A historical essay on the genesis of megadungeons and their usefulness in the current TTRPG environment
After seven years of reading and playing First Edition AD&D, with a special focus on the work of Gary Gygax, it was inevitable that I would stumble upon the concept of megadungeons. While I did run some big dungeons (G1-G2, WG4, and others), I never committed to a megadungeon. Why not? Mostly, because it would be too much reading and preparation. Didn’t seem like fun for me! Plus, I wasn’t sure my players could hang with floor after floor of >30 rooms.
In the meantime, I’ve started enjoying smaller, more digestible, story-driven dungeons like Rise of the Blood Olms (which I reviewed last week). All of this raises the question: do megadungeons have a place and function in the current TTRPG ecosystem? Especially with the recent successful crowdfunding campaign to publish Gary Gygax’s Castle Zagyg, how useful are these kinds of resources to 21st century Game Masters?
Believe it or not, I think megadungeons could serve a very useful purpose at the modern TTRPG game table—even with OSR groups that tend toward simplicity. But to understand how and why, you have to acquaint yourself with the history of the megadungeon…
Players, not the Game Master, wanted the first megadungeon.
Before there was D&D, there was Blackmoor. Dave Arneson’s wargaming group had been experimenting with new styles of play that would become–with Gary Gygax’s help–Dungeons & Dragons. Blackmoor was not only the name of their game, but it was also the name of the world Arneson was creating. While it’s debated, Arneson’s Blackmoor game probably began in the spring of 1971. Gygax wouldn’t get a chance to play Blackmoor until 1973. My dates are coming from The Making of Original Dungeons & Dragons 1970-1977, but seem to jive with firsthand accounts that I have heard from players in Arneson’s group.
At GaryCon 2019, I struck up a friendship with Bob Meyer. Bob was not only one of Dave Arneson’s very first Blackmoor players, he also had the first PC to be killed in a TTRPG. But that’s a story for a different day. Bob and I have had many chats about the old days in the Twin Cities game group. That’s where I learned the story behind Blackmoor Castle and its megadungeon.
In 1980, Judges Guild published “The First Fantasy Campaign,” a game supplement that described not only the land of Blackmoor, but the dungeon itself. The dungeon has ten subterranean levels with a multi-level castle above it. If you’ve ever played Blackmoor with Bob Meyer at GaryCon, you’ve experienced some of this dungeon. Bob graciously ran an ongoing campaign for my home group on Zoom that allowed us to go further into the dungeon than convention play might allow.
Blackmoor Castle was the first megadungeon. In truth, it was the first TTRPG dungeon! But Dave Arneson did not intend to build a megadungeon. Session after session, the players simply wanted to delve deeper into the dungeons under Blackmoor Castle. As they did so, Arneson warned them that if they continued in the dungeon, they would lose the game! In his mind, the main threat was the invading forces following the Egg of Coot. As they had been warned, the Egg of Coot did invade with his forces, while the heroes were busy looting the dungeon. Blackmoor was overrun and that campaign ended! So much for not winning or losing in an RPG!
But here’s my point: historically, Dave did not set out to make a megadungeon. That’s just what his play group was interested in doing. But that changed with Gary Gygax.
Gary Gygax made the megadungeon normative.
In early 1973, Dave Arneson traveled to Lake Geneva, WI and ran a game of Blackmoor for Gary Gygax, Rob Kuntz, and other members of Gary’s local wargaming group. Gary was blown away by the experience and suggested that the experience should bottled and sold as a published game.
After playing the game with Arneson, Gary decided to run his own version of the game in Lake Geneva. In a note that he wrote to Arneson, published in The Making of Original Dungeons & Dragons 1970-1977 (pg. 83), Gary said,
“…I drew up a couple levels of the local ‘Blackmoor’, i.e. ‘Greyhawk’. The chaps were so nuts about the game that most of my spare time has flown into levels and rules for an eventual campaign similar to yours. … If you can spare me copies of your secret rules and level maps it would be greatly appreciated!”
Clearly, players continued to enjoy the megadungeon! But Gary seemed to also enjoy it! In Dragon Magazine #287 (Sept. 2001, pg. 26), Gary states that in these early years he was designing one dungeon level per week! It seems that as Gary ran his frequent West Marches style game, he continuously added dungeon levels for upcoming sessions.
There was no inherent logic to the dungeon from level-to-level. In modern terms, these were more like one-shot dungeons stacked on top of one another. He himself said in the third pamphlet of OD&D, The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures, “These levels contain such things as a museum from another age, an underground lake, a series of caverns filled with giant fungi, a bowling alley for 20’ high Giants, an arena of evil, crypts, and so on” (pg. 4). Anecdotal stories from his players suggest there were all kinds of weird and wacky levels and challenges from week-to-week.
As Gary began to codify and revise Arneson’s rules for D&D, the megadungeon became a standard part of D&D. Again in OD&D, Gary says, “Before it is possible to conduct a campaign of adventures in the mazey dungeons, it is necessary for the referee to sit down with pencil in hand and draw these labyrinths on graph paper. Unquestionably this will require a great deal of time and effort and imagination” (pg. 3). Gygax then includes a cross-section of a 6-level dungeon.
