Pacing a megadungeon

[Talakeal]

If your players don't give a crap about the world then NOTHING you do will matter because, without fail trying to maintain pacing purely via mechanical leverage will hit a point where the logic or the game collapses. And not in a good way.

I don't see any relationship between the two.

Could you please elaborate?

I really like worldbuilding, but this still comes across to me as a complete non-sequitur.

There are entire sites whose sole reason to exist is to be dedicated to circumventing anything you do on that level.

Which sites are these? Circumventing what exactly?

[stoutstien]

I don't see any relationship between the two.

Could you please elaborate?

I really like worldbuilding, but this still comes across to me as a complete non-sequitur.

Which sites are these? Circumventing what exactly?

Pacing, attrition, tension, choice, and the other things you want to include aren't maintained by resources and recovery rates in a vacuum. Without heavy investment in the world there is no reason to push beyond the most minimal of risk because that risk has no value. You could get through 1 or a 1000 scenes and the net effects are the same. All that will happen is the party will gravitate to maximizing thier gain while minimizing risk. Why shouldn't they? Without in game ties it would be silly not to.

In a lot of ways every TTRPG game is a mega dungeon with different paint on the walls. Doesn't matter if it has a strict path or full sandbox it has walls, doors, flow, and such. Space cowboys or dwarfs in a underground cavern system. Mega dungeon or vast dessert.

The only difference is the world.

[King of Nowhere]

The last hex-crawl I ran suffered from this problem; the PCs would go back to town after the first fight of every dungeon, and if they actually suffered any noticeable resource expenditure on the way to the dungeon, they would abort the journey entirely. More random encounters made the problem worse, not better.

In real life / narrative, you are not significantly less likely to die if you take an arrow to the chest in the first fight or the last fight, so the goal should be minimizing the number of fights total.

you can't apply real life to something that is similar to d&d. you have those characters with anime-like level of power, they are not going to die to the first arrow. and verisimilitude means that the world has to be consistent, not that it must look like real life - indeed, if a fantasy world has magic that's not exceedingly rare but looks just like real life, then it's generally done wrong.
if you want players to feel the risk, you need to have some supercritical instadeath rule. but then, this would actually lead to random death in random encounters, and nobody really wants that. or, if you don't want the players to play resource management, you have to change system with one where you recover everything at every short rest.

furthermore, you complain that your players are being too cautious, but then you complain that they would not act like that in real life. well, in real life people would be even more cautious, since their actual lives are on the line.

if you want random encounters to be dangerous because you don't want your players to take too much time, you can ramp up their lethality. use a powerful monster that can, at least potentially, kill somebody.

I was thinking of how I run some megadungeons, and whether those principles could be applied to you - because my case was high level, high power, a very different way to play. But I did use some environmental effects; in my case, it was the demiplane of a dead god, and so those hazards were justified.
So, in my case
- every minute, roll a d6. On a one, there is a storm of loose magical energy; roll a d10 for which one. And while most of them were elemental damage that could have been prevented with the right protection spells, and one result was free healing, there were two tempests of dispel magic. So, they couldn't count on long term buffs to protect them, and they would take damage.
Eventually, after a while we calculated how many mass heal they'd have to burn in an hour to compensate for the damage, and they just subtracted it from their prepared slots.
when the players started talking to deliberate, I would assume their characters also had the same conversation in real time.
- some places host specific trials. the pcs have to get there and perform some sort of tests. those have additional dangers. One of them had radiations; every minute a saving throw, if you pass the next DC is higher. when you fail you get stat damage, and the DC resets. Again, they could use healing spells to compensate, but it was draining quite fast. Another place had a mutating virus. At first I asked each player why he would not be bothered by a common flu. Each one stated a reason. Then the virus mutated, and whatever reason they stated could no longer protect them. or, if they made a saving throw, the DC would increase. Again, this sets a time limit. Another had assassins spawning, and another had assassins - but trying to kill an npc that they had to protect as part of their trial.

As I said, it's high level, and a lot of stuff only works because it was the demiplane of a god, ripe with wild energy. But maybe there's some ideas you can adapt in there. it worked very well, the players felt the danger and the urgency without it feeling forced, or too crazy. The players did eventually find some ways to rest - spending healing slots all the time, but less than they'd regain after sleeping. But as I said, if they really work for it, let them have their victory.

You must've missed "forever". The lack of savviness is the idea of trying to clear a dungeon level that cannot be cleared, like trying to kill all the monsters when new ones will always wander to the area, or trying to make a complete map of a structure that changes when you aren't looking at it. The task can literally never be finished, because the attempt is based on false assumption.

You know, unless you have some really good excuse for that, like my own "this is the demiplane of a dead god, full of wild energy, and it coalesces into random monsters spontaneously", this is quite silly and can be immersion-breaking.
I mean, whenever you leave the dungeon, new monsters are coming in so it's always full again. Why? where are they coming from? why are they all just going into the dungeon and sitting there instead of attacking each other? if they are birthed so fast that no matter how many you kill, they always refill the dungeon afterwards, why don't they just overrun civilization? what happens if you stop killing them, won't the new ones still come?
we accept that kind of stuff from some videogame because we expect it to run on a limited simulator and to be there only to provide us some combat (games with more focus on the plot don't have respawning monsters). most of us want something better from tabletop.
if you go into the savannah and kill all the lions around, surely some other group of lions will move in; but it won't happen overnight. and if the next week a new group arrives, and again you kill it, you will shortly deplete all lions from a larger area, and it will take many years for the population to recover.

[gbaji]

I don't see any relationship between the two.

Could you please elaborate?

I really like worldbuilding, but this still comes across to me as a complete non-sequitur.

I think what he was getting at is that if the players don't have some actual interest in some sort of "goals" in the game, then the're just going through the motions, and only the most heavy handed of mechanical tools will move them forward.

If they want to go explore "the caverns of doom", because they got a map from someone and it indicates that some cool item is there, they will push on to clear said caverns and get said cool item. Better yet, if obtaining said item allows them to return in triumph to their home kingdom and be rewarded as "heroes of the realm", or something, they will do that as well. But only if they care about their characters gaining the cool item, or being declared heroes of the realm. If it's just "I'm playing this character I rolled up this week, and we're just whacking some monsters and getting random treasure", then they may not be invested in the game or outcomes of the game, and therefore have no reason to do anything other than the bare minimum to "game the system".

The players should, ideally, *want* to go explore the dungeon, and *want* to go to new areas and find new things. There should be some motivation beyond merely gaining experience and advancing their character's power level. They should have at least some interest in some sort of "story" they are telling along the way, so advancing that story should actually matter to them. If they don't, then that's a whole nother problem.

Now, to be fair, you didn't state that they weren't interested in delving into the dungeon, but you fear that they will just nibble away at it a small/safe piece at a time. And also to be fair, you are correct that if this is to be a dungeon crawl, and more about quantity than small numbers of super tough encounters (ie: resource management), then this will make the game dull and boring. And yeah, there are two ways to deal with this:

Structure the dungeon to force them to do more in each delve (lots of ways to do this). Or... just let them do it.

If they "get bored" with the super slow/safe method, what do you suppose they will do? Maybe start taking more risks. Pushing on longer in each session in the dungeon. It's kind of a self correcting problem really. I mean, they can sit there whacking one room at a time, then returning to base or something, but are you absolutely certain that after having done that a few times, they aren't going to just look at their sheets, realize they still have like 90% of their capability left, and then go "hey. Let's hit a few more rooms before heading back"? This is only a problem if they simply don't trust that the next room wont be some uber tough encounter that requires them to be at 100% to succeed. And yeah, based on your past posts, I suspect that they may very well have that concern in their heads, so who knows?

Another trick to get them to spend more time actively adventuring is to really draw out the travel stuff. Spend time describing the terrain along the way. Have NPCs come up to them and strike up conversations. Role play each and every social encounter they have while traveling to town, at each shop in town, at the inn they sleep at, and the whole way back. After a few cycles of spending 15 minutes actually running their characters in a dungeon crawl for every 2 hours of talking to NPCS, they might just get the hint. There's a "cost" in player time as well as the stuff written on the character sheets. Maybe make them realize that cost, and if they want to get that cool treasure at the end of the dungeon any time in their lifetimes, maybe they should speed up a bit.

