MDBC 22: Grande Temple of Jing (Sixth Floor)
Megadungeon Book Club is moving on to Grande Temple of Jing (2016).
See last week's post here.
The Slimelord of Level Six
1930s American gangster themed ooze casino settlement. This dungeon rules!
The rooms are all written to have some specific purpose, the NPCs that the players are likely to all interact with have names and a purpose for existing besides "ball of XP," and the level layout is non-linear. The odd fact that PCs will be forced to strip down to their skin to avoid their clothes and items burning off is a strange choice, but other than that the rest of the level is great. This dungeon should be run as a settlement and not a dungeon, it can work as a dungeon but isn't particularly noteworthy in that way. Rather, the potential politics of working with / against / around the Slimefather seem like they'd be perfect for an addition to most megadungeons.
Koniyata Caverns
This dungeon bills itself as a new faction compound, but its actually a mud-themed grabbag dungeon with mud elementals, demons, froghemoths and a dragon amidst it's various closet monsters. It's serviceable but very forgettable. The dynamic between the Koniyata, the demons, and the mud elementals is worth stealing and reworking.
The Gravecaves
An expansive set of caves with minimally detailed rooms intended mainly to address the question of "where do dead creatures in the megadungeon go." The book suggests that GMs put a MacGuffin here for the PCs to find, or a powerful magic artifact for them to loot. The procedure to increment the "Doom Clock" (ramping up random encounter difficulty) serves to keep PCs moving and not spending too much time here, which is a bit odd for a graveyard intended for people to pay respects.
Despite it's presentation, I do not think the Gravecaves are intended to actually be crawled through as a dungeon. I would treat them as a mid-megadungeon biome instead, allowing PCs to crawl through as a depthcrawl if you wanted to steal the idea. I do think the Gravecaves are useful in that respect, giving a place for PCs to explore through without being an actual destination too often. I don't think the room descriptions are necessary in the text, each spends a few sentences describing at length who's buried in what room when the name of the room ('Pet Cemetery', 'Beggars and Fools', 'Heroes Lay') is perfectly adequate.
Gauntlet of Heads
A fairly linear escape-room style dungeon. Each of the rooms is bespoke and could likely be yoinked for use in other dungeons or kept as part of the whole. The layout and gimmick of the dungeon (teleporting paintings a la Super Mario 64) are both fairly linear; this dungeon is obviously intended for a theme-park style. It's better than the early floor Gauntlet dungeons and could be repurposed elsewhere.
Test of the Titans
A series of combat encounters that cause the PCs to gradually grow in size as they defeat larger and larger Giant-typed creatures. The fun of this level is intended to be mechanical and theme-park, the size does not persist as written past the exit of the dungeon. Steal the idea, skip the dungeon.
Journeyman's Arena
Another gladiatorial arena similar to the one on the Third Floor, skip it unless you want ideas for combat-as-sport fights.
River of Gold
A lethal riverboat ride with accompanying saloon full of NPCs. While riding the river full of molten gold, the PCs have the opportunity to visit various closet monsters to fight them and take their loot before retreating back to their floating rock vessel before it leaves them behind. The aesthetics of this dungeon are cool and I'm sure fun would be had while here, but the "dungeon" is literally on rails due to the nature of the gold river. Steal the idea of a planar-connected river of gold, skip the implementation here.
Floor 6 Conclusion
Floor 6 returns to some semblance of good dungeon design, enough that I would be happy to run a few of these as written. The temple is also simultaneously leaning more into the theme-park design ethos of many lategame Pathfinder 1e modules and it's incredibly evident. There seems to be little consideration for the dungeon as a living space that is ever intended to be visited again beyond the first time. It's consistent for Pathfinder module design, but a bit sad when you see the potential for areas like the Slimefather casino and the Gravecaves outside of such a structure.