He continues, “There is no real limit to the number of levels, nor is there any restriction on their size… ‘Greyhawk Castle,’ for example, has over a dozen levels in succession downwards, more than that number branching from these, and not less than two new levels under construction at any given time” (pg. 4). The megadungeon was now a formal—and expected—part of the D&D experience.
It’s notable that megadungeons don’t seem to have as much emphasis in later works, like the AD&D (1st Edition) Dungeon Masters Guide. That books seems to focus more on outdoor and urban adventures. Even then, in Gygax’s description of preparing for a campaign, he talks as though the multi-level dungeon is truly “[t]he testing grounds for novice adventurers… The general idea is to develop a dungeon of multiple levels, and the deeper adventurers go, the more difficult the challenges become…” (pg. 87).
Published megadungeons were rare then…and now!
Despite lots of talk about running megadungeons, that was not the standard design for published modules or adventures. In truth, the earliest modules published by TSR were competitive modules re-done for home play. As mentioned above, Judges Guild released Blackmoor Castle in 1980. It is not my sense that many DMs owned or used that supplement. There are other published megadungeons like 1979’s Caverns of Thracia and 1980’s Dark Tower both by Jennell Jaquays (also released by Judges Guild). But the one that likely made it to the most tables was The Temple of Elemental Evil (1979) by Gary Gygax and Frank Mentzer.
I have yet to meet one person who played in (or ran) Elemental Evil and had great things to say about it. It sounds like it was a slog both for DMs and players. While I’ve run The Village of Hommlet (the intro to Elemental Evil) twice and loved it, I’ve never tackled the sequel megadungeon myself. Just seems like too much work.
And maybe this is why megadungeons never got a lot of love from publishers? It’s a high page count…and I doubt many play groups actually wanted to run them. Seems like a losing proposition for a publisher.
The publication of megadungeons is still rare, as best I can tell. In 2018, WotC published Waterdeep: Dungeon of the Mad Mage, which is a reimagining of Ed Greenwood’s megadungeon, Undermountain. I recently borrowed a copy of Mad Mage from my brother and gave it a fairly thorough read. But, as with Elemental Evil, I found myself asking, “How and why would I ever run this?” Familiarizing myself with one level of a large dungeon is hard enough already. But twenty-three levels… plus a subterranean city? And also Waterdeep, above it all? Come on. It left me wondering (a) if anyone actually runs these things and (b) if there’s any usefulness to these megadungeons for GMs like myself.
How published megadungeons can be useful for modern GMs
So why would you ever pick up a copy of The Temple of Elemental Evil, Castle Zagyg, or Dungeon of the Mad Mage? Let me give you a couple of ideas:
Read them for inspiration. Reading room descriptions isn’t thrilling. But I do enjoy reading the introductory summary of each floor. Then, if something sounds interesting in the floor summary, I’ll scan through the room descriptions until I find the relevant information. This can inspire your own dungeon or adventure design. But perhaps even better…
Break megadungeons up as smaller dungeons. There’s nothing that says you can’t take one level out of a megadungeon and use it on its own. Likewise, you can also condense bloated dungeon levels into something more realistic and usable. Dungeon of the Mad Mage isn’t one dungeon. It’s 23 dungeons, many of which could be split off into enjoyable 5e dungeons. The same is true of The Caverns of Thracia and Blackmoor Castle.
Why and how to make your own megadungeon
The more exciting idea to me is making my own megadungeon! I’m not thrilled by the idea of simply designing level after level of a dungeon. But I am excited by the idea of a dungeon that my players visit from time-to-time, delving deeper each time.
I’m currently putting together my notes for a Free City of Greyhawk campaign that will feature the PCs as college students in Clerkberg. From time-to-time, they will have opportunities to sneak off to the ruins of Castle Greyhawk to do some adventuring and treasure-finding. Except I’m not planning to run the newly Kickstarted Castle Zagyg books for it—I’m designing my own!
My plan is not to make massive fifty-room levels, but more reasonably-sized OSR-style dungeon levels. But the original megadungeon intent is intact: as they go deeper, the challenge level will rise. So it’s something they can return to, as they grow in skill (and hit points, of course). So who knows how deep it will go? Unlike the original Gygax home game, which seemed centered on the dungeon, it will be available to PCs as an option if they want to go dungeoneering. But, of course, there will be other story options in and around the city.
It seems that this style of dungeon would be perfect for a West Marches game—or even for one-shots. That way, you can have a familiar setting around the dungeon (which also helps with preparation) and you’ve just added a level that needs no inherent connection to the preceding or following levels. I’m planning next week to write about how to design a dungeon floor, using the Cairn 2e Warden’s Guide. That’s one way to very reasonably put together a solid dungeon level that’s sure to be fun for your players.
The intent of megadungeons has always been player enjoyment.
Arneson’s group was having more fun in the dungeon than out of the dungeon. Gygax and his crew loved going floor-to-floor. So, if your players enjoy going through dungeons floor-by-floor, there’s no reason to not have a megadungeon.
But there are simple ways to use a megadungeon that doesn’t necessitate memorizing twenty-three floors of someone else’s dungeon. Use published ones for inspiration, if you like. But it seems the most feasible and digestible approach is to follow the example of Arneson and Gygax by designing your own megadungeon, one level at a time, as necessitated by your game and as enjoyed by your players.
I’d love to hear in the comments below about any megadungeons that you have run or designed yourself. I’ll be sure to report back on my own Greyhawk campaign later this year!
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