That, obviously, depends a lot on what the players actually like to do. But assuming that you wouldn't be putting in a megadungeon if the players aren't at least significnatly interested in "kill things, take their loot" style play...

[Vahnavoi]

A calendar only helps if the players already know everything about the scenario; how big the dungeon is, how much time they have to explore it, and what is the optimal path to whatever they need to stop to avert the clock.

You have literally never done this, have you? Because you are entirely wrong. Players don''t have to have perfect information in order for a calendar to be useful. The minimum amount of information required to create time pressure is one (1) future event. Beyond that, the player's calendar can be empty, as can be their map. They can learn more information as they, you know, explore, and then fill in the blanks themselves.

Nowhere does it follow that the players ought to be told what the optimal path is before they actually start exploring. Classically in megadungeons, pathfinding is a gameplay puzzle the the players have to solve. Finding any path that satisfies a time requirement would be an achievement. Finding the optimal path? Even the game master doesn't need to know that. They only need to know at least one possible path, given they intent for the overall scenario to be winnable.

I don't follow. What does keeping a clock or making players talk in real time have to do with pacing dungeon exploration?

Pacing is about how you use real time. You can pace your game and put time pressure on your players by putting them on a clock to plan or do what their characters would.

But what is the pressure to make the characters actually try and engage with the game?

Why not just blow all of your ammo (and other resources) in the first room and go back to town? Why ration at all? Why go deeper?

Game goals such as "keep your character alive" , "earn experience points and wealth" and "get to dungeon level 100 and kill Morgoth".

You oddly presume players are not "engaging with the game" when they are already implicitly buy into two of those three game goals. Engaging with the game is why they'd follow the basic tactic at all.

Now imagine a player who takes the third goal just as seriously.

I am going to guess by "stupid" you mean "requires thought", which is almost the opposite.

Checking die rolls and doing table look-ups to wipe your ass "requires thought", yes, but not in a way that makes the action more significant, important or interesting. That's the stupidity being referred to: wasting brain power on things that don't need it

IMO, it isn't "crunchiness" that slows down the game until the high end of player skill; for most people its an inability to remember the rules, focus, do mental math, etc.

In other words, yes, crunchiness slows down a game, and you can make a game faster by eliminating pointless crunch. Because that lessens the number of rules to remember, number of things to focus on and the amount of mental math required to begin with.

Both ends of the spectrum, of course, suffer from decision paralysis, but I don't think the system has any influence over that.

A system straightforwardly influences number of decisions a player has to make and thus whether they will suffer decision paralysis. Any user interface designer could tell you that. Any game designer could tell you that. How have you effectively written a game and still not figured this out?

Also, its really weird that you like old school dungeon crawling but hate crunchy games. That seems like such a contradiction.

Old D&D is rules light compared to your games and even it has rules that can be simplified or tossed. Again, we at conventions deliberately experiment with trimmed down rulesets to find the minimum that still delivers an old school dungeon crawling experiencd.

I have never played Angband. I have played a lot of Diablo.

Is there a timer you are fighting against? What does it mean for Morgoth to win?

It means what I just said it does. In Angband, the goal is to get to level 100 and kill Morgoth, just like in Diablo you're trying to get to the bottom of things and stop Diablo.

If a player gets stuck on a level because they're too afraid to lose their character, they never get there, which means the bad guy wins. Simple as that. As already noted, Angband does not have a timer, it's a game of infinite resources.

In virtually every RPG I have ever played, Diablo included, the optimum strategy is to grind the easy area until you cannot progress there anymore, then repeat in the next easiest area.

One, that's what I just described to you. Two, you are confusing basic safe strategies with optimal strategies. You should stop using words such as optimal or optimum when you haven't even stated what you are optimizing.

The only way to prevent this that I can find is random cheap death. In Diablo, this just means you load your save. In a game with actual stakes, it means the game is over and everyone is pissed off, especially if the random cheap death occurred as a consequence of natural play.

You are severely lacking in imagination. Especially since the obvious alternative answer has been repeated over and over again in this thread: put your players under time pressure!

Grinding in the safe area cannot remain the optimum strategy, can it now, if it eats a prohibitive amount of time. That's neither cheap nor random, because the players are in control over how much time they use for a thing.

That's great, but for a game with unlimited resources to have any challenge at all, it requires a level of skill far higher than most players are capable of.

Winning a game like Angband takes a level of skill higher than most players are capable of. Playing it and enjoying it don't. Most players have a lot of fun playing it for a few runs despite never making it to the end. I suspect you are suffering from brain rot caused by your playgroup.

What does a camp costing resources look like in practice?

Have you ever made camp in real life?

It takes time. It takes space. Shelters suffer wear and tear, firewood is burned, rations are consumed, traps need to be assembled and disassembled, and if that cannot be done, abandoned. A camp will leave traces of your passing, unless you take more time to erase those traces.

All this, while you have places to be.

Make a poor camp, or take too long making camp, and you won't get any rest. Camp too long in one spot, your enemies will find you. Make camp too often, and you'll start running out of materials that make for a good camp, meaning you will reach your destination exhausted, starved and sore... if you reach it at all.

"Camp = rest = all meaningful resources restored" is a pure game conceit that you can toss in a fire and burn. In reality, camping is a trade-off. One resource is turned into another; food, water, time and heat are turned into reserves of physical and mental energy required to continue a journey. Stop handwaving half of the equation.

[Mastikator]

Food and water is an option as a stand in for a time limit. If you enforce a 1 long rest per 24 hours then each time they take a long rest they each use a days worth of rations and water. To make them push forward instead of going back is to put a point of no return in the mega dungeon, entice them to go through by letting them know there is some awesome treasure on the other side. For example when they loot some mooks they find a piece of parchment which tells them about some awesome treasure, that leads them into a passage that signals to them that if they go through they'll have to find another way out (otherwise they may not trust you, the DM, but with foreshadowing they'll feel it was fair, even though it was entirely contrived the entire time).
Make sure the treasure is something worth it, it may be some consumable magics but also something cool they can use, and some gold.

You can then drive them forward by putting food and water as treasure in places in the mega dungeon, but only barely enough that they don't starve to death. Pieces of maps or directions can be found from dead enemies, they can tell of where a pantry might be, or other enemies in the mega dungeon.

The reason they go into the dungeon in the first place, the monsters from the dungeon attacking the village or whatever, may even have a reference to "bring their valuables and add it to our big pile of treasure".

[Satinavian]

In short, I am wondering how to incentivize the characters to actually push themselves in exploring it rather than falling back on the old 15 minute adventuring day routine.

Just don't try to get your players to behave in a specific way.

Basically you have two options :

1) Give your players the freedom to decide for themself and accept if they make decisions you don't like.
2) Don't give the players this freedom and decide rest intervals yourself.

Everything else doesn't work. What you are trying to do atm is fine tuning the rules that your idea about appropriate rest intervals is the only one that makes sense while still giving the players the choice. That is trying to have your cake and eat it. If you ever manage to push the players to do it your way, their choice has already become pure illusion.

[ahyangyi]

Unfortunately, all RPGs I am familiar with use resource management as the primary, and to an extent the only, form of mechanical challenge.

This is something I don't understand. Note that the in-combat action economy is a separate thing from long term resource management. "Spending a turn to do a full attack" isn't resource management, you are going to use that turn no matter what. And you can definitely have fun combat and non-combat challenges even if the players always fight with all their spell slots available, at least in a system like 4E (where the wizard's highest level spells are not win buttons).

Also I'm not advocating to completely abandon the resource management aspect, just pointing out the possibility.

[SpanielBear]

If you've played Diablo, or Angband, or most other games of the genre, whether on computer or tabletop, you ought to have realized that "15 minute workday" is the normal and expected tactic.

As in: the basic loop is, you go as deep as you can as quickly as you can, fill your pockets with loot, then retreat as quickly as you can back to safety, rinse and repeat. Abilities to make this easy (Town Portal, World of Recal, etc.) are staples of the genre.

