TFT: The Land Beyond The Mountains

All this talk of sandboxes has me thinking of Metagaming's still-born foray into the mega-campaign sandbox marketplace, a product that was designed for use with its The Fantasy Trip role-playing game.

Entitled The Land Beyond The Mountains, and published in 1982, shortly before the demise of Metagaming, that mega-campaign sandbox setting is comprised of two published adventure supplements, The Warrior-Lords of Darok and The Forest-Lords Of Dihad. Two additional adventure supplements were announced, for the provinces of Muipoco and Soukor, but never saw the light of day.

In this sandbox setting, all four provinces (Darok, Muipoco, Dihad and Soukor) are bounded by impassable hills, mountains and wastelands to the west, north and east. To the south is the sea. Each of the provinces are at odds with each other, and the overall setting is post-apocalyptic, with scattered ruins, mysteries, monsters and artifacts left behind by a vanished and technologically and magically advanced culture.

The adventure supplements for Darok and Dihad are slim: 32 pages each. An interesting innovation of this series is a fold-out 11x17 hex-map of the featured province, attached to the supplement cover. Other than the roads, rivers, settlements, mountains and sea hexes, the map is open for the gamemaster to add her own hex-crawl elements.

The first three pages of each supplement are identical. They briefly cover the history and legends of the overall mega-campaign region, and explain some of the shorthand and symbols employed throughout the supplements. The bulk of each supplement is filled with significant personalities, treatises on the culture of that province, along with sample towns, encounters and scenarios, and supported by several random tables.


The Land Beyond The Mountains is billed as a perfect vehicle for sandbox play: "Here lie rich deposits of gems and ore, and the buried relics of a forgotten golden age. Here are wizards and warriors aplenty, scheming to seize new territories for their liege lords or striving to keep the major trade roads safe and free for all. On these pages you will meet spies and scholars, raiders and traders, and many wondrous and dangerous beasts. In short, a myriad of opportunities for players to make and lose their fortunes, or attain positions of great political influence within a fast-changing, often unpredictable environment."

Even considering the thin-ness of the adventure supplements, I don't think the above statement is entirely over-reaching. After all, the benefit of supplement slimness is that it gives the gamemaster greater latitude and opportunities for sandbox play, beyond the adventure-as-written.
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The Endless Stair And Player Choice

Keep On The Borderlands is one of the better TSR modules. Not because it has well-developed NPCs (it doesn't). Nor because of its' exceptional artwork (serviceable, but not mind-blowing). Not even because of it has a sophisticated plot (at best, the DM may tease something out about the Temple of Chaos organizing the scattered humanoids into a raiding force).



What is great about Keep On The Borderlands is that it allows players to select the level of challenge they are willing to face.

Among the rumors provided in Keep On The Borderlands is that the deeper you go within the Caves of Chaos box canyon, the more dangerous the denizens. A cave mouth closer to the canyon entrance is less dangerous, while those at the end of the box canyon are likely filled with fearsome opponents, and fabulous treasures. The players can play-it-safe, and explore the nearer cave-mouths, or take a chance at the deeper ones. The DM can adjudicate the results of that player choice, free of any hint of bias, since it is the players themselves that pick the easier or harder road.

It is well-understood by all experienced D&D players, that the deeper within a dungeon you delve, the more dangerous the traps and monsters. Yet one of the design principles, regularly applied to dungeon creation, is that the stairs to the next-deeper level are difficult to discover. Call that what you like: I call it railroading.

Rather than hiding stairs to the deeper levels, i'm of a mind to have one staircase -- The Endless Stair -- that traverses the entire depth of the dungeon. Not a staircase that goes directly down mind you, but one that meanders, splits, crosses chasms, follows underground rivers, backtracks on itself, and reveals varying architectural styles at different points in its' descent.

As the stairs decend, there are dungeon levels hiving off in different directions, sometimes blocked by hastily-completed walls, or locked and barred doors, offering danger, mystery and treasure. There may be collapsed stair sections along the way, requiring magical or mechanic means of bypass, and portcullises on the staircase preventing immediate entry to lower levels for those lacking creativity, but there will be no question where those stairs are.

The only question ... for the players ... is whether they are feeling lucky today, and want to take a chance exploring lower dungeon levels in exchange for potentially higher rewards.
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Dungeon Entrance To Die For

Among the fantasy tropes used to begin a megadungeon campaign is the abandoned monastery.

Legends tell of an abandoned monastery that was founded by an ancient order of warrior monks, who were tasked with the responsibility of containing some evil presence found beneath the site of the monastery. Over time, the monks either became complacent and abandoned their posts, or were corrupted by the evil they were charged to contain.

Now -- years, decades, or centuries later -- the evil beneath the abandoned monastery has grown to proportions significant enough to come to the attention of the players or their benefactors.

The players travel to the site to determine the threat posed by said evil presence and, if necessary, eliminate it.

The above illustration would be a neat hand-out, to present to the players as an illustration of what they see as the approach the abandoned monastery. But why use a black and white illustration, when you can hand them a photo of the actual freaking chapel!

