The World's Larget Dungeon Discussion/Review

[deaddmwalking]

So an age ago, I bought both the World's Largest Dungeon and the World's Largest City.

They're both terrible products. The only thing they have going for them is that as hefty, expensive books, they look somewhat impressive sitting on your book shelf - at least, if your audience isn't familiar with them. You may be asking why they're terrible and that's a great question - one that I plan to answer over the next few weeks. But they're trying to 'update' the World's Largest Dungeon to 5th edition via BackerKit.

They've raised nearly half a million dollars to convert the original single volume tome into a four-volume set with slipcover and magnetic DM screen. It'll cost you about $300 to get a physical copy of the books assuming that it reaches fulfillment and isn't derailed by tariffs (they promise it won't be).






So if you've got $300 burning a hole in your pocket and you're tempted to jump in on this, I figure talking about why this product and even the concept behind this product is a bad idea. But that's for the future. In the meantime, any one that has some familiarity with the product is encouraged to weigh in and share their thoughts.

[Kaelik]

On this forum Molochio posted quoting me and I don't know where the quote is from. It all holds up except the part where I would be willing to play it.

I don't know. It gives you all sorts of bullshit vendor trash that might theoretically add up to WBL, but who the fuck cares because there are no goddam vendors.



Also, it specifically tells you to not follow the normal XP rules. It basically says "We don't care how you do it, here are some examples, but no matter what you do, just make extra fucking sure they level much slower than normal" so it's possible, what with all the vendor trash, that they follow the WBL for a slowed X progression.



So anyway, fuck them.



It is exactly what sabs says, but oh well. I wouldn't mind playing it, if I could ever convince a DM that the actual test isn't "wear them down with 400 shitty fights in a row" and let me play a character that is always at full Hp and has at will abilities, because fuck that other shit.



If I could ever get to level 3, I could solo the whole thing with a DFA.

[deaddmwalking]

If you're traveling on I-70 between Denver and Topeka, you could leave the interstate, head to highway 24, stop in Cawker City, KS, and bear witness to the World's Largest Ball of Twine.

Or you could look at this picture and save yourself the trip
Why does it exist? As pointless as it is, staking the claim to the 'world's largest anything' has a certain appeal. The thing is, taking a gander at the World's Largest Ball of Twine doesn't take a lot of time. It might be interesting to see a small town and find a place for lunch. Maybe check out the haunted mansion you didn't even know about when you arrived. So there's always a chance that coming for the 'world's largest' you may end up finding something else worth the trip.

The thing about a dungeon is that you won't be going anywhere else for a long, long, time. The giant dungeon is a giant time sink and 'experiencing' it is the draw. How long do you think any group can sustain interest to justify the size?

In all honesty, we don't expect this adventure to be run from beginning to end.
While it has been designed to be just that - the world's largest dungeon
- and it has a logical reason for being here, such an undertaking would
break even the bravest DM and players

If you're not going to tackle the mega-dungeon but instead treat it as a bunch of unrelated stand-alone dungeons that you grab sections of to play, you have to consider the overall cost versus buying a single product that is more distinct and interesting. Visiting the 328th room of a dungeon that is organized under the same theme is probably less interesting than the 328th dungeon room you see in your 8th dungeon, but this one is themed as the first emperor with terracotta golems and it feels so much different than the 299th room in the 7th dungeon that was the lair of a werewolf cabal raiding the nearby countryside.

So what's the organizing principle of the World's Largest Dungeon? And why does it have 'every monster from the SRD'?

The dungeon is supposed to have been created by Celestials to imprison demons and undead in 'the before time'. But nothing lasts forever - an earthquake opened the dungeon and other creatures started entering the dungeon. Then another earthquake happened and more creatures entered the dungeon. Every creature in the SRD... Sorta...

You're probably wondering: how did AEG fit one of everything in here?
Well, thar's easy to answer. We didn't
......
For instance, we have chromatic dragons and a metallic dragon, but
not a blue or white dragon. We have a sphinx, but not every variety of
sphinx; We thought the androsphinx satisfied the category and we
moved on. We have most of the dire animals, but not all of them. Where
we could, we used every part of the buffalo, so to speak.

Now, from a GM perspective, one of the most valuable resources are stat blocks for the opposition. One of the great things about the SRD is that it includes a whole slew of opponents, and many of them can be dropped into a closet and run without much preparation. But anyone can do that. Modifying monsters by adding templates and such can also be helpful. If you're running an encounter with a patrol of orcs, you probably want various leaders and champions, and not a whole bunch of Warrior 1s. This book has both. Sometimes they give you the generic stats of a Frost Giant, and sometimes there is also a Frost Giant Cleric 9 and/or a Frost Giant Barbarian 11. As a resource for stat blocks, the book isn't particularly useful. There's no appendix of opposition, so nothing that tells you CRs or helps you find what you're looking for. Using a PDF you could search a word like 'dragon' and find a stat block on your 26th try but with 302 mentions of 'dragon' either in the text or in conjunction with 'dragon bile poison' or 'dungeons and dragons' it's not quick, or easy. And if you're using a 800+ page physical book,

[deaddmwalking]

So from Kaelik's quote it's clear that the subject of World's Largest Dungeon has come up before on the Den. Several people mentioned having started it and not finding it very interesting. Some of that may be chalked up to GM errors, but some of that has to lie at the feet of the designers.

[deaddmwalking]

So when you enter the dungeon, the first thing you discover is the illusion of choice. There are two exits from the room that you enter, but they both go to the same place. As for whether the GM ran it correctly or not, most of the first 20+ rooms really are empty. The idea being that orcs have been waging a war against kobolds and troglodytes and the orcs are currently on the losing side. But really, I'm getting ahead of myself. The book is organized into 15 sections on 16 maps. The first area (A) is 'Longtail's Destiny' but there are areas like Hell on Earth (G) and Tomb of the Unliving (N). Virtually every area is a square filled with square rooms and rectangular hallways, so everything fits nicely on a square map and from a distance looks almost exactly like a Borg Cube.





All of the regions are printed on a 22x17 map, which gives a square size of like 3mmx3mm - pretty freakin' small even on a poster map. And while individual rooms may be relatively big (like 60x80) the map basically shows squares. It actually would have been a better map if it just showed the relative position of rooms to each other. Or, if they wanted to commit to this format, having a high res electronic version would have been nice. Instead you're looking at white type of sand yellow grid trying to how to describe a giant hallway without a number that leads to A29. Oh, and the only entrance is a secret door, but it's open.

There's backstory that the GM will read - about how the orcs were attacked by darkmantles, and there are some NPCs that might tell you the story, but mostly it's already happened and it's pointless and meaningless. Compare this to The Sunless Citadel where the PCs could potentially play kobolds against goblins and have some meaningful diplomacy. In any case, you might find a few orcs, quite a few troglodytes, and some kobolds. You're also likely to get killed by fiendish rat swarms because you don't have any solutions to swarms at 1st level. If you do that, then you can go through 20 rooms (A57-A77) that are mostly empty because they're unstable from earthquakes. Eventually you get to 'maze-like areas' where you find the surviving orcs, more reptilians, and the wererat who originally organized them to work together before things fell apart. And if you kill everybody you get....

Most DMs and PCs aren't going to like this, but it was inevitable. If the
PCs earn XP at the "normal" rate, they'll be 8th level before they leave the
first map. In order to keep this adventure challenging, we had to ignore
that.

You'd think that finishing a section of the Dungeon would have some sort of 'conclusion', but it just rolls right into the next section of the Dungeon. And at this point you've basically seen Darkmantles, Kobolds, Orcs, Troglodytes, Lizard Folk and various rats. Low-level adventures can be a challenge, but this isn't exactly taking the game in a new direction. And having lizard folk and troglodytes allows them to check off an extra monster on their list, but it's not actually more INTERESTING that there more than one different type of reptilian opponent.

So why did we come here anyway? Well, the book has some suggestions. Glory. Treasure. Glory & Treasure. Or maybe some monsters escaped the unescapable dungeon and the PCs chased them back here, and now they can't escape even though the people they chased totally escaped from the unescapable dungeon proving that it's possible (except not for the PCs because 'f*ck you, that's why').






The whole dungeon is supposed to be a celestial prison, and it has been damaged. Playing up the 'wards are failing' and the PCs are going in to proactively eliminate threats before they bust loose and potentially destroy the world is a better option. Essentially, the PCs would have the option to go on delves when they feel the desire, and every opponent they eliminate helps ensure that the world they live in is safer. That still lacks a fair bit of dynamism - they're basically engaging an opponent that's waiting in stasis and there's an awful lot of opposition to wade through.

If the point is to wander through the halls and fight one of everything (more or less) than it seems like they could have saved a lot of page count just by making it an arena with a button you press and the fight is on.