If a single trip takes more than 15 minutes of real time to process, your system is slow for this kind of play. 30 to 45 minutes is still acceptable, allowing for several trips per 4-hour session

If you want to push exploration as an angle, you need to do away with basic conceits that allow this to happen. To give you some ground rules:

1) No safe retreat. Every time player characters want to rest, they have to establish a camp in detail, they have to set up watches, build traps and fortifications, etc.. It's part of gameplay and consequences follow from how they do it.

2) The goal is on the other side, AKA motive to keep moving. Give players hints for targets deep in the dungeon.

3) Rewards tied to exploring terrain, not some tangential thing. For example, the player characters could literally be paid for finding and mapping new rooms.

4) Most rooms are empty and most encounters aren't combat. This goes together with:

5) Time is a resource and is in fact the most common resource used. "15 minute workday" happens because characters have all kinds of other resource limits, but unlimited time. Turn that paradigm around. Wandering through empty hallways, clearing collapsed tunnels, disassembling traps, going around a pit, these don't consume spells or hitpoints or even equipment, but they do consume time. Put this together with 2) and 3), and efficient use of time becomes the key to progress.

6) Keep a calendar. Things inside and outside the dungeon change as days go by. Events in time will work as distant targets to encourage exploring just as well as distant targets in space. Put this together with 3) and 5) to create tasks such as "I want X pieces of ore by date Y".

There’s some really nice thoughts here I’m definitely going to adapt. Thanks for sharing these!

[Vahnavoi]

You know, unless you have some really good excuse for that, like my own "this is the demiplane of a dead god, full of wild energy, and it coalesces into random monsters spontaneously", this is quite silly and can be immersion-breaking.

I was talking about what drives exploration. Immersion is a different aesthetic and one that wasn't relevant to the topic before you brought it up.

Nonetheless, you implicit idea of how immersion works is wrong. Angband, and video games in general, are perfectly capable of making those "good excuses", but more often that not manage to be immersive despite such silly game conceits. Immersion is achieved by becoming so accustomed with a game's assumptions that they become internalized parts of decision-making. For most kind of games (not just roleplaying games, ALL games), immersion is build up through play, it's not some fragile pre-existing thing that you have to avoid breaking.

we accept that kind of stuff from some videogame because we expect it to run on a limited simulator and to be there only to provide us some combat (games with more focus on the plot don't have respawning monsters). most of us want something better from tabletop.

Don't kid yourself. A human game master using tabletop rules is a limited simulator too. On the flipside, modern computers already allow for more detailed and more expansive simulations than many humans are capable of running. "Wanting something better from the tabletop" made sense three or four decades ago when computer games were in their infancy. Now? You ought to hope your game master has actually played some computer games, because they frequently demonstrate how certain game design principles work, reducing the need for your game master to re-invent the wheel.

[GloatingSwine]

If you want to promote exploration in the dungeon, Diablo is the wrong frame of reference. Diablo is a game where you crunch through stuff and it gets out of your way until you reset everything and/or reach that one boss you want to farm for good drops.

Don't build a Diablo dungeon. Build a Metroid dungeon.

Focus your design on the shape of the dungeon and how everything in it interconnects, don't allow it to be "cleared" so it's always roughly as dangerous to go backwards as to go forwards, instead have encounters be a function of time spent and distance travelled, and have the interesting rewards always come from the preplaced one-off bosses. (interesting rewards include shortcuts to previous areas/opening ways out to town).

It makes the concept of "go as far as you can then bail out" irrelevant, bailing out is exactly as hard as getting there was and you don't get anything until you find and beat the next boss.

[Sapphire Guard]

People at the town gates charge for passage.

[Jay R]

They enter the dungeon, kill some kobolds, maybe a few orcs and ogres, and leave. That works once, maybe twice. By the third time, the kobolds have set up a bunch of traps and the ogres have an ambush ready. And 1,000 orcs are preparing to invade the town from below.

Alternatively, once the PCs have come up with treasure a couple of times, town residents have formed a half-dozen parties and are going down too. Maybe some parents come and ask the party to rescue their children who went down their to get rich "just like the heroes".

The town powers (mayor, lord, anybody with enough troops) demand that the PCs lead their people down so they can get the treasure. Or maybe just insist that the PCs stop stirring up trouble. Maybe the orcs come to the local baron and charge the PCs with murder and theft.

The point is that there is a real world here, and it reacts to what's happening. The party can go slowly, but that doesn't slow the world down; it gives the world time to prepare to fight back.

[Quertus]

Its more that I expect players to play smart.

As long as challenge is linked to resource attrition, then any challenge in the game is wholly illusory as long as the players can recover resources at their own pace.

This sounds almost like a clear problem statement. Ok, so… how about not playing a game based on resource attrition? Play… (functionally) WoD Dark Ages characters. The Vampire can just drink blood from the monsters to power their healing and abilities, and can just keep going. The Werewolf automatically heals, and regains power every time they get mad. The Mage doesn’t really have any meaningful resources to spend… although Someone need to have a healing power, else their health is a limiting factor. Etc. Just roll your own “eternal” “classes” into 2e or 3e D&D (depending on how much fun you want to have, and how quickly you want to level), add a Wizard who runs shops inside the dungeon, and they’ve got no real reason to go back to town, like, ever.

I mean, really, the first question of order is "what does a megadungeon mean to you?" I can tell you what it means in a 1eAD&D kind of way, and what that implies about campaign structure. But without that, we can't give whys. And without the whys, the whats are kinda hard.

A megadungeon, to me, is much like a hex crawl, or Minecraft - it means that there aren’t these artificial time constraints, and we can play the game however we find to be fun.

Granted, yes, things like food and wandering monsters provide a gentle and subtle level of Time pressure (not unlike how a trivial pittance of a dungeon entry fee is a subtle and gentle encouragement to get more out of each trip), but, done right, they don’t really prevent you from going at your own pace.

——- Sample 3 - Time matters, just a little ——-

Heart of Darkness, with its 1-month long rest.

Let the Players play the game at their own pace. However, open with a (really easy, they cannot possibly fail) timed quest: a remote (human) village has caught a plague, and they are escorting an elven “ambassador” (herbalist mage) to assist.

(I’m assuming, other than their magic item, an extradimensional space that stores exactly 100 potions, they can be built as a starting character, with mild social skills, but mostly just magic to let them grow whole plants from the seeds they carry, allowing them to create whatever remedies they need at a moment’s notice.)

While the PCs are in town, monsters attack. Technically, the villagers can win the fight, even in their sickened state, if the PCs, say, choose to protect the ambassador, but it’s probably more fun of the PCs help stomp the monsters - or even beat them all by themselves. (Again, emphasis on it being easy here.)

After a bit, the ambassador figures out what brew is most helpful, and administers it to the villagers. And… probably to the PCs, unless they’ve taken really clever measures to avoid catching the plague themselves (not that it does more than a cold in the early stages).

A few things about the plague: it only affects humans, it involves real germs, and everyone is still carrying those germs. The village is put into quarantine until the plague germs can be killed.

Only… one child doesn’t recover. In fact, almost every long rest, another child suffers a relapse. And all the while, the megadungeon keeps disgorging its failures.

Behind the scenes, a Plague Demon is, every long rest, cursing one of the children. Or, rather, creating a germ demon, which goes out and infests a child, spreading the plague and preventing their immune system from fighting it. (They get a save or whatever, so it isn’t 100% every long rest that a new child “relapses” (gets possessed).)

Details… maybe the dungeon is known / obviously the source of the pathetic attacks from the beginning, or maybe the PCs piece together clues over the course of the adventure. Whatever.

The dungeon has stronger monsters the deeper you go, of course. And various clues the party can use to guess “demonic experimentation” (among other things).

Outside the top level or two, each layer has a “boss monster” (usually a demon), who is experimenting on the creatures, giving each level a theme. One of the earliest bosses is insect themed, for example; once defeated, no new insect monsters are created.


1/year (1/12 long rests), the hated by everyone ice demon comes up to the top inhabited layer, and hands out silly snow-themed items to the weakest monsters (the ones who will get disgorged if the megadungeon is full): snowman suits, snowball guns, icicle blades, whatever. It’s both a reminder of the passage of time, and an opportunity for a clever party to ambush a level boss.

