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Ancient History
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Post by Ancient History »

It could be fun indeed, but it would require a lot of buy-in from the players as to why they were all together in a dungeon, who runs/controls/does what, etc.
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Post by hyzmarca »

Ancient History wrote:It could be fun indeed, but it would require a lot of buy-in from the players as to why they were all together in a dungeon, who runs/controls/does what, etc.
Depends on how serious you want to take it.

It's pretty easy to say that you're the local junior chapter of the Evil Guild of Evil and your job is to build dungeons and stuff princesses into them for heroes to rescue. Go full Venture Brothers. The Dungeon Building, World Destruction, and World Conquest, And Heroing businesses are all heavily unionized. Monster are heavily unionized. There's literally a monster's guild that all monsters are members of. There's a minimum basic contract that Guild Dungeon Masters are required to abide by. (And good luck getting Monsters for a non-Guild gig).
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Post by Ancient History »

I mean, unless you just want to go strictly Dungeon Keeper and say "The Forces of Darkness have planted you in the middle of the wilderness as its champions; craft your center of power with which to corrupt and destroy the Forces of Light, and by the way their champions are going to be on their way any time now."

But more realistically, you have to look at how dungeons work traditionally and how they could work.

So for example, if your characters were warlords of different monster tribes, you might move into an existing ruin/dungeon complex, claim parts of it, and work to expand it for your own use - the whole dungeon ecology angle, where you know there are kobolds on the first level but the little shits know not to come down to level three, because that's orc territory.

Or you could be a cabal of necromancers sharing resources like a dentist's office block, and you go to a convenient necropolis where there's a good amount of raw material to work with, but everybody basically does their own thing.

Other times, dungeons function as a level of protection as much as anything, a useful way to keep people away from you so you can get some serious Dark Work done. In this case, you might have a nominal leader while the other people are much more functional, with assigned roles and clearly delegated authority, like security at a military base or aggressively paranoid corporation.

More directly on that line, you might have an actual purpose - you might be good or lawful guys designated to keep the horribly evil/chaotic prisoners imprisoned, and the dungeon in this sense might be a more traditional prison with some less-traditional precautions, because annual operating budgets get iffy when kingdoms rise and fall every thousand years. Or for the inverse, you might be like in Temple of Doom, working to excavate for evil artifacts and needing some rather elaborate security structures around the whole thing.

Hell, you could be dwarfs looking to build a small mining hold and facing semi-annual invasions of goblins and kobolds on beakdogs and elephants...
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Post by hyzmarca »

You know, I would love to play a Communist Tucker's Kolbolds campaign. Like you are a tribe of Red Kobolds who were kicked out of your clan by the Bourgeois establishment and have to start your own colony in a dungeon somewhere, and subtly undermine capitalism in the nearby kingdom.

So you're basically low level monsters with shitty powers, but you have access to buttloads of treasure and traps as well as a command economy that makes building up the dungeon that much easier and the ability to recruit stronger monsters via bribery and propaganda.

Playing Kobolds, I think, is the best way to go about it, because it requires the players to be mean and think mean. Having only 4hp and crap saves basically means that they will die horribly if they just murder the interlopers as brutally as possible using indirect means.
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Post by Prak »

I'd be down for either the kobolds or necromancers ideas. Kobolds are always fun and the overall goal could be to attract some big powerful dragon to toady around, or have some big half-dragon thing that you keep as the kobold-equivalent of goblins and wargs, or whatever. But the Necromancer Workshop block could be a lot of fun too.


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Post by Shady314 »

Ancient History wrote: More directly on that line, you might have an actual purpose - you might be good or lawful guys designated to keep the horribly evil/chaotic prisoners imprisoned, and the dungeon in this sense might be a more traditional prison with some less-traditional precautions, because annual operating budgets get iffy when kingdoms rise and fall every thousand years.
That'd be really interesting. House Kundarak has a prison just like that in the Eberron Setting. They have to handle shit like imprisoning liches because they can't find their phylacteries. Monsters with spell like abilitites to teleport, people that could fuck with the guards minds etc. Then there's the asshole minions/henchmen always looking to break them out.
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Post by angelfromanotherpin »

I'm picturing a D&D version of the SCP organization.
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Post by OgreBattle »

Kobold Fortress would be fun.
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Post by JigokuBosatsu »

I think we're all pretty sold on the idea. I could see this as a supplement- system agnostic with a bunch of seeds and procedures for how this sort of game would play out.
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Post by Ancient History »

I'm still working on Space Madness! for virgil, but maybe we should explore who would be in, and what they want? My innate instinct is to start with d20 and the Stronghold Builder's Guide as a starting point, but I'm not married to that.
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Post by Avoraciopoctules »

I've seen a couple games where the MC generates a dungeon, then gives the players control over one of the factions inside it. You could probably save a lot of work by just taking an existing megadungeon, then giving the players the goal of taking over the whole place while fending off adventurers.

