World's Largest Dungeon (not even close to first draft)

The World's Largest Dungeon is a large d20 adventure from Alderac. While it might not be the largest dungeon ever (I think Castle Zygyg will be 8 128 page books; Undermountain is at least 2 boxed sets and 3 modules plus a computer game; Dungeon World was an entire plane and I think 3-4 books), it's definitely the largest dungeon in one book. 840 pages, with little to no artwork and a very small font, 810 or so of which is for the dungeon (the rest is a small intro and appendix).


It's priced at a cool $100, but can be had cheaper online. (I got mine on ebay new, for $30). That's a lot of money, but it's more or less the equivalent of 15 64 page dungeon crawls, which generally go for $15 each or so. Which is actually a pretty good deal.


This is a strange book to review. Like I said, it really is the equivalent of 15 or so 64 page adventures, which I normally write about 6-8kb of words for. So the Worlds Largest Dungeon probably deserves the world's largest review. But that ain't gonna happen, at least not from me. But I will try to cover it as best as possible.




Dungeon Backstory:


The history of the dungeon is perhaps not the most original in the world. It seems that the powers of good (aka the Celestials) decided to imprison a bunch of evil types and built a giant prison to hold it. Like always, instead of building the prison in someplace nice and safe like say, in some obscure outer plane or out in space on a moon or an asteroid, they built it in a fairly hospitable place on an inhabited planet. Because as Lord Helmet says, "Good is stupid."


In this case, good was even stupider than normal, because they apparently built this prison in a tectonically active region (ie, somewhere that has earthquakes, presumably near a fault line) and even better, built it underneath a lake.

So anyway, as you can probably guess, the prison worked fine until one day an earthquake happened and boom, it fell apart and the prisoners started running amok. At which point it sort of turned into "Escape from New York", basically they stopped trying to guard it from the inside (sorta, there are still guards remaining inside), but have the entrance and exit guarded.




The Dungeon Itself


Unlike a lot of dungeons, this is essentially just one big flat thing (except for one small area below the map). This makes mapping much easier, but I think loses a lot of flavor.

It's basically a 4x4 sectional map, with each section being one "sheet" (for lack of a better word), except for one which is actually two "sheets". So there are a total of 15 sections. Each sheet is really about the size of a 4x4 regular sheet of graph paper, though, so it is a big dungeon. (I think the biggest one I ever made was 8x8, this is 16x16)


There is one really big complication to it. It's like a roach motel - PCs go in, they don't come out. Because it was meant to be a prison for extraplanar types, there is some sort of magical field blocking teleportation out. And once you go in the entrance, it closes and you can't go out. So as written, if you are going to run or play this, you are in for the long haul and will need a lot of dedication both from the GM & players. The book estimates that it will take 2 years of gaming to finish.



Section A "Longtail's Destiny" by Michael Hammes

This is the section just after the entrance

Basically, a group of humanoids, led by a wererat named Longtail, came to the dungeon for adventure and loot (same reasons as the PCs). However, they soon found that there wasn't all that much treasure in this section, and that


Section B "A Goblin Empire?"

Sort of like Section A, a group of humanoids migrated to this section. In this case, goblins, hobgoblins and bugbears.

Section C "The Final Option"

This section was meant to house just one fairly powerful demon

Section D "The Tartarean Depths of the Xill Master"

Section E "The Last Stand"

This is another prison section. But this section still has some celestial guards


Section F "The Maze"

Section G "Hell on Earth"

Section H "Protectors of the Tree" by Jennifer Baughman

This is by far my favorite section of the dungeon. Unlike the rest of the book, it's not really a dungeon crawl. For one, it's got more role-playing and character interaction (other than just combat). For another, it's almost a forest adventure, as opposed to a dungeon.


As mentioned earlier, the dungeon was apparently built on a fault line. And underneath a lake and forest. An earthquake happened, and the top came crumbling down. The lake fell elsewhere, flooding the region, but this got the forest. Including a very very old treant which was venerated by a group of wood elves.

Being a tree, the treant survived (I guess they don't really have internal organs to get squished), but apparently haven't fallen, can't get up. (Actually it was immobile before it fell, not having seen one of those scooter for the elderly commercials). And the elves beeing elves, decided they would go down into the dungeon and protect him.


Section I "The Halls of Flesh" by Mark Carroll and Jim Pinto

This is pretty icky

Section J "The Pyrefaust" by Jeff Dohm
Section K "The Shallows"
Section L "The Deeps"
Section M "The Chasm"
Section N "Tomb of the Unliving"

This is the double section.


Section O "Halls of Ice and Stone"












It's actually pretty good, but it falls well short of being a legendary dungeon in anything other than size.

I also think it's got some logic problems. Like it's supposed to be a secret prison no one really knows about. Except there are these elves that regularly fly in and out to protect a really famous tree. How can the tree be famous, but not the location where he is?

I also think having it like a roach motel really hurts it. I mean, very few people will want to do nothing but a dungeon crawl for 2 years. And I would have to think many of those who do would want to do more than just the same dungeon. I know I wouldn't want to be in the same building for 2 years, even the world's largest brothel (even with pizza delivery).

Personally, I think it would have been a better, and more importantly, a far more useable, product if this had been dropped, and the dungeon could be entered/exited in various locations. True, PCs can leave about halfway through, thanks to the hole in the middle.

Oops, make that "Napftor"

I've always been saying it mentally as "Nap-fa-tor", which is probably one syllable too many, but also doesn't explain why I added the "h". I guess I thought it was Egyptian.