But the important part is, Time is passing. Villagers get old and retire. Cursed children die (after about a year of bed rest, depending on their saving throw rolls, and how helpful the ambassador is encouraged to be (his potions could be used to help the party, or the children, or for other purposes). Seasons pass.

It’s really unlikely that the PCs will be able to save all the children, but if the plague Demon isn’t defeated, eventually there won’t be any children, and the village will eventually die off. After 120 long rests, point out that the party has been there for a decade now (and, if the plague Demon isn’t defeated yet, unless the party has pulled some miracle, probably that the streets are quiet, adults and the elderly shuffling from place to place, with no children to be seen).

If the children died off, and the plague Demon yet lives, after 360 long rests, the last shop in town closes. The PCs are on their own for even the most basic of gear.

After 600 long rests, regardless of the state of the dungeon, the PCs (If human) die of old age. Campaign over.

The Players can set their own pace, but there’s very clear consequences to taking a lifetime to clear a dungeon.

[Talakeal]

So it looks like this game is getting pushed out the door a lot sooner than I had hoped as our regular game is going to be on hiatus for a couple of months.

Looks like I am just going to be using my own Heart of Darkness system as we don't have time to learn something new. (And my players don't really want to learn something new, which I guess should make me proud that they like my game so much? But it still seems kind of limiting.)

So I think what I am going to do based on this thread is have the dungeon restock with tougher monsters over time, but tie progression to actually pushing ahead (whether that is mapping, finding waypoints, killing "boss" monsters, or finding treasure I haven't decided yet) so that dragging your feet makes things harder, not easier.

This sounds almost like a clear problem statement. Ok, so… how about not playing a game based on resource attrition? Play… (functionally) WoD Dark Ages characters. The Vampire can just drink blood from the monsters to power their healing and abilities, and can just keep going. The Werewolf automatically heals, and regains power every time they get mad. The Mage doesn’t really have any meaningful resources to spend… although Someone need to have a healing power, else their health is a limiting factor. Etc. Just roll your own “eternal” “classes” into 2e or 3e D&D (depending on how much fun you want to have, and how quickly you want to level), add a Wizard who runs shops inside the dungeon, and they’ve got no real reason to go back to town, like, ever.

I am actually more used to White Wolf systems (or my own Heart of Darkness system) where resources aren't tied to the daily rest cycle like D&D, and it makes resource management much simpler.

(Mages use quintessence as a resource, which is on a weekly recharge btw).

Of course, in those games most of the time when there is an action heavy "adventure" it is very time sensitive.

Using those systems for a hex-crawl / megadungeon is even worse as, rather than a 15 minute work day, you are getting a 15 minute work month, and years of time will pass in setting by before the PCs actually accomplish anything.

If you want to promote exploration in the dungeon, Diablo is the wrong frame of reference. Diablo is a game where you crunch through stuff and it gets out of your way until you reset everything and/or reach that one boss you want to farm for good drops.

Don't build a Diablo dungeon. Build a Metroid dungeon.

Focus your design on the shape of the dungeon and how everything in it interconnects, don't allow it to be "cleared" so it's always roughly as dangerous to go backwards as to go forwards, instead have encounters be a function of time spent and distance travelled, and have the interesting rewards always come from the preplaced one-off bosses. (interesting rewards include shortcuts to previous areas/opening ways out to town).

It makes the concept of "go as far as you can then bail out" irrelevant, bailing out is exactly as hard as getting there was and you don't get anything until you find and beat the next boss.

I am very much going for a Metroid style over Diablo.

I actually got the urge to do a mega dungeon last year while playing Blasphemous (basically a cross between Metroid and Dark Souls) and seeing how the dungeon areas interconnected.

I don't know though, I still feel like it could backfire, as during my hex-crawl game the more wandering monsters they encountered the more often the players retreated town, and would only actualy deign to explore a dungeon or other site based adventure if they managed to get to it in more or less perfect condition, and still bailed out at the first opportunity.

People at the town gates charge for passage.

That has always come across to me as a total mood killer.

It's hard for me to take the dungeon seriously as mysterious and dangerous when people are set up outside trying to make a quick buck. It also kills any sense of danger if the guards are there to keep people out instead of keeping the monsters in (heck, if they are even capable of keeping the monsters in!) or that the PCs going in is a burden on the community rather than potentially saving their lives / homes.

Just don't try to get your players to behave in a specific way.

Basically you have two options :

1) Give your players the freedom to decide for themself and accept if they make decisions you don't like.
2) Don't give the players this freedom and decide rest intervals yourself.

Everything else doesn't work. What you are trying to do atm is fine tuning the rules that your idea about appropriate rest intervals is the only one that makes sense while still giving the players the choice. That is trying to have your cake and eat it. If you ever manage to push the players to do it your way, their choice has already become pure illusion.

You can frame it about control, but it isn't, it's just fundamental game design though. Games should reward skill and have risks and consequences.

The guy who takes 10 years to do a job that could have been done in one afternoon if they were willing to take risks is not really a hero IC, and a game that drags on without any actual excitement or need for thought is less a game and more of a chore OOC.

Food and water is an option as a stand in for a time limit. If you enforce a 1 long rest per 24 hours then each time they take a long rest they each use a days worth of rations and water. To make them push forward instead of going back is to put a point of no return in the mega dungeon, entice them to go through by letting them know there is some awesome treasure on the other side. For example when they loot some mooks they find a piece of parchment which tells them about some awesome treasure, that leads them into a passage that signals to them that if they go through they'll have to find another way out (otherwise they may not trust you, the DM, but with foreshadowing they'll feel it was fair, even though it was entirely contrived the entire time).
Make sure the treasure is something worth it, it may be some consumable magics but also something cool they can use, and some gold.

You can then drive them forward by putting food and water as treasure in places in the mega dungeon, but only barely enough that they don't starve to death. Pieces of maps or directions can be found from dead enemies, they can tell of where a pantry might be, or other enemies in the mega dungeon.

The reason they go into the dungeon in the first place, the monsters from the dungeon attacking the village or whatever, may even have a reference to "bring their valuables and add it to our big pile of treasure".

That requires some pretty serious contrivances.

Food is dirt cheap and readily available compared to most of their equipment, and this requires them to be repeatedly trapped in dungeons.

Most game systems have relatively simple magic that either conjures food or allows people to go without it.

It can be done, but it is going to require a lot of house rules and contrived situations, and I am not sure I want to go to the much work for something that is likely to just piss the players off and ruin everyone's immersion even if done really well.

This is something I don't understand. Note that the in-combat action economy is a separate thing from long term resource management. "Spending a turn to do a full attack" isn't resource management, you are going to use that turn no matter what. And you can definitely have fun combat and non-combat challenges even if the players always fight with all their spell slots available, at least in a system like 4E (where the wizard's highest level spells are not win buttons).

Also I'm not advocating to completely abandon the resource management aspect, just pointing out the possibility.

Because with infinite resources you can't actually lose combat, so you don't have to care.

I remember fights in 4E boiled down to "everyone use their daily, everyone use their encounter powers, then chip away using your utility powers until the things finally fall down, and then take a rest." It was certainly the most boring combat I have ever encountered in a game except maybe Age of Conan.

The problem is that if you make combat deadly enough that it is still a challenge with unlimited resources, then it is going to be so deadly that a little bad luck will also wipe the party even if played perfectly, especially if the players are under some form of time pressure.

[BRC]

Is the goal to build a "Push your luck" style approach, where the PC's are encouraged to push as far as they feel comfortable before retreating to the surface and resting?


It sounds like with your system "Rests" can take weeks or months, I think you might be able to work with that.


Without reading the whole thread, my instinct is to give them some sort of incentive for going fast. Possibly using Time as a resource.

I don't know the theme of the Megadungeon, but I'm picturing a scenario by which different sections of the dungeon are set to "Unlock" over time, each unleashing a new hoard of monsters into the dungeon until that particular section has been cleared. The PC's have cleared the next section of the dungeon, it's effectively gone Dormant.

While the dungeon is Active, monsters escaping the dungeon besiege the town and prowl the nearby roads, preventing all but the most well guarded caravans from coming through, and preventing much work from getting done in the town as the besieged townsfolk need to put their efforts towards defending/repairing the town.