Because randomly spawned encounters don't really need to make sense
Or if it's supposed to be more than a series of random fights, the Dungeon should be something that the players 'settle'. Exploring the dungeon could be a kingdom management simulator - as you establish yourself as the dominating power bringing hordes of humanoids under your sway, you can create a society that serves to support you in further domination, where every room has a chance to bring you more power! In Might and Magic I: Secret of the Inner Sanctum finding the various pools that gave you a +4 attribute increase certainly worked to motivate a lot of exploration.

So if fortune and glory (or treasure and glory) are some of the best motivations they have for us, let's scan for some treasure...

[deaddmwalking]

So the word 'Treasure' is used almost 1800 times (a little more than 2x per page on average. But probably more than half of them are 'N/A'.

Because there are over 1,500 Rooms in the
Dungeon, no matter how much or how little treasure we assigned it was
going to be the wrong amount. Carefully weigh whether or not the PCs
need another + 1 longsword; would the campaign be better served with a
potion of cure light wounds instead. Don't be afraid to give out less treasure at the start of a Region, anticipating greater rewards at the end.

Generally speaking, players are going to use the best treasure that they have. They're also potentially limited in how much 'stuff' they can carry. At some point the PCs are going to start dumping the copper pieces because it's too heavy relative to the value. That same thing will happen with silver, and possibly gold. +1 Longswords (3000 gp) aren't worth carrying around if you have something that is worth more but takes up the same amount of room. Even if the PCs have the ability to carry thousands of magic items, there's no worry about WBL concerns in the dungeon. And even if that could be an issue outside the dungeon, the den has done a pretty good job outlining why you want to move from a gold economy to a wish economy so players invest in castles and men-at-arms instead of saving for another +1 Int.

So, before the PCs even enter the Dungeon, they can get a +5 Halberd and +5 Chainmail. But they're sized for a Titan and if the PCs figure out a way to use them, they don't work because 'f*ck you, that's why'. One of the 20 'empty rooms' includes the body of a celestial, and if you touch it you get +1 Con and +1 Wisdom. Why would you start touching the bodies of dead Celestials I don't know, but apparently you should.

Outside of that, in Section A there are some gems and other art objects (all worth less than 500 gp individually, and probably less than 5,000 collectively, a few minor magical items like a whip token, a single magical short sword (+1, but you can add a 1st level spell if you have Craft Arms and Armor, which you can't have because you're not 5th level, because f*ck you, that's why), a few masterwork items. Despite the folks here having spent considerable time searching for treasure they thought existed, there's not much here. It would have totally been fair to put together a pretty decent lair for 'Long Tail', but the best stuff is mostly just equipment.

Section B provides us a greater meta-magic rod of silence, a couple of +3 equivalent weapons, a +2 equivalent weapon, and several +1 weapons. This is supposed to cover levels 4-6, so it's definitely on the light side, especially since weapons may not match what PCs prefer to use. There are wandering monsters, and you're supposed to generate treasure for them randomly, so that's actually where the best loot would likely be. But even if your GM rolls random encounters (they don't) and they use what they roll (they won't) they probably won't bother with generating random treasure on the fly, either.

So yeah, wealth doesn't appear to be a GOOD reason to explore this dungeon.

[deaddmwalking]

So in Area C (levels 7-9) there is a +3 anarchic flaming keen mighty cleaving unholy longsword, but finding it requires searching DC 30, then opening a lock (DC 50) and the box itself is indestructible by any means. I assume that the designers don't expect anyone to actually be Evil, so that probably means that nobody gets to use it. That's followed by a couple of cursed items - one that's a necklace that drains con while you sleep, and a sword that's -2 but appears to be a +3 Vorpal blade. There are also so many treasures of worthless baubles or illusions. After killing the dragon you find several small magical items including a ring of wishes with 0 wishes (because f*ck you, that's why). There's a black robe of the archmage on a spectre (it's ghost touch). By and large, the reward to risk ratio skews very low.

[deaddmwalking]

So each Dungeon segment does have a story, and it pretty much sounds like they were developed independently and then shoved into the 'World's Largest Dungeon' with minimal thought. Section D (levels 14-18) isn't supposed to be explored immediately after Region C, and incidentally it's not possible to get to Region E from there.

The areas are arranged alphabetically left to right, top to bottom.

Code: Select all

M N N O
I J K L
E F G H
A B C D

Like this

So from Region A you can go East (Region B) or North (Region E). From Region B you can go North or East, and both of those regions are designed for Levels 7-9. There are areas where there are no connections between regions - you can't go to D from C; instead you'd have to go North (G), East (H) and South (D). That's relevant because you shouldn't wander directly from a low-level zone to a high level zone. That said, Region J (levels 13-15) is accessible from two regions that are level 7-9, one that is 9-12, and one that is 10-12. So it's definitely possible to move to an area beyond your capabilities.

As a result of this, it's possible to advance through the Dungeon and later head back to an area that you're wildly too powerful for. And if you had any information about what lay in the direction of each region you could make informed choices, but that's not really how this works.

Okay, so Area D is the Tartarean Depths of the Xill Master. And the Xill has a complex plot. You see, he's mad at his people. He wants to unleash a mad god to destroy those people. And in order to find and release the god, he needs a wish. And in order to get a wish he needs to break into a vault that contains a Pit Fiend named Kator. So Chtrax (Mad Xill) needs to find Kator (imprisoned Pit Fiend) to earn a wish to find/free Arsakhor the Undying, a malevolent, exiled god, in order to visit vengeance upon his own people who exiled him.

Now, Chtrax is an 11th level wizard in addition to being a Fiendish Xill. At 11th level, you gain access to 6th level spells. This includes planar binding. So Chtrax could just choose to scribe Planar Binding into his spell book when he advanced from 10th to 11th level as one of the two spells he learned automatically, then used it to summon/bind a Noble Djinn (10 HD) and gotten 3 wishes per day. Enslaving Formians and allying with Derro never needed to figure into things, and you'd expect someone with an INT of 24 to have figured that out. But I guess he selected acid fog and globe of invulnerability, and now he's stuck not being able to advance in level for longer than it takes to find and assault this dungeon (incidentally he spent 2 years torturing a sage before the location was finally revealed to him, so he hasn't really been in any kind of hurry). Oh, and one of his minions is a 16th level wizard, capable of casting 8th level spells, who ALSO didn't take planar binding and in fact chose greater shout, iron body and f*cking polar ray as 8th level spells. And he has an INT of 27. Chtrax also has a Derro minion that used wish in the before time, and now controls the Tarrasque, but only as long as he stays with it. The Derro minion Rroliq is a 14th level Sorcerer, and he has limited wish, so he could totally use it to duplicate planar binding, and since that spell doesn't have any XP or expensive material components, he could just cast it at least 3 times per day. And with his INT of 12, he's practically a special-needs child compared to the wizards he works for, so I can give him a pass on not realizing, but everyone else SHOULD.

Okay, so we have a mad plan that doesn't make any sense, and we have a time limit before the plan works. Ideally (according to the book) the PCs kill the Sorcerer who controls the Tarrasque, allowing it to go on a murderous rampage, killing Chtrax before his plan takes effect. If the PCs don't stop the Tarrasque from digging into the sealed vault of the Devils, they'll eventually get free and kill everything, taking over the Dungeon. PCs aren't really supposed to fight the Devils imprisoned in the impossible to access room without a Tarrasque digging a path for them, but if they do they're supposed to be able to use special manacles (as long as they don't touch them) to force the Pit Fiend to use his wish to imprison himself and all of his kind. The manacles aren't supposed to MAKE him use his wish, so there's really no reason he wouldn't say no, wait for the other devils to kill all the PCs, and then free him. Unless he fears his Devil allies MORE than the PCs?

In any case, winning means never discovering all the Devils imprisoned here, which probably makes the GM chortle to himself but leaves the players completely in the dark? I don't know, man, it seems weird.

I'll talk more about this in the near future, I'm sure, but it seems crazy to me that an adventure that was never played by anyone and no one remembers fondly has generated $498K in pledges from 1,185 backers up to this point. It's not nostalgia. And 5th edition isn't more mechanically rigorous than 3rd. It makes less sense to me than the Xill's plan!

[deaddmwalking]

Region E - The Last Stand (Levels 4-6)

The chapter overview highlights that this section is more jumbled than others. Celestials and Inevitables had this region as a garrison. The remaining celestial wardens have to restore the wards with bullshit magical ceremonies that are right at home in 5th edition. There are eight staffs, but four are lost, and because they have fewer ward chargers the wards are slowly failing. There are two factions of barghests at war with each other, and a group of shadows. Having two factions of the same monster seems like an odd choice if the goal is to credibly include all the monsters from the SRD. To make up for that, they stick an assortment of monsters as allies of the Inevitables (the Redeemed).

So it's unlikely that the PCs will start a fight with the Celestials, especially one of the CR 22 Leonals. But it annoys the hell out of me that one of them includes a +4 Breastplate that isn't included in the stats provided. There are also dozens of rooms (some HUGE) that don't have a reference number.

