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Post by Scott on Jul 30, 2011 20:42:43 GMT -5
I was just thinking about something Gary once said about the size of the Greyhawk Dungeons. At their largest, when Gary and Rob were co-DMing and writing, the Dungeons were 28 levels deep. What would you populate the 28th dungeon level with?
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Post by GRWelsh on Jul 31, 2011 8:04:12 GMT -5
According to DMG p. 174, level 16 and down is just more of the same, at least in terms of toughness of monsters.
Ah, if only we could see EGG's and Rob's notes from that dungeon, I'm sure it would be a glorious mess. "Bottle City","The Living Room", "Isle of the Ape" and the Alice in Wonderland modules probably give us glimpses into what it was like. Unending weirdness, I suppose. Tricks, traps, tests, riddles and puzzles. Many gates. Imprisoned demons and demigods. A capering, elusive Zagyg.
Ernie's geomorphs always implied that as one went deeper, dungeon corridors gave way to caves and caverns. So, perhaps features of a prototypical Underworld, like what was to appear in the D series, were in the deepest levels of this incarnation of the Greyhawk Dungeons: huge cavernous vaults, glowing lichen and moss, underground lakes and rivers, magic pools, mountainous stalagmites and dripping stalactites.
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Post by Scott on Jul 31, 2011 10:55:36 GMT -5
In Gary's original dungeon, Levels 8 - 10 were caverns. The Isle of the Ape gate was in here somewhere. 11 - 12 went back to 'dungeon' I believe. And 13 was Zagyg's Chamber. But I agree with your assessment. The deeper levels are primarily caverns, with some worked areas located here and there.
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Post by Scott on Jul 31, 2011 14:39:00 GMT -5
I've been working on my dungeon lately and wanting to run some old school dungeon crawling.
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Post by Scott on Aug 3, 2011 8:53:35 GMT -5
Dungeon Level 28, Room: 1. The Dukes of Hell have decided to hold their Millennial Banquet in this room. At the head of a large banquet table sits Asmodeous. To his right sits Bealzebub, etc. 12 pit fiends are working as waiters and bus boys. Etc...
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Post by grodog on Aug 11, 2011 0:28:02 GMT -5
Nice, Scott! I don't recall Rob mentioning too much about the deeper levels, but agree that they're generally caverns and caves and such. I'll go rummaging through my notes to see if he said anything helpful about the expanded castle's lowest levels.
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Post by Scott on Aug 12, 2011 10:38:42 GMT -5
It would be interesting to see if they actually had 28th level encounters in the dungeon. I'm not sure 28 levels deep is the same as monster level 28.
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Post by grodog on Aug 19, 2011 17:35:02 GMT -5
I agree---other than your arch-devilish breakfast meeting, there aren't too many baseline encounters to challenge PCs at monster level 28
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Post by Scott on Aug 26, 2014 8:20:22 GMT -5
I ran this past Rob on his Dragonsfoot thread. He stated that 28 was really just an arbitrary number Gary came up with. Once you passed 13 it was not really set. Level 14 had a sloping passage to the 18th level and a gate to Asgard. There was a Dragon Level somewhere down there, but never placed. Lots of ideas, but still pretty fluid or under construction.
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Post by geneweigel on Sept 3, 2014 21:56:50 GMT -5
I remember doing an image to show all the levels and I labeled for 1980 to 1986 "the sketchy Kuntz era" for levels 51 to 70. I think thats a major thing that has never been highlighted over did El Raja Keye actually exist separate from Castle Greyhawk? Or was it "just playing" ERK as a CG crutch?
When he was describing the first level of El Raja Keye it seemed like Mordenkainen's Fantastic Adventure's Maure Castle and when Gary spoke to me about Castle Greyhawk it seemed like Keep on the Borderland's Caves of Chaos.
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