I’ve been trying to write that post all day long and I keep getting distracted… I can feel it coming.. one of my dreaded/beloved consciousness-devouring, depression-killing creative surges…
I have dungeons on my mind. More precisely, I think about Mega-Dungeons, a lot. Those huge, multi-leveled sprawling complex that were at the core of the first fantasy campaigns of the mid-seventies and were revisited more or less successfully in the following years.
I also realize that I’ve reached that point in my gamer life where I weigh my current involvement (both gaming and blogging) in the game against both my perceived enjoyment and my rising sense of nostalgia about D&D. Mega dungeons feature a lot in such nostalgia.
Which, come to think of it is kinda weird since I never played in anything bigger than Gary’s (and later Monte’s)Temple of Elemental Evil.
Anyway, there’s a lot of buzz online both in the old and new schools about revisiting the Mega-Dungeon as the core of a campaign setting. In fact, Amityville Mike, getting a strong vibe from the old school community, called 2009 to be the year of the dungeon.
His feelings seem spot on.
Monte Cook took the online RPG world by surprise a few days ago with his announcement of making a subscription based website centered on a Mega-Dungeon called Dungeon Delve for the 3,5 ruleset. He even snagged the very cute http://dungeonaday.com/ URL for it.
Right afterward, James Maliszewski chimed in, claiming polite skepticism about the true old-school content of that project
Friendly word of warning dear grognards, I smell an unnecessary rise of orthodoxy coming (from both sides of the fence) and James and a few other bloggers are, willingly or not, steering that scary boat. Then again reading said old schoolers blogs, I think it might be too late.
They are games people, not some secret monastery codex that must remain untouched!
The next day, James posted his further thoughts about it and he proposed to launch a similar project for Sword and Wizardry (a OGL Retro Clone of the 1974 D&D game). He also mentions some other pre-WotC D&D MegaDungeon project going on in other Retro-gaming publication and websites.
Way to go man! I think this is the best way to go at it, offer a tangible alternative that people can get behind instead of throwing tomatoes to each other!
Now both 3.5 and pre-WotC D&D fans will get a taste of huge dungeons. Yay says I!
Please note that I make no assumptions about how Old School Monte’s project will really be like. In fact, I’ll just stick to saying it should be a Mega-Dungeon project, much like Ptolus was (with an added layer of very developed civilization over it).
I’m also glad to see that several other bloggers are running with the idea at different scales.
As I’m writing these lines, I’m of two thoughts about all of this.
First, I’m curious as hell to see what Monte will do. I’m more interested in the business model of the whole thing than the actual content since I have little to no interest in pre-4e stuff. There’s a good chance I’ll join the project as soon as it takes subscribers just to see how it goes (hurrah for blog revenues!).
Second, I can’t help but asking myself: What about 4e? I mean I’m a strong believer that 4e can do a honest tribute to Old School yet I haven’t made a tangible demonstration of it.
My biggest question is what would a 4e Mega-dungeon be like (once again, possibly but not necessarily old school as defined by James here)?
In fact, seeing some of negative reaction to Monte’s project and to a lesser extent Necromancer Games‘ Classic 4e, I feel the urge to step forward and do something about it.
Creating a successful 4e campaign based around a Mega-Dungeon would definitively be a daring challenge.
Making it into something bigger (amid the potential justified criticism and jerk magnet that the Old School/New School divide is) would be an unbelievably hard yet highly satisfying project too. But I’m getting way ahead of myself here.
Instead of getting drafted into a needless argument or being sucked in by an unplanned Nerd Project (i.e. one that seems awesome but crashes and burns when the flavour of the month changes), I will, in future posts, set the foundation under which I would design a 4e Mega-dungeon campaign, that my players and I would enjoy playing in (please note the emphasis here) and then go into more details.
I know my players and I know what I like. It’s a small enough subset that I can wrap my mind around. If the idea flies and I can get this to go further than a Nerd Project, I’ll see if this can be grown further out and maybe move this over to my Chatty Studios website (once I finish Kobold Love).
In fact, I’ve been spending the last 2 hours with my friend Yan and we’ve already laid the foundation for the Setting, the meta-plot and the “raison d’être” of this Mega-dungeon as a plausible campaign setting.
There’s a lot of questions to answer to get this thing started. Here’s a few I have on my mind. I invite you to add more if you have them.