All of these areas have multiple connections to neighboring Regions - just 10' wide hallways that go for several hundred feet until you're in a new area. I'm not saying that you should need to find the Red Key to enter the next area, but it would be nice if it was clear that's what you're doing. For a large dungeon like this sometimes groups choose a strategy like 'always go left'. That would have the players exploring less than 10% of Region A, less than 10% of Region E, and then wander into a Fiendish Manticore ambush and die.

If you want to make a large dungeon interesting, the players have to be able to set a course for themselves. The players have no information about what's IN the Dungeon, or where they are IN RELATION to the rest of the Dungeon, or even what to expect as they enter each region of the Dungeon. That's a real missed opportunity. Choosing 'left or right' a million times isn't going to be an interesting choice after the fourth or fifth time. PCs should have some type of landmark. Traditionally Dungeons had 'levels', so if you found a stairs going down you'd know you were potentially going to enter a new region. That by itself wouldn't be enough for such a large dungeon, but it would help.




The penitent man is humble before god

Indiana Jones does a good job to illustrate what we're missing. He knows that he needs to obtain the Holy Grail, and he knows that he has to overcome three fiendishly difficult challenges to get there. He doesn't know EXACLY what they are, but as he encounters each one he's aware of his relative progress toward his goal.

Like, I really believe that the Dungeon is the size it is because that's what they felt they could fit on their graph paper sheets and they just sort of taped them all together into a single giant sheet. There are sixteen regions because that's what fit when they put it together. If I were designing a Celestial Prison, I'd probably start with a symbolically important number like 7 - our Celestial Prison has 7 layers. The bottom-most layer is the 'most secure prison section'. The top-layer is intended to 'gently' keep people out - basically the front gate of the prison. The first layer would have connections to the 2nd and 3rd layers. The second layer would be a prison layer, and the 3rd would be a guard layer. Then the overall shape of each layer would be some type of glyph. One of the prison layers might be a water-level, one of them might be a lava level - this is something where the players could understand the structure of the dungeon and have some EXPECTATIONS in order to guide their choices. It's okay to subvert some of those expectations - like the prisoners took over part(s) of the prison or WHATEVER, but having a chance to compare reality against what they expected is a big part of respecting player agency.

The World's Largest Dungeon doesn't really have that - you wander in blind, and you explore, maybe you see some interesting scenery on the way, but when you get tired of the road trip, too bad, there's just more and more driving. Sometimes the destination really is the destination!

[deaddmwalking]

Section F: The Maze (Levels 7-9)





It's possible that Region F is the 3rd region you've entered, after having explored Section A and E or A and B - and if you haven't already given up on this module, this is probably what will make you want to. I've done some mazes in real life, and they can be fun as you to maintain a sense of direction and memory of where you've been before, retracing your steps a few times before moving to a new area. The fact that you can jog through and move from section to section relatively quickly means that even dozens of turns and dead-ends isn't going to be THE END. But trying to do that through 100 numbered rooms and COUNTLESS unmarked rooms and hallways is designed to be an exercise in frustration. The density of rooms on this section of map is probably about 3x higher, so the feeling of 'another empty room' is increased by at least that much.

This area also has 'warp gates'. These are portals that require a key. Each key is tied to a specific location. If you activate the portal with a key, you always go to the room tied to that key. There are supposed to be 10 gates. I can spot 6 of them by looking at the map. It's possible I overlooked them despite pulling out my poster map - they are printed in a bright blue font which is exactly the same as they use for secret doors generally. To even review this I have 3 electronic copies open - one that's open to the front page (a small map that shows the regions relative to each other), the back pages (the poster maps enlarged with numbers that are difficult to distinguish), the main text of each region, and then I sometimes pull out my physical map. This is not a good setup for a GM, especially if they're potentially trying to do something with battle maps or some such.

That gates don't seem to matter much - there's nothing stopping you from walking from one end of the maze to the other without using the warp gates, BUT, there are a couple of glaring problems. Some of the rooms don't match their descriptions at all. F23 is supposed to be a 'isolated warp gate room' - you're supposed to be able to enter it through the warp gate and by no other means. But in the map it has passages leading away that end in doors. The map is WRONG. Also, there is a list of rooms where the warp gates are supposed to be, and truly, four of them are unmarked. If the PCs don't have a key, warp gates take them to a random room. It's POSSIBLE that PCs will walk through a portal and enter a room with no other exit but a Warp Gate that leads them BACK TO THAT SAME ROOM.




I think I know what that's like

Now, hopefully as a GM, you CHOOSE SOMETHING DIFFERENT rather than just telling your players that they're trapped forever unless someone wanders into the room with a key tied to another portal.

Okay, so you're in a maze that you don't want to do. You either came in from the South (from B) or from the West (from E). So we start numbering rooms FROM THE NORTH. I understand that there's a combination of trying to make it easy to find a keyed entry by looking at the map, so generally going from left to right, top to bottom, SORTA makes sense, but on the other hand, if a room only connects to one other room, maybe it makes sense to keep them together. And if you think you know where people are going to start, maybe make that ROOM 1.

So more than 1/3 of this level is controlled by a clan of Minotaurs. Another 20% is controlled by a DIFFERENT clan of Minotaurs (sorta like the two warring groups of Barghests). There's also a Rahshasa (10%), cryohydra (5%), a sphinx (5%)*, a harpy tribe (5%), a dragonne (5%), a manticore pride (5%), and an assassin vine jungle (2%).

*A gynosphinx. Which is fine, but at the beginning of the book they declared that they included an Androsphinx to represent the sphinx type and they moved on, so you shouldn't expect to find ANY OTHER KIND OF SPHINXES.

In Area E, they called out how there wasn't really a 'finale' compared to the other sections, but to me it seemed pretty clear that you could help the wardens re-establish control of their section of the dungeon. There's even LESS here - getting through seems to be the only goal. Which is also the overarching goal of the entire dungeon, so it's just another step along the path of additional punishment.

[3% Milk]

I have a bootlegged pdf of this from back in the day.
WLD is garbage.
Most of the time I wouldn't expect to run a dungeon like this, but rather just take some good ideas/areas/encounters and recycle them for other purposes.
I don't remember using anything from this crap dungeon.

[deaddmwalking]

Okay, we're less than half-way through the book - 331 pages out of 850+. But everyone reading probably gets the gist. Since plugging in 5th edition stats would be pretty easy, what's the POINT of the BackerKit?

This isn’t just a reprint, it’s a total overhaul of the legendary record-breaking megadungeon, fully modernized for 5E and today’s gamers.

Every corner of the dungeon has been reexamined for a new generation. Encounter pacing, experience progression, and the structure of each region have been rebalanced to ensure that every room matters. Whether you're navigating cursed hallways or taking down one of the 18 epic bosses, you'll feel the tension at every turn.

The entire first level has been completely reimagined and rewritten by acclaimed designer jim pinto, offering a brand-new experience for veterans and newcomers alike. The rest of the dungeon has undergone multiple rounds of editing by a team that includes professional dungeon masters, veteran RPG authors, and sharp-eyed language editors to ensure clarity, flow, and mechanical excellence.

They've doubled the page count. That's something that could be done to add more description to the vast number of rooms without any description at all.

I understand that the products depicted are a mock-up and may not represent the final product, but take a look at the maps in this picture:






That's the same map as before - even the graphics placement is the same. Notice those huge rooms with no detail at all? I mean, in this case it looks like the numbers are also missing, and the 'vegetation graphic' is slightly better than before, but otherwise it's virtually the same. ACTUALLY, there's one section on the original map that was a different color of yellow that now looks like the rest of the Dungeon.

But imagine for a moment that you're creating an adventure using this map. Let's further say that you want to create basically the same adventure that the folks at the World's Largest Dungeon wanted to create. A group of Celestials and a group of Inevitables is working to contain a prison that slowly deteriorates around them. Cut-off, facing a desperate last stand, surrounded by enemies on all sides.

I defy you to try to make that scenario fit into that map in any kind of sensible way. Do you see a fortress-like bastion that has no connection to other regions (anything connecting to the edge of the map) that looks like it could be held by carefully controlling choke points? Do you see anything that look like 'charging stations' where the wards must be maintained that brave and desperate angels could try to surreptitiously visit? Or a series of exits that they must hold while the inmates have the run of the interior?

Take a look at the giant green room in the center of the map. Note that it is the largest room (by far) and due to the bright coloring, the one thing people will IMMEDIATELY notice about this map. What would you do with something that seems to be the focal point of the entire dungeon region?

Well, if you're the World's Largest Dungeon (original version) you'd do this (edited slightly for length, but not to remove ANYTHING of interest):

This large room appears to be an interior garden. The ceiling
is masked with a blue sky, complete with a sun and the occasional
storm cloud. The floor is covered with dirt and plant life abounds.
In the distance you hear creatures moving through the forest and
you swear you hear rain falling somewhere in the room. Someone
put a very large forest in the middle of this dungeon.

