Dungeon Design

Well I was thinking of maybe incorporating some aspects from Dark Souls, with bonfires. Not A direct 1:1 lift but something similar, as I suppose Dark Souls could be seen as one Huge Mega Dungeon.

That being said I haven't settled on anything fast, aside from the Dungeon being a built upon the remains of an ancient dwarf hold and the base camp town being buy the coast or near a river.

Any ideas for a bonfire like thing that isn't so overtly gamest?

Make them places consecrated by a Priest of Cleric who passed through the dungeon (who also leaves clues like journal entries or notes and whatnot).

They could have religious iconography, and offer up a bonus to HP regeneration when resting in them.

The twist? The Cleric is the big bad, or the hapless victim of the big bad.

Brilliant idea, I will likely use it, maybe have him be a grey philosopher (Undead cleric) at the end of the dungeon.

Who many levels would you recommend for a mega dungeon?
10?
20? 40?
60+?

Dungeon Fantastic has a series of notes and guides from his megadungeon. His advice makes me think of shit like Dark Souls level design, with a focus on interconnectivity, discovering short-cuts, and similar features.

>Bonfire ideas not overtly gamist.

1) Depending on your tone, that might not be a bad thing. There's some cartoony, clearly gamist shit, and it can be fun to just roll with it.

2) Refluff it. Call it the curse of the maze witch, or something. Provide some RP or story reason why your bonfire equivalent exists.

Really, the only way that I can see to not make it an obvious gamist mechanical thing is to refluff it and hide the respawn mechanics behind other mechanics, like sanity or madness. Maybe the PCs suffer the real threat of going hollow.

It depends on how large each level is. The more levels, the more work there is to do. You may want to diagram how you want the levels to interact vertically, and not just horizontally.

I personally would start with ten, and then add on if I wanted to. You could also have several dungeons that connect to one another, either vertically or horizontally, each one with its own ecology and encounter tables.

Also, why 2e? 2e has some really bizarre decisions built into the rules like level limits, ability score requirements, and exceptional strength. Why not use something like Basic Fantasy and port the bits of 2e you like back to it?
>basicfantasy.org/

Or you make it, that after every Section Party find's another shortcut to the surface. That would make the looting and reequiping easier too and they can continue Close to where they Stopped the Last time, with the amount of backtracking that you deside on.

Well there is on I used - make dungeons places where people live, I myself just finished running a session where druid npc that is...Well tarantula based non drow dirder guarded a spider that belonged to local kobold tribe from some drow trying to use her for there hunts, it made for interesting roleplay situation.

2e because I have a ridiculous amount of monster manuals for it and would like to use all the crazy and wonderful things in there.
However, I am considering possibly using 3.5 e6 or GURPS, due to players being more familiar with the former and the flexibility of the later. Which would you choose?

Also, how does one maintain interest in a dungeon crawling game without it starting to feel like a slog and having the players start asking WHY are we going into this giant meat grinder every week?

That sounds good, but I feel that diminishes the feeling of risk and danger in the dungeon.

You can of course Mix and Match the short Cut concept withe the sefahouse house concept.

For example have them so quests for one of the factions, that Fight for supremacy in Your Dungeon. Earning their Trust can give them a save resting Place and mght even Open shortcuts that were impassable before, Like heavily Fortified Guardpostes, or secrte ways that only the Village elder knows.

Well, you gotta love the 2e monster manuals. I wouldn't use either 3.5 or GURPS, since dungeon/hex crawling is the best way to play 2e or earlier editions. Basic Fantasy would be easy to convert monsters to (monsters in early editions of D&D typically use Fighter attack progression and saving throw numbers), so you'd use BFRPG's Fighter to determine that instead of 2e's. BFRPG is free and is a clone of B/X D&D.

You're going to want to stress resource management to some degree, including time. I've attached a time tracking sheet to help with that if you don't already have one.

You *might* want to consider using the 2e treasure as XP rule in the DMG (last paragraph of pg. 69 of the revised (black cover) DMG) if you're dead set on using 2e.

I don't care really, I just prefer using a more basic, structurally sound system and porting the bits of 2e that I like, such as kits, weapon specialization, and spells.

Here's a time tracking sheet for light sources.

Thank you for the time trackers, I did not have any so they will be very useful.
As for gold for xp, I was intending on using that, as that seems to be how the game was designed for dungeon crawling as it will help encourage avoiding combat.

One of the things I have always struggled with GMing is finding a way to make resource management fun for the players as it always seems to result in ticking boxes of on a sheet instead of giving any sense of excitement.

Any advice on that matter?

Forgot pick.

Bump for the night

In my experience, like horror games and humor games, having resource management be fun/intense and not just an exercise in bookkeeping comes down to group and attitude a LOT more than mechanics or GM technique. If your players are mostly in the IT'S JUST A GAME BRUH camp, then no amount of flavorful description or tone setting is going to make them care about marking one more ration off their sheet (or if they do care, it's more frustrating than intense).

If at all possible, lock the PCs into the dungeon. Ensuring that they can't simply turn around and hike back to town to spend their loot at Haggling Akhmed's potion bazaar limits their ability to have total control of their adventuring resources.

Spells like Rope Trick and teleport are your enemy here, if they're already in the game, consider making the dungeon a special zone in which they don't work - Oricalcum ore in the rocks or whatever. Build it into the environment's back story by having some abandoned mines, wizard lair etc.

A dungeon can still have a story, the one's I've liked best had an evil at the centre that was being confronted, the place wasn't just a monster barracks..

I'll also endorse the blog posts on TheAlexandrian, particularly this one about how to manage, maintain, and restock the dungeon from session-to-session.

thealexandrian.net/wordpress/1248/roleplaying-games/re-running-the-megadungeon-part-2-restocking-the-dungeon