- Will the Dungeon be fully mapped (like the ones from the seventies) or will it remain mostly abstract like ThunderSpire Labyrinth?
- Huge levels to explore or linked 5-room dungeons?
- Will it embrace Old School dungeon design lore or player psychology-driven controlled encounters? Are both mutually exclusive?
- Will it be a static exploration environement (keyed rooms), a dynamic dungeon environment or a mix of both?
One thing’s for sure, my current players would have no stomach for a ‘map as you progress’, count up your Iron rations and get killed many times type of campaign. As much as I’d like to try it someday, that’s not what my players expect of our shared game.
One of my design goals will be to try to merge what 4e does best with what I miss the most about huge dungeon crawls and see what comes out of it.
That’s why I know that some of the answers I’ll choose will lead some to say that it’s not going to be a true Megadungeon campaign. To this I’ll answer: So what? I have the freedom to define my own game and limited words in which to convey it to readers.
It will be centered around a huge sprawling underground complex and most of the campaign will be set in it. That’s a workable definition of Megadungeon for me. I don’t say it’s the only one or a better one… I’m just saying it’s mine… 🙂
More to come!
Image Credit: Undermountain level, Copyrights Wizards of the Coast 2007.
That sounds like an exciting project. Will there be community involvement like all the other megadungeon projects popping up left and right, or is it just a personal thing?
I suppose another question is: “Will it have a big bad evil guy, or is the dungeon and its ecology itself the enemy?”
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This project sounds interesting. I don’t think I’m alone in the opinion that 4e and an OD&D style megadungeon probably aren’t compatible. But if you can prove my skepticism wrong I might even try playing 4e. Good luck on the project.
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@Wyatt: It might become like such a project but I really need to sleep on the idea. As things stand I’d like to build a pilot scale project that I would try over a few gaming sessions with my buddies and if it flies I’ may propose to make this into something bigger. Your question is a great one to add to the pile.
@Jack Crow: Having a hard to reach goal is what makes an endeavor satisfying. We’ll see! 🙂
This sounds very cool.
@Jack: I may sound ignorant, and very easily could be, but what is it about 4e that would make it at all incompatible with a megadungeon? What is a megadungeon that would make it incompatible with 4e? There seems to be something that I just don’t get. I’m not trying to be a jerk, and if you return to see this, I really would like to know.
Can you shed any light on this Chatty?
I’ve been mulling similar ideas myself of late, although i don’t think I have the group for a proper megadungeon either 🙁
A few things I’ve come to think about it:
I don’t think the one dungeon level:one character level alignment works properly in 4e because it only takes 10 encounters to go up a character level. That’s not very mega. On the other hand, you do want to make the decision about when to go to the next dungeon level (and the threat of being thrown down further before you’re ready) interesting. Right now, I think 10-15 levels is about right, with some range of difficulty on a given level (perhaps level 1-5 encounters on the first level, with the level fives in the out of the way bits, then level 3-7 on level 2 or thereabouts). With 30-50 encounters per level (remember, you don’t want clearing the level to be feasible or attractive) it should be megaish.
Remember to include “negative space”. Rooms without some interesting flavour, but no encounter or other systemically worthwhile contents. You should do what you can to make them colourful, though. Maybe a little weirdness, some foreshadowing and the like.
You also want some rooms that aren’t “empty” but aren’t tactical encounters, either. Magical weirdness and non-damaging traps come to mind.
Curses can be modeled in 4e using the disease rules, substituting an attack vs. Will for the attack vs. Fort, and you can use Endurance, Arcana or Religion checks as you see fit for progression.
Wandering monsters are a must, and come into their own in combination with “events” that prevent the PCs from leaving the dungeon whenever they feel like it (portcullises, teleporters, slides and pits to a lower level, one-way doors, etc.). They also add to the “unclearability” factor. They make hacking the experience system tempting, too, but I’m not sure about it yet.
Dungeoneering and skill challenges are still aspects that I’m still mentally grappling with.
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@Linnaeus –
Actually, the “one dungeon level = one character level” would work better in 4e (10 encounters, multiple monsters in each, and each can span multiple rooms) than in 3e (13 encounters, usually single monsters or pairs, small encounter areas).
In any case, the “mega” part in both cases comes from depth, rather than number of rooms on a level.
