World's Largest Dungeon

[Falontani]

As always, if you are a player of mine you shouldn't be reading.

I love the concept of this megadungeon. I have just recently begun running my players through it at it's fullest.

Group set up (fairly large)

1. Venerable DWK Factotum (going trapsmith)
2. Gnome Artificer.. thing (I think he said he was taking warlock levels and binder levels?)
3. Krinth Shadowcaster (with the author's fixes)
4. Elven Fighter (using my homebrew; every odd level starting at 3 it will get one Ex Transmutation spell that it may cast 1/day targeting only herself, duration is always 1 round/level)
5. Neraph Flavored Soul
6. Duskling Totemist
7. Spellscale Sorcerer

A large party to be sure.
I have all 3.0 and 3.5 books available for use
the party alignment is roughly Neutral


Now the part that I am coming to the Playground for: The dungeon only makes use of the Player's Handbook, Monster Manual, and the Dungeon Master's Guide.
This monstrosity of a dungeon is over 900 pages long, and modifying even a single section is a large amount of work for a single individual. I am picking this dungeon up as I have much less time to work on my own campaign (where nearly every encounter is handcrafted)
I would like to expand the dungeon to include elements from more than just the core 3. I would like creatures that have taken class levels to not just take fighter levels. I would like to add in some of the really cool creatures from outside of the monster manual, like the Angel of Decay (a truly iconic encounter) or any number of other awesome creatures that are hidden through the nearly 100 3.0 and 3.5 books (probably more than that if I am missing some, and I am sure I am). I would like the lich to have more than just player's handbook spells. I want this dungeon to truly feel epic and grand.

TLDR: Giants could you help me add more flavor to this dungeon, spice things up, and overhaul the World's Largest Dungeon?

[Mike Miller]

If you haven't read through the module, then you don't truly understand what you are asking of people. If you have read through the module, then you should understand that the amount of work to change enough of what is in there to make it interesting is more work than it is worth.

I have a group now that is roughly level 12-13 and they've gone through about half of the dungeon. I try to add things as you are suggesting where applicable. However, it is a lot of work. To simply keep ahead of things and reduce repetitive encounters and traps is a lot of work. Adding new and interesting things on top of it is a lot more.

An easier goal is to find certain classes or monsters that you want included. Then add the classes to whatever enemies you think it fits well with and replace repetitive encounters with the monsters you like. There is simply too much megadungeon here to be doing a complete overhaul. It would be easier and faster to make your own megadungeon than to edit this monstrosity. This is coming from a DM who has basically edited 1/2 of the dungeon so far, too. The module is practically unusable as a campaign in its published form. It is almost all combat and lacks cohesive bonds between regions.

If you really want to run this thing as a full campaign, you would be better off coming up with an overall plot (preferably plots) that can spill over into various regions. The PCs need encouragement to go further. Trying to handcraft every encounter will burn you out fast. Find simple edits you can make.

[Zombulian]

The real question is, is it a chocolate or strawberry soul?

[Uncle Pine]

That is... quite the query. I believe a more sensible approach would be to identify some encounters you believe are too vanilla, detail them for those who don't have access to the book, and then either make a thread for each of those trying to spice them up or just continue here asking one at a time. For example: a player of mine is currently DMing a module for the first time and last session the rest of us went through a room which had a statue in it with a trap that summoned a Large fire elemental which attacked us. As a woodling human artificer I wasn't too thrilled to fight a living flame, but in the end we dispatched it without much difficulty. That said, a single fire elemental (probably) straight out of MM isn't that exciting in a game where all 3.5e books are open, so if my player was you and planned to overhaul this encounter he could've made a thread named "How to spice up a hot boy?" describing the trap, the situation the group was in and its composition to make a truly epic dungeon room.

As a side note, you may want to decide whether or not dragonwrought kobolds grow humongous as they gain class levels at your table, as it may affect your group's ability to dungeon crawl. Start from post #4 in this thread. This isn't meant to start a debate on kobolds, I'm just pointing it out for OP to decide how this piece of RAW is handled in her own game.

[Falontani]

I apologize, I don't mean to ask every giant to overhaul the whole thing. I know when I started this that I wouldn't be able to do what I normally do. I won't handcraft every encounter. I don't think I can even handcraft a single region on my own before the players finish the first one. Especially with my limited time.

I was only hoping some giants could find a specific encounter that they thought was interesting, and spice it up with different creatures that would be appropriate, a different class, etc.

Spoiler

Show

in the first region there are multiple times that fiendish darkmantles, fiendish dire rats, and fiendish rat swarms are used. Not to mention fiendish stirges. If a giant liked the way an encounter was set up, they could change a fiendish darkmantle fight into that skiurrid fight or something else

If five giants choose three encounters then we could have a unique encounter in each region. I am more than willing to do a large amount of work. I just would appreciate help, and the people I normally go to for this sort of thing happen to be players this time.

