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I suppose the first megadungeon I played was The Final Fantasy Legend.
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Nov 26, 2020 23:04
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| # ¿ May 10, 2024 00:12 |
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One of the earliest megadungeons in literature, by my reckoning, is Margaret St. Clair's Sign of the Labrys, which was listed in Appendix N. It's a post-apocalyptic novel where most of the population has been killed by fungal plagues. The survivors live in enormous underground bunkers that the US government made in anticipation of nuclear war. The strangest thing about it is that it's a post-apocalypse without scarcity. The gummint also made huge stocks of preserved rations, disposable clothing, etc. so when people need something, they just walk into a warehouse and take it. The protagonist works in a warehouse pointlessly shifting boxes around, just to have something to do. (The only actually necessary work is bulldozing corpses into mass graves.) There's little violence--people avoid each other out of fear of the plague, and because humans have lost their instinct to be social animals. Of course, there are lots of stories about impossibly huge subterranean monster lairs, from pulp fiction all the way back to mythology. But in this novel they actually talk about the environment having levels, and accessing new and undiscovered levels through hidden chutes and shafts. There are also some monsters created by mutations and experiments--mostly slime molds, which probably had some inspiration on D&D oozes. (The most interesting one feeds on CO2 in an endothermic reaction, and gives off some compound that causes hallucinations. So if you get close to it, you'll trip balls and stumble around until you freeze to death.) Another influence from Appendix N that I could mention is Mount Voormithadreth from Clark Ashton Smith's Hyperborea stories. That one wasn't mentioned in Appendix N, though.
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Dec 1, 2020 17:27
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It's a bit near the back of the AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide that lists some influences on D&D. It includes some authors you'd expect--Howard, Tolkien, Vance, Anderson--and some that are practically forgotten today. For example, Abraham Merritt received special mention on the shortlist of the most influential authors.
Halloween Jack fucked around with this message at 20:16 on Dec 1, 2020 |
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Dec 1, 2020 20:14
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Jon Joe posted:I think these can make for really interesting encounter and level design, but they're really easy to do wrong. In 5e, the system for my megadungeon, traps are done -really- wrong. It's a tactical system wherein out of nowhere, in the middle of a player's turn, they can get screwed out of their strategy if they didn't spot a trap. This feels bad for the player and gives them no room to react.
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Jan 6, 2021 19:07
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aldantefax posted:I think in D&D's panoply of editions traps were one of two things: If you're playing a fighter and you get a few levels and some good armor, tooling around the 1st or 2nd dungeon level starts to become a predictable grind more like a CRPG--you can survive several combat encounters and then start looking for the exit. Except for traps. Traps bypass the to-hit mechanic and just gently caress you up with a lot of damage.
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Jan 13, 2021 18:54
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aldantefax posted:I think though that when it comes down to "traps", they really are more "tricks" because the default assumption is that players will find a way to mitigate or circumvent it in order to make forward progress. It is rare that you see in adventure design a trap that not only prevents forward progress but also eliminates some or all of the players unless it's trying to make a point like the death beam at the start of Tomb of Horrors (and that had a very specific meeting by Gygax).
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Jan 14, 2021 05:43
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| # ¿ May 10, 2024 00:12 |
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If the PCs are actively seeking out things that aren't murderhoboing, it's a blessing. It sounds like you need to put something they've just gotta have down in the dungeon.
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Jan 24, 2022 16:02
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