@Precocious Apprentice: To clarify, its not necessarily the creating of a megadungeon for 4e that I’m skeptical about. Phil is a creative dude and I’m sure he is going to come up with a really cool dungeon. I’m skeptical about whether this megadugeon for 4e can capture an “old school” feel with the new system. As far as I can tell the only similarities that 4e and OD&D (AD&D) have in common is the name. They are completely different systems and I’m not sure that OD&D mega dungeon delving craziness is possible logistically with the current game, although I’m open to the possibility and applaud Phil for trying. Don’t get me wrong I’m far from an expert on 4e, I have only read the rules and have never played. I am certainly open to an “old school” 4e tribute, so I guess we’ll see what happens. Its in good hands either way.
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I figure a 4E megadungeon would have lots more than 10 encounters worth of enemies, but not expect you to clear a level. That would allow for other groups to return to the same level another group just went through – like in the old campaigns with 20 players. But that’s a different kind of campaign than the new standard.
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@Jack: Well as chatty said, he as no real intention of capturing the old school feel as he knows his player do not want it.
The idea here is, as 4e is an evolved version of the old school D&D (whatever is version), how could the mega dungeon idea evolve to be more in line with the 4e way of thinking. By evolved I do not imply better but different. It happens we prefer the evolve version but is in no way a universal preference.
We are a diverse group with different past experience. Phil & Mat have played old D&D a lot. The others I’m not sure if they have played at all but I tried it and hated it at the time. On the other hand Franky as played a whole bunch of story driven games. I on the other hand stuck with GURPS as it support whatever my world building fancy came up with, whether it be sci-fi, modern, horror or fantasy. As a group we definitely embraced the 4e way of thinking.
Concerning the trap subject, I’ve always hated traps considering them cheap tricks that only encourage paranoia and drags the game down. That does not means that they should not exist. I like when traps are built as encounter or puzzle in which you get a warning and must act. You have the occasion to play it out “à la” Indiana Jones: “Pull that lever or we’ll die!” 😉 This is something that 4e encourage.
@Graham,
Your concept disagrees with the old schoolers that I’ve read on the topic, but I’m sure there’s room in the world for both versions. Just to be clear, though, my sources say that exploration and unclearability are key traits of a megadungeon. Then again, so is the one character level to one dungeon level ratio, so something has to give 🙂
@Jack,
I don’t think Phil or anyone else is saying you can do a genuinely old school dungeon in 4e. I’m pretty sure you can’t for a variety of reasons. I believe you can get closer than many old schoolers seem to think, though.
The skill system, will mess with the dungeoneering aspect, though, and the experience system changes the role of wandering monsters, which, in turn, throws other things off a little. Even little things like the adventurer’s kit instead of a long list of dungeoneering tools makes a difference.
That doesn’t mean that old school concepts can’t inform 4e dungeon design, though.
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Awesome comments!
@Precocious: Welcome to the blog! Thanks for commenting. There are many potential obstacles to make an Old School Mega Dungeon in 4e , mostly because of the design decisions behind the game, none of which I believe are deal breakers. I’ll try to make a post about that question in order for me to help me identify the elements and take them into account in the project.
I’ll give you one example so you don’t feel I’m brushing you off.
Old School dungeons were a lot less detailed than modern adventures because there were a lot less elements that were dependent on rules. So a 1e room for the 1st level of the dungeon could be like:
20’X20′ room, Moldy Sofa (approaching it has 30% chance of releasing a patch of yellow mold), 4 goblins (hp 3, 4, 6, 7) are resting here. They have 1d10 CP and 1d3 SP on them.
The same room in 4e could need a lot more work to achieve if you wanted to follow the encounter design rules to a T.
You need to choose the types of goblins (possibly copying the stat blocs to lower the DM’s page flipping in the MM), then you need to establish DCs to detect and avoid the Yellow Mold (once again only if you wish to follow current trends of allowing PCs to actively find and avoid hazards). Then you need to detail what Yellow Mold does to PCs (or refer to the DMG)
You also need to chose which treasure parcel you give out to PCs (if any) and finally if you play with minis, you show a model battlemap and detail room elements that can come into play during a combat… etc
That’s a lot of work if you intend to make 10 levels of dungeons!
One answer to this is to disregard many of the design assumption of 4e and super simplify everything. But then again, many would say that you might as well play an earlier version of the game… an argument I happen to agree 100% with.
