Dwimmermount in hand

I was one of the Kickstarters for Dwimmermount. I finally have the hardback, map book, and image book in hand. I like them a lot. It was a very long, turbulent process, but the final product is actually quite good. I can easily run a campaign for years with this book.
Parts of the dungeon are fairly standard, which is a good thing. But it also has a lot of pseudo-science/technomagic bits which work quite well.
The background is cool, and there are different groups of monsters in the dungeon, and their relationships are mapped. Some work together, others hate each other. If the players are smart, they could easily gain allies to help them.
The art if very old school in style. The book is big, and looks like it will take a lot of punishment.
Overall, I'm glad it is finally here. The final product looks to be very usable, and well thought out. Congrats to everyone involved in finally getting this setting into print!

Light in the dungeon

After reading the post about PC's trying to weasel out of using light sources on Planet Algol, I got to thinking about this. Usually, a mage just has continual cast on stones or his staff, so having a light doesn't really become an issue. My big thing is the radius of the light source.

Many light sources only have a 15 to 30 foot radius. If you're walking into a big cave that's 150 feet across, you'll stick out like a sore thumb to every monster there. If they have bows, you're kind of screwed. You'll just be walking along, and arrows will start pelting into your group. You'll see the arrows appear, but you won't have any idea where they are coming from. I think many DM's miss this.

The players will need to either use magic to locate enemies, have a demihuman locate the attackers, or launch torches or lighted items out around them, or they will have no idea where the attackers are located. Most dungeon adversaries can see in the dark just fine, so they don't need light sources. Because the players have torches, every monster anywhere nearby will see them coming, and will have fantastic targets.

I'd give monsters total cover until they have been located. In addition, they might even gain a bonus to hit the torchbearers, since they may as well have a giant bullseye painted on themselves.

Fountain of Restoration

Here's a random room for a dungeon:

Fountain of Restoration
This small room (10' x 10') has a fountain in the center. The fountain is a cleric healing a wounded warrior woman lying on the ground, with water pouring from the wounded woman's mouth. Characters that drink from the fountain recover all levels and ability points lost due to undead draining.

If the water is taken from the room, it becomes poisonous. Anyone who drinks the water after it has left the room must Save vs. Poison or permanently lose one point of Strength. If they try returning to the fountain to recover this lost point of Strength, it will not work, because the fountain only repairs losses due to undead.

Megadungeons - I've never really used one

I have Castle Zagyg, but I skipped out on Undermountain and the various 2e megadungeons. I played around a bit with Rappan Athuk: The Upper Levels when it came out, but I never really used the entire thing. I've just never been able to justify to myself the existence of such a thing. I love small crypts and stuff like the Catacombs in Paris. But a huge dungeon with seemingless endless levels just seems goofy. I could maybe see it if parts of it are attached via dimensional gates. But having everything stuffed into one mountain is kind of silly to me.

In some ways, I kind of regret this. After reading the Dwimmermount posts on Grognardia, I would actually like to try a megadungeon. I doubt that I would run it very long, especially compared to the amount of preparatory work it would require though. But for those of you who like this stuff, I hope you have fun!

Published adventures, and how I use them

I very rarely use a published adventure as written. Too many times, my players will do something completely off the wall, or just ignore something that would cause the adventure to collapse before it even gets started. I've made a little list of things that I do that makes even stuff published for completely different systems usable.

1. Maps. These are always useful. I have a collection of photocopied maps in a binder that I can whip out at a moments notice.
2. NPC's. Also always usable. It's a bonus if they're written in the system I'm using.
3. Art. That cool picture of a vampire will be used somewhere.
4. General plot lines. These can provide some great inspiration, even if the particulars in the adventure wouldn't suit.
5. Little details. The room with a neat description and associated monster might get dropped into a completely different scenario, just because I like it. I've done this with a couple adventures that I've literally not used for anything else. It's kind of my "Well, at least I got this one little room out of the book" feeling.

What kind of fool enters a megadungeon?

I was just thinking about this a bit. If a megadungeon exists, and especially if it is well known, what kind of fool would actually think that entering it is a good idea? Especially if there are numerous reports of adventuring parties not returning, or only a few returning, who describe all the horrible things that happened to their friends.


Reasons people might enter a megadungeon:

1. They're insane. Megalomaniacal, even.
2. They somehow think that they won't get hurt, when 9 out of 10 people who enter the dungeon die there.
3. They have very powerful cleric friends who will resurrect them.
4. They're archeologists.
5. They're mages looking for a powerful spellbook known to be lost in the dungeon somewhere.
6. They're priests attempted to recover lost relics.
7. They're priests attempting to banish the evil that lives in the dungeon.
8. They've been hired by the local government to clean out the dungeon. And they're megalomaniacal enough to try.
9. They're godlike beings, and can't really be hurt by anything in the dungeon.
10. They're Sensates from the Planes, and just want to experience everything the dungeon can offer.
11. They're sacrifices.
12. They're escapees from something even worse than the dungeon.
13. They like living in dungeons, and think it would make a nice home.
14. They have a fool-proof plan to raid the dungeon without actually having to fight anything. At least, they think it's fool-proof.
15. They enter the dungeon to find a relic located there that will save their spouse or children.