This is the Saint-Michel d’Aiguilhe Chapel in Le Puy-en-Velay, France and was built some time around 962 A.D.

The entrance can be reached by climbing up 268 foot-high steps, carved on the exterior of the basalt extrusion that forms the mountain beneath the chapel.

Imagine having to climb that mountain every time you intended to begin your dungeon delve.

I would love to get the floorplans for this Chapel, and use it for an entrance to a megadungeon, with the dungeon proper following some endless staircase driving deep into the basalt extrusion and far beyond.

You could make the "endless staircase" the centerpiece of the dungeon architecture, with various levels hiving off, spoke-like, around a central staircase, complete with bottomless pit at its centre.Source URL: https://idontwanttobeanythingotherthanme.blogspot.com/search/label/megadungeons
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Megadungeons In Four Dimensions

"Dwarves may opt only for the fighting class, and they may never progress beyond 6th level (Myrmidon). Their advantages are: 1) they have a high level of magic resistance, and they thus add four levels when rolling saving throws (a 6th level dwarf equals a 10th level human); 2) they are the only characters able to fully employ the +3 Magic War Hammer (explained in Volume II); 3) they note slanting passages, traps, shifting walls AND NEW CONSTRUCTION (emphasis mine) in underground settings ..."



- 1974 Dungeons & Dragons, Volume I, Men & Magic, page 7

I've been giving a great deal of thought, lately, to the design of a megadungeon. One of the purported features of a megadungeon is that it is a "living" dungeon: it is constantly changing, both in its inhabitants and construction. Adventurers come and go, and as they do, killed monsters are replaced by new ones, and conflict between the denizens continues. In addition, new areas are opened up, either through new construction, magic, or perhaps primal forces at work, warping the environment.



In OD&D, Dwarves have a unique and powerful ability: to detect new construction in underground settings. How far -- through time; the fourth dimension -- does that ability extend? Can dwarves estimate the relative age of the dungeon construction, and techniques employed? One of the beauties of unanswered questions like this, is that most of us felt free to come up with our own answers (god forbid we send that question to Sage Advice).




My interest in the Dwarvish ability to detect new construction is related to my megadungeon musing, since my dungeon design assumes a multi-staired and passaged nexus point, from which the dungeon flows in many different directions. One of the possible clues to the connections between areas is similarities in construction, which should help the players guess who the original designers were, and for what were those areas used. The related difficulty of using this feature, in my megadungeon, is in making it meaningful, recording it in some way on my own map, and providing related visual or descriptive clues to the players.


I have not yet arrived at a satisfactory solution to my mapping problem. Perhaps different wall colors on my map, or modifying the fill behind the walls to signify different construction? However, I am leaning towards using different Hirst Arts floor and wall tiles to signify different construction areas to the players.



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Medieval Castles As Adventure Locations

I've been searching around, trying to find a suitable nexus floor plan for a mega dungeon entrance, without much success. However, in the course of my wanderings, I came across a website with a plethora of imaginary castles, many designed in the Harn-esque fashion of Castles of Harn. Sadly, the author of the website passed away in 2006. Someone has maintained the site, presumably in tribute to his creativity and imagination. I did a google search for "castle floor plan", and came across several other castles, including some really huge modern homes.




I like to use real castle and catacomb maps upon which to base my own dungeons and adventure environs. Doing so gives me some assurance that the environments are structurally sound and believable. Now, the castles from the above site are not real, but they are designed in such a way as they could be.


What I also like is when the layout appears to have been added to over time, giving the map a labyrinthine feel. This tends to give me an opportunity to have several areas that are more difficult to access. If the map has secret passages, staircases and the like, so much the better.
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The Name Of The Rose: Three Dimensional Labyrinths

The Name Of The Rose is one of my favorite films. Besides starring Sean Connery and Christian Slater, two fine, accomplished actors, it is set in the 14th century, at a medieval abbey gripped with fear due to a handsome monk's recent and unholy murder. More murders follow. Connery and Slater's characters arrive at the abbey shortly after the first murder, and attempt to solve the crimes. The abbey is the site of a massive library, off-limits to visitors: its contents hold the key to revealing the motive behind the mysterious deaths.

If you have never seen this movie, or have not seen it in some time, you are strongly encouraged to do so. As inspiration for a murder-mystery adventure for fantasy role-playing, this movie has few peers. There is little in the way of combat, but if you like atmosphere, fantastic sets and elaborate puzzles, this is sure to appeal to you.



One of the set-pieces of this film: a labyrinthine library, filled with octagonal rooms and rising and decending staircases. The two principles become separated and lost within the library, and use their wits to locate each other, retrace their steps and eventually find egress. It's commonly held that dungeon labyrinths are a bore, when it comes to rpg adventuring. I'm sympathetic to that view. Imagine your typical dungeon labyrinth, but now in three dimensions. Doesn't seem that appealing, does it? But, instead of being a labyrinth, what if that many-staired and chambered space was rather a nexus-point, a convergence of stairs and passages, going up, down and across, and giving the players a plethora of adventuring alternatives?

