Design It To Run: How I Am Designing & Running the Montporte Dungeon

We are closing in on Session 30 of the Montporte Dungeon Campaign and I feel like I can now speak with a bit of experience about designing and running a megadungeon. Back in the 1970s, I started with a dungeon-only campaign as my Holmes D&D set came with dungeon geomorphs, rather than a module. None of my fellow gamers owned modules, just lots of graph paper. So running a dungeon was our default. But that was a long time ago and I hadn't really attempted to run a megadungeon since.

What follows is descriptive, not prescriptive. I am attempting to describe how I am designing and running a dungeon, not how you should do it. Most weeks, I am scrambling to get ready for game night in between family, work, and my music obligations. So with those caveats, here is my approach:

Campaign Mindset: From the start, my mindset has been to run it as a campaign setting and not an adventure module on steroids (which is how most published megadungeons appear to me). Rather than focus on rooms, I focus on areas, peoples, etc and then fill in the details as needed (or as I have time), just as if I were running a typical non-dungeon campaign.

My Dungeon: The Montporte Megadungeon is designed by me for me to run. And I run it with people I know. I am not creating something for publication or something to even post on my blog for others. It is very specific to me and our Monday Night Gaming Group. I don't feel like I have an audience of gamers/consumers to please, just a group of friends to entertain.

As Needed: I only create the dungeon a little in advance of where the players might go. At the beginning, this meant a fair amount of mapping. But now, not so much. There are several reasons I do this: (1) I don't have the time or energy to create a 20 level dungeon all at once; (2) I don't always know what will catch the players' interest and I would rather have things be more open-ended and flexible; and (3) Inspiration comes to me slowly and if I try to do too much at once, the dungeon turns out bland. I need to give myself time to let ideas germinate.

Mapping Part 1: Fortunately, I love to draw dungeon maps. Unfortunately, we are playing online with a VTT (our group uses either Roll20 or Fantasy Grounds, depending on the GM...I opted to use Roll20). This means that I could either draw maps by hand, scan them, and upload them...or create maps digitally. I opted to create them digital in AutoREALM, which is a slower process for me, but it cuts out the conversion process.

Mapping Part 2: I usually start my mapping process of a level by creating a 5x5 grid in Publisher. Each square in the grid is 10", which means I use the custom setting to create a 52" x 52" page (allowing for 1" margins). I then place a text box in each grid, describing in as little detail as I can, what is in each square. In dungeon terms, each square represents 300" x 300", the same sized used in Stonehell. I then, as I need to, create the detailed 300' x 300' maps in AutoREALM, with a 5'/square scale. I convert it a JPEG and--Presto!--I have my map for Roll20. I can also drop the JPEG file into my Publisher grid and create level map, which can also easily be converted to JPEGs. By using blackened rectangles to cover unexplored areas, I can create overview maps for the players like the one below (it takes about 15 minutes):

Level 1, From the Players' Perspective

Seeds: I try to drop adventure or plot seeds into the campaign as we play (from this blog post by Michael Curtis {The Society of Torch, Pole, and Rope}). It is up to the players to decide what to do with them. This only works for me if I do not plan details too far ahead. I have had to let go of my inner-world builder's conceit of "this place exists whether or not a PC ever sees it." It should feel that way to the players, but that is not how I am operating behind the scenes.

Tropes Part 1 ("the lack thereof"): For the most part, I have avoided the OSR cliches and tropes--random tables, lots of slash and grab sessions, and traps for the purposes of having traps. It is not that I have a philosophical or ideological reason to avoid them. My reasoning is more pragmatic: It takes a surprising amount of time to create a random encounter table that might only be used 1 or 2 times. It is easier to just create the encounter than to create the table to generate it.