What I seek is to merge 4e with it’s design assumption with as many Mega Dungeon tropes and game elements to recapture the feeling and fun of these types of adventure… And I’m perfectly aware of how subjective this all is.
More in future posts!
Will it embrace Old School dungeon design lore or player psychology-driven controlled encounters? Are both mutually exclusive?
I’m not quite grocking what you’re talking about here. Can you maybe go into a little detail about how player psychology-driven controlled encounters are designed?
I’ll be following this project with interest. Old or new school, ideas for cool dungeon features and unusual encounters are always welcome. 🙂
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@ Linnaeus: Excellent pointers which I will ponder on in the next few days.
I’m not entirely sure that each levels of a dungeon had to fit character levels. From what I gathered from James’ Dwimmermount reports, players refrained from taking any stairs going down before they were all 2nd level.
What follows will likely make it into a post soon but I’d rather put it down while it’s on my mind.
The way I see a 4e pre-mapped Megadungeon would be to have a certain number of set-piece encounters per map level. Probably 6 or 7. I would also have a bunch of empty rooms, some with interactive terrain features (chasms, pools, ridges, etc…)
Finally, I’d have random encounter tables that fit the level’s theme (plus possible wanderers from nearby levels) to bring the total number of encounters of the whole level to 12-15.
I’d make the average level of all encounters fit the dungeon’s level but I’d use the whole range suggested by the DMG (from party level-2 to party level +5).
I’d finally put in a few ‘Climax level’ encounters per level, maybe one or two, representing something far stronger than the PCs. Maybe the HQ of 2 factions. PCs would have to avoid or Roleplay themselves through these areas.
Or maybe there would be something very big and strong wandering through the level, looking for lunch. Maybe like a Dragon or a Demon. Heck Mike Mearls mentioned having an Aspect of Orcus walking around on level 1 and creating a skill challenge to convince it to keep the party alive.
(Damn I’m writing novels here!)
@Anders: Welcome to the blog! I would never dream of trying to design a dungeon for a 20 player campaign (with 6-10 players showing up each session) with 4e, at least not with my current grasp of the game.
Were I to do it, I’d take Labyrinth Lord and give Jeff Rient a call!
@Yan: As we discussed, you already have many of the answers to the questions I asked. If we go forward with the pilot scale of this project, this will not be an old school mega dungeon because the whole group would not be willing to do it more than one or two session… if at all.
@Brian: I meant encounters designed to hit the motivations of each of the players in your group. My group has a strong butt kicking streak, so I need to put in combats. I have a few Tacticians so I need to let them plan in some encounters instead of having them react all the time. There are strong Storytellers so encounters need to make sense in the world around the PCs and so forth.
I don’t think old school dungeons were designed like that. Although I clearly recall reading about Gygax and Kuntz designing part of their respective dungeons to specifically challenge their players.
imho, 4E would be excellent for mega-dungeon campaigns.
* Improved PC resources let them do more each “cycle”. Unless you whack them with very hard encounters every second room, PCs should actually be able to chew through more territory than ever before.
* New challenges. Disease and poison tracks plus skill challenges enable a fun layer of storytelling/gaming. Not that you couldn’t do this before, but it’s been codified nicely in 4E and helps spur encounter designers’ imaginations.
* Ding! The auto-level ups and genericization (my first made-up word of the day! May there be oogly more!) of such things as ritual components and other resources means fewer logistical issues with being stuck in a dungeon.
* Emphasis on traps and hazards as part of encounters and challenge ratings. Again, more tools to make what often becomes kick-down-the-door and fight-toe-to-toe experiences lively again.
* Big environments. Movement, powers, and whatnot favour larger combat zones than in previous editons. This rewards creative environment design and switches up from dense maps that sometimes can drag the game down.
@Linnaeus –
Whenever I think megadungeon, I think of Diablo 1.
Each level in Diablo would contain, probably, 5-8 encounters of a 4e size. The mega part came by being as deep as hell itself.
(Of course, then there’s the old dungeon-crawling game that came on a cassette tape for the TI99/4 my uncle had. [Tunnels of Doom, I think.] That would be more of a “classic” old-school dungeon design.)
.
Other than that, I agree with Johnn Four that 4e has a lot to offer a megadungeon. I also believe that the work described by Chatty, while more in 4e than 1e, is less than 3e/3.5e was.
As with many things related to this hobby, definitions are slippery and hotly contested. The Megadungeon was big. It could be big surface wise for any given level and big depth wise.
