Early Mega-Dungeon Ideas and Design Principles

I posted a while ago about the steps necessary to set up a Dungeons & Dragons campaign, as outlined in the original booklets.  I'll repost those steps in brief below:

1. Read the damn books.
2. Acquire all of the recommended equipment
3. Design at least six levels of my underworld
4. Design a ground level map of the area above the underworld
5. Map the terrain immediately surrounding the dungeon on hex paper, with a hex being 5 miles across
6. Map the town that will serve as a home base for the PCs

I can strike through steps 1 and 2, because I've done them.  Step 2 isn't quite finished, because I'm still waiting on the arrival of the Outdoor Survival board game I ordered, as well as some hex paper (which isn't in the equipment list but I consider a necessity).  That means the next step is to begin designing my "underworld".  That's what original D&D calls it, but more commonly we call it a mega-dungeon, or a campaign dungeon, and my first task is to design the first six levels.

Doing that requires some forethought, because I don't want to design a meaningless labyrinth full of disconnected monster encounters.  That kind of game was a lot of fun when I was young, but I wouldn't be satisfied running something like that now, and I doubt my players would love it either.  I need some underlying concept to tie the whole thing together.

My initial plan had been to use a version of Castle Greyhawk, but for various reasons I found those that exist a bad fit for what I want to do.  Castle Zagyg - Gygax's aborted attempt at publishing the castle - remains unfinished, although I hear that there's more on the way.  The Greyhawk Ruins module by TSR is a decent enough funhouse dungeon, but it's loaded with far too many game elements that were introduced after original D&D.  Castle of the Mad Archmage - which began as a fan's attempt to provide a complete dungeon for Castle Zagyg - seems promising, but it also has more post-1974 game elements than I want.  The Castle Greyhawk module of the late-1980s, as an out-and-out joke adventure, was never in consideration.

Given the above considerations, I've turfed Castle Greyhawk as my initial mega-dungeon.  I'll probably place all of those modules in my world at some point, but what I really want to open with is a dungeon built using the 1974 rules.  And I want it to be my dungeon, something personal that belongs to me.  I don't think that anything can capture the spirit of 1974 D&D better than that.

As it stands, I have the following plans for my campaign world.  I'm using Australia as the basis for the geography and climate.  I'm going to use a loose interpretation of my hometown of Ararat as the home base for the PCs.  Obviously I have a lot of familiarity with both, and there are elements of Ararat's history that I can tie in to my dungeon concept (particularly it's prison and lunatic asylums).

For the dungeon, I have a loose idea that something lies sleeping far beneath the earth close to the town.  Some entity that infects the dreams of the town's inhabitants, driving some to insanity.  A cult tried to dig down to find it, and to take advantage of its power, and later on monsters took over, and other defenders birthed from the dreams and nightmares of the entity sleeping below.  So I have a mega-dungeon concept that's broad enough to incorporate a lot of D&D elements, and I can make smaller dungeons of the local prison and asylums if I wish.

As a basic design principle, the mega-dungeon has many levels that grow successively more dangerous the deeper they go.  Gygax suggests that the dungeon have no less than a dozen main levels.  The random dungeon treasure table has entries for levels 1-13, as does the wandering monster table.  My current thinking is that I'll plan for 13 levels, which seems large enough to accommodate regular play for a long while without being overwhelming. 

Getting down into the finer design elements of the dungeon, I don't have any ideas yet, except that I know I want to create something that incorporates every dungeon monster from original D&D, with the possibility of expanding to incorporate those from Supplement I: Greyhawk.  Basically, I want to be able to plausibly use the wandering monster tables in those booklets, and to run a dungeon that makes sense of the original D&D rules. 

I'm particularly inspired by this article over at All Dead Generations. To summarise the post, the author writes about using less combat, and more obstacles that take advantage of the inherent capabilities of the PCs.  It particularly focuses on magic-user spells, but it's an idea that's easily expanded to cleric spells and other class and racial abilities.  Basically, I need to ensure that every tool available to the PCs will be useful in my dungeon.  It seems simple enough, but I think many of us have experienced the opposite.  Ever played a 3rd edition rogue in a dungeon full of undead, constructs and oozes, all of which are immune to your sneak attack ability?  Or a ranger from the same edition, with a favoured enemy that never shows up in the game?  This is something to be avoided, especially in a mega-dungeon campaign where the bulk of the game will take place in that one environment.