For the GM:
This Room is one giant forest with little in the way
of landmarks or features. If the Room were larger one could easily get
lost in it. The creatures that inhabit it are largely nomadic wanderers that
have little in the way of dens, so there are no specifically important
regions of the Room.

Treasure: None of the creatures of the Lost Garden have anything
of value.

Creatures: Celestial Shambling Mound (CR 8), Phantom Fungus (CR 3), Violet Fungus (CR 3), Shrieker Fungus (CR 1)

Like, literally your party walks in, sees some plants, and if they walk around enough, they see some good-aligned Shambling Mounds that won't hurt them unless they attack the garden. Technically there is a celestial corpse with treasure, requiring a DC 35 search check to find. Do you know how long it takes to search a 5x5 square? A full round. Do you know how many squares there are? Who is even able to hit a DC 35 Search check at that level, let alone often enough to search the whole place. Let's say that you're a generous GM with very little understanding of the rules and let them make a SINGLE search check for the entire place, and conveniently decide that they're 'within 10' of the surface or object to be searched and they fail. The one thing that could have been even MILDLY interesting doesn't have any clues to know to look for it, and if they fail, they get nothing (because f*ck you, that's why).

And if they do exhaustively search every single part of the jungle and they do succeed on the check they get:

There is one possible source of treasure: in the southeastern
corner of the Room a tree's roors have covered the corpse of a hound
archon, but a DC 35 Search check is required to find the body.
On the body are a silver dagger, 6 + 1 arrows, a mighty composite longbow
(+2 Str bonus), and a spiked chain.

I am literally blinded with rage right now. Please excuse any typos, because I can't even see what I'm writing. Good thing I'm a decent touch typist!

So let's say I believe that I believe them when they say: The rest of the dungeon has undergone multiple rounds of editing by a team that includes professional dungeon masters, veteran RPG authors, and sharp-eyed language editors to ensure clarity, flow, and mechanical excellence.. If I believe that, like WHAT WOULD THEY EVEN DO. How did they make this room 'significant'? How does it 'really matter'? If they provided a SAMPLE of an updated room that helps me understand what they mean by 'improve', that'd be SOMETHING. But instead we just are supposed to believe that the same folks who did such a mind-numbingly mediocre job the first time around have been able to shine that turd enough to resemble a diamond, and they did it all using the same god-damn lame-ass boring cubic-grid random-dungeon-generator caliber maps that are better suited to a kid's menu at an Olive Garden than a D&D game?!?!?!?!?!?!?!

Okay, I took a break for the red to clear so I can consider evidence in a more even-handed way. [Deep Breath]

No, you'll have to excuse me. I can't and won't believe that. In fact, I'm going to READ some of what they helpfully included in their request for money.



So we have some 'updated text' there on page 5. For those of you that have trouble with reading small images, under Scale it says:

Scale is a bit of a mixed bag here. In the original printing, the maps needed to be at least six feet tall (marketing demanded it) when fastened to the wall. As such, there were limits as to how big the Region maps could be. The original intent was for the dungeon to be many square miles. But if you do the map, it's a lot less than that.

As such, the maps were initially designed to be 5-ft by 5-ft squares, which was also the baseline for the third edition. However, making them 10-ft by 10-ft squares, in fact, gets the size of the dungeon closer to the original mark. However that makes a lot of these hallways gigantic. So, there are a few suggestions on how to apply scale to these maps.

The simplest answer is the maps are not to scale. They give a general idea of the placement and size of a hallway or room, but the DM is free to mix things up however and whenever. When the mapping doesn't line up, that's on par with what the celestials intended.

All of the squares are 5 by 5 or 10 by 10. Done. Don't worry about it.

The space under the mountain does not match the space on top of the mountain. It doesn't have to make sense. It's magic.

Region H is problematic when you try to ascertain how remote this prison is. If the PCs never visit Region H, it is irrelevant. Alternatively, Region H is 10 miles east of where it appears on the map. Problem solved.

Doing any of these requires some different visualization, but none of it reduces the dungeons' playablity. There are still rooms, doors, hallways, monsters, traps and the occasional treasure.

They have $505k pledged to 'upgrade and improve' their original product and that's the best they could come up with'? Hell, if marketing required that it be AT LEAST 6' feet tall, why didn't they make it 12' tall? The could have doubled the number of squares and kept it at the 5' scale. Or maybe that's a typo (or a damned lie) and marketing wanted it a MAXIMUM of 6'?

Not that the map is even that important... I mean, it's good to know how rooms connect to each other, but since so many of the rooms were blank or described in ways that are incompatible with what's depicted, the GM was going to have to make a number of judgement calls. If they wanted to make this some type of 5th-dimensional-hyper-cube that can't be mapped via traditional means, they could have just had a bunch of individual sections that connect as if through teleportation and it wouldn't matter that technically they'd occupy the same space if they were laid out in poster format.

Half the people who have 'testimonials' in the backerkit say 'I'd never use a mega dungeon, but there's a lot of pieces, and I'd use some of those'. I just don't understand spending $400 to have a nibble or two. Especially when there are so many free resources! And that's assuming that future encounters are more than 'there's a jungle room with a celestial shambling mound who probably won't hurt you'.

There are a lot of reasons that I despair for the future of humanity at this moment. And yet, somehow, this seems to be the thing that has convinced me there is NO HOPE.

[deaddmwalking]

I have a bootlegged pdf of this from back in the day.
WLD is garbage.
Most of the time I wouldn't expect to run a dungeon like this, but rather just take some good ideas/areas/encounters and recycle them for other purposes.
I don't remember using anything from this crap dungeon.

Going through it in some detail now, I could see potentially lifting a stat block (even though they're hard to find) or the general concept (using the Tarrasque to break into an unbreakable prison), but none of the SKETCHES of an idea are done in an interesting way. Even if the concept of two (or three) clans/tribes/packs fighting each other for territory inspired you, dropping all of the characters into static rooms with minimal suggestions for advancing the plot is a missed opportunity.

Let me say more about how bad the organization is.

Let's say you went to Room F1. There's a Minotaur that's guarding that room 90% of the time. But 10% of the time, he's in F7. Now, let's say your PCs enter F7 before they enter F1 (almost guaranteed, because F1 is entered from the North, and most people will be coming in from a 'level appropriate region' either West or South) and you see that there's a 10% chance that there's a particular Minotaur there. Then you have to REMEMBER that he's detailed in F1 because NOTHING SAYS THAT in F7. There are 100 rooms keyed to an F, and even if you read through everything and had a general idea of where everything is supposed to be, unless you're ShitMuffin, you won't remember which room has each stat block keyed to it. And with 16 regions and more than 1600 total rooms, each time something like that happens, ARRRRGH!

But yeah - the idea of conflict between people in different regions ends up feeling so STATIC the way it is described. A bunch of stuff happened recently, and the PCs get to observe the effects, but NOTHING INTERESTING IS HAPPENING NOW. It's just so disheartening. And it's a lot to fix, so I remain extremely skeptical that anyone involved did so.

[Kaelik]

Truly if the dungeon is supposed to be a prison it should, obviously, have levels, you should go down, because that's just a good way to signal to players, and the fact that it's a perfectly thing perfectly flat plane is baffling to the extreme.

But also, another thing that it would make sense to have in a prison is TEXT! LABELS! NAMES FOR PLACES! They could have each section be connected by hallways with little checkpoints in them that say "Entering Cell Block E, we put all the Minotaurs in here specifically." and then players could make at least some decision about where to go, why to go there, or whatever.

And by establishing the setup you have room to play around and subvert it. You could have a section that says it's all the [Orcs] and then it's all Shadows because of a Shadow breakout, you could have a plaque clearly intentionally destroyed so players are like "oooh, I wonder what didn't want us to know!" you could do literally anything interesting at all!

[deaddmwalking]

Truly if the dungeon is supposed to be a prison it should, obviously, have levels, you should go down, because that's just a good way to signal to players, and the fact that it's a perfectly thing perfectly flat plane is baffling to the extreme.

YES!

But also, another thing that it would make sense to have in a prison is TEXT! LABELS! NAMES FOR PLACES! They could have each section be connected by hallways with little checkpoints in them that say "Entering Cell Block E, we put all the Minotaurs in here specifically." and then players could make at least some decision about where to go, why to go there, or whatever.

YES! YES!

And by establishing the setup you have room to play around and subvert it. You could have a section that says it's all the [Orcs] and then it's all Shadows because of a Shadow breakout, you could have a plaque clearly intentionally destroyed so players are like "oooh, I wonder what didn't want us to know!" you could do literally anything interesting at all!

YES! YES! YES!