The faster the PC's beat down the latest threat to awaken in the megadungeon, the faster the dungeon goes Dormant. During these Dormant periods, the townsfolk can work on campaign-scale upgrades, further scout the dungeon, ect ect.


If we say, there are 3 months between each section "Awakening", then If the PC's clear the section in two weeks, they've got 2.5 months of downtime on which they and the grateful townsfolk can work on improving things. If they take a week of rest between each room and don't clear the section for 2.5 months, they've barely got two weeks of downtime to work with.

If we use weeks as timeblocks, whip up a bunch of things that each take about a week to do.

"Strip-loot cleared areas of the dungeon for extra valuables" Takes about a week, gives the PC's more gold to play with.

"Train Guards to patrol roads" Merchants are willing to send more valuable goods on caravans while the dungeon is awake, increases what the PC's can buy while the dungeon is awake.

"Upgrade the Forge" PC's can buy better weapons and armor! Takes about a week.

ect ect ect. Encourage them to get the dungeon back to sleep as fast as possible so they have as many weeks of downtime as they can get their grubby little hands on to use to improve the town.

[King of Nowhere]

I was talking about what drives exploration. Immersion is a different aesthetic and one that wasn't relevant to the topic before you brought it up.

no, immersion is not a different topic. or rather, it is, but it is something that has to be considered.
if you are looking to restructure your house, you still have to care about structural stability; you can't knock down a load-bearing wall just because you wanted a bigger room.
so, if you want to drive exploration you have some tools to use, but those tools must make in-world sense.

Nonetheless, you implicit idea of how immersion works is wrong. Angband, and video games in general, are perfectly capable of making those "good excuses", but more often that not manage to be immersive despite such silly game conceits. Immersion is achieved by becoming so accustomed with a game's assumptions that they become internalized parts of decision-making. For most kind of games (not just roleplaying games, ALL games), immersion is build up through play, it's not some fragile pre-existing thing that you have to avoid breaking.

my idea of how immersion works is not universal, but it is important to at least a significant subsection of the population. ok, diablo-like videogames are liked by some people, but the nonsensicalness of the world with respawning monsters is the first factor driving me away from those kind of games. I can't get invested in something that doesn't even try to be consistent.
And from the way my players react to the way I always try to link game mechanics with worldbuilding concepts, changing the game mechanics where needed, I can tell that they appreciate the effort at consistence. it may not be a strict prerequisite, but it's certainly a nice thing to have.

Don't kid yourself. A human game master using tabletop rules is a limited simulator too.

as a human, I cannot project an image in high definition to let my players see their characters beat up enemies. I can't make math so fast, authomatically keep track of their inventory without them bothering to do so. When roleplaying an npc, I am limited by my lack of acting talent, while a videogame uses professional voice actors. I am a limited simulator.
What I lose there, I gain in other areas. First and foremost, flexibility. No matter how complex a videogame, there are only a certain number of plotlines that it can have codified. A certain number of options that have been coded. My npcs won't be acted or depicted as well as those of a videogame, but they can pass a turing test. the party trying to infiltrate the villain's home disguised as plumbers? never seen a game reproduce that. passing judgment on rulings? a videogame does not have rulings, only codified responses.

So, when I play with a pc I expect it to do well what a pc does well. When I play with a human, I expect it to do well what a human does well. using videogames as a goal of what you want to achieve is inherently wrong, because they are different mediums achieving different things. there are different expectations. when playing a videogame, I accept that I knock down the wall because the game has no coded option to do so. when I play with a human, I expect knocking down a wall to be a legitimate option, and I do not accept "you just can't" as an answer. On the other hand, when I play with humans I accept our hand-drawn maps and poor acting, while a videogame sporting those would be deleted immediately

[Satinavian]

You can frame it about control, but it isn't, it's just fundamental game design though. Games should reward skill and have risks and consequences.

The guy who takes 10 years to do a job that could have been done in one afternoon if they were willing to take risks is not really a hero IC, and a game that drags on without any actual excitement or need for thought is less a game and more of a chore OOC.

As always it is about buy in.
If you actually have players who want to play an attrition based campaign in a megadungeon, then yes, balancing risk and reward for it is OK.

But if don't have players that want to take that risk, then no amount of game design will work. Either they break it (and play in a way you don't like) or they complain because they can't break it (which would be you forcing to play them a certain way.)

You have never made an attrition based campaign work. That is probably not the fault of your rules. It probably is because your players, especially Bob, are not compatible with such a game. No amount of fine tuning will salvage this.

The guy who takes 10 years to do a job that could have been done in one afternoon if they were willing to take risks is not really a hero IC, and a game that drags on without any actual excitement or need for thought is less a game and more of a chore OOC.

But if you want a game of risk vs reward, then you must your players let choose. And you must let them choose the lowest risk for lowest reward option, if that is what they want. If you don't want to run this because it is boring, then don't present it as an option. And don't pretend they get to choose when the only way you want to make viable is playing as daring adventurers who regularly take risks where they need to be smart to survive.


You have been here with a similar issue a couple of times. And i see it play out again :

- You present an attrition based system where the players have to considder how for they push with greater rewards for greater risks.
- The players take a very low risk option. Repeatedly.
- You are bored because every fight is a forgone conclusion and your interesting bosses, locations and treasures never appear.
- You fiddle with the ressource system to make your players go further. Either by lowering the rewards for the low risk option, introducing some kind of cost for time used or reduce the relevance of defeat
- Your players either complain or refuse to engage at all with the campaign or suddenly become super reckless because defeat is meaningless

If you have the same players, especially Bob, that will happen again this time around.

[Talakeal]

...But if you want a game of risk vs reward, then you must your players let choose. And you must let them choose the lowest risk for lowest reward option...

That's the thing though, it isn't "low risk and low reward" its "zero risk and full reward". If it really were a tradeoff this wouldn't be (nearly so much of) an issue.

Is the goal to build a "Push your luck" style approach, where the PC's are encouraged to push as far as they feel comfortable before retreating to the surface and resting?

It sounds like with your system "Rests" can take weeks or months, I think you might be able to work with that.

Without reading the whole thread, my instinct is to give them some sort of incentive for going fast. Possibly using Time as a resource.

I don't know the theme of the Megadungeon, but I'm picturing a scenario by which different sections of the dungeon are set to "Unlock" over time, each unleashing a new hoard of monsters into the dungeon until that particular section has been cleared. The PC's have cleared the next section of the dungeon, it's effectively gone Dormant.

While the dungeon is Active, monsters escaping the dungeon besiege the town and prowl the nearby roads, preventing all but the most well guarded caravans from coming through, and preventing much work from getting done in the town as the besieged townsfolk need to put their efforts towards defending/repairing the town.

The faster the PC's beat down the latest threat to awaken in the megadungeon, the faster the dungeon goes Dormant. During these Dormant periods, the townsfolk can work on campaign-scale upgrades, further scout the dungeon, ect ect.

If we say, there are 3 months between each section "Awakening", then If the PC's clear the section in two weeks, they've got 2.5 months of downtime on which they and the grateful townsfolk can work on improving things. If they take a week of rest between each room and don't clear the section for 2.5 months, they've barely got two weeks of downtime to work with.

If we use weeks as timeblocks, whip up a bunch of things that each take about a week to do.

"Strip-loot cleared areas of the dungeon for extra valuables" Takes about a week, gives the PC's more gold to play with.

"Train Guards to patrol roads" Merchants are willing to send more valuable goods on caravans while the dungeon is awake, increases what the PC's can buy while the dungeon is awake.

"Upgrade the Forge" PC's can buy better weapons and armor! Takes about a week.

ect ect ect. Encourage them to get the dungeon back to sleep as fast as possible so they have as many weeks of downtime as they can get their grubby little hands on to use to improve the town.

Yeah, this is very close to what I am thinking.

[GloatingSwine]

I am very much going for a Metroid style over Diablo.

I actually got the urge to do a mega dungeon last year while playing Blasphemous (basically a cross between Metroid and Dark Souls) and seeing how the dungeon areas interconnected.

