Worlds Largest Dungeon

[koldstare]

Has anybody else seen this dungeon? 1600 encounters and all of the monsters in the monster manual...
http://cgi.ebay.com/Worlds-Largest-D...sid=p1638.m124

whats the largest/longest dungeon you have ever run or played?

[Szilard]

My friend has that, the book is literally 2 or 3 inches thick!

[senrath]

That book scares me. And I think the longest I've ever been in was about 20 or so encounters, spread out over, if I remember correctly, about 10 square miles.

[Flickerdart]

Wow...6 pounds of dungeony goodness. 1000 pages...that's impressive.

Now if the adventure covered the entire level-up from 1 to 20...that'd be neat. Same for letting certain-level players start at different places if the earlier challenges are too easy.

And "all the monsters in the manual" also means no human enemies, then? And I'd like to see how they do the aquatic monsters...

[senrath]

Wow...6 pounds of dungeony goodness. 1000 pages...that's impressive.

Now if the adventure covered the entire level-up from 1 to 20...that'd be neat. Same for letting certain-level players start at different places if the earlier challenges are too easy.

And "all the monsters in the manual" also means no human enemies, then? And I'd like to see how they do the aquatic monsters...

To quote the sales page:

This colossal epic will take characters from neophyte dungeon crawling all the way to epic levels.

So it'll probably either start at level 1 or really low.

[koldstare]

it said it started at level 1 and that if played in its entirety takes Two Years of real time to play through. Also that you can not leave until the dungeon is completed due to a 1 way force effect at the entrance

[Prometheus]

I'd really like to know whether or not that has anything besides combat encounters and whether or not it is any good.

I actually don't tend to use many dungeon encounters, when I do, they are seldom deeper than three floors or wider than five rooms (think Zelda dungeon size as a serious upper bound).

But this gets me thinking. How cool would it be for the boards to collectively make a giant dungeon? Where one person leaves off, the next person picks up. It could be a giant paint file, or series of connected paint files. Whose interested?

[koldstare]

But this gets me thinking. How cool would it be for the boards to collectively make a giant dungeon? Where one person leaves off, the next person picks up. It could be a giant paint file, or series of connected paint files. Whose interested?

I know I'm new to the boards but i would definitely be in

[Corsec1337]

I was actully thumbing through it last night. Friend of mine is about to put it up on Ebay with some special maps that came out with it when it was first sold.

It has some interesting encounters in it and also has some roleplaying. The book is very... very long. The biggest flaw is that there isn't an appendix that tells you where what is. Like big imporant named people. There is a Wizard that has a tarrasque as a mount in the dungeon though... That should tell you how difficult it can be.

[SamTheCleric]

Yeah, and that tarrasque isnt the final encounter. Seriously.

I believe... *dont read if you're gonna play it*

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The dungeon is an extradimensional prison for some god-like being... and it's beginning to fracture... Been a while since I thumbed through it.

[KillianHawkeye]

Woah, a Wizard riding the Tarrasque?! WTF

I guess that solves all the talk about the Tarrasque being weak for a CR 20. Just stick a Wizard on him!

[Kizara]

Anyone actually run it?

I dunno, but it sounds like fun to me.

[Chronos]

Myself, I have doubts about it. Including every single monster in the Monster Manual? That sounds uncomfortably like the Library of Borges, which contains every book possible, and therefore no information at all. A dungeon (or library) is defined as much by what isn't in it as what is, and it takes no creativity at all to just smoosh everything together.

And things like the "One way forcefield that you absolutely can't get back out of, no, not even if you do that" smack of railroading. If I'm going to get railroaded by a DM, I'd prefer to at least have some real storyline to go with it, not just the ultimate hack-and-slash.

[Gralamin]

Myself, I have doubts about it. Including every single monster in the Monster Manual? That sounds uncomfortably like the Library of Borges, which contains every book possible, and therefore no information at all. A dungeon (or library) is defined as much by what isn't in it as what is, and it takes no creativity at all to just smoosh everything together.

And things like the "One way forcefield that you absolutely can't get back out of, no, not even if you do that" smack of railroading. If I'm going to get railroaded by a DM, I'd prefer to at least have some real storyline to go with it, not just the ultimate hack-and-slash.

It doesn't have every monster in the manual, due to OGL restrictions.
And there is some storyline, they just don't like people leaving the dungeon.

[Hadrian_Emrys]

The trick, I imagine, is the problem of longevity combined with entirely random WBL. I'm guessing that there are few shops and no reliable means by which to hold onto a ton of loot. Sounds to me like an ideal setting to use a lot of necropolitans and warforged unless you devote SOME skill or spells towards feeding yourself and keeping your fluid intake up.

[Douglas]

And things like the "One way forcefield that you absolutely can't get back out of, no, not even if you do that" smack of railroading. If I'm going to get railroaded by a DM, I'd prefer to at least have some real storyline to go with it, not just the ultimate hack-and-slash.

Well, presumably if you managed to get back to that point after gaining 10 levels, you might be able to disintegrate it or something. You're only level 1 when you pass that point originally, though, and I imagine it would be a rather long trek back (if it's even possible) after you've gone through enough of it to gain that much xp.

I've gone through a few encounters in the very beginning on these boards once. The game fell apart due to inactivity and/or a disappearing DM, I don't remember which.