[deaddmwalking]

Okay, I think everyone is with me up to this point. The original World's Largest Dungeon was not a good product. The map(s) look like they were 100% randomly created and consequently don't represent any functions that would be reasonable with the Dungeon's backstory (interdimensional prison for the worst bad guys that threatened the reign of the gods)*. The layout is focused more on taking up space on a poster (so that it's at least 6' tall) rather than a rational organization that empowers players to make informed decisions about their actions - they're forced to wander without any meaningful sense of direction or objective, with the end goal that they eventually get sick of the Dungeon and don't see most of it. BUT the book argues that even though that's the inevitable result because a Dungeon this size STOPS BEING FUN it can be used as a smorgasbord to pull encounters or concepts from - and it fails at this, TOO. Encounters are generally boring and mostly boil down to rolling into a room and finding someone occupying it. It's orc and pie. I mean, most of the creatures are pulled directly from the SRD, so literally randomly rolling an encounter each time you open a door wouldn't be worse. But even if there were encounters you wanted to use, there is no meaningful way to find them.

*The Line Developer says otherwise:

Then came the hard part. I had to design the maps before the writers
could start writing. We had to make sure there were enough Rooms
in each Region and that they all "meshed" at the end points. This meant
a lot of long hours in Photoshop. Six weekends and 100 hours later,
we had basic designs for the floor plans that Cris Domaus would
later turn into poster maps, with pretty colors and smooth textures.
They're the ones you're looking at now.

I could take that as they randomly generated all the maps, then added in some additional passages to connect areas, but if it is 100% hand-crafted that's even more damning.

So those problems are going to remain no matter how much of the book we look at. But let's keep looking. Moving on!

Region G: Hell on Earth (levels 9-11)

So each region has a section that provides an overview of the section of the Dungeon. There was also an overview of the Dungeon as a whole. These can be repetitive. There was an Earthquake. Then there was another Earthquake. Derro came. Then more Derro came. But the general idea is that the gods created this prison for a specific problem. But what that problem was is inconsistent.. I'll explain with a couple of quotes - it wouldn't be a problem if they built a prison and then sent a bunch of bad guys there over the millenia, but it really implies the creation for multiple different incompatible reasons.

Eons ago, before mankind stirred from the sleep of creation, Astakhor the Undying, the Destroyer and the Void incarnate surged madly in the planes, and brought war to the heavens. Great celestial cities, infernal strongholds, and even the halls of the gods succumbed in the clutches [of] his foul hand. Though the Nemesis' destructive ability was a dire threat, his corrupting aura brought all manner of outsiders beneath his banner. From these fallen celestials rose a particularly corrupted Solar called Kator. This fallen angel gathered to him a host of loyal followers and served the mad god and his fell purposes, laying siege to the gates of heaven.
.....
It was only when the good and evil gos joined forces were they able to defeat Asrakhor and imprison him beyond reach in some cosmic prison for all eternity.

Thousands of years ago, the demon lord Kraveshk unleashed his demonic hosts upon the world. Few recall the devastation mounted by these dark armies that issued from the abyss, but those who do refer to this period as the Great Oblivion. Though little is know of Kraveskh and his fiendish soldiers, legends from this era speak of the horrible deaths, despair, and pain the hosts of the demon lords wrought. The Great Oblivion is a time better left forgotten.

For what seemed like an eternity, the Lord Krasveshk took control of most of the Northland realms, imposing his havoc upon the creatures that survived his initial onslaught. The situation lasted for several decades and the demonic hosts eventually gaind control of more territory, until the demons dominated the planet.
.....
Fortunately for the pre-human races, the troubles of the world caused sorrow in the heavens. Though the gods refused to intervene directly, some angels decided to take matters in their own hands and put a stop to Lord Kraveshk and his heinous minions. Eventually, an elite group of angel and celestial warriors descended from heaven in a valiant effort to help save the world.
......
What the people did not realize....[the angels] made sure the demon lord was kept under close guard and brought to the dungeon, where Kraveshk and the demons that had been caught with him were also imprisoned.

Now I admit that a war against the heavens led by fiends and a conquest of the material world by different fiends aren't exactly the same story, but I figure that only one army of demons and devils is necessary to justify the existence of the prison. I mean, if the prison had been built at the beginning of time with the intention that it would be filled over time, having a list of 'major onslaughts' that all contributed to the inmate population could make sense. But it FEELS completely disjointed. Now, incidentally, they cut it from 24 regions to 16 in the process of development, but I don't think trying to cram more into incompatible places is what drove this. I mean, it literally seems like the writer for this chapter had no knowledge of what any other authors were doing - they were given a list of monsters, told what the theme of the dungeon was, and then just wrote their own adventure. Since there were 14 authors and 15 regions (but one is a double-region), it sounds like that's EXACTLY WHAT HAPPENED.

The more the players work to understand the Dungeon, the less it makes sense!

Okay, so Region G is dominated by a round room surrounded by lava flows. The scary demon is in the center room. The Celestials are camped along the Southern edge of the map (G1-G33). The Northwest quadrant is controlled by Nighthags. The Northeast quadrant is divided between a section controlled by a Mohg and his undead minions and another section controlled by an Erinyes. There's a couple of random monsters and the southeast quadrant is controlled by a demonic host.

Okay, everyone is arrayed around the map edges, and everyone is fighting over control of the center. The leader of the angels is dying, and when that happens, there's an epic fight in the middle of the dungeon. Some of the bad guys try to convince the PCs to murder the good angel leader through trickery, but even if they don't,

The DM is welcome to have rhe wall of this cocoon come down in a climax of magical energy just as rhe PCs arrive. Perhaps the Jemons ;_ictually broke through, Krasveshk hit rhe right spot from inside rhe prison,
or an assassin made her way into Cyrlebrai's private sanctum and murdere<l him, destroying the powerful wall of force in one swift move.

And the PCs win or something, and there's NOTHING about what that means, or what any surviving Celestials do, or ANYTHING that makes the fight worthwhile. As far as the book is concerned, the PCs kill all the bad guys and the PCs can head North to Region K, south to Region C, or take a lava river to Region H or F. It'd be nice if someone would pop in to say 'thanks, but our princess is in another castle'.





It is baffling how pointless they can make such an 'epic fight' seem. It's just so sad. And the people who thought this book was GOOD are the ones that are IMPROVING it. That's what happened with the move from 4th to 5th edition, and you know how that turned out.

I am so depressed.

[deaddmwalking]

Region H - Protectors of the Tree (Levels 11-13)

So generally the various areas we've covered have been intended to be part of the Celestial Industrial Prison Complex, but that theme can't really justify every creature in the SRD. Specifically, it's hard to justify any type of sylvan encounters. So NEAR the prison Derro were digging and somehow triggered a collapse SO VAST that a forest from MILES above fell into a deep chasm but somehow a new roof formed over it. Anyways, the Elves set up a fortress to guard the tree/Treant that fell down in the giant hole, but they're being hunted by monsters from the dungeon, but their leadership doesn't care suspecting that all the disappearances are people just going home. Presumably the PCs are supposed to figure out why elves keep dying and deal with the monsters. This is complicated by a monster framing the PCs for a murder.

One of the monsters is an Erinye. Not the same Erinye that lives next door. It's another one of those 'an earthquake happened, then another earthquake happened; some Derro came, then some more Derro came; a Erinyes set up a base of operations to free her Demon commander, and then another Erinyes set up a base of operations like 400' away (though some of that is through solid rock) to prey on elves. Do the two Devils even know each other? Does it make sense that one is working with a Demon? And with the goal of putting every monster from the SRD does it make sense to feature not one BUT TWO different Erinyes?

The first one wants to reclaim her angelic heritage, and tries to convince the PCs to go get an artifact, then give it to her so she can be the one that gives it to the angels, earning her reprieve. The second one CLAIMS she wants to reclaim her angelic heritage, trying to convince the PCs to help her, but actually manipulating them into doing evil things, assuming that the PCs even realize what type of creature she is, since she uses a magic item to appear as different creatures.

There are also Dwarves here. Nobody knows why. They seem to live with the Elves with a few rooms set aside for their own use. They don't have any goals or motivations that I can see - they just want to play cards with the PCs and share rumors. They appear to be here only because there were no other places to put standard dwarves where they wouldn't muck up the 'narrative' elements.

If the PCs figure out that an Erinyes is causing the disappearances, question mark. If they solve the murders, question mark. Everybody who is guarding the sacred grove hates their job and there's nothing about solving the underlying malaise and restoring the sanity of the 'boss'. Oh, oh, oh, I'm depressed again!

[deaddmwalking]

Region I: The Halls of Flesh (Levels 7-9)

So I'm more than half-way through the page count of the book, so that's good. But this section MAKES NO SENSE!

"The Halls Of Flesh" is nor a metaphor. The corridors and Rooms of this
blighted Region make it unlivable for normal beings and a perfect place
for unspeakable and horrible diseases. Oozing with misccreant detritus
and foul ichor, the Halls of Flesh house some of the Dungeon's most
unseemly and uncontrollable beasts. Abominations that no man could
have devised, live here and their sepsis Oozes through the halls like the
bloody remains they leave in their tracks

Ostensibly this was a prison built by Celestials, there's no reason to make a living creature dungeon that is riddled with parasites. And it's not like the map style CHANGES. The rooms are still square with lots of hard corners, you know, just like human organs. I guess that hundreds of years ago a Drider conducted unholy experiments after wresting control of this section of the Dungeon and sealing it from Celestial interference.

