I’ve never needed an excuse to write a megadungeon. I love the audacity of the idea. The OSR is full of great textbook-sized megadungeons. When I stumbled upon a #Dungeon23 post by Sean McCoy, I immediately shared it with Harun and began brainstorming.
Besides the usual monsters, traps, and treasure, for me, a good adventure has the following qualities:
A familiar theme. When you pitch my adventure to your players, they will picture something in their minds. This is called resonance. It is familiar, flavorful, and functional. The theme of the abandoned ancient city resonates with us because most gamers instantly think of the Erebor, or Mines of Moria from The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.
An exciting twist. Underground dwarven cities are common in the OSR realm. Besides the ones by Tolkien, there is also Dwimmermount from Autarch and Dwarrowdeep by Greg Gillespie. There are plenty of adventures about abandoned cities of dwarves, but not the abandoned cities of elves.
Inspired by the Thranduill’s Halls from the Hobbit, this megadungeon is built from the ruins of a giant underground elven palace carved from rough caverns. Once, these were the golden halls of a happy and prosperous people. Now it is an overgrown decaying ruin. It is the monument to a people’s hubris and their desire for more power.
Resources
I can’t wait to see some of these great dungeons everyone cooks up. Over on Duvelman’s Vault there is a amazing trove of resources you can pull from.