Since it was drawn on 8’X11” or 8’14” Graph paper (4 to 5 squares to the Inch) a level was often either one sheet or several taped together. I recall the ones I used to draw when I was 10 and they were mostly 1 sheet per level.
Anyway, I agree with both Johnn and Graham for the rest. 4e is mega dungeon friendlier than 3.x both prep wise and stat wise. In fact, Rob Conley (of Bat in the Attic) shared some firsthand experience about running such games in 4e on Mike Mearls’ blog.
Gotta love Megadungeons! Wow, that map of Undermountain takes me back. I must have poured over the boxed set for hundreds of hours, and even had the chance to play in it a fair few times too. The dungeon that is, not the box. That would be silly.
The Worlds’ Largest Dungeon filled our Third Edition playtime grandly without much advanced preparation from yours truly, and that’s what I’d look for in a 4e Mega-Dungeon – something you could pick up, explore and play without much fuss, picking it up and restarting as required.
Must put more thought into this. Good stuff!
I’m warming up to this idea more and more. It seems that 4e may be more compatible with an old school style of gaming than I first thought.
“Chatty DM: There are many potential obstacles to make an Old School Mega Dungeon in 4e , mostly because of the design decisions behind the game…”
It seems the only real issue is the rules light style of OD&D versus the rules “medium” style (compared to rules heavy 3e) of 4e, and what to modify to make the game flow properly. I’m a firm believer in making the system conform to your vision, as compared to making your vision conform to the system.
Maybe its time for an old school/4e hybrid, why not, it could be a great system. Now I fully realize that the hardcore old school and the 4e converts are never going to like this idea, but who cares. Its all about making things your own, and system isn’t sacred.
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I like mega-dungeons. There – I’ve said it! As long as you’ve got variation between the levels and sublevels which make it consistent, then everything else is what we’ve all been doing since we started playing & DMing. I loved Undermountain and Descent Into The Depths/Vault of the Drow equally.
The new school vs. old school arguments for Dungeonaday seems more based on ownership of subscription content and lack of support for old school game play. How are you stopped from saving files I wonder? It’s nice to see the old-schoolers plotting their own mega-dungeon.
Old school and new school are not rules-bound. They are styles of play that differ in attitude towards the game. 4E advocates new school play and makes no bones about it. You can play it old school of course. At the end of the day, it’s your game.
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@satyre: Welcome to the blog! I agree about old vs new… that’s why I’m making the issues seperate. My upcoming 4e Megadungeon campaign (that’s growing at an alarming rate, like all runaway ideas) will try to capture the tropes of old style dungeon crawling with the realities and mechanics of 4e.
The rest is, as you say, semantics and personal preferences.
I’d recommend letting players make intelligent choices about what they are going to engage next. 5-room dungeons would be good for it; they are small enough to have a clear theme and not be repetitive.
Also, wandering monsters are a must, but be sneaky: Make a custom of list of encounters that are interesting and that hold clues or information or other stuff useful for making sense of or coping with stationary encounters. That way, they don’t seem such a waste. Also, one possibility is to give no experience and no conventional treasure for them. Treasure parcels are only hidden in stationary locations, be they lairs or other things.
I would not call the result an old school dungeon, but it could be a viable 4e megadungeon.
Agreed on all accounts Tommi.
I’ve already settled on a campaign model and I will likely go for multiple interlinked 5 ‘encounter’ dungeons (along with empty rooms) set in the same Megadungeon. Each sharing a theme and being the focus of a one or two gaming sessions.
More this week.
I’ve refrained from commenting on this article because of my limited D&D experience. That said, I am taking part in World D&D day Mar 21 and because of articles like this one I am definitely looking forward to playing.
Maybe after a little more D&D experience under my belt I’ll be more of an active participant in these types of discussions.
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I miss megadungeons. I think the only reason why I don’t use those anymore is because of the time it needs to play it. With only one or two session each month of +- 6 hours each… a megadungeon could run for a year and a half in realtime. I think my players would hang themselves.
They were fun to play though.
Hi Chatty –
One way of getting around the encounters-per-level concern is simply to abandon the (silly, verisimilitude-shattering) XP-bookkeeping aspect of the game and level up when it’s dramatically appropriate – imagine a mechanic whereby the DM gives a PC her new character sheet (which the PC has made up, maybe a couple weekends prior) when her character achieves something fantastic. Or just when she reaches the stairs to the next level. The XP-shopping guideline for encounter design could be kept in place, but XP math is nothing more than a minor pain in the balls and is easily-enough jettisoned by an attentive, drama-minded DM.