There are 137 numbered rooms, which is quite a few more than most regions have. Many of the rooms have evocative names like 'the Room of Strength' but they aren't written where the PCs can see them and it doesn't mean anything, anyway. The room of Strength is literally a room that is used to bypass an encounter and doesn't have anything interesting in it AT ALL.

I'm guessing that either the author(s) suffered major head trauma or they expect the only people still playing this dungeon must have it.

While the PCs cannot see them (illusions cast on the
wall prevent it), there are 4-ft. high vents every 5 ft. of this hallway. These
vents cast flaming hands as the PCs pass, resetting every 2 rounds. The
safest method of traversing this corridor is for everyone to run as fast as
they can.

You know what would be safer than setting off every trap and taking damage from it? LITERALLY ANYTHING ELSE! Why not find the traps using abilities like trap finding and then disable them? Why not have a slew of defensive buffs up like resist fire when exploring dungeons as a general rule?

But I'm going to take a moment and talk about traps in D&D and why they suck. But first, let's remember Goonies.




We could use Last Crusade or any of the other Indiana Jones movies for this, or even Jungle Cruise. The point is, in film, very few traps just wallop you for a bunch of damage. That's BORING. That doesn't let the Players engage with the game world AT ALL.

Does this sound fun?

Player: Sir David blithely moves down the hall, his sword drawn and shield at the ready.
DM: [rolls dice] As Sir David moves 30' through the tunnel, the ceiling collapses above him [rolling more dice], killing him instantly.

No?

How about this?

Player: Aragar the Daring moves cautiously through the hallway, carefully checking every step to ensure there are no hidden traps.
DM: [rolls some dice] As Aragar moves down the hallway searching for traps the ceiling collapses above him [rolling more dice], killing him instantly.

Not fun? At least the player was taking an action to TRY to save themselves. You want MORE? What if it worked?

Player: Aragar the Daring moves cautiously through the hallway, carefully checking every step to ensure there are no hidden traps.
DM: [rolls some dice] As Aragar moves down the hallway searching for traps he finds one and [rolling more dice] disarms it. The party crosses the hallway safely.

Hey, nobody died. But they could have! Thrilling, right? No?

How about this:

DM: As you open the door your torch light spills into the room beyond. In the flickering light you notice movement on the ceiling in the room above you. As your eyes adjust to the dim lighting you notice a dozen heavy boulders swaying slightly as they hang pendously. It doesn't look like it would take much to send them crashing to the floor, crushing anything below.

Now it's an encounter. The players can evaluate the situation and start considering what they want to do. Try a different path? Discover the trigger mechanism and lure an opponent into the trap? Spiderclimb across the wall above where the boulders hang to avoid the danger? Or maybe they do want to boldly walk down the passage ignoring the danger. Or have the rogue carefully analyze and disable the traps. Part of those choices reflect the player's objectives - if they're in a hurry quickly bypassing the obvious trap might be the right call. But as long as they're engaged with the game world and making choices and those choices influence what comes next.

Think about it from the perspective of a dungeon designer (like One-Eyed Willy). If you have a completely hidden trap, you might fall into it. The EXISTENCE of hidden traps might be helpful in terms of slowing the exploration, but mostly big obvious traps ALSO slow down the exploration. In fact, some of the obvious traps can just be dungeon dressing and that's fine, too.

[deaddmwalking]

Region J: The Pyrefaust (Levels 13 to 15)

Okay, I alluded to the following quote from the back of the book, but let me include it here so I can begin asking some hard questions.

Then came the hard part. I had to design the maps before the writers
could start writing. We had to make sure there were enough Rooms
in each Region and that they all "meshed" at the end points. This meant
a lot of long hours in Photoshop. Six weekends and 100 hours later,
we had basic designs for the floor plans that Cris Domaus would
later turn into poster maps, with pretty colors and smooth textures.
They're the ones you're looking at now.
Go ahead, look at them. I'll wait.
So then came che process of choosing writers for the book and
allocating "story" and "monsters." For three months we designed and
wrote and wrote and designed. Four writers dropped out of the process,
all eventually replaced by Richard Farrese. By January 8th, 75% of the
text was done and I was ready to start editing.

Okay. Here' s a map of Region J:

Many fire creatures have made rheir
home in the Pyrefaust, forming a diverse
ecosystem. The Pyrefaust consists of a series of'
niches, or "rings." Each ring of the Pyrefaust is a
community of creatures and at the center of
each ring lies inexplicable power that draws
the creatures to protect it. This power is
believed to be the awakening of Tyrus' and
each race draws upon his evil in a different
way.

They go on to describe the nine rings that make up the level. Now look at that map again. I'll wait. No, really. Look at the map. Enjoy the smooth textures.

Now notice the complete and total lack of anything RESEMBLING a ring???!!!

And it turns out that I'm not the first to notice. Looking for a picture to share I found A lovely review by Oriongate which looks like a fun read and that s/he came to basically the same conclusions in a fun to read snarky way.

So the 'first ring' is 9 rooms that make a vertical line along the western edge of the map ending with the three rooms that are colored red (and not including any of the rooms that are colored blue). Now I imagine that the writer for this chapter actually sketched out a dungeon, it had rings, and things made a lot more sense. But marketing wanted the map to fit on the poster, and circles are hard to draw with the software they're using, so they just stuck in the word 'niche' to replace the things that obviously aren't rings.

But just as the last region was just a place to shove all the Aberrations, this place exists to shove all the fire creatures. Since they cut from 24 areas to 16, this was probably originally going to be 'the fire level', but it's now 'the fire and chaos level'. And since they had to put things like Lawful Evil Fire Giants in because it was fire, the fire and chaos theme seems weak. Also, this area has an Efreet who, you guessed it, has the ability to grant wishes to non-genies 3x per day, so instead of harnessing the power of the Tarrasque to dig a tunnel to a trapped Pit Fiend, bind him with an artifact that prevents him from using his powers without your permission, and then begging him to use his powers with your permission to help you so you'll release him, he could have just come over to this section of the Dungeon.

Not that he might have known what was in this section of the Dungeon. I mean, nobody does until they go here, and even though some people have had 4,000 years, they've just kept themselves to themselves.

There are a lot of trolls here, and since fire actually damages them, that seems like a really strange decision. Equally baffling is the decision to populate the level with Celestial Rasts (NG) and have them attack the PCs on sight with no provocation. There's a 'zigguraut' on the map. It appears that after having filled 94 rooms they needed a tomb, so they decided to put it on a different map that is apparently the only thing that's not on the exact same level as everything else. It's a very standard tomb and it has a vampire seductress who actually references other sections of the Dungeon. Guessing that means it's Richard Farresse and this is a section originally assigned to another writer that he replaced.

Okay, I'm planning on taking a decent break from looking at more of this - instead I'm going to read the review I linked to and commiserate with someone else who has punished themselves in the same way.

[deaddmwalking]

So I set up an account at Backerkit so I could see the discussion. I am surprised to see people saying things like 'thanks for designing such a great adventure'. I was also curious to see what types of 'incentives' they were offering to try to get people to pledge more. Anyways, they're proud of their 'boss encounters' in regions A-D and you can see minis inspired by them. Here's one:




Technically this Shrek-looking mother-f*cker is actually a Doppleganger and not a goblin

A ton of their minis are from Reaper (a company that I like and one that I have literally thousands of their miniatures. I'm pretty sure that the STL rewards are from someone else. Look at the ridiculous scale of the clutched scroll in this mini:




Other incentives they're offering are promising to name their own characters and letting backers compete in a miniature painting contest.

[deaddmwalking]

I enjoyed reading Oriongate's Review. He focused a lot on how poorly balanced encounters were, how badly the dungeon supports wealth by level, and the lack of sanity in the dungeon design (for example, pointing out that Poison is used in many traps and all of the inhabitants of the dungeon by design are immune to poison). Honestly, I could just end this with a 'hear, hear' but we're almost done, so for those who don't want to go to read elsewhere, read on!

Region K (Levels 10 to 12) and Region L (Levels 12 to 14)

We're going to tackle these two regions together, because they are comprised of a single giant lake. J is 'The Shallows' and L is 'The Deep'. The shallows are dominated by a Green Dragon, and the Deep is dominated by a Fiendish Kraken. There isn't anything in region J that implies a barrier or separation, but Region L has a bunch of stuff about a coral dam and breaching it and a planned invasion but none of that actually makes any sense presumably because of some rewriting/lack of communication between authors. I really would pay money to see if ANY continuity errors are addressed, but not the amount that they're asking. It doesn't sound like it... Even with a 'completely rewritten Region a' they have the same 'boss fight', so I expect that changes are purely cosmetic - applying a new template to their page background and printing in color. But that is ABSOLUTELY NOT WORTH IT!