If I ran something like that, I'd probably use part of Castle Greyhawk or the Emerald Spire.
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Post by radthemad4 »

<Raises hand>

Both d20 Dungeon Keeper, and larger scale Logistics and Dragons sound fun.
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Post by Ancient History »

I suppose there could be a "reclaim the ruins" expedition. Your group starts out toward a set of pre-determined ruins, with your cohorts, and look into rehabbing it and making it a suitable base of operations. Definitely a different dynamic from the other kind of dungeon expeditions.
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Post by Mask_De_H »

I'd be down for a Dungeon Keeper kind of game.
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Post by erik »

Ancient History wrote:I suppose there could be a "reclaim the ruins" expedition. Your group starts out toward a set of pre-determined ruins, with your cohorts, and look into rehabbing it and making it a suitable base of operations. Definitely a different dynamic from the other kind of dungeon expeditions.
In one of the D&D campaigns I ran we basically were exorcising a haunted light-house keep on an island and decided that it would make a nice base of operations since nobody owned it and it was near a large port city. There was a bit of fun in having a fixer-upper. Shipwrecks all around that my cleric could rehab as a hobby, maybe to run a fleet with a skeleton crew in the future, that kind of stuff. Sadly that campaign retired just at that point, full of hope and promise, since the DM stated he wasn't up for high level challenges.
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Post by Ancient History »

Secrets of the Fire Swamp (d20 3.+) IC/OOC

Oct 10, 2015 to May 28, 2017

By the premise, this was supposed to be a relatively short, eminently flexible sandbox game. I decided, in my illness, to try a double-class-by-level variation, since low levels suck and it would give PCs a bit more flexibility.

In hindsight, that might be where I fucked up.

Like a lot of these games, initial interest was high (seven players), which was whittled down by attrition (four died), and then it entered a long, lingering period where days could pass between posts, before mercifully coming to an end in what was originally intended to be a side-quest (delivering a flask of oil of slipperiness to a Dragon Turtle so that they could consummate their marriage...I'm not proud of that one.)

What Went Right
I have no idea. I look back, and I think a lot of the players had no idea what was going on at any given time, and that represents a failure of me as the gamemaster. The PCs succeeded more often than they failed, which is good, even if they did keep ending up in situations where the environment and their own abilities were more of a challenge than the mooks I was throwing at them.

What Went Wrong
Everything. I should have mapped things out. I should have made the adventure more engaging, more timely. I should have kept it shorter and punchier, maybe deadlier. Not every story has to have a happy ending, and a TPK in the Fire Swamp would maybe have been a lot more merciful than the extended slog that it became. It would at least have presented a Tomb of Horrors-style anecdote about the ridiculous deadliness of the swamp and maybe inspired a conga-line of PCs. I dunno.

Why
I do know I ended up writing a lot more material than actually saw play. Which is pretty common for these things; I get more interested in the individual encounters and the backstory than how PCs get from point A to point B, and without a strong plot element I think a lot of players get lost in the sandbox (they never even encountered the Great Leap Sideways, or the hidden temple, or the artifact Thrull was after). I also grossly misjudged the double-level system, especially when combined with Tome stuff. That was entirely my bad.

In all, I think it was the long, slow death - days between posts - that dragged this thing out. Maybe I should have called it months ago, but I hate to just quit on a game, even if the ending is a bit too succinct.
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Post by Darth Rabbitt »