The players all understand that this is a dungeon crawl, not a great story. They expect it will be better than a gladiator tournament, and that is about it.

As a side note, you may want to decide whether or not dragonwrought kobolds grow humongous as they gain class levels at your table, as it may affect your group's ability to dungeon crawl. Start from post #4 in this thread. This isn't meant to start a debate on kobolds, I'm just pointing it out for OP to decide how this piece of RAW is handled in her own game.

I am going to say no, while I can definitely see the idea and reasoning, and might even consider it myself, this player took kobold's slight build, they just didn't want to die by age in the middle of this, but decided that +3 mental stats would be nice. They wanted kobold for it's actual racial traits

[Uncle Pine]

Spoiler

Show

in the first region there are multiple times that fiendish darkmantles, fiendish dire rats, and fiendish rat swarms are used. Not to mention fiendish stirges. If a giant liked the way an encounter was set up, they could change a fiendish darkmantle fight into that skiurrid fight or something else

If five giants choose three encounters then we could have a unique encounter in each region. I am more than willing to do a large amount of work. I just would appreciate help, and the people I normally go to for this sort of thing happen to be players this time.

If you describe the way those encounters are set up, we can help without going our way to either download a pirated copy of the WLD or buy one. I'm going to take a wild guess and say those various rats encounters are just "idly standing there" and if that's the case you could spice them up with some monsters from Libris Mortis. There are a bunch of evocative rat-like or scavenger creatures in that book, such as bone rat swarm, corpse rat swarm, or dire maggots.

[Kesnit]

Now the part that I am coming to the Playground for: The dungeon only makes use of the Player's Handbook, Monster Manual, and the Dungeon Master's Guide.
This monstrosity of a dungeon is over 900 pages long, and modifying even a single section is a large amount of work for a single individual. I am picking this dungeon up as I have much less time to work on my own campaign (where nearly every encounter is handcrafted)

I've run WLD from Section A to J. There is a story in each area (as laid out in the start of that area). As the party progresses from one area to the next, the monsters change. If the party gets bored with an area, they can just move on to the next. Section A is kind of dull - because it is intended for LVL 1 characters, who would likely die to anything too fancy.

You said you are running WLD because of time constraints. Making the changes you are asking for would require more time than trying to put together your own campaign because you have to make sure anything you change fits with the theme of the area. Plus, you would have to keep track of the character sheets for any new monsters you added; the module has everything right there in front of you.

My opinion - let it be. There is a lot of diversity in WLD as the party progresses.

Edit: All of that said, you may want to look at Encounter Traps from Complete Scoundrel. The traps in WLD are mostly simple traps on doors and in hallways. Throwing in occasional encounter traps can spice things up, and CS has a lot of traps of varying CR's already statted up.

[JyP]

I ran this Dungeon previously - I think we stopped around 13th level, with evil PCs, some of which were imprisoned in the Dungeon. As PCs used more than Core books, I reworked some parts, let me recall :

- in section A, I setup some weapon of legacy (Living Lightning), which was related to the Titans at the start & end of the Dungeon
- in section B, I completely rewrote goblin squads so they could be a challenge on PCs. I played some drums each time the squads were pinpointing the PCs...
- in section D, the phantom of one PCs, a neutral cleric dwarf, setup his forge - so it could be used as an NPC to enchant weapons & armors.

I also replaced some traps with encounter traps in section F I think, rewrote the Minotaurs, Trolls, some encounters with undeads in section C...

I used additional crafting rules with craft points so PCs could improve their gear, gave some items of legacy to each one also...

If I could go back in time : I think I would limit PCs to use 3.0 Core also. Another point would be to limit levels, so PC levels would match the Dungeon section.

[Fizban]

Group set up (fairly large)

1. Venerable DWK Factotum (going trapsmith)
2. Gnome Artificer.. thing (I think he said he was taking warlock levels and binder levels?)
3. Krinth Shadowcaster (with the author's fixes)
4. Elven Fighter (using my homebrew; every odd level starting at 3 it will get one Ex Transmutation spell that it may cast 1/day targeting only herself, duration is always 1 round/level)
5. Neraph Flavored Soul
6. Duskling Totemist
7. Spellscale Sorcerer

A large party to be sure.

So. . . an optimized party with four casters and 2-3 melee characters crammed into 5' corridors in a module that is at most expecting a standard un-optimized PHB party of cleric/fighter/rogue/wizard.

I am picking this dungeon up as I have much less time to work on my own campaign (where nearly every encounter is handcrafted)

The only way to actually save time using a printed module is to not modify it at all, and even then you still have to read and understand it well enough to run the thing. WLD is actually far worse in this regard, since while most regions have some sort of story going on, it must be pieced together by combining the intro and the individual rooms and tracing the paths the party could take. So you can try to just run it room by room, but you will inevitably run into something like a corridor with a trap that's explained in the room after the players passed the trap, or being told that these guys take the party to meet this other guy who's in a whole different region and suddenly you need to know the whole plot. And unlike a more direct module, the regions of WLD are blocks of hundreds of rooms that can be encountered wildly out of order.

