The World's Largest Dungeon has killed my Conan game!

Here's my advice:

First off, sit back, draw up a character and go with it. Relax, have fun and don't worry about it. If the majority of the players want to play the WLD then you can't make them play Conan.

Use the off-time to work on your upcoming, future Conan game. Draw up lots of memorable npc's, create nifty handouts, make some evil villains, the works.

Hack-n-slash gaming is fun but it does tend to grow stale. When it does, start dropping some hints about your Conan campaign, but don't push them into it.

That's my advice, for what it's worth.
 
It sounds a lot like a game one of my GM's put us through - Return to the Tomb of Horrors
He waved the Start at 10th level flag at us and in we piled
"Do we need a thief ?"
"Not really..."
()*&^(*^%))*&%
At one point, while I was on holiday I might add, two characters got killed instantly (mine included) with no saving throws allowed (some big bad thing just decided to zap two of us). Worse still, one of the characters was killed in such a way that raising them wasn't an option. That was it as far as I was concerned. I made my raised character go slightly wonky and had him decide that he should be the one to get killed ALL the time from that moment on. It got to be quite fun... arguing with the thief about who gets to pull the lever...or even better still walking up and pushing the button while he was still looking at it.

I think the high point for me was starting a fight with one of the other characters because they got themselves killed instead of me !
 
All those mega-dungeons are just meatgrinders with no real creativity behind them: Night Below, Undermountain, City of the Spider Queen, Return To The Tomb of Horrors, Return To The Temple of Elemental Evil.... I have never found extended dungeon campaigns fun or interesting. They're just one lame battle after another which does little to propel the wafer-thin plot forward, often with little to no reward for risking your neck. Why seek out, let alone fight, non-inteligent monsters that are incapable of amassing hoards of treasure, when you can simply rob your fellow man by selecting "high value targets"? You'll get the goods everytime with much less risk. But then I tended to run and play in humanocentric campaigns even before I ever got Conan (except for a few all drow or all orc campaigns that were quite fun as departures from the ordinary).
 
Iron_Chef said:
All those mega-dungeons are just meatgrinders with no real creativity behind them: Night Below, Undermountain, City of the Spider Queen, Return To The Tomb of Horrors, Return To The Temple of Elemental Evil.... I have never found extended dungeon campaigns fun or interesting. They're just one lame battle after another which does little to propel the wafer-thin plot forward, often with little to no reward for risking your neck. Why seek out, let alone fight, non-inteligent monsters that are incapable of amassing hoards of treasure, when you can simply rob your fellow man by selecting "high value targets"? You'll get the goods everytime with much less risk. But then I tended to run and play in humanocentric campaigns even before I ever got Conan (except for a few all drow or all orc campaigns that were quite fun as departures from the ordinary).
I like the Return To The Tomb of Horrors because there was an interesting purpose and a well established connexion between Tomb of Horrors and its sequel. It was a good alternative to Vecna (IMO).
 
The King said:
I like the Return To The Tomb of Horrors because there was an interesting purpose and a well established connexion between Tomb of Horrors and its sequel. It was a good alternative to Vecna (IMO).

Ugh! Don't even remind me about Vecna Lives! That was the absolute worst of the lot. :evil:
 
Jonathan said:
Dude, that sucks. I've always enjoyed reading about your different campaigns...

Well, Jonathan, you'll no doubt hear about our WLD campaign too (on our group's mailing list, not here).

I'm not sorry we're playing WLD. I just wish the player focus was on my campaign right now instead of what's coming next.

It's only fair, though, I suppose. I've played in some campaigns that ranged from awful to good-but-didn't-hold-my-interest that made me think more about what we were going to play next instead of what we were doing right then.
 
Oh, yeah, I know... but I've been really enjoying the Conan tales. (Sorry, by 'campaigns', I meant the story arcs in Conan).

(BTW, remind me to post some wedding/honeymoon pics to the group)
 
Well, last week I made maps of the palace, statted up the king, a sorceress, and 3 generals, and made combat sheets for all five plus about 3 pages of various guards and mercenaries.

