The World's Largest Dungeon

Upon finding out that the maps for The World’s Largest Dungeon are available online for free I just about made a mess in my pants.

For about 9 years I’ve had a copy of the book The World’s Largest Dungeon (TWLD). It is a supplement by AEG for Dungeons and Dragons 3rd edition. When released it was a $100 book with over 800 pages, 16 full color poster sized maps, and it even came with a couple miniatures from Reaper. The thing is a work of art. It is designed with the express purpose of taking up to 2 years real time to get through from start to finish. During one of the many moves I had while in the navy, all of the maps for this book were lost and I was really upset about it. It has sat on my shelves waiting for me to find a use for it ever since. At least until now.

The book also claims that it uses “every monster” in the 3.0 Monster Manual. Which is partially true, it doesn’t use regular animals and it doesn’t use every single version of things. For example they use a single Sphinx in the entire dungeon and you will never see the other two types. There are also a lot of things that have odd templates added to them as well. I haven’t read all of it over the years because I want to keep it a surprise, but from what I hear they are at least interesting.

The whole concept for it is really neat too. The Dungeon that the PCs wander into is essentially a completely sealed prison for celestial beings forgotten for an untold number of millennia. It is filled with some of the most dangerous creatures in the game and has been reshaped from its original design by countless beings and natural disasters. The dungeon is designed to take a single party on a one way journey (because the entrance is a one way wall of force and the entire thing is sealed against interdimensional transportation) starting at level 1 and taking you to level 20 at the end.

It is rough, difficult, and unforgiving. This thing is one of the most brutal endurance tests of the gaming world. Oh how I wish I could play this. I haven’t met many gamers who haven’t wanted to take a crack at it. It is a challenge that we all have wanted to take on at some point just for the bragging rights. No one ever does though because of how big of a commitment it is. Plus, outside of my high school gaming group, I don’t think I’ve ever had a gaming group that I’ve had 2 or more continuous years with gaming on a nearly weekly basis. I think the group we had on board the boat is the second closest and we were getting interrupted by that whole “deployment” thing every once in a while.

As much as I love the campaign I’m currently playing in it just happens far too infrequently due to a variety of real life factors to satisfy my relapsed addiction to tabletop gaming. I also want to practice my GM skills to hone my very dull instincts. Then there’s also the want to try out many different and bizarre character builds that have been running around my head for a while. I also want an excuse to be gaming more often; enjoying the great nerdy gathering that is a game night. Mostly I just want the company of fellow nerds on a regular basis, oh how I miss it.

So, as much as I’d like to run TWLD I know I can’t realistically get a dedicated and enjoyable group together to run it. Not without making the game flexible. Plus there will always be the inevitable GM burnout that can kill a game as well. If I were to run this I would need to have a rotating GM, a flexible player base, and a regularly scheduled session with casual requirements for who is playing and who isn’t.

While thinking about those requirements I remembered something I had thought of back when I first picked up the book. It could be run in an X-Crawl campaign. Then an idea started forming in my head. If this was used in an X-Crawl style tournament or marathon, then we could just do it in a completely casual and semi-goofy style. Maybe X-Crawl isn’t necessary, but it gives us a viable story-like reason to justify it. Basically I just want to run a 4thcore style gaming group every couple of weeks using TWLD as the primary module.

I want to play some good old fashioned dungeon crawls with no real storyline and/or run some classic modules in addition to using the world’s largest dungeon. I want some min-maxed powergaming with a flexible group of people who are there to kill some monsters and take their stuff.

I guess X-Crawl isn’t needed in all reality. We can just do some hardcore dungeon crawling on a virtual tabletop in non-sequitur dungeons while enjoying silly game mechanics. I think I might explore this concept a little bit more.

More on this later. I've got some numbers to run and things to look up. There might be some conversion issues because of 3.0 vs Pathfinder, but I doubt that it's much of an issue.

Campaigns that never happened: X-Crawl

Source

Pro-wrestling meets DnD and professional sports. Dungeon Crawling is the national pastime of the North American Empire, formerly part of the Roman Empire, lead by Emperor Ronald I. Dungeon Judges (DJs) create the most elaborate and exciting dungeons for a team of XCrawlers to battle their way through for fortune and glory broadcast to every television in every corner of the Empire. Playing to the crowd is just as important as skill while traversing the dungeons. The more the crowd loves you, the more money you get.

The setting was created at the end of 3rd edition's cycle, just prior to 3.5 hitting, so it has some adjusting that needs to be done if you were going to play it today with a more refined rules set like 3.5 or Pathfinder. I suppose you could run it as a 4e game, but there's that whole inability to adapt 4e to non-WotC sanctioned environments so... yeah...

Anyways, the setting is entertaining to think about. Anything with a unique flair for the dramatic usually catches my interest quickly (see me obsession with Yu-Gi-Oh and pro-wrestling) and get's my head filled with entertaining ideas about the setting. This one, combining an alternate modern Earth setting with Pro-wrestling and fantasy gameplay, is right up my alley. Oh the things I wanted to design and play in it...

Being able to just jump right into a dungeon crawl without a real narrative attached is something I have trouble doing, but in a setting like this I can do it as an entire session just because. You can take classic crawls and make them special events. A pre-made dungeon? Easily incorporated. Random dungeon idea with strobe lights and fog machines? Done!

That isn't to imply that this setting is just dungeon crawls and roll-playing. There is real potential for international intrigue and hidden plots. XCrawlers are extremely skilled individuals from drastically different backgrounds. What happens when countries go to war? The Drow are still hidden in the Underdark waiting to take vengeance upon the surface world. Hitler could be resurrected under the right circumstances. There are entire criminal organizations running their own "basement" dungeon crawls. Sponsors and rival teams can interfere with you between Crawls. So much there.

I have wanted to play/run an XCrawl campaign so badly since I first picked up the book, but as always, my enthusiasm was rarely matched by those around me and when transitioning between different gaming groups over the years it was always more important to find the simple thing that everyone would play rather than the out there stuff that is difficult to get an established gaming group to try out. 

I don't expect I'll ever actually get to play this game at this point, as much as I would like to. I like the setting, I like the feel, but I'm not sure I'll get a group together at this point anytime within the next 10 years and there are other systems/settings I would rather play first so once again it goes on the back burner.