I don't know though, I still feel like it could backfire, as during my hex-crawl game the more wandering monsters they encountered the more often the players retreated town, and would only actualy deign to explore a dungeon or other site based adventure if they managed to get to it in more or less perfect condition, and still bailed out at the first opportunity.

Everything can backfire.

It should be clear that there is no "bail out" though. There's no escape rope, if they want to leave they have to walk out and they will have the same encounter rate on the way out as they had on the way in.

The only other alternative is not to have a way out. The only way out is through.

Edit: Also make the available reward in each significant area of the dungeon plateau fast so that they cannot get anything new until they beat the next boss and get into the next area.

[Talakeal]

Everything can backfire.

It should be clear that there is no "bail out" though. There's no escape rope, if they want to leave they have to walk out and they will have the same encounter rate on the way out as they had on the way in.

The only other alternative is not to have a way out. The only way out is through.

Oh no, no encounters on the way out!

That was basically the catalyst for the poopshow last time; they got bushwacked by a tough random encounter on the way back from the dungeon, and from that point on it was utter paranoia and refusing to take risks or push on in any context.


The only way out is through is an interesting idea, but its really hard to pull of narratively except on rare occasions.

[GloatingSwine]

Oh no, no encounters on the way out!

Then you're doomed to them only doing one encounter and walking back. The incentive needs to be to move forward, encounters in a new area of the dungeon need to be rewarding at first but stop being so relatively quickly and there needs to be a spike of reward on the gates between each zone (which can be boss fights, difficult skill challenges, puzzles using components found in the area, whatever).

Either that or, again, no way out.

The entrance to the dungeon isn't a door, it's a portal that only goes one way. Once you step in you're there until you find an exit.

[Pauly]

An alternative to the dungeon regenerating.

Once you clear a level it is cleared. Friendlies move in and build basic homes and fortifications. You can trade for basic supplies, but they give you half the GP that you’d get in the town for gear. The players can rest, but if they want full value for their shinies or want to buy specialized gear then they have to travel to town.

You will end up with a no man’s land of reduced danger between fully cleared levels and enemy zones so the players can travel faster and with reduced risk. However no man’s land is by no means safe and you can still stumble into significant TPK capable enemies if you aren’t careful or are unlucky.

There are other parties and if you take too long they will find the exit to the next level. The shiniest loot and biggest XP are for finding the level exit. Eventually the NPC parties will clear a level and make it safe for friendly habitation.
Some of these other parties may be hostile and will happily stab the party in the back and steal their loot if you give them the chance. Other parties may be friendly and be willing to form alliances of convenience.
Other parties may have maps, loot, information they’re willing to sell or trade.

Every so often you can make the level exits of 2 levels close together so that the party can finish the level then punch through and finish the next level in one trip. Making them feel like big gorram heroes with loads of shiny loot,

Also the monsters are getting stronger [for plot reasons]. The longer it takes to find and clear a level the more powerful the enemy on that level will become. You should only start doing this once the party have been informed by NPCs that it is happening.

Doing it this way
- reduces dead time on trips back to town.
- allows the dreary part of dungeoneering, building safe havens, finding all the monsters on a level, to be outsourced to NPCs.
- allows the players to encounter NPCs who will feed them plot relevant clues in a natural way.
- gives the players a focus - find the level exit - rather than just letting them wander around exploring all the nooks and crannies.
- the players risk losing rewards if they take too long to find an exit.
- the platers will, eventually, find the system rigged against them if they waste time.

[gbaji]

That's the thing though, it isn't "low risk and low reward" its "zero risk and full reward". If it really were a tradeoff this wouldn't be (nearly so much of) an issue.

How is that the case though? The only way that can work (for the party) is if you, the GM, fail to have the world work in a rational way. If they just walk in, take out one room, then walk back out, expecting an easy fight and treasure from the room, then rinse and repeat over and over, then you are allowing this. Just... don't. Are the monsters in the next room just stupid or something? After the second or third "room" is wiped out, with the assailants disappearing, perhaps the residents of your megadungeon might just respond to that in some way? More traps. Collapsing tunnels so the attackers can't get to them (I mean, if you aren't also using "monsters are ranging out from the dungeon and attacking locals" as a pressure to speed up, then the NPCs have no reason to leave easy to traverse tunnels from the surface right to their doors, right)?

What would you do if you lived on a street, and three days ago, the house a few doors down was robbed and everyone within killed. Then two days ago, the house two doors down was hit in the exact same way. Then, last night, your next door neighbor's were wiped out? Would you just sit there in your house oblivious to the likelihood that your house is next? No. You wouldn't. So why are the denizens in this dungeon complex just sitting around waiting for their doom, like their entire reason for existing is to wait in a room until some PC adventurer comes along and kills them and takes their stuff?

Dungeon complexes should be extremely dangerous if not taken out quickly and quietly. It's why I suggested earlier creating "areas", that are logically/thematicallly linked, with the chambers within connected in some ecosystem sort of way. The exact layout is unimportant, but as long as you create this kind of structure, then it should force the players to have to handle an entire "neighborhood" all in one "pass". This doesn't mean that they have to fight everything at once, but they must continue through it until it's all "done" (which could mean different things, but should never mean "attack the first room; leave, then attack the second room; leave, etc"). Doing anything less will not decrease their risk, but increase it massively. Because, the next time they go to the same area, and attempt to move past the first room, they will find the entire set of denizens in that area, prepped, defending themselves, and ready for the PCs. And that should result in either a TPW, or very nearly so. You have to teach your players that the NPCs are not just waiting to die and hand over loot.

A well structured megadungeon should have different areas, with different "types" of creatures in them. And the ones in any one area should work together in some way. They live in proximity to eachother, they must have a means to live there, right? They must have food, resources, some reason not to just kill eachother, some presumed desire to protect the whole, etc. Taking out just one small subset of one of those areas, then leaving for a couple days to restock, then coming back is the *worst* and most stuplidly dangerous way for the PC's to deal with this.

The entrance to the dungeon isn't a door, it's a portal that only goes one way. Once you step in you're there until you find an exit.

Yup. That's the easy way to do this. There's a cave with 5 portals in it. You find a key, which opens one portal that transports you to another chamber with 5 portals (one of which you just came through) and one tunnel. None of your keys work on any of the portals, even the one you just came through. You are forced to travel down that tunnel which goes a ways and then enters into "dungeon 1". You will have to deal with a number of different rooms with different creatures in dungeon 1. At the farthest part, on the boss bad guy of the dungeon are two keys. One opens the portal you came through and takes you back to the starting cave. The other opens one of the other portals in that chamber, allowing you to explore dungeon number 2. You can now go back through the tunnel to the chamber, then exit out the entry portal back to the cave, and go back to town to rest and resupply. Next time you go to the cave, you again use your first key to enter the chamber. You still have your exit key, so you can leave any time you want, but now you use the key to the second portal, taking you to a room with the exit portal from there which you can't use. Once again, you are forced to travel down a long tunnel, explore "dungeon 2", find and defeat the boss, who provides two keys. One is the exit key to dungeon 2, the other the entrance key to dungeon 3. You go out, find yourself in the portal chamber, and can use the first exit key to go back to the starting cave, then travel back to town again. Riinse and repeat with dungeons 3, 4, and 5.

Then, just to make this a true "megadungeon". The last boss in dungeon 5, drops the usual dungeon exit key *and* the key to dungeon 6. That opens the second portal in the first cave, and leads to another chamber with 5 portals and a tunnel. Same deal. Repeat over and over. This very very simple design can support 25 different dungeons, all with their own isolated theme, creatures, monsters, ecosystem, etc. All requiring you to complete each dungeon in a single pass (can't leave until it's done). And, of course, the dungeons must be completed in order. And each one gets progressively more difficult. Um... This is pretty dumb layout, but is an easy way to get around "My players fight one fight and then leave" style adventuring.

You can, of course, create more complex interactions between the different dungeon areas within your "megadungeon", but the core point is to ensure that each section is "difficult, but quite possible", and that it require them to actually think about what they are doing, how they proceed, not waste time or resources, etc. You know, if that's what the goal is.