When I ran it, I ran it straight (we got through about 2 regions)- read and understand the module, don't bother messing with the stats, just let the party set their own difficulty by self-direction. I let them have gestalt since one player really wanted it and they started at level 3 with an item or two, but after that they were on their own, complete with actually rolling for traps and needing to map. Mapping turned out to be a poor idea since two players were interested and two couldn't care less. Rolling for traps is not nearly as hard as some people seem to think it is, if the DM has a handful of d20's and is actually prepared, and the player isn't dawdling. The result was pretty much what you'd expect: a series of rooms with fights and traps, half the party wanting to scour the place and take every NPC that wasn't explicitly hostile while the other half was ready to just get moving because they understood that wasn't the point.

You'll probably need to double the size and monster counts of everything just to account for a 7-body party. If you want more than just PHB monsters then my suggestion would be to make a list of whatever monsters you're interested in and just dump them in whenever you read a room that sound appropriate. WLD isn't written as a dungeon full of random monsters- a lot of the areas are specifically tailored to justify the monsters that are already there. Sure, you can replace things, but when it's full of "a bunch of fiendish rats and darkmantles came out of the portal," or "this area is full of drow archers hiding behind barricades," and "ettercaps made the webbed path that lead to the driders that overthrew the drow," or "there's two tribes of minotaurs in the maze," or "this mash up of monsters and templates is the focal point of the entire region," or "there are x, y, and z monster tribes in this region," well why change things? And beefing up this or that encounter is just going to make it more obvious how the entire rest of the dungeon is not on that level. Replacing a "min-boss" means keeping track of every time they're referenced elsewhere in the region and having to make sure the replacement can actually do the things they're supposed to do.

So the best you can do without a massive overhaul is swap out a trash mob here or there.


And as popular as it is, bringing "WLD characters" to WLD is probably about the worst thing to do. Sure, it's a megadungeon you can't leave with little or no reliable gear. And it's also full of stock and rock bottom op'd monsters and humanoid NPCs, deliberately designed so that an unoptimized PHB party can tackle it.

[Mystral]

My personal suggestion would be to go week by week on this. See where your players go to in the dungeon, then prepare 1-2 cool encounters that would work in the section they are currently in. Then, mix them into the other encounters to keep things entertaining.

Or go the 4e route of giving random monsters special powers, spell like abilities or stuff like that.

A complete overhaul of the largest dungeon in the world would be a waste of time for every party involved.

[Elkad]

You'll probably need to double the size and monster counts of everything just to account for a 7-body party.

Or Tucker it up, which is harder to DM, but more satisfying.
The monsters know the place (at least their area) intimately, and while they may not have a maze of Tiny corridors to squeeze through, they will run for help, pay bribes to the bigger monster down the hall to come help them, etc.


I haven't run WLD, but I've run a lot of classic crawls like ToEE for big parties (6-10 characters, plus henchmen). If the party is not careful, they'll have half a dungeon level pouring down the halls at them when the alarm goes out, and more stuff sneaking behind them to lay ambushes if they try to run.

Get the party cornered in a couple storerooms, with the fighters/warlock desperately holding a door and the list casters trying to nap in the corner long enough to recover spells. And then something tunnels up through the floor near the sleeping wizard, just as the orcs launch their 11th assault on the door.

[Fizban]

Well yeah, but that's still re-writing large parts of the dungeon. The "tucker" level and faction status of the tucker-able mobs is already set, and being trapped in a megadungeon most don't have any more justification for pulling traps or high engineering out of their butts than the PCs. One particular room I remember was: barghests in gobbo form pull the lever on a trapdoor so they can just shoot at the party. Except the barghests have a bare handful of garbage bows between them, while my party (as with many "WLD" parties) had a warlock, so this was laughable, as was most likely intended. Said barghests are also supposed to be negotiable. One could make the trap less obvious so the PCs actually fall for it, give the barghests a bunch of optimized bows, and have all 30 flank around and pile on the minute the PCs are detected, but that's not the scenario for that section.

As for attacking while resting: again, the dungeon is specifically designed to be do-able. People worry about resting, but there are rooms specifically marked out as being 100% safe to rest in (though not always immediately telegraphed to the PCs). That said, random encounters do continue to roll on by when resting in other rooms, and can have some hilarious results: there's one entry in the first section where fiendish rats burrow through the (feet thick stone) wall. The party had specifically holed up in a room and barricaded the door to block random encounters, but I went "hey the table says they burrowed through the wall so boom rats suckers." I thought it was pretty funny (though I let them plug up the "cracks" after that).