To that end, I'm going to list out the various class and race abilities that I need to make sure are a viable part of the dungeon:

Fighting-Men

• Use of Magic Swords: This is easily taken care of by simply using the random tables to generate treasure hoards.  The exclusive ability to wield intelligent magic swords is vital to the fighter, and the tables make them far more common in original D&D than in later editions.
• Barony: The ability to build a castle and become a "baron" is a part of wilderness play, and not relevant to dungeon design.
• Sweep Attacks: This is the fighter's ability to make multiple attacks against "normal men" (enemies of 1 Hit Die or lower).  I've cribbed the term from the Gold Box computer games, where I first encountered the ability.  Using the standard dungeon encounter tables should take care of this for me, providing plenty of opportunities for higher-level fighters to hack their way through low-level enemies.

Magic-Users

• Spells: Much of this ground is covered in the post I linked to earlier.  To highlight some specific spells that need to be provided for, or that dungeon areas could be "gated" behind:
• Read Languages (I'll need to include some dungeon writings in languages that PCs are unlikely to have)
• Detect Invisible (this spell is useful in its own right for detecting invisible creatures, but it's also called out that objects and treasure can also be made invisible)
• Detect Evil
• Knock
• Levitate and Fly (just providing some verticality in the dungeon will make these spells more useful)
• Water Breathing, Lower Water and Part Water (flooded dungeon levels are always a fun time)
• Dimension Door, Pass-Wall and Teleport (for dungeon areas that can't be accessed any other way)
• Plant Growth (possibly a dungeon section that can be reached by making some plants taller?  Although it seems like Levitate and Fly would take care of that at an earlier level.)

Clerics

• Spells: The main spell I need to make provisions for is Find Traps.  Filling a dungeon with traps is of course not difficult.  Finding the balance between including enough for this spell to be worthwhile but not so many that they get frustrating and annoying is the real trick.  But otherwise the Cleric spells are generalised enough, and the list small enough, that I don't need to specifically design for them.  It might still be a good idea to look over the spell lists for clerics and magic-users when I'm thinking of "keys" to unlock hidden dungeon areas.
• Turning Undead: I need to include undead in my dungeon for this ability to be useful.  No shit, Sherlock.  The trick for me, as ever, will be in not using too many undead creatures, especially with old-school level drain in effect.

Dwarves

• Wielding the +3 Magic War Hammer: Much like fighters and magic swords, the +3 War Hammer is powerful in the hands of a dwarf.  I'll need to make sure that my dungeon includes one, although the random tables may take care of that for me.
• Noting slanting passages, traps, shifting walls and new construction in underground settings: This is the ability that will probably most influence the design of my mega-dungeon.  Gygax was big on this kind of stuff in his early writings: tricks and traps that are designed to get the players to go unwittingly deeper into the dungeon, or to trap them in certain areas.  Passages that are imperceptibly slanted enough so that they lead down to a deeper level without anyone realising are a particular favourite of his.  These are things I have to include and keep in mind if I want to make this dwarf ability a useful one.  What I won't be using is the Gygax trick of including passages so imperceptibly slanted that even dwarves can't notice them.  Granting PC abilities just to arbitrarily negate them isn't the kind of game I want to play.

Elves

• Noticing Secret and Hidden Doors: Yes, of course my dungeon will have secret doors.  But for the sake of completeness, I must mention the ability.

Hobbits

• Hobbits don't have any special abilities that need to be specifically designed for.

Magic Items

As with the game's spells, the list of magic items is small enough, and their applications broad enough, that specific design is not required.  For weapons, I just need to make sure that there are plenty of the monster types that certain swords are extra-effective against.  Cracks in walls for the Potion of Gaseous Form, treasure to be found by the Treasure Finding Potion...  Areas and objects that are worth scanning with a Ring of X-Ray Vision...  None of this is too difficult.  As with spells, looking at these items can provide inspiration for tricks and obstacles in the dungeon.

SUMMATION

What's become apparent (and what I already suspected) is that original D&D is a game small enough in scope that the majority of its elements are baked into the game's random tables.  I'm quite confident that, simply by following the design guidelines laid out in the booklets and using those random tables, I'll get a game that incorporates all of those elements and avoids making any PC abilities useless.  The only race or class that needs to be specifically designed for, at this stage, is the dwarf.  The booklets have a lot of suggestions for tricks and traps of the kind that dwarves can detect, and I'll try to incorporate as many of those as possible.  Otherwise, I'll be following my own design instincts with a heavy reliance on the game's random tables.