[koldstare]

Oh, i guess all monsters in the SRD then. If it is going to last a couple of years it should have at least a little story. Otherwise why not just roll random encounters all day and kill everything that way.

[Yahzi]

That sounds uncomfortably like the Library of Borges, which contains every book possible, and therefore no information at all.

An excellent observation. I agree that the WLD probably contains an amount of fun inversely proportional to its amount of MM completeness.

[Chronos]

Well, presumably if you managed to get back to that point after gaining 10 levels, you might be able to disintegrate it or something. You're only level 1 when you pass that point originally, though, and I imagine it would be a rather long trek back (if it's even possible) after you've gone through enough of it to gain that much xp.

No trek at all, if you have teleportation spells. Unless, of course, there's some Macguffin which prevents them from working, too, in which case I stand by my railroading comment.

[Chronicled]

No trek at all, if you have teleportation spells. Unless, of course, there's some Macguffin which prevents them from working, too, in which case I stand by my railroading comment.

Teleportation and summoning spells don't work in the dungeon since it was made to keep demons/devils/etc inside.

[Tsotha-lanti]

Myself, I have doubts about it. Including every single monster in the Monster Manual? That sounds uncomfortably like the Library of Borges, which contains every book possible, and therefore no information at all. A dungeon (or library) is defined as much by what isn't in it as what is, and it takes no creativity at all to just smoosh everything together.

Yeah. At least the Undermountain has themed levels.

[Ka'ladun]

Was playing in this a few days ago. There were 6 of us, all starting at level 4. It seemed a fairly generic dungeon crawl, although there were a few cool things like the magic item eating altar. Also, I don't know if it's part of the dungeon or if the DMs made it up;

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there were two epic level casters (a level 27 wizard and level 35 warlock if I recall) that were controlling everything and put us in a room with several petrifying monsters (basilisk, gorgon, etc.) The session ended after about 6 hours with the rogue exploding and the rest getting captured for their experiments

[Bavarian itP]

it takes no creativity at all to just smoosh everything together.

Where's the problem? D&D is the world's best-selling RPG exactly because it takes no creativity to make a funny adventure.

[Saph]

We've been playing through the World's Largest Dungeon for about a year. Gone from level 1 to level 12.

It can be pretty fun, if claustrophobic. There are LOTS of traps and some sections of the dungeon are best navigated by the principle "don't touch anything, not even the floor".

Encounters tend to be a bit of a crapshoot. We often run into encounters that are incredibly easy, and often run into encounters that are incredibly hard. Partly this is because the monsters have a tendency to cooperate - you alert the goblin guards on one level, they ring the alarm, and 200+ goblin warriors along with commanders and spellcaster support come looking for you.

Equipment is incredibly hard to come by. It's normally completely random what magic items you get. Warriors are reasonably well-served, since there are plenty of weapons, but don't expect anything unusual or that isn't in the DMG.

The dungeon tends towards heavy combat, with occasional negotiations. There aren't any normal people to interact with and most of your time will probably be taken up with exploration or huge battles. That said, some of the huge battles can be really fun. In the final battle in our current level that we've just completed, we ended up fighting:

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• 2 gelatinous cubes
• 1 ochre jelly
• 4 flesh golems
• 4 more flesh golems
• 4 enhanced flesh golems, along with a drider and a mage
• An infinite horde of construct zombies, with four driders providing spellcasting support
• 2 more flesh golems
• A spellcaster capable of using 7th-level spells
• The infinite horde of construct zombies, again
• A drider warlord with seven attacks per round
• A group of eight flesh golems, another group of six flesh golems, a high-level drider spellcaster, a medium-level drider spellcaster, two Gargantuan-sized spider constructs, and the infinite horde of construct zombies one more time. Luckily we had some backup for the last one.

. . . all within the space of a couple of hours. The whole thing took two months to play out, and I went from being 10th-level to 12th-level just from the one day's fighting.

It's probably a good choice if you like Gygaxian-style dungeons, and if your DM doesn't have time to homebrew a full campaign but you want something that'll last - the book cost our DM as much as a couple of normal sourcebooks, and it's kept us occupied for a year. Good value for money. :)

- Saph

[Glawackus]

Maybe not quite on-topic for this forum, but does anyone know if there are currently any online games of this being run? I'm kind of curious to see just what this whole thing is like.

[senrath]

Maybe not quite on-topic for this forum, but does anyone know if there are currently any online games of this being run? I'm kind of curious to see just what this whole thing is like.

Ye gods, that would be scary. Considering how long it takes to run this dungeon, and how much longer online games usually take...*twitch*

[Glawackus]

Ye gods, that would be scary. Considering how long it takes to run this dungeon, and how much longer online games usually take...*twitch*

But why climb Everest? Because it is there.

[senrath]

But why climb Everest? Because it is there.

Well, I'd play it, if I could be guaranteed a group of people who wouldn't quit after the first couple of months.

[Adumbration]

Although I haven't yet played a PBP game, I probably would join that game. Sounds like fun.

[Sampi]

I have been playing it with my group for two and a half years now. We play biweekly, and we've gotten about halfway. The average character level is 15 now, and we take turns GM'ing.

It can be fun.

It is not written very well.

It is edited very poorly.

But we will get ourselves through it.

The best bit? Immortal Fiendish Half-Dragon Gibbering Mouther. Don't ask.