Knights & Knaves Alehouse

By the way, here's a recent post by Blog of Holding about one of the literary inspirations for megadungeons, Sign of the Labrys:

http://blogofholding.com/?p=4415

Zenopus Archives wrote:By the way, here's a recent post by Blog of Holding about one of the literary inspirations for megadungeons, Sign of the Labrys:

http://blogofholding.com/?p=4415

Yep, that's one of those books (like Three Hearts and Three Lions or The Dying Earth) that when you read it makes you say, "oh, so THAT's where D&D came from!" Incidentally, the other Margaret St. Clair novel on Gygax's Appendix N list (The Shadow People) seems to have been just as direct an inspiration for the Depths of the Earth from the D-series modules.

T. Foster wrote:

Zenopus Archives wrote:By the way, here's a recent post by Blog of Holding about one of the literary inspirations for megadungeons, Sign of the Labrys:

http://blogofholding.com/?p=4415

Yep, that's one of those books (like Three Hearts and Three Lions or The Dying Earth) that when you read it makes you say, "oh, so THAT's where D&D came from!" Incidentally, the other Margaret St. Clair novel on Gygax's Appendix N list (The Shadow People) seems to have been just as direct an inspiration for the Depths of the Earth from the D-series modules.

It would be nice her books were in print.

I agree. I have (and have read) Shadow People only because I found it a library book sale. Ebay is probably your best bet.

Check your local used bookstores: most of the ones I've been to seem to have copies of some of her books (same with Gardner Fox).

Yeah, I was able to get both of those books with very little effort or $ at the FLUBS. It's not like either one is at all collectible or sought-after (by anyone other than obsessive-compulsive Appendix N completists, that is ).

When I played AD&D 1E, me and my friends never used published modules. When someone entered a dungeon the DM's often did not know how big the dungeon was going to be. They just made the first few levels, we started playing, and they kept making levels until the PC's got bored/scared and decided to go somewhere else. We also used the dungeon wandering monster tables, so once you got down to the 5th or 6th level things started getting really deadly.

I don't think we used the random monster level equivalent matrix though, we just used dungeon level as monster level so it was very rare for anyone to get down below the 10th level of the dungeon.

sandman wrote:When I played AD&D 1E, me and my friends never used published modules. When someone entered a dungeon the DM's often did not know how big the dungeon was going to be. They just made the first few levels, we started playing, and they kept making levels until the PC's got bored/scared and decided to go somewhere else. We also used the dungeon wandering monster tables, so once you got down to the 5th or 6th level things started getting really deadly.

I don't think we used the random monster level equivalent matrix though, we just used dungeon level as monster level so it was very rare for anyone to get down below the 10th level of the dungeon.

We did that as well, but typically our dungeons had an ending premade. If we didn't make an end players tended to think they were supposed to hit every room. I suspect that had to do something with published modules and that expectation that levels and rooms didn't go on forever (that they were finite with the "big room" at the end). I always hated that feeling, that you could predict there was an ending. I prefer the mix, both the presumption of limited mini-lairs and unlimited underground exploration (where you don't know if there is 30 rooms or 3 million). I think one of the 1Eisms though, is that dungeons don't start and end at the door, they continue on in woods, towns etc. Every place a player finds themselves is the dungeon (in a way). Playing for years underground in the same megadungeon would get old I think.