Monday 3 April 2017

Lost Megadungeon details

I had a reasonable idea, I think, for the East-facing entrance to my original megadungeon. The doors (15' wide each, and 30' high, and flanked with towers) open onto a kind of ledge, with a long narrow bridge stretching away about 185'. The bridge is above what I've called the 'Bargaining Floor' - this settlement was obviously intended to be heavily involved in commerce. Steps lead down from the ledge into this large room. The bridge ends at a large platform with a statue of a dragon on it, and an entrance (shh! It's secret!) to the rest of the complex.

There isn't much of this that I actually did - a couple of pages of notes, detailing 11 rooms on Levels 1 and 1a, four maps, which cover the areas I have the descriptions for and hint at what I had in mind for some others (the other levels I've drawn seem to be parts of 2 and 4, connected by truly enormous staircases, though many of the details on the maps are now obscure to me), and a couple of sketches of how levels relate. Some of the notes on the maps are frustrating - on the Level 2 map, 'to Level 4 and the South Gate' presumably means I had another part of Level 4 in mind, because the part of L4 I do have connects to another part of the L2 map. I don't know what 'back of cave' means (or rather, I don't know which cave it refers to). I do know what 'to Anak/Noegyth' means (this dungeon was originally intended to link to maps and other info I wasn't otherwise going to use) but I won't be allowing the players to do that. That staircase will now have to lead somewhere else - to a brand-new Level 3. The Level 4 I have here is going to be scrapped for the same reason - I'm replicating maps from other sources that I've now 'folded back' into the existing game-world.

It seems that the entrance-level is actually quite small. I guess my thinking was that it would be easy to isolate this area if the city was attacked. The staircase from the platform takes you down to Level 2, which then leads back up to Level 1a - that might need tweaking a little, perhaps there should ways to access other parts of the complex from Level 1, perhaps from the 'Bargaining Floor' - but I like the design of the entrance. I was obviously having a good couple of days when I did this, whenever it was (I suspect about 1992).

I think I will try to tie this information back into Silvergate and try to use this stuff as a subsidiary eastern entrance (the main entrance I've already designed for Silvergate - bigger than this one - faces south). Finding a way of linking Silvergate's topmost levels with these will - slightly - increase my room-count for Silvergate and add some new options and routes for the players. However, this stuff was produced by the 'old me' (see for details this post for example). The default monsters here are Orcs, Goblins and Rats. Perhaps as I need an Orc lair on Level 4, I should just plonk this on top and replace the Level 4 map with my Orctown? That might work.

In all, there's about 25 rooms here of salvageable map, and 11 descriptions, a few of which I'm pretty proud of. There are also two more options for actually getting into the place, through the new entrance proper, and through the 'back of the cave', wherever that turns out to be (about 600' to the north and 250' west, and then maybe a little down the hill, I'd say). Perhaps that is one of the entrances I already know about? I need to get my Silvergate file and take a look.

Ah well, we'll see. It's made me think about Silvergate again, and you never know, I might even start running it soon...

1 comment:

  1. Addendum: I hadn't noticed the other day, but the staircase leading 'to Anak/Noegyth' is going up, not down, and must therefore lead back to another (northern) part of Level 1. Level 1a is thus effectively a lair (there are only 13 rooms in total) that connects outside with both Levels 1 and 2. Very useful I think.

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