Personally, I'd probably create something that's more like a vast network of tunnels stretching all over the place, with various areas being connected sets of chambers where various denizens dwell. Probably also have some sets of creatures actively opposing others to create some additional aspects of things. That way the PCs can find paths through the tunnels (where aside from rare wandering creatures, or raiding creatures from one area to another, they're unlikely to run into much) to travel to different areas they wish to try exploring/attacking/whatever. Makes more more dramatic and "realistic" feel IMO. Also can make the underground portions *vast* (as in takes days of wandering around to find a new section, so no just skipping off back to town). Allow the players to find some "safe spaces" hidden here or there, and secret routes they may be able to use as short cuts.

But yeah. The one thing I absolutely do not allow is for PCs to play the hit and run game. Not for long. And not without some really good rationale for why their victims would allow them to get away with it. I've run very large underground dungeon adventures like this several times. And usually, it's some sort of "You need to find a way through to <some important thing you're looking for>", so "going back to town after ever fight", just isn't a viable option. Once you've had to travel a week under ground, sneak through the chamber with the poisionous sentient mushrooms, wander a few more days, then swim through an underground river tunnel thing, then negotiate for passage from a kingdom of goblins (which maybe required that you help them raid their orc enemies and steal their mcguffin back or something), travel more days, then run through the underground graveyard where the dead kept rising in infinite numbers, it's probably not really realistic for you to "go back to town to resupply" or something.

Kinda depends on what you're going for. Some adventures the players are regularly going to one town or another. But I run lots of adventures where they're wandering in the wilderness, or exploring ancient ruins, or some distant island or continent, or... vast underground realms. I've never had a problem figuring out how to "pace" the mechanical aspects of the game in terms of "making sure that the PCs are challenged". And the one common thread to all of them is having the PCs have to deal with "chunks" of content, which must be dealt with as a single whole. Maybe that involves negotiation. Maybe it involves solving riddles, or disarming traps. Maybe it's just having to defeat all the bad guys. But each has to be "solved" as a single component. And most of the time, if you initiate interaction with that content, and then leave without resolving it in some way, and then try to come back, either the thing isn't there anymore, or has become significantly more difficult to deal with. My game elements don't just sit there, statically, waiting for the PCs to take infinite time and attempts to deal with them.

[ahyangyi]

The problem is that if you make combat deadly enough that it is still a challenge with unlimited resources, then it is going to be so deadly that a little bad luck will also wipe the party even if played perfectly, especially if the players are under some form of time pressure.

Why is that wrong though?

Doesn't the resource management thing, attrition, time pressure, whatever thing you want to add to the game, essentially do the same (create an encounter where it's possible to TPK even if played perfectly) but jumps through more hoops?

As long as you think "bad luck TPK is bad", then of course everyone is going to be super risk-averse. Aren't these two things connected?

(again, I'm not describing how I'd run a megadungeon; I'm just examining the premise)

[Talakeal]

Why is that wrong though?

Doesn't the resource management thing, attrition, time pressure, whatever thing you want to add to the game, essentially do the same (create an encounter where it's possible to TPK even if played perfectly) but jumps through more hoops?

As long as you think "bad luck TPK is bad", then of course everyone is going to be super risk-averse. Aren't these two things connected?

(again, I'm not describing how I'd run a megadungeon; I'm just examining the premise)

I am not sure how my feelings as a GM affect my player's feelings one way or the other.

I don't really like random death in RPGs. PC death is fine if it is for a reason, but generally it requires inordinate stupidity to die outright in one of my games. I much prefer player skill to have an outcome on the rewards; playing skillfully means you get further, get more XP and treasure, and complete more storyline objectives. I also think that players are, ideally, heroes, which means putting themselves in danger.

Ideally the players would have enough sense to recognize actually being in danger and turn back once their resources are depleted rather than simply giving up at the first setback.


Honestly, I feel like it's not actually about danger, but about laziness. Players don't like to have to put thought into the game and so they take the easiest path, and then blame it on risk aversion. And at the same time, I want the players to have to put thought into the game so that playing skillfully affects the outcome.

[stoutstien]

I am not sure how my feelings as a GM affect my player's feelings one way or the other.

I don't really like random death in RPGs. PC death is fine if it is for a reason, but generally it requires inordinate stupidity to die outright in one of my games. I much prefer player skill to have an outcome on the rewards; playing skillfully means you get further, get more XP and treasure, and complete more storyline objectives. I also think that players are, ideally, heroes, which means putting themselves in danger.

Ideally the players would have enough sense to recognize actually being in danger and turn back once their resources are depleted rather than simply giving up at the first setback.


Honestly, I feel like it's not actually about danger, but about laziness. Players don't like to have to put thought into the game and so they take the easiest path, and then blame it on risk aversion. And at the same time, I want the players to have to put thought into the game so that playing skillfully affects the outcome.

Sounds like you failed to account for player motivation as much as the characters.

By taking "death" off the table barring multiple mistakes regarding "skill" application you are promoting this playstyle. Doesn't matter how big of a carrot you use if they don't like to eat vegetables.

[King of Nowhere]

The problem is that if you make combat deadly enough that it is still a challenge with unlimited resources, then it is going to be so deadly that a little bad luck will also wipe the party even if played perfectly, especially if the players are under some form of time pressure.

depends a lot on the setup.
i run deadly combat, but i never had a tpk, luck notwhitstanding. individual deaths, plenty; but that's the point of resurrection spells. the party being defeated and having to teleport away? happened many times. I do not pull punches; I even tried to cast dimensional anchor on them once (so rarely only because it uses up actions that the npcs generally cannot afford), but they managed to dispel.
the thing is, my players know that I run combat as a challenge, and they prepare accordingly. I make available single use spell tattoos, and I encourage everyone to get at least a dimension door as soon as they can afford it. Dispels too. So, while combat involves a high risk and bad luck or tactics can indeed result in a loss, the party has enough escape avenues that they always manage to get away.
that said, you apparently play at a lower level, with harder resurrection. not sure if you can really set up something like I did. and not sure whether your players would like it.

Ideally the players would have enough sense to recognize actually being in danger and turn back once their resources are depleted rather than simply giving up at the first setback.

isn't that what they are doing, though? at least from their perspective.
consider that they don't know what you do. you may know there is nothing but simple fights ahead, but they don't; they see that they used up some resources, they know from previous games that they can get hard random encounters, so they remove that risk by never adventuring at less than full power. it happened several times to me that I put in an easy fight as warm-up, and the players do not know it will be an easy fight and spend an hour planning for it.
seems to me like you'd like them to dance to the tune of a music they cannot hear.

also, it seems to me your frustration comes from wanting to recreate scenarios like movies or videogames. like the outmatched hero that pulls through by the barest of margins, and the party that keeps going forward until it's almost dead. but neither can work, because tabletop gaming is a different medium. in a movie you control the plot and the outcome of the actions, so you can build a situation where the hero needs to roll high and succeed. in a videogame you can decide, to keep things from getting boring, to advance while short in spells; because you can reload the game if it goes poorly.
in tabletop you have neither luxury. but you can have your players be cunning heroes planning and using their resources in the best way, something you'll never see in movies.

[Quertus]

Oh, I know - this would be another good opportunity for the "Demigods of Adventuring", who are on paper strong enough to clear 3 or 4 levels per long rest.

Looks like I am just going to be using my own Heart of Darkness system

That's pretty terrible for a megadungeon, but at least, if you let them rest at will, you can show the townsfolk dying of old age, until the PCs do so, too.

So I think what I am going to do based on this thread is have the dungeon restock with tougher monsters over time, but tie progression to actually pushing ahead (whether that is mapping, finding waypoints, killing "boss" monsters, or finding treasure I haven't decided yet) so that dragging your feet makes things harder, not easier.

Why would you respond to your players saying "we want things to be easier" by making things harder? That's not good GMing. You should choose a different style of carrot/stick.

Also, why would the dungeon restock with tougher monsters over time? That doesn't make much sense to me.

I am actually more used to White Wolf systems (or my own Heart of Darkness system) where resources aren't tied to the daily rest cycle like D&D, and it makes resource management much simpler.

(Mages use quintessence as a resource, which is on a weekly recharge btw).

Of course, in those games most of the time when there is an action heavy "adventure" it is very time sensitive.

