Giambattista's Megadungeon

Doing some organizing in my D&D folder on my computer today I came across this incredible megadungeon map drawn by Giambattista Nolli in 1748.  I think I came across this one day while Google image searching for floorplans and recognized it for the masterpiece in dungeon construction that it is.  You can visit an interactive zoomable navigable version of the map here (thanks UO!).

I am going to use portions of this for the ruins of ancient Abolon that my 5e Waterdeep campaign players are likely going to be discovering soon under the sewers.

This is just a snippet - the full map is way too big to paste here.

The Saint's Shrine - Map

Another old map. This is one of two maps that I made back in May of 2009 for the now defunct megadungeon.net project that James M. had going on.  I don't think this one ever was keyed, or if it was the key never was put on the website before it was taken down and James never forwarded it to me.  Click this link for the full size image in a new tab.

Here are the original instructions from James M. that I worked off of to make this map:

 "Let's go with the Saint's Shrine, which is wholly man-made level without any cavern areas. There's one connection to the Bulwark above it and two to the Last Stand below. As I envisage it, the highlight of the level is the Shrine of St. Gaxyg, which is a large, temple-like structure at the heart of the level. All the other rooms should be arranged in a defensible fashion around it, providing fall back positions the monks could use if creatures from the lower levels invaded. There should be lots of secret doors, hidden rooms, twisting corridors, and the like."

After I finished the map, I gave a brief explanation of the map to James to pass on to whomever he had lined up to key the level:

 " I designed the level with the idea of the monks' defense foremost in my mind, so in some places it might be a little more linear than I might have otherwise done. The central shrine itself I made fairly interconnected, but there is only one exit (strafed by arrow slits) to the rest of the level from the shrine. A few notes to pass on to the person keying the level: I imagine that the secret doors in rooms 10 and 1 would be relatively easy to find from the inside, as they were designed to conceal the way up from outside, not to prevent people from coming down from above. However, if a party does not find them they might wrongly conclude that this is only a small sub-level and that might be interesting as well. The large pool of water in chamber 67 held back by the floodgate is ten feet deep. At ten feet deep it contains exactly enough water to fill the passageway it floods into from floor to ceiling assuming a ten foot ceiling for the passageway. The staircases down to that passageway should drop at least ten feet of elevation so that the water would be contained in that passage. I envisioned that the flooded passage would slowly drain out over the course of several days through small cracks where the wall joins the floor, and the pool will refill slowly from an enchanted basin affixed to the bottom of the pool (of course the level keyer could change any of that). The floodgate itself gets pulled up a slight incline to open it, so if the winch is released the floodgate would slide back down to its closed position. The many pit traps throughout the level could be relatively deadly to a party (depending on their depth, spiked nature, etc) as several are in positions where you might not expect one (directly in front of a door, for instance); I envisioned these pits as part of the defenses of the level as the monks could easily avoid them through the many secret passages. Of course, I could remove any or all of the pit traps as requested. The eastern exit to the Last Stand is guarded by a stretch of passageway with murder holes in the ceiling; room 99 is above that stretch of passageway, I tried to make that clear on the map but it may look a little confusing; the passageway from room 98 to 100 goes underneath room 99. Once again, I went a little over the suggested room count at 101 numbered chambers"

 Below is a detail of the shrine of St. Gaxyg:

Dwimmermount Doesn't Suck

Dwimmermount doesn't suck from my perspective as a player.  I played in a play by post Dwimmermount game run by James M. a while back at http://odd74.proboards.com.   I responded to an open invite James made on his blog.  This was before Google+ existed in all its free multi-person video chat glory.

I played Kersa Duer, female goblin thief and shit stirrer (we were Group 2 if you actually check out the posts on the odd74.proboards).  I had a lot of fun and I think the group as a whole was having fun before James completely dissapeared without even a goodbye post.  Just like Joe the Lawyer  et al we were exploring the 1st level of Dwimmermount coming in the main entrance.  We found a secret door and an alchemist's workship and before that we tangled with metal infused skeletons that were guarding a door, and we found a metal disk that was a key in the secret room, and it fit in the door...

jamesm Level 8 Warlock member is offline Whipping Boy Joined: Dec 2007 Gender: Male  Posts: 812 Location: The Echo Chamber Karma: 25

Re: [GROUP 2] Beyond the Door « Reply #78 on Sept 29, 2009, 10:29am » Sept 28, 2009, 12:00pm, carlnash wrote: "Pull boys! Pull! Lets see them ignore this!" Whether for good or ill, the lead skeletal warrior springs to life as the noose lands around his neck and you pull on it. His companions then do the same, all twelve of them rushing forward in battle formation, clanking of they go. Clanking -- that's the odd thing about the skeletons before you: they make too much noise for the armor they are wearing, especially as their feet are not shod with sabatons. Looking more carefully at the skeleton you have ensnared and pulled closer into the light of your torches and lanterns, you see that its bones are shot through with a silvery-black metal -- metal you assume it to be, because it reflects the light. All the skeletons have the same appearance to them, with veins of this strange metallic substance covering their bones and, judging from the clamor they make as they advance, weighing them down somewhat. Link to Post - Back to Top   Logged James Maliszewski, Writer and Sleep-Deprived Dad Grognardia

The Internet is a Megadungeon

And there is some fucked up shit waiting to devour your soul, tucked away in a rarely visited sub-level.