That has been on my mind the last couple of days, as I search for a way to design and develop a dungeon environment which provides maximum latitude to the players to strike out and pursue their own dungeon-delving interests. One of the constraints on the full enjoyment of a campaign by role players is the suspicion that they are being railroaded. What could be more freeing, for both the DM and the players, than that the mega-dungeon have a nexus-point, leading to a myriad potential adventures, with easy access to the surface and the dungeon-locales which most interest the players?

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Hubris, Terror and Despair In Dungeons and Dragons

There are several terrific moments, throughout the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy, where the protagonists and antagonists are confronted by their own hubris, terror or despair. Barbossa's death in the first movie. Jack Sparrow's death in the second. In the third, the final confrontation with Lord Becket. In that scene, Becket's hubris finally betrays him, and, in his moment of realization, he somnolently descends the stairs from the ship's bridge, Don Giovanni-style, into hell, both literal and figurative.

I admit I can be as low-brow, crass and ribald as the next D&D player, but when I comes to "adult" themes for Dungeons and Dragons, concepts like hubris, terror and despair are the ones I find most interesting to explore. Those are the ones that truly get emotions running high at the gaming table, and the ones that are talked about for days and months following.

Being unable to save a dying character or watching them get dragged down into hell. Having the chickens come home to roost on an earlier decision of the party. The 'long defeat' in Lord of the Rings. Disasters wrought as a result of the inaction of the party. I find those to be far more interesting than themes revolving around the libidinous or avaricious.

The problem is how to arrive at the confluence of circumstances necessary to achieve that, without railroading the players? Several months ago, while DMing a D&D session, the party was overwhelmed by some Yuan-ti. One of the characters was poisoned, and none of the others reached him before he succumbed. Not just the player, but the whole party went into a funk. Several sessions later, players were still talking about it, chiding themselves for not having prepared sufficiently, or having failed to act sooner: there were (at least not to my knowledge) no suggestions that I had constructed the death. To my credit, the players were previously warned about the poison, and several characters had made earlier saving throws.

I think hubris, terror and despair are the sorts of themes that players enjoy exploring as well. Particularly if they are coupled with themes of heroism and redemption. One of the features that I intend on adding to any megadungeon I create is a "Well Of Souls", a pit into the very depths of hell, teeming with horrors to cause even the bravest to faint, a location where the party must go, and -- at great personal risk to themselves -- recover a lost party-member.Source URL: https://idontwanttobeanythingotherthanme.blogspot.com/search/label/megadungeons
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Megadungeon - That's So 2009!

I don't know about the rest of you, but the recent publication of Michael Curtis' Stonehell has resurrected my fascination with the megadungeon.



The Stonehell megadungeon was seemingly inspired by ruminations, almost a year ago, regarding the feasibility and advisability of attempting a commercial megadungeon. While some pounded their chests and rent their garments, lamenting the impossibility of the task, others (like Curtis, Joe Bloch and Chevski) took action, one producing Stonehell, the second creating Castle of the Mad Archmage, and the third setting up megadungeon.net. In addition, Chevski's recent efforts to create a Dwimmermount setting banner suggest the possibility of another megadungeon in the offing.


Mind you, other than the efforts of those three bloggers, what other old-schoolers have undertaken the task of creating and sharing their own megadungeons? It seems like most of us in the blogosphere have moved on to new affronts and fascinations, such as the red-box, d6 weapon damage, science fantasy and sword-and-planet. I include myself here. I hope that's not the case, that there is still room for enthusiasm regarding the creation and use of megadungeons amongst D&D players.


When polling old-schoolers, one of the oft-referenced, "definitive megadungeons" is The Mines of Khunmar. Created by Stefan Poag in 1980, and published in 2004, The Mines of Khunmar is subtitled "An Adventure Outline" rather than megadungeon. That 58-page, free download comprises 12 pages of cover and background materials, and 8 Dungeon levels and sub-levels, spread over 46 separate map-pages. The Mines of Khunmar is well worth checking out, to see why many old-schoolers suggest it is a good example of megadungeonery.


Considering that The Mines of Khunmar is some 46 map-pages, you might think that it is a far more substantial, adventuresome offering than, say, Curtis' 20 map-page Stonehell. Yes, Khunmar is adventuresome, but Curtis' Stonehell environment is far more dense and compact, so more rooms and encounters are packed into each level of Stonehell.


The Mines of Khunmar contains a cornucopia of underground dungeon tropes that are expected of a megadungeon adventure: underground rivers, lakes and pools, chutes, gently-sloped passages to lower dungeon levels, vaulted caverns, abandoned temples, undead-filled tombs, throne-rooms, warring monster tribes, labyrinths, deadly tricks and traps, magical gates, rivers of lava, abandoned gold mines, dragons, demons, bottomless chasms, and monsters a-plenty. It also lacks any over-arching story: there is no BBEG to defeat, no epic battle to wage in the last room of the last level; there is no plot-line to follow, and no hooks or sign-posts that need to be satisfied.
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