D&D General What do you think of mega-dungeons for online D&D play?

[Blue]

Personal opinion here, nothing universal.

I find that we need to work harder to be fully engaged in the game online. As a player everyone is at a remove, I have a computer where I could read a thread on ENworld if I'm not immediately involved in a scene, and even if I just space out who's going to catch it on the few-inch-square video? As a DM it's harder to catch cues and body language that someone is disengaging, as well as harder to project to everyone and captivate them.

As such, I find that puzzles (which don't engage everyone and there's little need to retain once they are solved) and combat (with significant time between actions) are two places where it's easier to become disengaged. I know these are both common occurances in many mega-dungeons.

For myself personally, I'd want to aim for a different experience than those. So I would look for a mega-dungeon that has more full-party-engaging (but not combat) exploration and discovery; I think that could work well.

 

[Klaudius Rex]

Quick answer: dungeons are great on VTTs. I am DMing Barrowmaze, playing in Caverns of Thracia, and DMing an original dungeon I've created for an OSR game.
So I've had some good success running Barrowmaze for 5e exclusively on Roll20. The automation is good enough to keep combats running fast. The dynamic lighting (or even legacy fog of war) can make mapping very quick.
That said, I specifically disliked the Dungeon of the Mad Mage as an adventure and mega-dungeon. If you would like me to share my review in this thread, I'll be happy to do so, but I don't want to derail the thread about the quality of DotMM.

sure.
im open to anything.
put a link or whatever you got (or send me a personal message with the info) whateverz

 

[Emerikol]

Let me know if you think this idea sucks? In particular, let me know if this will work better for online D&D as opposed to in-person play. And, while this isnt a recruitment post, we are always looking for new players, so if you're interested, send me a message.

I think the megadungeon beside a large city is a classic D&D trope. I don't by any means play that every time or even most times. I would be happy to do it though on occasion. I played Monte Cooke's dungeon a day and it worked out well. Being able to return to home base easily is a boon for PCs. So I would definitely detail out the city and provide some hooks there as well. Then the PCs, as they gather wealth, can move up in the city.

One idea might be to provide some ancient heirloom that gives access to the dungeon. In this case the dungeon would be more "static" and not a hive of humanoids. The only way into the dungeon is using the heirloom. So the rest of the surrounding area knows about the existence of this fabled dungeon but only the PCs inherited the heirloom from their grand old archmage uncle. Yet, what they didn't anticipate is that there are two "keys" to this dungeon. Another group has gotten the other key and will be rivals for the treasures to be found. They may even be working for some evil organization or they might be working for a LG high priest.

 

[Retreater]

sure.
im open to anything.
put a link or whatever you got (or send me a personal message with the info) whateverz

I'll just share my brief comments about Dungeon of the Mad Mage here and not full-on rant about it.
It is really big, but it's also bland and has numerous empty/boring areas. My players would go through entire sessions encountering no monsters, traps, or interesting features whatsoever. In face-to-face play, I would have been able to easily add stuff, but on a VTT after I had spent around $50 on the official adventure, it was a hassle to add stuff and change things on the fly.
To try to lead my players to the "better" stuff, I just walled off entire sections of the complex, hoping they would be lead to the "good" stuff. Even that didn't work, and they lost interest.
There's not a good theme, unifying concept, or reason to go into the dungeon. You can add this, but there are so many great dungeons already out there that you could likely find something better.
We were on Roll20, where module content was largely limited only to official WotC releases. We shifted to "Tales from the Yawning Portal." The dungeons in that are more varied, interesting, and are short enough to string together into a "dungeon campaign" without being exactly a megadungeon.
It took a lot of work for me to add Barrowmaze onto Roll20, but it's superior in nearly every way to Dungeon of the Mad Mage. I have also added Frog God Game's Rappan Athuk, also better than Dungeon of the Mad Mage. If you are just learning the ropes of VTTs, I wouldn't recommend trying to convert a megadungeon right away.
If you're not on Roll20, other VTTs might have better selections of 3PP content. But if you are looking for good dungeons ready to go on Roll20, I would recommend Tales of the Yawning Portal over Dungeon of the Mad Mage. Conversely, you could run Tomb of Annihilation and start at the fairly big dungeon at the end.
But if you do decide on Dungeon of the Mad Mage, be ready to add encounters, traps, and a plot. As it is, it's very bare bones. (Just want to add that I'm writing my own mega-dungeon for publication, so I've been studying the mega-dungeon design for a few years now. I would never have submitted something like Dungeon of the Mad Mage to my editor.)