I’m with Jonathan Drain on this one: a city is a megadungeon with a ceiling so high you can’t see it. The old-school ‘megadungeon’ fetish is little more than nostalgia and border-drawing – a terminological concern and a personal one – but once you’re past the lexicographical preoccupation the whole topic seems straightforward enough. 4e encourages DMs to think in terms of encounter design rather than room design (experientially rather than spatially), and more importantly (with its action points/encounter powers/milestones/5-minute spell durations) in terms of the flow between encounters, rewarding methodical approaches by restoring powers but also rewarding let’s-get-the-bastards!-style play with action points/milestones/ever-growing balls. 🙂
Look, you can build a dungeon that’s infinitely large in every direction as long as you provide clues re: stair/chute/tunnel location (airflow, monster access, gurgling water, eldritch vapours, drums in the deep, etc.) and build session-sized areas that offer both moment-to-moment and afternoon-scale thrills. i.e. Give the players something fun to do (choose) every few minutes, something stunning every 60 minutes, and something lifechanging every week or two, and it doesn’t matter whether they’re spelunking without a map in Mammoth Cave or leading a group of lackeys to overthrow PM Harper. ‘Megadungeon’ is ultimately an attitude, an atmosphere: something huge, a quantity and quality of information that encourages the PCs to think of consideration as daring, opportunities to sneak, to fight, to run, to collect, to analyze.
It has nothing whatsoever to do with goddamn graph paper and even less to do with the layout of subterranean caves, a topic about which nearly every megadungeon ‘designer’ in history has demonstrated he knows absolute zero.
A dungeon is a flowchart dressed like a cave; it’s a decision tree with fangs. The graph paper fetish is a historical artifact (cf. Crowther and Woods’s ‘Adventure’ game, the smaller Zork megadungeon, etc.) and shouldn’t limit how you think of megadungeon design.
And as little as ‘dungeon’ layout has to do with caves and graph paper, it’s got even less to do with the ruleset governing players’ actions within it.
Philip – good luck, baby! Sounds like a fun project and I look forward to seeing what you come up with. Hell, I’d kind of like to help out sometime. 🙂
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This is wisdom, though the ‘old school’ types don’t dig that noise. Then again, you’re not trying to ‘design a megadungeon,’ you’re trying to design a fun roleplaying game for your friends using D&D rules. So the physical layout is a distant secondary concern to: do they have interesting choices to make? Can you as DM make those choices more interesting at runtime (excuse me, gametime) by weaving in temporal (i.e. narrative) concerns that aren’t there on the page? Can you respond to the players’ express desires and their unexpressed (or unconsciously expressed) longings, as you perceive them, to scar their memories the way that ridiculous blue or white box did when you were a babychild? There’s no pure form to the game, nor to ‘dungeons’ in general, so
Do As Thou Wilt
shall be the whole of the law. Obviously. I mean, it’s a game, not a church service. (Man, this ‘old school’ talk puts me off. Though as a n00b that’s to be expected, right?!)
Wax Bankss last blog post..Older school H3: Pyramid of Shadows.
@Vulcan Stev: I must confess of having exceedingly too much 4e content lately. I hope that my general RPG/Gming muse returns so I can write about other stuff. Thanks for hanging around though.
@D_Luck: As Wax mentions right after you, the Megadungeon does not have to be something you have to finish. Like Cyberpunk, it’s really a matter of attitude. As I read the comments, my project takes shape more and more…
@Wax: Ahh my favorite prose master is back and as entertaining as always. As you saw in my comments, I’ll likely abandon making an Old School game with 4e.
I shall however create a short campaign for my gaming group based on carefully picked Megadungeon tropes. It will be centered on a huge sprawling dungeon… in fact the dungeon will likely by a main NPC of that campaign!
As you so aptly put it, Old School/New School argument are tedious and sterile, what counts is the game I create for my players… and tangentially the blog posts I shall generate from there…
And then later, who knows, maybe we can all team up and make something bigger and grander. The offers of help from you and others have not fallen on deaf ears.
Oh and I hear ya for the XP and may very well do just that. Leveling up when it feels right has worked before for our group.