Tropes Part 2 (my trope): My one conceptual trope has been the computer game, Myst. I am not trying to recreate Myst as we play, but I like the idea of using interlocking clues and details so that the players gradually piece together the multiple back stories of the dungeon. There are a few chatty NPCs in the dungeon, plus lots of scrolls and documents. In fact, every encounter is a clue to the dungeon. Not all clues are earth shattering, but they all pile on one another to paint a picture and tell the story of the dungeon.

Improvisation and Planning: I only occasionally use set-piece encounters that are tied to specific physical locations within the dungeon. They are there, but there are not a lot of them. I do, however, improvise a lot. For a lot of people, improvisation implies a lack of planning or forethought, kind of like "winging it." As a musician, improvisation means something different to me. Improvisation means creating responding to others as you play, but it still requires as much planning, forethought, etc. I spend a considerable about of time planning for each session, but I look at options the players have in front of them and how they might respond, rather than planning specific encounters ahead of time. I am not sure if this makes sense to you, the reader, but I have found it to be my style of GMing...at least most of the time.

Rationalization and Logic: The Montporte Dungeon has a series of backstories that provide an inner logic for myself and the players. However, it only works when we (our group) let go of (1) the question of why a big multi-layer hole in the ground would be there in the first place; and (2) previous preconceptions about megadungeon play (this has been a bit of a struggle as the cliches of dungeon play haunted us when we started).

Inspiration: I read a lot--close to a book a week--and while I do not plan my reading around gaming, I often read things that end up in the dungeon. A recent example are the small bottles of impossibly cold water (why did it not turn to ice?) found in Session 22. These were inspired by So Cold the River, a novel by Michael Koryta. My days with the Appendix N types of literature are mostly in the past, but I am finding inspiration in unlikely sources. This has proven to be a benefit as some of the guys in our gaming group have way more gaming stuff than me. I have thus far avoided the dreaded "You pulled this from B1, didn't you?" or "Hey, this sounds like Dragon #135."

Further Reading: John Arendt (Dreams in the Lich House) recently published two posts on megadungeons that present an interesting point and counterpoint: You Will Never Finish That Dungeon and From an Alternate Universe. I found them interesting and helpful. For me, Michael Curtis' (The Society of Torch, Pole, and Rope) post, With New Old Eyes, is my "go to" reading for running a megadungeon. Peter D (Dungeon Fantastic) wrote an excellent post, Megadungeon Play Reflections-The Immediate and the Cumulative, that lives up to "Fantastic" moniker. I have previously tried to capture a bit of my own thinking on designing and running megadungeons: Five Paths For Dungeon Design and Creating Meaningful Choices in a Dungeon-Centered Campaign.

Heisenberg's Dungeon

"Intuitively obvious to
the casual observer"
as my college physics
text book would note
(after a page of calculus)

James Mal (Grognardia) published a post back in October 2009, entitled Schrödinger's Dungeon. James' contention was that it is nearly impossible to publish a true megadungeon. Leaving aside the slightly sad irony of this statement in light of the Dwimmermount Kickstarter (unless he has used the Dwimmermount Kickstarter to prove his point, in which case supporters were really funding a research grant to prove his hypothesis...but I digress)...anyway, leaving aside the irony, I actually believe his point has some merit. But I prefer Heisenberg to Schrödinger.

Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle is simple to state (so long as one is not interested in the why, then you have to do math stuff...not so simple): When it comes to subatomic particles, we can either precisely know the location of the particle or its momentum, but not both. The more we know about one, the less we can know about the other.

In my mind, there is a certain analogy with megadungeons, the more we define it by maps, keys, descriptions and tables, the less mega it becomes. Mega implies something that is almost infinite in scope: Endless caverns, layers, an underworld of tunnels and rooms. Defining it with a map limits its size.