 

[Burnside]

I am currently running Dungeon of the Mad Mage on Roll20 and my players and I are loving it. I would NEVER run this particular adventure in any other way besides VTT.

I highly recommend the Dungeon of the Mad Mage Companion from DMsGuild - it goes a long way towards providing an actual overarching story to sustain the campaign as well as ideas to improve every level.

Earlier in the pandemic I ran Sunless Citadel and Forge of Fury and in general would agree that VTTs are great for dungeon crawls.

 

[Klaudius Rex]

So, today is the day! We'll be starting Dungeon of the Mad Mage via Discord and I decided on Owlbear Rodeo.

...wish me luck....!!

 

[Mannahnin]

Good Luck! Report back!

 

[Burnside]

So, today is the day! We'll be starting Dungeon of the Mad Mage via Discord and I decided on Owlbear Rodeo.

...wish me luck....!!

Good luck! My group is on level 2 of the dungeon but we only play for 2 hours every other Monday, so you will probably pass us. Let me know if you want to compare notes!

 

[jgsugden]

In my experience, they have advantages and disadvantages.

Focus is more of an issue in online games because there are so many more distractions around us (from family, to internet, to pets, etc...) Mega dungeons tend to have less story, and can be harder to make engaging. I'm playing in DotMM right now, and the ongoing storylines in that are weak. It is a less engaging game for me. I am playing in another campaign that has a "side" megadungeon (Similar to the Happy Fun Ball in Critical Role Season 2, it is a dungeon we can enter whenever we want. So far, it is just a chaotic collection of challenges and treasure with no real storyline reason for being there.) When a player is absent, we often delve into it (as the story allows). It is a disappointment when we go from the main game storyline to these random dungeon antics.

I am also playing in Odyssey of the Dragonlords onlight right now and running a couple homebrew campaigns as a DM online. The central storyline in all three is more engaging and we have a lot less "distraction" problems (but, obviously, still some). In my games, and in Odyssey to a lesser extent, there is a lot of scrambling to handle PCs going where you did not expect. I have some places that I want to be iconic locations in my game, but I have not built all of them on Roll20 as I plan to transition back to F2F later this year (I hope to, at least) and I did not expect the PCs to visit or see it until then... but PCs scry, and once they can teleport....

All in all: I highly recommend it for DMs that lack the time to do a lot of preparation. On the other hand, if you have excess prep time, I think you'll find more player engagment and involvement if you give them the more expansive world to live within.

 

[MNblockhead]

I've been running Rappan Athuk going on two years. When I started, we were playing in person and I was using RealmWorks to display the map on a horizontal display, revealing areas manually as they explored. Eventually, I used Maptool because it was easier to pull up and use a map without any preparation.

Eventually, because of COVID and work, we went full VTT and I now run it in Foundry.

Megadungeons are great in VTTs for all of the reasons others have listed. If you like a lot of tactical play in your games, if you want lighting and line-of-sight to matter, VTTs make it easier--if you have the walls etc. set up.

The problem I ran into is that Rappan Athuk has over 100 digital maps and these are not small single location battlemaps of one or a few rooms. They represent entire levels or large sections of a level. I've gotten very good at prepping maps in my VTT. The VTT I use, Foundry, makes adding wall easy and I will make sure I prep several maps where the party is most likely to end up. Sometimes a single map last the entire 8-hour sessions or several sessions.

But Rappan Athuk is also just riddled with an insane number chutes & ladders like connections. Besides stairs nicely connecting one level to another, there are underground rivers, trap doors over chutes, teleportals, giant rat tunnels, etc. A DM can quickly find that the characters have wandered into an area that he has not yet prepped.

So, if you are not running an adventure that is already prepped for you, it is important that the VTT you select can allow you to quickly load a map, apply fog of war, drop some tokens on it and run it by revealing areas manually. It sounds like your will not have this issue if you bought the official version of DOTMM through Roll20, etc.