I have been spending a lot of time lately geeking out on my own website - modesty never my strong suit, I bought the carlnash.com domain name a while ago and I just recently purchased hosting and started making my site.  Time spent making my site easily navigable, integrated with Facebook, findable by Google, etc., got me thinking about dungeon design in a whole new light.

My website is a small little collection of hand-carved tunnels; but it is part of a megadungeon.  There is a cave mouth in a little hill outside of town; that cave leads to http://carlnash.com/index.php - the home page - the "front door" of my little corner of the dungeon.  This cave is mostly empty, well visited, with five tunnels leading away to other chambers of my site, each tunnel mouth helpfully marked with the name of the destination chamber.

[Internet Megadungeon Feature 1: All exits are clearly marked with a descriptive name for the destination]

There are other exits as well, obvious exits, but these dive straight underground and travel a great distance before re-emerging in other regions of the vast megadungeon; telepathicdumpster.com; the kingdom of myspace; one lengthy and serpentine passage even emerges right here in this blog!

But wait!  Might there be more to the well traveled entrance chamber than first meets the eye?  Graffiti scrawled on the cave wall seems to have been left by the original cave builders, goblins of Clan Carlnash.  One scribbled note seems to be referring to a secret exit from this chamber!  The secret door is not hard to find; if the cavern wall is prodded, one section will be found to swivel on a central pivot, revealing a black portal beyond...  the portal leads to another dimension, the dark side, http://carlnash.com/darkside.php.  Anyone running their mouse over the carlnash.com home page will find the "secret link" as their cursor turns from an arrow to a selector icon when it passes over the hidden exit.  Using visual clues as to likely locations for the secret exit may speed up the search.  Those bold enough to step through the portal may not so easily find their way back; the only exits from the dark side go further into the dungeon besides one marked "Destination as yet unknown".  This unnamed portal does return to the home cave.  The dark side itself is unremarkable; it has a blacker feel and a strange image for a banner, but not much else... unless "Detect Magic" or a similar ability is used... then it is revealed that hidden messages and locked portals were woven into the very substance of the dark side during its creation (hidden messages and "shadow links" in the source code of the page).

Leaving the home cave down one of the five exits leading further into the carlnash caverns, explorers would soon find a peculiar feature of the megadungeon; most chambers within a level of the dungeon will be totally interconnected, allowing for easy travel from any point to another in only one step.

[Internet Megadungeon Feature 2: the original dungeon designers WANT the dungeon to be easily navigable]

The carlnash caverns are also connected to a parallel world, with gates to the world in every chamber... but the gates are one way FROM the world to the caverns!  The gates are plainly visible in each cavern, marked with the ancient symbols of Facebook, and invite any who know the secrets of that alternate reality to use their secret password to unlock the gate and open a two-way portal directly to the speaker's Facebook homeland.  Using a gate in this manner does leave a visible power signature that makes it possible to tell how many visitors have activated it.

[Internet Megadungeon Feature 3: many exits and other features will be password protected; prior membership in a particular organization or subterfuge may be required to gain access to passwords.  Carrying a badge of membership in an alternate reality like the Kingdom of Facebook will often unlock different content in many rooms throughout the megadungeon.  Many other actions and even the paths taken by Internet Megadungeon explorers may also impact what content will be found as the megadungeon is explored...]

[Internet Megadungeon Feature 4:, over time the dungeon will make itself appear as the explorer WANTS the dungeon to appear (cookies; the targeted ads/treasure maps and personalized content/room decorations feature...)]

Long term observers of the carlnash caverns would notice that the front cave is not the most heavily trafficked area; more than twice as many explorers come through the portals from the land of Facebook directly into various areas of the caverns than enter the caverns through the cave mouth in the hill.  The busiest cave is the vast cavern that houses the Nash Emporium.  The few vendors peddling their wares in the dark bely the bustling underground marketplace the chamber could hold.

A greedy adventuring party would soon grow tired of the caverns of carlnash; there is not much loot to be had at this point (just a few free song downloads and free art) and like almost all explorers of the Internet Megadungeon, the party likely possesses a magical warp whistle that lets them teleport to almost any other section of the megadungeon at will.

[Internet Megadungeon Feature 5: the URL bar is the magic warp whistle, and all explorers can just teleport to a known destination or use the scrying balls that are cheaply had at any general store (search engines like Google) to find a destination]

Map of the Internet!

So why does our brave adventuring party not just teleport to the biggest chambers full of loot, slay the dragon, and party like it is 1999?  Sometimes all is not as it seems in the Internet Megadungeon.  Many clearly labelled exits actually lead to somewhere completely different; many well known and previously safe chambers may suddenly become home to cunning assassins who strike from ambush, or worse yet, use tasteless, odorless gas to cripple explorers from hiding.  Countless factions live out their lives in the Megadungeon, and many vie for the attention of the party.  Come raid our caves, they hiss from the shadows, our dragon is uncensored, and our jewels are available for free download...  lies, all lies!  The dragon has a giant black bar obscuring its chest, rendering your slaying arrows impotent as they find no target.  The jewels, so carelessly scattered, vanish into vapors in your clutches as chuckling devils run out clutching contracts.  The free download is of a trial gem!  It is a worthless piece of crap crudely shaped to look like a gem!

[Internet Megadungeon Feature 6: subsequent inhabitants of the megadungeon take advantage of rules 1 - 5 manipulating and breaking them in an attempt to harm and rob explorers...]