This is coming from a player of the aformentioned PbP
Ancient History wrote:Like a lot of these games, initial interest was high (seven players), which was whittled down by attrition (four died), and then it entered a long, lingering period where days could pass between posts, before mercifully coming to an end in what was originally intended to be a side-quest
On my part at least, it wasn't as much lack of interest as a lot of time-consuming stuff coming up over time (getting a job, studying for exams, getting ready to move, etc.) I'd have gladly continued the game further, although the next couple of months are going to be a pain for me so perhaps it's for the best it ended when it did. But I'd gladly do a follow up at some point in the future. Your games are really fun.
(delivering a flask of oil of slipperiness to a Dragon Turtle so that they could consummate their marriage...I'm not proud of that one.)
Fantastic.
I think a lot of the players had no idea what was going on at any given time, and that represents a failure of me as the gamemaster. The PCs succeeded more often than they failed, which is good, even if they did keep ending up in situations where the environment and their own abilities were more of a challenge than the mooks I was throwing at them.
I actually kind of dug that, it made it feel like a weird-ass environment that we really had to explore to figure out.
Not every story has to have a happy ending, and a TPK in the Fire Swamp would maybe have been a lot more merciful than the extended slog that it became. It would at least have presented a Tomb of Horrors-style anecdote about the ridiculous deadliness of the swamp and maybe inspired a conga-line of PCs. I dunno.
I can't speak for the others, but I'm kind of glad Archimedes wasn't killed off, he was a fun character to play even though I fucked up on a few things with him (sleeping with the Sea Cow was not one of them--it was foolish but I maintain it was totally in character for a lonely monster, even one with a really high Wisdom).
(they never even encountered the Great Leap Sideways, or the hidden temple, or the artifact Thrull was after).
Unless you plan to use those in a future game I really want to know what those are.
I also grossly misjudged the double-level system, especially when combined with Tome stuff. That was entirely my bad.
I basically stopped casting spells in combat after Archimedes got his iron body so he basically only had one class track, which was admittedly "pouncing closet troll."
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Post by Ancient History »

Great Leap Sideways: Psionic crab civilization, inspired by The Science of the Discworld.

Hidden Temple: Giant Aztec-style pyramid made of gold, full of traps, mummified reptilians, and an artifact that would disintegrate and auto-reincarnate you. Underneath were caverns full of blind troglodytes and albino lizardmen.

Thrull's artifact: Basically a crown of vermin if it was a literal item and not just a spell.
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Post by Darth Rabbitt »

That all sounds awesome. Now I really wish the game had continued, real life be damned!
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Post by hyzmarca »

Ancient History wrote: Hidden Temple: Giant Aztec-style pyramid made of gold, full of traps, mummified reptilians, and an artifact that would disintegrate and auto-reincarnate you. Underneath were caverns full of blind troglodytes and albino lizardmen.

Was there a talking stone head named Olmec?
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Post by Ancient History »

There was an oracle, yes.
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Post by CapnTthePirateG »

Ancient History wrote:Analysis
I hate to be a massive jackass after you provided entertainment on the internet for free...but I have to agree with a lot of what you said.

A lot of the game felt like a "random events happened" plot where we went to the fire swamp, lost 4 guys, and then picked up a shadow party of weird NPCs that did...stuff...with no real goal or reason to care other than "we're here now and maybe there's some money?" There was a lot of stuff that seemed weird for weirdness' sake and I will definitely admit to losing interest over time in addition to fun real-life issues. I would probably have paid more attention if it became a revolving door of PCs or something absurd rather than a slog of confusion and apathy, but I believe I am on record as wanting poor Malagos to get eaten rather than continue the game.

I will also admit to learning that a single-classed low-level wizard does not stand out well in the land of gestalt homebrew, leading me to the conclusion that I will never run a gestalt game.

What was our end goal/reason for hitting the swamp in the first place? "Get the dragon turtle laid" was kind of a cool idea, but maybe not worth losing over half our combat strength.

Again, I don't mean to be a jerk on the internet, just stating my thoughts.
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Post by Ancient History »

What was our end goal/reason for hitting the swamp in the first place? "Get the dragon turtle laid" was kind of a cool idea, but maybe not worth losing over half our combat strength.
Part of the problem with true sandbox games: giving the PCs a purpose without it becoming a railroad (which defeats the purpose of the sandbox). The Dragon Lube thing was supposed to be a sidequest, but things were taking so long I ended up subverting it to just be the main quest line.
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Post by TheFlatline »

Ancient History wrote:I mean, unless you just want to go strictly Dungeon Keeper and say "The Forces of Darkness have planted you in the middle of the wilderness as its champions; craft your center of power with which to corrupt and destroy the Forces of Light, and by the way their champions are going to be on their way any time now."
The last AD&D game I ever ran was based on a novel called Villains by Necessity where you played bad guys in a post-revelations world where good won. You are the last effort by the dying evil gods to make a stand.

I ran it kind of like a Kobolds Ate My Baby! game- real slapstick, silly, dirty, etc...

We never got to the point where we built a dungeon but we did take over hamlets and villages and stuff. It was a lot of fun.

Somewhere in the black hole of my internet archives I adapted the setting straight to the beer engine from KAMB. I think I left off on the magic section but it was mostly complete.
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