One thing that is a little weird is they keep repeating text about how likely the dragon is to see the PCs. It's a TN 25 + the lowest hide bonus for the group if they're not hiding. You might think that the TN represents the distance from his lair, but it's the same TN given in multiple rooms, so that doesn't seem to imply that's the reason. That means that if the PCs are actively hiding, and one of them rolls poorly, it appears they're EASIER to spot. Like these are things I don't really care about because I know the rules and I can easily fix this on the fly, but for a product that people spent real money for, it's disappointing. Like I would not suggest ANYONE run the Dungeon as written. I mean, I wouldn't suggest anyone RUN THE DUNGEON. But if you were, there would be a lot of things to change - so many that starting from scratch is a better option.

Anyways, in Region K there's a Dragon, and he's the scariest thing there, and he can get you anywhere in the place, so before long you're going to be attacked and have to deal with him. The hags that plan to attack you as soon as you defeat the dragon (while you're at your weakest). Otherwise, it's mostly a grab-bag of aquatic monsters, with some real odd-ball non-aquatic monsters thrown in randomly (like a roper and a gray renderer).

There is no map of 'below the water', where most of the creatures live. All of the encounters happen 'at the surface'. What makes water combat interesting is that it's 3-dimensional, and usually is something that PCs can engage in at a lower level than aerial combat. Completely missing that fact and making every water-fight as boring as possible is disappointing. Probably my first introduction to Computer RPGs was Might and Magic I: Secret of the Inner Sanctum. That also had a map that was divided into square regions (16x16, 256 squares) and full of encounters that happened on the surface of the water. But it also had Dungeons, some multiple levels deep, with all kinds of interesting things. The small number of fights 'on the surface of the water' weren't any more interesting than the other fights, but they weren't the major focus of the game.

Speaking of video games, another game I liked to play was Eye of the Beholder I. That's a game where you get stuck in a dungeon and have no way out but through. One of the things that game had that this one seems to have completely missed is that you could find and Raise Dead those adventurers. There's only like 1 living adventurer I remember the Dungeon mentioning, but here's a dead adventurer. You can get a scroll of water breathing, but nothing about recruiting him to your cause, and definitely nothing about stats. The advantage of a Pen-and-Paper role-playing game is that you have so many more options - but somehow the authors fail to consider MOST OF THEM, or offer any suggestions.

There's some stuff about maybe making friendly with the locals and working with them to rid them of the dragon, but the way the region works, the dragon will find you before you can have any sort of meaningful diplomacy. So eventually you fight him, kill a bunch of random stuff, and keep going to the other side of the lake that appears to be the same place because there are no borders or anything.

Then you fight a Fiendish Kraken and a host of other water-based creatures. There's an elasmosaurus, which I think counts as the one Dinosaur that they felt they needed to include to 'fulfill the type'. There's also a surprisingly large number of elves here for stupid reasons, and they're too low a level to a) survive or b) help.

Like all the regions, despite CENTURIES of time spent together and a significant amount of distaste for each other, none of these groups is involved in active conflict against the others. The book suggests that you shouldn't worry about what creatures eat, but players may wonder why Dire Sharks even WANT to eat them if they don't have to eat to survive. And if they do have to eat to survive, this whole lake is stupid to the extreme as full as it is with apex predators. Maybe if they were in service to a creature who had affixed freakin' lasers to their heads (or wands of scorching ray).

Killing everything isn't supposed to be the point. The deep lake (which remember exists in a perfectly flat dungeon and involved water pouring in from above when there was a cave-in) resulted in the deaths of a bunch of demons, and their corpses turned to evil goo, making the lake naughty. Players are supposed to go deep in the water (where the book explains rules about pressure damage that ensures they will die) and conduct a ritual to cleanse the lake. But that doesn't DO anything. I mean, I guess if new creatures inhabit the lake they won't get all evil like, but the PCs won't care because they'll have left with no plans to return.

All that's left is the top row of the dungeon - M, Nx2, and O.

[deaddmwalking]

So I have some thoughts on what comes next. After finishing looking at The World's Largest Dungeon I'm going to take a look at Rappan Athuk.





Like World's Largest Dungeon, Rappan Athuk was intended as a 'super-dungeon'. It was originally released in 3 parts. Looking at what Rappan Athuk did differently and evaluating whether those aspects are better or worse, and why, will then inform our discussion of what a better World's Largest Dungeon would have looked like. But first, we finish the delve before us.

Region M: The Chasm (Levels 9-12)

So remembering that the Dungeon is laid out in a 4x4 grid, it's entirely possible that the PCs have headed North from their starting point in A (levels 1-3), through Region E (4-6), through I (7-9) and into M (9-12). They'll have to go through a couple more regions to get to the 'intended exit'. The way things connect they could completely bypass N (the undead) and get to O through the lake region (K) and enter O from a region for levels 10-12. Since Region O is intended for levels 16-20+ that's supposed to be a bad idea. But it is? We'll take a look in due course.

The story of why Region M exists makes no sense. Apparently it was part of the nearby plain and dumping all the giant rocks that were removed from the dungeon somehow uplifted it and pulled it into the mountain?

When the celestials descended, they gutted rhe mountain completely.
In the process of mining, massive slabs of stone were cut loose, falling
to the wide plains below and shattering its surface. A portion of the plane
survived, but was thrust up slightly by the impact and covered by a shower
of dust. The rest of the area was reduced to rubble. Between the two sections
the rock was gouged deep, for it is here the falling slabs hit hardest.

Shards of that rock pierced the far wall of the vast chamber, and lava
flowed forth, as if the mountain were bleeding. The lava flowed down
into the gorge, filling it enough to become a formidable river of gold
lava cutting the chamber in half-- the intact valley to one side and the
rubble to the other.

The only place you couldn't possibly enter Region M is in the Northwest corner (the edge of the page, and therefore the only section that couldn't possibly connect to any other regions) so that's where they start numbering from. One half of the region is caverns divided from a cavern big enough to fly in with very few numbered entries. The first 25 entries are mostly where flying things like air elementals, rocs, and belkers can attack you. There's also some things that might come out of the dirt, like a giant scorpion or an elder xorn. None of them have any particular motivations or reason to exist beyond they were in the SRD.

The cave network is dominated by Driders and their Drow slaves. I thought Driders were created when they failed some type of religious test, so they were considered somewhat outcast from society, but I admit that I'm not super into Forgotten Realms and don't really care what's supposed to be true. There's a poison item that all drider are immune to, but drow aren't, and I highly suspect that's some made-up bullshit (of which there's already been a fair amount) to justify something stupid. Anyways, the authors probably know that drow are usually in charge because I guess the driders used to be the slave of the drow, but now the drow are the slave of the driders? I don't think what happened is very clear but maybe that's just a failure to read closely. Point is, you can join the drow in their slave rebellion against the driders, which is probably what you should do to get through this area as quickly as possible. Virtually all of the encounters are with drow or drider, which in keeping with the rest of the dungeon is surprisingly REPETITIVE considering that a major selling point was the VARIETY the dungeon is supposed to contain. A random Chaos Beast or Invisible Stalker doesn't really relieve the monotony in any meaningful sense.

The last numbered area (M72) is offered as a way to leave the Dungeon (and come back in). It suggests that as a way for the PCs to spend 'all that gold they've been lugging around', but there hasn't been very much gold, and the PCs haven't had a chance to get any treasure that would make hauling large amounts of anything possible.

Anyways, it's the shortest region by numbered rooms, and that's what you get - weak on theme and another chance to cram in some more creatures that they couldn't figure out where else to put.

[deaddmwalking]

Region N: Tomb of the Unliving (Levels 14-18)

This area is supposed to have the FIRST LICH EVER, and you're not even supposed to be epic. That's not even the most powerful creature, though. There's some wildly crazy rules about using hordes of undead and they're stupid and broken, but if you use them the PCs will all die from ability damage. Often undead are easy to beat because they're vulnerable to things like Turn Undead, but the region basically makes that impossible. That said, you're running into Skeletons and Zombies along with Dread Wraiths so trying to get all the undead in a single region makes no sense at all.

One of the conceits of the Dungeon is that it is SO OLD that it pre-exists humanity. As a result, none of the undead are 'people'. But what they are is left up to the GM.

One thing I haven't talked about is random encounters. Although I've accused the dungeon of appearing to be static, random encounters can potentially avoid some of that. There are Random Encounter Tables for groups of rooms in each Region. For example, N1-4 (entrances from Region M) have you roll 1/hour. Most random encounters have you do something like 'roll for an encounter 1/hour, and 30% of the time roll on the encounter table'. This one just has you roll a d20 and on a 5-12 nothing happens. On a 1-4 'negative energy' briefly animates a skeleton that then collapses' with different types of creatures depending on the roll. For a random event it's stupid and boring. But it's better than 2 Dread Wraiths and their 8 Wraith disciples attacking from ambush.

