Mega (or at least big) TFT dungeons!

[larsdangly]

I'm got a lot of things going on with my TFT campaign this winter, but one component of it that has be totally jazzed is a gigantic (possibly infinite - I haven't decided where it ends, if at all...), complicated dungeon. Effectively, I'm making a proper 'megadungeon' a'la the ones you hear about for the OSR, except built from the first blank piece of paper for TFT rather than converted.

Perhaps the biggest decision I made early on was to do this strictly on hex paper, following standard TFT mapping conventions. This is a surprisingly big commitment because a lot of things you might imagine drawing on blank or square-gridded paper get mutated into something else when you are trying to follow the conventions of hex mappinng.

The second major decision I made was to map the whole thing at 1:1 scale; i.e., the smallest hex on my map is equal to 1 hex on a standard Melee battle mat. I have added a megahex overlay, which I also use to guide mapping of spaces that are 3 or more hexes wide in every direction (rooms, wide halls, etc.). This would seem to be harder than mapping at suggested 'labyrinth' scale, where 1 hex = 1 combat MH, but I feel like it is more than worth the effort. There are two major advantages: 1) I have the space and detailed outlines to very clearly indicate where I want things to be; and 2) my dungeon map is literally a direct map of what I will lay out on the table during play. This turns out to be really cool. Effectively , I'm following the convention in the new Labyrinth Hexes that came with DoD.

But pulling back and looking at what I'm producing, the really striking thing is how strongly I feel the urge to make things DENSE. I.e., something or someone interesting is getting plopped down at least every 10 MH or so in any given direction (often denser).

The reason doesn't have anything to do with TFT's dangerousness or the sizes of my map sheets or whatever. Rather, it is an outgrowth of playing for a number of months continuously where we use the MH tiles at the table, with religious consistency. There is a skill to using these things well, but once you get good at it you find that the experience of dungeon crawling is super immersive, and has a tense immediacy: The players and GM are very focused on the details of everything that is happening - almost like every minute of play is similar to the spooky action sequence in a horror movie. As a result, there is a kind of pacing of decisions, observations, encounters, etc. that feels right, and anything much more 'dilute' than that feels tedious and hard to focus on.

Anyone else out there doing something similar?