Just found this site. (I’ve been avoiding reddit lately.) Now I’ve got an incentive to make D&D memes again. Migrating my old stuff gradually while I come up with new ideas.
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Megadungeons are a bit of a relic from previous editions, when mapping was a large part of the experience. If you’re going to run one, I recommend using B/X or even OD&D and perhaps scaling down a bit - Old megadungeons were made when entire college dorms played in a single campaign, and were meant to grind down party resources.
Mega-dungeons are great. I’m running one now and I basically have zero prep, I made the dungeon and just see where they go. They go in the dungeon and explore, get into some trouble and grab some loot. It’s honestly so nice to have them dungeon crawling. My last game I was juggling plot lines across 5 cities and making custom content constantly in prep. I was burning out between 5e and building content every week.
5e Undermountain is a very poor megadungeon.
It’s also great for a sandbox game, even if it’s not focused on the dungeon. Having a default option really helps get things moving, or to still have a session if you don’t have everyone around (or if you want an open table).
I remember playing Keep on the Borderlands back in the 70’s. I think I might have been one of the very few at the time that questioned thee necessity of these giant and seeming pointless gauntlet style dungeons. Was so fun playing back then, but man… the logic you had to suspend just to move forward three steps. 99.9% of every dungeon was entirely pointless. But by god they were so fun!
We would try to create a map, then be like nope and go outside again
I’m the party wizard/necromancer/note taker and sometimes I do make maps.
Heavy Spoilers for floor 9.
We got the initial map image from the DM. This is annotated and updated.Did you annotate it, or are these the DMs notes?
We got the map from the “Headmaster”. Anything in the font for most of the room labels (Dining Hall, Library, Private Chambers, etc…) were already there.
Any rooms or halls on the far side of a secret door and any labels in a smaller font were my annotations.
Where did you find this map‽ that’s so much more than the first level of DotMM. Is this an old version of Undermountain?
Yeah. This is the 4e version of the 1st floor map. The 5e version is only a small corner of this, but I exaggerated a bit for the meme.
I refuse to believe anyone actually ran this module.
I’m in the middle of the 5e version at the moment. We’re level 11 and have reached floor 9 so far. We started December 1st of 2022 and play at least once a week.
Mind blowing. It feels far better suited for something like Shadowdark or OSE than 5e; just totally out of place with 5e’s themes. How are you enjoying it?
Loving it so far. I haven’t had a good old fashioned dungeon crawl for quite some time. Megadungeon in 5e does throw me off occasionally, but we’re doing pretty well. Only one PC died so far, but the druid/cleric revivified him before it stuck.
I adore classic dungeon crawls & this looks like a blast. My group really dislikes mega dungeons…or really any dungeon… they’re weird people but they’re my weird people <3.
My group really dislikes mega dungeons…or really any dungeon…
Dungeons and Dragons
they’re weird people
Your aren’t wrong.
I kid. Honestly, my group is super role-playing heavy and doesn’t tend to gravitate towards dungeons either. We like to joke that we play the game wrong because in the game world I am running their are no dragons either, so we really don’t do Dungeons OR Dragons.
Update: We finished the campaign last night on Friday the 13th (9/13/24). We all got out alive, with the majority of our loot, from the 23rd level, at level 19 (334411 XP 😁), but opted not to fight Halaster in the condition we were in.
I’ve wanted to run The World’s Largest Dungeon ever since I saw a blog post about it on a webcomic site. I’ve bought and read through it a few times, and stolen chunks of it as dungeons in other games.
You should check out the halls of Arden vul it’s massive. There’s a let’s play on YouTube right now that is epic. Some of the best examples of old school play out there.
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtBYin1uOBmCs1hSQQqxesYPbod7Y5Cfq
I loved Dungeon Keeper so much.
