Into the Megadungeon Episode 3 "The Problem of Space"

 

I have another episode and reader notes to share with you! But first a couple of announcements. First, Ultan's Door Press is having a September sale, with almost everything at 15-20% off. Get the entire run of Through Ultan's Door and Downtime in Zyan. I even have a small number of Huargo's White Jungle posters available! Head over to the webstore here while it's still open. 

Second, I've decided to start a project connected with the podcast called "The Megadungeon Syllabus". (Forgive the silly pedagogical title, but my day job is professoring and I literally write syllabi all the time, so I'm just going with what I know.) It's going to be a larger ongoing project where I create three versions of a reading/viewing list--short, medium, and long--broken down by different topics. I'll probably create it a google doc that people can download, or just follow the links from the doc itself. I'll certainly share the evolving work in progress doc as it develops here and on my newlsetter, Missives from Beyond the Veil of Sleep. (By the way, if you want to sign up for the newsletter and get these posts straight to your inbox, go here.)

Now on to our real business, Episode 3 of Into the Megadungeon, "The Problem of Space". This time I interview Gus L about his long running HMS Apollyon campaign. We had a lot of fun talking about how dungeoncrawling involves navigating a concrete space, how to make treasure actually interesting, why it's so hard to publish a good megadungeon, and how you can draw on the weirdness of history to get outside of bog-standard fantasy tropes. Without further ado, I present Episode 3 to you on your platform of choice:

Find Episode 3 "The Question of Space" on Spotify here. 

Find Episode 3 "The Question of Space" on Apple Podcasts here.

Find Episode 3 "The Question of Space" on Google Podcasts here. 

Find Episode 3 "The Question of Space" on Podcast Addict here.

Find Episode 3 "The Question of Space" on Overcast here.  

Find Episode 3 "The Question of Space" on Pocket Casts here.

You can find a full transcript of the episode here. 

Reader's Notes 

Art by Evlyn Moreau

As always, here is the extended reader's notes for the interview. 

Gus's Stuff

First, you can find many of Gus' posts about the HMS Apollyon campaign over at his old blog, Dungeon of Signs here. I HIGHLY recommend you download and read Gus' HMS Apollyon Player's Guide, which you can find here. It's a wonderful repurposing of Original Dungeon & Dragons to lean even more into procedural dungeoncrawling and the wild Apollyon setting. 

For Gus' theoretical writings on the procedural dungeon crawl, as well as new gaming projects, you should take a look at his newer blog All Dead Generations here. For Gus' published adventures, like Tomb Robbers of the Crystal Frontier, and Broken Bastion, visit Ratking Productions here. You can purchase Beneath the Moss Courts, an adventure about lawyers and pirates set int he world of my zine here. 

FLAILSNAILS & Constantcon

At one point we discuss FLAILSNAILS and Constantcon. FLAILSNAILS was a set of protocols whereby GMs agreed to allow players to take PCs from one game and use them in other games. Constantcon was the massive open table schedule of running FLAILSNAILS games that people could play. If you want to know more, I wrote about FLAILSNAILS on track 01 of my Google+ Mixtape here 

Gus's Megadungeon Recommendations

Gus also refered to three published megadungeons that he thinks are each very good in their own way. This is really the first set of megadungeon recommendations on the podcast. 

Caverns of Thracia by Jennell Jaquays, a pathbreaking early hobby massive dungeon notable, like Jaquays' other early contributions for it's evocative flavor, use of factions, and open map design. Gus wrote a review of it for Bones of Contention here.    

Patrick Wetmore's delightful gonzo science fantasy megadungeon, Anomalous Subsurface Environment (ASE) that started Gus on megadungeon gaming. You can still get in print or PDF here.

Gus also praises highly Richard Barton's truly massive The Halls of Arden Vul, which you can find in all it's enormous glory here. 

History as Inspiration for Adventure Design

Finally, of course, you can find the UNESCO World Heritage list here, presenting you with numerous real world locations to fire your imagination for your location-based adventure design.