Using those systems for a hex-crawl / megadungeon is even worse as, rather than a 15 minute work day, you are getting a 15 minute work month, and years of time will pass in setting by before the PCs actually accomplish anything.

Yes, Mages can use Quintessence... but they don't actually need it, except to power Devices (whatever those are called (darn senility)).

But my point was, hand me a megadungeon, and let me build a Dark Ages style party that never needs to rest, and we'll finish the dungeon in 1 delve. Or, you know, could, if only someone would hold the sun out of the sky.

My point is, if you remove resource attrition as a consideration, it removes the impetus to play the game in the unfun way you seem to want to avoid.

I don't know though, I still feel like it could backfire, as during my hex-crawl game the more wandering monsters they encountered the more often the players retreated town, and would only actualy deign to explore a dungeon or other site based adventure if they managed to get to it in more or less perfect condition, and still bailed out at the first opportunity.

Uh, yeah, more and more powerful wandering monsters has the logical consequence of the PCs doing less per run, not more. If you want to encourage the PCs to do more per run, you want fewer and weaker random encounters, or to remove such altogether.

That has always come across to me as a total mood killer.

It's hard for me to take the dungeon seriously as mysterious and dangerous when people are set up outside trying to make a quick buck. It also kills any sense of danger if the guards are there to keep people out instead of keeping the monsters in (heck, if they are even capable of keeping the monsters in!) or that the PCs going in is a burden on the community rather than potentially saving their lives / homes.

But you're not playing the game, your players are. So it's their mood you need to focus on. And their mood might well be encouraged towards "doing more with each run" - you know, that thing you inexplicably seem to want - if you place guards charging for entrance to the dungeon at the doors.

You can frame it about control, but it isn't, it's just fundamental game design though. Games should reward skill and have risks and consequences.

The guy who takes 10 years to do a job that could have been done in one afternoon if they were willing to take risks is not really a hero IC, and a game that drags on without any actual excitement or need for thought is less a game and more of a chore OOC.

If that risk is "destruction of the world", then the moron who didn't take 10 years, and destroyed the world in an afternoon, is the true villain. Unless the world is terrible, and ought to be destroyed, of course.

And... you should probably have an OOC conversation with your players, and ask them how they feel about this, and what would best motivate them to play the game in a fun way. Personally, with all the horrible deaths your parties have suffered, I think, if I were a player at your table, I'd vote for "the only way out of the dungeon is to die", so that, every session, the PCs adventure until they hit a TPK. That would help everyone get an accurate understanding of the danger levels involved.

If your table had slightly more sane individuals, I think I'd vote for "we have the power to reset each level of the dungeon." So we try to clear the first level, fail, retreat, and reset the level, try again next long rest. This makes each layer a puzzle (even if a trivial one) of how to use resources efficiently to defeat the level in 1 run. Perhaps a temple of Time or something, where the actual mechanic is, each level automatically resets each night, caught in an endless loop, and we're going level by level, finding the nexus to undo the curse or something.

That requires some pretty serious contrivances.

Food is dirt cheap and readily available compared to most of their equipment, and this requires them to be repeatedly trapped in dungeons.

Most game systems have relatively simple magic that either conjures food or allows people to go without it.

It can be done, but it is going to require a lot of house rules and contrived situations, and I am not sure I want to go to the much work for something that is likely to just piss the players off and ruin everyone's immersion even if done really well.

Paying for food and lodging and dungeon entrance, as I present it, isn't supposed to be important, it's just a subtle nudge to make the players want to do as much as possible on each run. It's getting them to grow their own carrots. If they want.

Because with infinite resources you can't actually lose combat, so you don't have to care.

Sure you can. Timmy can get pushed down a well, the village can be burned to the ground, whatever.

I remember fights in 4E boiled down to "everyone use their daily, everyone use their encounter powers, then chip away using your utility powers until the things finally fall down, and then take a rest." It was certainly the most boring combat I have ever encountered in a game except maybe Age of Conan.

The problem is that if you make combat deadly enough that it is still a challenge with unlimited resources, then it is going to be so deadly that a little bad luck will also wipe the party even if played perfectly, especially if the players are under some form of time pressure.

Don't make it deadly - make it losable. And then let them reset time after they've lost, and try again next session.

That's the thing though, it isn't "low risk and low reward" its "zero risk and full reward". If it really were a tradeoff this wouldn't be (nearly so much of) an issue.

OK, and? What's your hangup with risk? IF my doctor told me there were two operations, one of which was high risk, high reward, the other of which carried no risk and offered the same reward, which do you think I'd choose?

Oh no, no encounters on the way out!

That was basically the catalyst for the poopshow last time; they got bushwacked by a tough random encounter on the way back from the dungeon, and from that point on it was utter paranoia and refusing to take risks or push on in any context.


The only way out is through is an interesting idea, but its really hard to pull of narratively except on rare occasions.

The dungeon is in a time loop, and resets every sunrise / sunset / moonrise / whatever? Disable each time nexus to finally put to rest an area? Still allows retreats, but requires a big push to clear.

Oh, it's inverse Re:Zero, the Megadungeon.

Why is that wrong though?

Doesn't the resource management thing, attrition, time pressure, whatever thing you want to add to the game, essentially do the same (create an encounter where it's possible to TPK even if played perfectly) but jumps through more hoops?

As long as you think "bad luck TPK is bad", then of course everyone is going to be super risk-averse. Aren't these two things connected?

(again, I'm not describing how I'd run a megadungeon; I'm just examining the premise)

Yeah, that's why I'd suggest carrots / sticks that don't involve increased risk of TPK, like paying guards entrance fees, or time-looped dungeons. Also, ones that are more "carrot seeds" that plant the seeds that might grow into carrot-shaped motivations inside the players, rather than being a direct external factor. "I want to explore more so that the guards take less of a percentage of my profits" rather than "the GM is hitting me upside the head with this stick".

Honestly, I feel like it's not actually about danger, but about laziness. Players don't like to have to put thought into the game and so they take the easiest path, and then blame it on risk aversion. And at the same time, I want the players to have to put thought into the game so that playing skillfully affects the outcome.

Um, I'm not sure what to tell you here. I think that this is very important, yes, that how smartly the PCs / players approach things should definitely have an impact. But... with your players? You've almost got to calibrate it to my "backstabbing idiots vs the bees" example for CaW vs CaS as the default victory condition, and let them have better victories for showing the survival instincts of a lemming, let alone the brainpower of a 7-year-old, or actual adventurer competence.

Build the game for the players you have, not the players that exist outside Bizarro World.

I mean, I wasn't thinking about your table when I made that example (I've had more than my fair share of terrible players (and terrible GMs) in my time), but maybe you should. Maybe you should build a game that can be beaten without TPK by the idiots in that example, and design your game with "degrees of success", such that more intelligent action is rewarded - not by success or survival, but by even better rewards.

Like... hmmm... the party should, if played competently (ie, to your usual metrics) be able to clear 2 layers, fix 2 time loop nexus points. Fixing 1 stops that level / area from looping and resetting, yes, but each nexus provides a number of Quintessence equal to the number of nexuses that have been fixed tonight. So the 1st nexus gives 1, the second in 1 run gives 2, the 3rd gives 3, etc. Start a new run, and the next Nexus only provides 1 Quintessence.

Make the Quintessence tied, not to their power, but to... something different. Like, they get to spend it to upgrade the town, or to make changes to your system (adding classes / schools of magic / weapon styles, whatever) for future games.

[King of Nowhere]

But you're not playing the game, your players are. So it's their mood you need to focus on.

I have to stop for a tangent here to heartily disagree.
as a dm, I play the game too. nobody is paying me, I'm there to have fun, same like everyone else at the table. So how I want to play matters as much as how the players want to play; more, because I am also putting in all the extra effort. The dm is not supposed to sacrifice his wishes to the players.
unless they are actually paying him, that is.

That requires some pretty serious contrivances.

I missed the irony of that earlier, but I can point it out now.
so there is some huge underground structure, and it was somehow abandoned and never resettled, and it somehow got filled with monsters, and somehow it is filled with treasure that nobody else took before, and the monsters are casually all just strong enough to be level-appropriate for the level the characters happen to be at.
Once you accept that premise, how can you complain about contrived coincidences?