Behind the Spells: Magic Missile (final draft)

Behind the Spells: Magic Missile

The Behind the Spells Series

One of the more flavorful things of the original AD&D was that many of the spells were named after their creator, generally famous magic-users played by one of the original D&D-ers. This has carried on even into modern day, though the proper names were dropped when put into the SRD (the source of the rules non-Wizards of the Coast d20 authors can use.)

But who invented the other spells, particularly the really common ones like magic missile and fireball? What's the story behind them?

That's what the "Behind the Spell" series is designed to answer in a slightly humorous but also useful way. It's presented somewhat like those TV shows that expose the secrets of an earlier, popular TV show, complete with host. In this case, an ancient Gold Dragon.

As near as I can tell, it's an ongoing series of PDFs. Weekly, bi-monthly, something like that. Short (3-5 pages), but priced cheap ($1). It's from Ronin Arts (Phil Reed's company), but by Bret Boyd, who you might know from various RPG related boards as Napfthor and from a number of good quality but low profile RPG products



Behind the Spells: Magic Missile


This is the first in the series, on the magic missile spell. Basically it gives some background on the creator of the spell, basically who he was, why he created it, the circumstances surrounding its invention. And where he invented it. Then some ways to use the spell that are not readily obvious. One example in this case is how the magic missile might not be able to damage items, but probably can nudge them a bit.

Lastly, there is some "related research" which is essentially about variations of the magic missile spell. A half dozen are given, 5 ideas and one writeup. The writeup is "Magic Sickles", a version that only affects plants, and basically works like a scythe or machete.

The PDF itself is plain, with no artwork except perhaps the logo for "Behind the Spells", if you count that as art. It's quite easy to read though and the lay out is clean and concise with nice, normal fonts. (I hate weird fonts)



Lots of products are based on clever ideas, but fail in the execution. This is both clever in idea and in practice. The background does a good job of explaining why the spell has the features that it does. Why it always hits, and possibly why it's one of those spells that actually isn't all that useful for a 1st level mage, but can be useful higher up.

It also gives you a really good adventure seed: Finding (and of course, looting) the wizard who invented this's secret lab. It does a good job of describing both the lab itself and the general area around it.

The other uses for the magic missile spell given are reasonable. Non-standard ways of using it, but nothing really invented out of the blue, just really parsing the description of the spell. So while this is really up to the DM, I think most would agree with the material here.

On the other hand, I think the variant spell examples needed some work. The one that was statted out wasn't all that useful (just affected plants) and the flavor text for it doesn't really match up with economics - it mentioned that farmers often hire mages to cast it to help their harvest, but the scale is much too small compared to an actual farm.

And while a few other variants are mentioned, they aren't statted. I think we could have gotten stats for 1-2 more.

Final Thoughts

All in all though, I think this is very much worth buying. For the value of things worth a $1, I have a test, which would I rather have? This, or two White Castles? (Or if you are from the South, Krystal. Which are pretty much the same, except I think taste slightly better. And unlike White Castle, they've never refused to serve me.)

The answer would be this, though much like only buying (and eating) 2 White Castles, you'd be hungry for more. Fortunately, this isn't like White Castle for me, and you can buy more, I think there's at least 3 others available, with more down the pipe.

Behind the Spells: Magic Missile (first draft)

One of the more flavorful things of the original AD&D was that many of the spells were named after their creator, generally famous magic-users played by one of the original D&Ders. This has carried on even into modern day, though the proper names were dropped when put into the SRD (the source of the rules non-Wizards of the Coast d20 authors can use.)

But who invented the other spells, particularly the really common ones like magic missile and fireball? What's the story behind them?

That's what the "Behind the Spell" series is designed to answer in a slightly humorous but useful way. It's presented somewhat like those TV shows that expose the secrets of an earlier, popular TV show, complete with host. In this case, an ancient Gold Dragon.

As near as I can tell, it's an ongoing series of PDFs. Weekly, bi-weekly, something like that. Short (3-5 pages), but priced cheap ($1). It's by Bret Boyd, who you might know from various RPG related boards as Napfthor


This is the first in the series, on the magic missile spell.



It's pretty clever, really. It does a good job of explaining why the spell has the features that it does. Why it always hits, and possibly why it's one of those spells that actually isn't all that useful for a 1st level mage, but can be useful higher up.



It also gives you a really good adventure seed: Finding (and of course, looting) the wizard who invented this's secret lab. It does a good job of describing both the lab itself and the general area around it.

There are other uses for the magic missile given. Non-standard ways of using it, but nothing really invented out of the blue, just really parsing the description of the spell.


On the other hand, I think the variant spell isn't that useful. Basically it's a version that only affects plants. That would be okay, but it mentions that farmers often hire a sorcerer to use it to help harvest. Which really, seems awfully expensive, since the range is only a 60 foot cone. Even if it were a 60 foot x 60 foot area, that would be maybe 1/10 of an acre. And an acre was originally defined by about how much one guy with an ox could plough a day, so was the basic farm size unit, I guess. This is kinda nitpicky, though.

And while a few other variants are mentioned, they aren't statted. I think we could have gotten stats for 1-2 more.


The PDF itself is plain, with no artwork except perhaps the logo for "Behind the Spells", if you count that as art. It's quite easy to read though and the lay out is clean and concise with nice, normal fonts.


I have a test, which would I rather have? This, or two White Castles? (Or if you are from the South, Krystal. Which are pretty much the same, except I think taste slightly better. And unlike White Castle, they've never refused to serve me.)

The answer would be this, though much like only 2 White Castles, you'd be hungry for more. Fortunately, this isn't like White Castle for me, and you can buy more.