I showed up last night ready to run. All anyone could talk about was WLD.

So I asked if anyone cared anymore about Conan or did they just want to go straight to WLD?

2 out of 3 said WLD, so we made WLD characters last night.

The raid on the palace will have to wait.
 
Evilschemer said:
Well, last week I made maps of the palace, statted up the king, a sorceress, and 3 generals, and made combat sheets for all five plus about 3 pages of various guards and mercenaries.

I showed up last night ready to run. All anyone could talk about was WLD.

So I asked if anyone cared anymore about Conan or did they just want to go straight to WLD?

2 out of 3 said WLD, so we made WLD characters last night.

The raid on the palace will have to wait.

Wow. WLD is like a cancer on the d20 world. I feel your pain. :(
 
OK...here's the plot of any dungeon-driven game, with a few variations thrown in...

1. Go into dungeon
2. Kill monsters
3. Get treasure
4. Go home

Now, this sophisticated plot thread can be enhanced by throwing in an epic, super-duper, totally rad magic sword.

1. Go into dungeon
2. Kill monsters
3. Get treasure
4. Get super-duper, totally rad magic sword
5. Endure a five hour dispute between five mindless geeks over who gets the sword
6. Go home

Romance can also be added to this gripping drama by adding a captive princess!

1. Go into dungeon
2. Kill monsters
3. Get treasure
4. Rescue princess
5. Sate the generally unfulfilled carnal fantasies of five mindless geeks by hehe hehe...doing her...hehe hehe
6. Go home

Now, extend this torture for at least a year and you've got the World's Largest Dungeon!!!!

People who actually prefer this kind of campaign don't deserve to play Conan.

'Nuff said.
 
Here we have a good expression to describe a room in old way DD:
1) door with (1a) possibly a trap
2) monster
3) treasure
Then what's the difference if you have 20 rooms or 500?
 
I assume your players never GM. It sounds like you've done a lot of work on your campaign.

I mostly run games and it is very time consuming, especially with a lot of character development and intrigue over encounter 1, then 2, then 3 etc.

I know if a GM has put an obvious amount of work in a campaign I'm happy to play in it. Most people who only play don't realise how much work is in running a game, not all, but most.

They sound a little ungratefull to me. I know if I was in your group I would be encouraging you to go home and spend hours working on your game so I can get the benifit from playing it. "No you can't come to the pub with us tonight, you have to get your campaign ready for tomorrows game" :D
 
Not all the blame falls on the players.

See my recent "After Action Report" thread about one of the lessons I learned.

One of the things I now realize I could have done to keep their interest was to keep the game local and build up the locales, NPC's, and intrigues around a city or location the PC's identify with and make a base of operations.

As it was, my intricately prepared political stories fell flat with the players because they lacked the context of the setting. I needed to build more context for them to interact with.
 
Wow, I just saw a copy of the World's Largest Dungeon at my store. It looks really useful. I bet it would make a great hill if you put it under some felt for a miniatures game. I just don't know why they say it's a RPG supplement.
 
Evilschemer said:
As it was, my intricately prepared political stories fell flat with the players because they lacked the context of the setting. I needed to build more context for them to interact with.
Then just wait for Christmas with the Shadizar campaign setting. Until then you will have your own opinion of the WLD.
 
With a cruel yet somehow satisfying sense of irony, discussion has already begun on what we're going to play post-WLD, and we haven't even STARTED WLD yet. At this point, we're thinking of returning to Mutants and Masterminds for a few sessions.
 
Evilschemer said:
With a cruel yet somehow satisfying sense of irony, discussion has already begun on what we're going to play post-WLD, and we haven't even STARTED WLD yet. At this point, we're thinking of returning to Mutants and Masterminds for a few sessions.
Hum; perhaps you can find others players that are willing to play Conan. Then your older pals will probably come along.
 
It definitely doesn't sound like your group is into the Conan thing. You could try talking to them, asking them what they didn't like about Conan. Maybe it's something you could fix, or maybe they just aren't into the Conan style.

Hope it all works out.
 
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