I have purchased a number of published megadungeons, including Stonehell, Barrowmaze, Anomalous Subsurface Environment, and Rappan Athuk. I love them (and shamelessly borrow from them) but they all seem like there is something not quite mega about them. Maybe it is just the experience of being able to see a whole dungeon level, just by opening the book and looking at a map, that makes them smaller. But I suspect it is something more. Putting a megadungeon in print is much like adding a butterfly to an insect collection. You have to kill it to keep it. You have to kill the megadungeon, destroying its growth and dynamic qualities in the process, in order to publish it. More than anything, the mystery and the sense of the vast unknown seems to get snuffed by the act of printing.

Maybe it is just me. I am not certain.

And the Answer is "Hit Points"

Take one of the older editions of Dungeons & Dragons (or your favorite retroclone), strip away everything except the one most fundamental and essential element. What do you have left?

Resisting Impulsive/Compulsive RPG Purchases

Back when I was in my late 20s, I lived for a time in northern Minnesota, along the north shore of Lake Superior. The area is absolutely gorgeous and I would move back there in a heartbeat if I had the chance...Anyway, while I was there, I spent a lot of time hiking, cross country skiing, and snowshoeing. I also took up fishing (or rather returned to it, as I fished a lot as a young child). I soon learned that fishing was not a cheap activity. It wasn't like it was when I was a kid, where I could bring home a bucket of panfish with a can of worms and cheap fishing pole. I needed all sorts of things just to get started--poles, reels, lures, jigs, tackle boxes--not to mention the need to have a boat, regular boat motor, trolling motor, floatation devices, sonar fish finder. I choose to be on good terms with boat owners, as I couldn't afford to drop the cash needed for even a small boat. Oh, I almost forgot the need for a trailer and a four-wheel drive truck. At the end of the day, you could buy a giant pile of Mrs. Paul's best for the price of catching one walleye.

One of my very wise fishing buddies made the simple observation that most fishing equipment is designed to catch fisherman, not fish. I think about that little gem on a regular basis as I am involved in a number of fun activities where I could easily spend way beyond my means (much to my wife's dismay). I play music (easy to drop $2K on a decent bass or $300 on an effects pedal). I read (and collect) history books and most of the topics I enjoy are only published by university publishing houses (not cheap). And then there is gaming. If you are reading this post, you need no explanation as to how easy it would be to drop a couple hundred on gaming stuff.

I have lived with myself long enough to know that when it comes to music equipment, books, and gaming stuff, I can very impulsive. Nothing like walking into a music store for a $10 instrument cable and walking out with a $600 guitar. Working in the nonprofit sector and having kids in college requires me to be bit more responsible than that.

Back in Minnesota, I would look at the fishing tackle and ask: (1) Do I actually need this to catch fish? (2) Do I need to buy this today or can I think about it for another day? I do the same thing with gaming stuff. The fact is, when it comes to gaming, all you really need is a set of dice, a pencil, and some blank paper.

It isn't that I don't ever buy gaming stuff...I do. And sometimes I buy a lot of it. And sometimes I buy things and then think the next week, what did I need with that? But I do try to avoid that sort of buyer's remorse. I think the main thing is knowing myself and not necessarily trusting that overwhelming urge to buy the latest game product. I try to only buy things I know I will actually use in the next six months.

I use online wish lists to keep me from online impulse purchases: When I feel the urge to buy something and I cannot think I will immediately use, I put it on a wish list and give it the highest priority. Almost always, I find myself going back to that list a month later and lowering the priority. My online wish lists are filled with thousands of dollars worth of stuff that I thought I had to have but then discovered I didn't really need. I figure I get the fun of shopping without an attack of buyer's remorse.

Truth be told, I have a lot of books that I will never read and piles of gaming stuff that  I will never use [Shhhh! Please keep that to yourself, as this is something I don't want to admit to my wife more often that absolutely necessary]. There a plenty of things that could have remained on a wishlist instead of being purchased by me. Lots of things sitting here that make me wonder, "Did I really pine and swone for these things?" This being said, a certain red five string bass has been sitting on my wish list for a good long time and Father's Day is just around the corner. Come on now, Daddy looks good in red.