Tips on Running the Worlds Largest Dungeon, as a Dungeon Master?

[silverwolfer]

This is a general question for advice towards those that have ran it before. The worlds largest dungeon, I know is a battle of stamina and keeping players interest in the long term.

Does anyone here have any advice

[Murg]

I have never run it myself, though I do own it.

This thread has a lot of good info so far as what your players will need to survive:

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=218343

If I was DM I would probably tell the players this info before character generation.

The key to maintaining player interest in any massive hack'n'slash dungeon crawl is to break up the monotony with things other than hack'n'slash dungeon crawling. When I was DMing book 2 of the Night Below campaign I ran into this problem of player burnout after lots of hack'nslash. My solution was to introduce lots of homebrew roleplaying-heavy sidequests between every big hackfest. This worked very well and I still look back fondly on that campaign.

Now in WLD there is a story reason of why the players, once they enter the dungeon can't get out. So it maybe be harder to come up with things to break up the hackfests. If worst comes to worst you may just want to ignore that plot point of not being able to leave the dungeon.

[Gavinfoxx]

WLD really kinda sucks in several quite profound ways... I have a big series of questions to ask GMs / For players to ask GMs / For groups to figure out and agree on, whenever someone says 'I am playing / GMing a WLD game!'


Which houserules does the GM enforce or not for WLD? Everyone should be on the same page regarding these things, and it should all be out in the open, before the players even think of making their characters!

1.) For characters that can invest resources in 'burrowing', 'earthgliding', and 'burrowing through stone' (there are several ways to do this, including Wild Shaping into a Thoqqua, for example, which specifically also leaves a usable tunnnel...), are the use of their abilities nerfed? Are inner room walls impervious as *well as* the obviously impervious outer walls? IE, will player characters sometimes be able to scout or bypass rooms in this way?

2.) For characters who invest in being able to do things with crafting materials, will the DM be using the standard lack of crafting supplies in this dungeon? Or will supplies be found, or will you be able to convert GP value in items to generic crafting supplies at a particular ratio with a particular amount of time?

3.) For characters who can replace animal companions or such things via summoning them, either a few times a day or via a 24 hour ritual, will those abilities work as advertised? What if characters want to release your existing animal companion and summon a new one? What about the magical paladin pokeball-mounts? Do those work normally?

4.) For characters that invest in short range teleports, or becoming ethereal or intangible, or things like that, do those work as advertised? At least for interior areas?

5.) For characters that expect to be able to Take 10 or Take 20 on skills, do those work as in the PHB? Or is that nerfed, as the dungeon suggests? If you can't search things reliably, after all, you don't end up at the more interesting rooms...

6.) For characters that invest in having access to, say, an Extended Rope Trick at level 5, does that work as advertised, to get access to a safe space? What are your rulings on Extradimensional or nondimensional spaces working in the dungeon? What if a Wizard wants to actually scribe scrolls, will the DM be hand-waving the exotic inks necessary to do so? Maybe just subtract a GP worth of value of loot to do this? What if an Easy Bake Wizard (it's a named build using a few combinations of techniques) wants to spend some time scribing scrolls to his brain by burning incenses, will those be placed as treasure?

7.) Will the DM be making intelligent adjustments to the 'security' of rooms or wandering monster based issues based on intelligent barricading techniques? Will the DM be enforcing the 'most locations are very dangerous and have hourly wandering monster rolls' rule? What if the party attempts to barricade themselves in one of the rooms that is NOT specifically marked as an obvious saferoom?

8.) Will the DM be changing the treasure of the module? Most of the treasure of the module is supposedly completely useless -- ie, 'art', or 'not equipment' sorts of things, or things that doesn't actually HELP, or things too large to be taken, and thus doesn't actually help the party. Alternately, is the DM relaxing the restrictions on the feat 'Ancestral Relic', ie, it's the only real way to appropriately sacrifice the crappy treasure (like a huge amount of material you can't change to useful gear because it's too big) to make useful equipment, maybe give it out as a bonus feat or not make it 'good aligned only'? Is this feat suggested or appropriate for this particular campaign of World's Largest Dungeon? For example, have everyone start out with an Ancestral Relic of an item that takes up one of their item slots, and let them upgrade that item as a custom wondrous item, including the ability to combine with other like-slotted wondrous items and to cast spells as a custom wondrous item?

9.) The module suggests completely banning the entire category of 'battlefield control' spells from the game, and mentions that they will not be placed in the game. Typically, a few pages later, a Web scroll is given out as treasure. Are there any house rules on battlefield control spells?

10.) For characters that want to do summons in general, with 'summoning' spells not actually acting like calling spells (ie, summoning spells don't summon an actual creature from somewhere, they instead summon a mystical 'genericized' example of the creature type in question), will those summoning spells work as normal, or will they be nerfed as the module says?

11.) To lower the mind-crushing banality and the sheer quantity of empty rooms and padding in the dungeon, and increase the rate at which the group can get to interesting things, will the GM be asking everyone for the heuristics that they have when they are going around in hallways, searching 'filler' rooms, or going through places with nothing interesting in them, and their search techniques both in and out of rooms, and then deciding which rooms they get to based on that?

That linked thread has an earlier example of my list of questions.

[silverwolfer]

mmm very helpful thank you, still open to other suggestions.

[Gavinfoxx]

Well.

What answers are you leaning to for those questions? I'd like to hear what you are thinking of!

[animewatcha]

I know nothing of this, but I see 'largest dungeon' and think of Dungeoncrasher ACF from dungeonscape (?). Might wanna restrict/ban it, or there may be A LOT of 'impromptu shortcuts' you would have to answer for.

[Gavinfoxx]

I know nothing of this, but I see 'largest dungeon' and think of Dungeoncrasher ACF from dungeonscape (?). Might wanna restrict/ban it, or there may be A LOT of 'impromptu shortcuts' you would have to answer for.

I think he should allow some types of impromptu shortcuts. Seriously! Lots of my questions asked about that sort of thing (there are other ways of making impromptu shortcuts, of course). Whether Shock Trooper just lets you deal hundreds of damage to a wall, or whether you can burrow through stone, or whether you can make your weapon count as adamantine for purposes of overcoming hardness or DR, or whether you get an at-will acid or sonic attack that works well against solid objects...

[animewatcha]

Some types sure. Just that having locked doors/trapped hallways being solved by 'free' methods ( never underestimate the creativity of players ) nearly every time is more 'resource friendly' then spells, etc.