Megadungeon Book Club 3: Megadungeon of the Mad Archmage Gary Stu
I'm taking part in Studio 315b's Megadungeon Book Club! We're looking at Megadungeon of the Mad Archmage Gary Stu this week, a megadungeon by Adam Thornton.
Check out last week's post here.
Initial Matter
A ton of thought has been put into realism on the surface here, hopefully there's a payoff down the line. Creating a deathloop style magic effect to explain why all the dungeon denizens fight to the death is a funny touch but reeks of Combat as Sport post-factual rationalization.
Having the ruler of the dungeon be a powerful demigod who sometimes shows up to tease the party is cool, but I suspect it would get old fairly quickly. This is likely the point, judging by the demigod's name (the eponymous Gary Stu).
The rant about the system used (complete with dig about "Fighting Lay-dees") sounds exactly like a grog from the 2000s screeching on the forums about how much 3.5e and Pathfinder rots your brain. The actual rules covered are fine and reasonable.
Floor 1
Hell yes, I love a map and a key on the same page. I did have to zoom into the map to make it a bit more legible, but I vastly prefer this layout to many other published works.
Putting stats directly after the name of the mob rules for usability, no flipping through books to look stuff up or improv-ing on the fly. The fact that the stats given are from so many eclectic rulebooks is a bit odd though. I'd recognize that orc statline with +4 to hit with their falchion for 2d4+4 damage anywhere. I guess the house rules rant was "rules for thee, not for me" because all of these weapon-holding monsters use non-d6s for damage dice and there's already been a few halflings.
Room 7 isn't labelled on the map but I assume its the room south of the Feast Hall (room 6). Why do the halfling line cooks only speak Spanish?
Wish the stairs were labelled where they went. Guess they're intended to line up geo-spatially instead.
Floor is 2 faction complexes connected by a thin hallway that leads to the Grand Stairway as well. Not a terrible start, players would be forced to engage in faction gameplay right away. Does make me wonder where the goblins are getting plunder if they're on an island in the middle of a volcano caldera one assumes is a decent ways away from civilization. Much thought has gone into how all the denizens of the dungeon get water and go to the bathroom, seemingly not that much thought into how they're getting enough food to feed everyone. The random encounters seem out of place for how little space would be wasted here, the encounters would be either coming up from other floors or like, hiding in crawlspaces in order to not be seen by all these goblin guards and monks with fists of death.
Floor 2
Well, its clear where the bandits are coming from on Level 1 now, so that's good. Floor is another set of faction compounds connected at tenuous points. What are the bandits and gnolls doing here besides just sitting in rooms to be closet monsters?
Floor 3
Ok, 2 mazes on 1 floor when running 1 maze is usually tiresome. These would definitely get elided at most tables.
Most creatures are friendly on this floor, or at least not immediately hostile. It would make more sense if the wandering encounters table made up the bulk of possible fights on this floor, but its been effectively removed here.
The Brokeback parody / reference with the 2 gay ogres definitely is a thing that exists!
Floor 4
A cool location for a level, open sewers with catwalks running through them and various "islands" within. The sightlines in this area may pose a problem for attracting encounters, but the penalty for open flame is also pretty high so perhaps adventurers are merely walking through here in the dark / very low light. Easily the most evocative of the levels so far, chances are high that this floor would have at least a few references to the shenanigans of the upper floors just due to the drains and loot screens set up everywhere to sift through the raw sewage.
Would not want to be the character that fell into 4'-8' deep of raw sewage though.
Level 5
The wight and Quasqueton subtables are good, despite being on another page and thus breaking the symmetry. A room of pools of strange liquid is a classic trope, big fan. The wights all being references to music stars is pretty funny and gives a lot more to go on other than "5 wights attack, roll for initiative." Not sure how the PCs are supposed to detect some of the traps in the Temple Maze, pretty sure most of them will be triggered with PCs wondering how the hell it happened.
Definitely was initially confused by the inclusion of the lair in the upper right corner, especially with the re-used room numbers and illegibility of the text.
This floor feels a lot more funhouse than the other floors. You're definitely going to be slogging through a lot of undead here and most of the rooms include some kind of trap to spring on the players. While feeling a little vindictive, this level 100% includes way more fun than the upper floors.
Level 6
The dwarves have no place to poop. Where is your verisimilitude, author?!
If the names in the crypt subtable are a reference, they went over my head. They're written as if they are, but the only one I can sort of clock is Alucard the Cruel as a possible Castlevania reference (or just a reference to Dracula...).
This level goes back to the faction-complexes-with-hallways design. I like Stoneybrook Farms with the Medusa and the Basilisk.
Conclusion
This megadungeon certainly checks off the "travel to other floors easily" and "have factions" checkboxes in megadungeon design. With the notable exception of floors 4 and 5, I think there's not enough rooms in the dungeon that aren't territory of another faction, making it hard for adventurers to go anywhere or do anything without pissing off someone (which looks to be the intention). The focus on Gygaxian Naturalism is a bit odd due to the inconsistency: lots of toilets and not nearly enough explanation for what people are eating. It's very likely that a lot of the meat in this dungeon is actually the other residents based off the behavior of the Flesh Vats, but it'd be nice to have those called out.
This megadungeon also continues the trend from the last of referencing mythical floors below the mapped ones that don't actually exist as a document. This seems more likely to be a case of the dungeon never being finished as opposed to an intended exclusion in comparison to Under Xylarthen's Tower though. Also similar to UXT, the pop references and the humor (as well as the statblocks) are all pulled from the 2000s era when 3.5 walked the earth.
The quality of the megadungeon is also very similar to UXT: it would be fine to run and a timesaver if you didn't want to roll up a megadungeon of your own, but otherwise the published document is not a whole lot of value added. Levels 4 and 5 are worth extracting. I'd rather run UXT than this.