having my players help with world and dungeon design. Throw those questions at them if you've already brought up the 100 floor dungeon idea with them. They might have some ideas that'll help you. And most any idea they come up with will be something they enjoy seeing implemented. The job is easier for you and more fun for them!