N16-N52 are considered wilderness by the the resident warlords. Unclaimed and uninteresting, the western most halls hold only the frustration of the great gates and chamber after chamber of crazed dead.

It is boring. Many of the rooms have names like 'Crypt of the Prideful' or 'Crypt of the Blasphemers', but it's not really like those themes mean anything in D&D. The 'Crypt of the Slothful' are so lazy that the undead don't even animate (no encounter).

Areas 53-68 are a Bodak's territory, and he's created a fake court to try the unliving.





He's basically Bane

Areas 69-110 are under the control of a Blackguard Ghost. There's a room where the PCs are attacked by weapons and there's a 25% chance that the weapon isn't destroyed, meaning the PCs could pick up some ghost touch weapons long after they already needed them. Could they have gotten ghost touch weapons previously? Well, there was a single +2 Ghost Touch Battle Axe in Region L hidden in a shipwreck below the water, wielded by a ghost with class levels and in N32 a +1 Ghost Touch Greataxe wielded by a different ghost with class levels. And then there's the +3 Ghost Touch Brilliant Energy Scythe and +1 Ghost Touch Adamantine Warhammer wielded by the Blackguard Ghost in N102. And the book KNOWS this is a problem. Way back in section F there's a whole bunch of shadows and they point out that if the players don't have Ghost Touch weapons or a lot of force damage available to them, they're toast.

There's really NO TREASURE at all throughout the entire module, so there's no way that PCs will have level-appropriate equipment unless the GM adds more. Like seriously half of the listed treasure is cursed. So definitely GMs will either need to roll a lot of random treasure for the various encounters, or drop things specifically tailored to their group. Since that's such an important part of D&D advancement, it's really a shame that the authors never addressed it.

Anyway, assuming you don't die because you don't have any of the equipment you need, you enter the Mummy's Tomb (Areas 111-134) and you fight Mohrgs, Zombies, and Allips. If you keep exploring you'll find that areas 135-159 are empty (they are the no-man's land between warlord territories). But that doesn't mean they're COMPLETELY empty. You can fight five Vrock demons that get summoned by a trap.

Now, the next area (159) should probably be the last, because it's the 'finale to end all finales'. But we haven't covered the third warlord yet, or why something is in this room. So for now I'll just say that there's a 'big bad' that is totally trapped, and the only way he's getting free is if the PCs decide to free him, and there's really no reason for them to do that. Just remind me to come back.

Areas 160-180. Since corporeal and incorporeal undead were already mostly covered, he mostly has golems.

Then we have Areas 181-201 which also belong to the Mummy because this book doesn't know how to number things in any kind of logical order. Then there are Stasis Chambers, but they mostly have Dread Wraiths, which you've already fought a dozen times. 210-239 is 'disputed territory' which is basically just like 'no-man's land'.

240-250 is the 4th warlord's area, the Wraith King. You would think that the Dread Wraith Warlord would have ALL the Dread Wraiths, but someone must really like Dread Wraiths because they're EVERYWHERE. Including here. So you get a whole bunch MORE Dread Wraith encounters because this module doesn't actually understand VARIETY.

Then there are a bunch more rooms that don't really belong to anyone, bringing our numbered room count to 265. There's so much to say about how stupid the maps are, especially with undead that ought to be able to pass through them, and how pointless a 'centuries old stalemate' seems. But it's getting repetitive and we're so close to to the end that I won't bother. Next post will be 'the Finale to end all Finales'.

[deaddmwalking]

Region N, Continued

So I mentioned that there were several 'undead warlords'. Each of them wants to open a crypt that contains 'the World Eater'. Each of them is convinced that if they free the beast (CR 20 Nightcrawler) they'll command it. They're all wrong. The thing is, they can't release the beast, but the PCs can. I'm not actually sure that they can't do it, but it would at least involve cooperation, so they won't. Essentially, there are four levers that need to be flipped; that removes four wall of force that prevent access to the central crypt. Additionally, all four doors must be unlocked, requiring a key (each held by a different warlord).

Somehow, the book thinks it's best if the PCs haven't killed the warlords, because when they learn that they can't control the beast, maybe they'll fight it? It's not clear why they would because if nothing else, it will free them.

So after the PCs unseal the crypt, the Night Stalker unleashes a wave of negative energy and EVERYONE in the ENTIRE DUNGEON takes 4 negative levels (killing all the low HD creatures outright). All the slain creatures rise up as undead and begin to march toward this room. And the PCs fight a big scary beast with whatever they have with them.

Actually, there are 24 'orbs' that the PCs can deal 50 damage to in order to open them and find potentially useful things. This includes things like 3 potions of cure serious wounds or 6 potions of cure moderate wounds, or 12 potions of cure light wounds. Since the PCs can's see into the orbs, there's no reason they'd actually pick anything remotely useful. Some of them are actually bad. A 'tainted orb' releases a wave of negative energy giving everyone another negative level.

There's all kinds of reasons to expect the PCs to lose, but the module suggests letting them win.

Allow the PCs to win. If the PCs have been heroic, valorous,
or just plain determined, allow them to win this one. Certainly
avoid "handing" them a victory, but unless they do something
supremely stupid, this battle should be a challenge, not the nail
in their coffin. PCs that have behaved "questionably" shouldn't
be given a reprieve, but certainly they should be allowed to heal
themselves and "power up" before the big fight.

The PCS are supposed to be fighting dozens or hundreds of other undead creatures, but it doesn't look like it says what they should be, or how many, or anything.

If the PCs don't fight the creature, it digs a hole out, and all the rest of the undead eventually join it in destroying the surface world.

The book knows that PCs probably haven't visited AT LEAST THREE regions, so this is a bit of an antic-climactic climax. Imagine going to the Elf-hold now to find them all dead and just zombies.

[deaddmwalking]

Region N, Final Thoughts

I suspect that the Ghost Blackguard could kill all the other warlords by dint of having a monopoly on ghost touch weapons and being incorporeal.

Region O, Halls of Ice and Stone, Levels 16-20+

So originally the dungeon was supposed to have two entrances, and each was guarded by a Titan. One Titan is dead, and the other has been entombed in ice and a Frost Giant chief took over his job in order to shake down people entering or exiting the dungeon. Since nobody enters from his side, and nobody leaves until the PCs, it's totally not worth it.

Here you fight ice creatures, frost giants, and apparently Bugbears? Maybe they forgot to put them anywhere else? Oh, and at least one more Dread Wraith. Someone really likes them! There's also a Fiendish Megaraptor, so maybe the lake-dinosaur didn't count? One of the numbered areas is the exit, so if you can kill a pair of Frost Giants you can just walk out.

The World's Largest Appendix

So noting that the book didn't have a Table of Contents or Index, it might be surprising to find an Appendix at all. There was a tiny version of the poster map with the Regions and their corresponding page numbers, but that was it. The Appendix has information on influencing the NPCs throughout based on their starting attitude, lists of statuses, diseases, encounter conditions, poisons, traps, terrible rules on hordes (swarms of medium sized or larger creatures). Then we get a couple of pages about how much work and passion this project took, and how proud everyone is of the finished project. The last word is literally

If I forgot to thank someone, that's because it's 2 A.M. and this book
goes to press tomorrow. Thank you all for this amazing ride.

That sorta sums it up for me, too. It's a project that feels rushed from beginning to end. They (appear to have) leveraged random dungeon generators and tweaked them in Photoshop to produce maps that are ALMOST but not ENTIRELY useless for the stories they wanted to tell, and ALMOST but not ENTIRELY failed to connect any of the regions to each other in a meaningful whole, but DESPITE THAT, didn't actually make any of the individual sections particularly interesting or compelling. Throughout they had a poor grasp of rules, an even more tenuous grasp of logic, and a complete failure to understand what would make a compelling dungeon adventure.

Despite that, they've gotten pledges for $530k to re-release this abomination with the promise of updating the stat blocks to 5th edition. I expect that they'll ask ChatGPT to do it. Just not all at once.

I can definitely help you convert individual stat blocks or walk you through the process of updating World's Largest Dungeon from D&D 3rd Edition to 5th Edition—but I can’t update or reproduce all of them in bulk due to copyright restrictions. However, here’s how I can help:
What I Can Do:
Convert Individual Stat Blocks: If you provide me with a specific creature, NPC, or encounter from World's Largest Dungeon, I can convert it to a 5e-compatible stat block.

Provide a Conversion Guide: I can give you a detailed step-by-step guide to convert monsters, traps, skill checks, and magic items from 3e to 5e.

Summarize Encounter Adjustments: I can explain how to adjust encounter difficulty and pacing for 5e mechanics.

Create Homebrew Replacements: If some monsters don’t exist in 5e, I can help you create balanced versions or suggest alternatives.

Generate Stat Blocks from Descriptions: If you describe the role and behavior of a creature or NPC, I can build a custom 5e version.

What I Can’t Do:
Reproduce the full contents of World's Largest Dungeon (or any other product under copyright).

Distribute a fully converted document for the whole module.