Does a megadungeon require factions?

Just a random thought while I was noodling around with my megadungeon.

I was thinking about one of the features of megadungeons - the faction.

Do you actually need factions?

I'm not saying they aren't useful or good. The question is, are they required? Can a dungeon be "mega" even without disparate and presumably competitive groups?

My line of thought is that no, you do not need them. They've helpful and make a dungeon a lot less boring, but I don't think they make a dungeon mega or not. They might be necessary for a sustained game. They make it more interesting. They keep it from either being:

- a random collection of monsters

- a fortress of a single, associated group

I suppose you could do a dungeon without them. Monsters in groups, say, as well as individuals, but without a lot of social interactions for PCs to discover and exploit. You pretty much get the Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord, with foes to fight and a boss at the end but no seperation of monsters into groups.

Just a thought.

Links & Thoughts for 4/29/2022

Stuff for 4/29/2022

- With Pathfinder: Kingmaker done, I have a little more free time. I'm spending it on professional development work, mostly, but also on Felltower and reading some game inspiration-al material.

- When I saw the title of this post, I thought it was a Gene Wolfe reference. Sadly, it is not:

The Book of the New Sun

. . . and speaking of reading, those are approaching the "re-read soon" pile again. I really like those books. They're dense but seem better to me the more I read them.

- Fire in the Lake watch - At the Printer and 788 orders.

- This is an interesting post on classes vs. skills. Or, why skills, anyway. I always prefer skills, but still.

Felltower break?

So we're having some Felltower scheduling issues.

Next game might be 5/15 - 2 weeks from Sunday.

I plan to use that time to develop a bit more of the dungeon. I should do some final prep on the Jester Gate, too, since it's probably about time for them to go through it. It's not a one-use gate, in any case . . . but it's probably a one-use destination.

So I have some marching orders for work . . .

Quick Show & Tell Report

So my client was overwhelmed by The Tomb of the Bitchin' Chimera. I basically made her day.

Of course, I also ruined her day by telling her that getting a copy of it will be difficult. So it goes.

Interestingly, she wasn't familiar with any of the silly stuff from old AD&D days - Dungeonland, Land Beyond the Magic Mirror, Isle of the Ape (not silly, but the inspiration was pop culture), etc. So I may need to see if I have loaner copies of those to let her read.

You have to educate your clients, I feel.

Show & Tell at work tomorrow

I'm bringing Lost Tomb of the Bitchin' Chimera to work tomorrow.

I need to show it to one of my clients, who:

- plays 5th edition D&D

- loves punk rock, including the Dead Milkmen

I'm still looking it over, myself, but I need to catch a reaction. I'll try to get one up ASAP, plus a more typical GURPS-related post for Thursday.

Pathfinder: Kingmaker - won!

I finished Pathfinder: Kingmaker today.

I was right, yesterday. I was cleaning up minions before a big boss fight. The boss fight was good, although like most fights at this stage, I had no idea what was going on much of the time. Way too many spells, rolls, and effects going on at the same time. Most of the time I just didn't know what people were up to, or what spell affected who and why, or how to remove it.

I did find that Dispel Magic is stupid, though - the bag guys put an effect on my main guy, so my cleric tossed Dispel Magic on him, and it knocked off one of his friendly buffs instead and my guy was still incapacitated by the hostile effect. Seriously?

Still, good fight.

Trying to avoid too many spoilers here, though.

I was disappointed with the very end of the game. I won the last battle, made some decisions . . . and then got a storybook flip through of what happened. But none of it was really interesting. Blah blah this person good at job, this person bad, this country did some thing and apparantly my decisions affected that, blah blah. I didn't really care much. I just flipped through. I'm not sure why but I didn't feel invested in it at all.

I was also disappointed that I didn't get to keep playing at all. I had a couple of unfinished side quests and I'd have liked to have finished them. I even got some XP in the final battle - rather a lot - but it didn't really matter. I'd never get to realize the benefits, so it was meaningless. My character had a romance with one of his companions, but all we got was a "they lived the best life EVER!" thing . . . a conversation with the actual character would have had some meaning.

And then it dumped me to the main screen. That was that. It was disappointing. Why hand me loot and XP and all of that when it doesn't matter even a little bit? It just wasted time from my actual life and did nothing else. Hurrah, 61K XP for something, a few more K of gold, a +5 weapon . . . I don't get to do a thing with any of it.

I enjoyed the game right up until then.



I do plan to play again - maybe as a Lawful Evil monk. I like fighters more than casters in any case, and it might be fun to use some of the weird monk stuff I found. I think if I play very evil I might just get a worse ending or the same one. So I may need to take one of my earlier saves with my good guy, make some different choices, and then see if I can get an improved ending. We'll see. That's for later, much later.

Good game overall. Long, though, very long.

Pathfinder: Kingmaker - Progress!

I spent a couple hours yesterday and about the same today (albeit broken into chunks) on Pathfinder: Kingmaker.

I'm basically trying to finish the game, and having a big multi-part battle with what has to be the end boss.

- I had a chance to stock up a bit, and probably should have done even more stocking up. But I bought a few Heal scrolls and a bunch of Heal, Mass scrolls. These have helped a ton. I should have, honestly, bought 30 or 40 of each and just spammed them out during fights. It's a great spell.

- Most of the fights I'm having are pretty nasty brawls, with lots of foes with multiple attacks that teleport in reinforcements. I'm enjoying them . . . and I enjoyed the ones before that where I had a horrid curse on me that cause me to roll 1s 40% of the time and foes to roll 20s 40% of the time. Why? Because I feel like I roll 1s 20-30% of the time already - it's rare for my 6-shot archer to hit with all six shots in one round even though it says he hits on a 2+ on a d20. So it didn't feel like such a debuff.

- I'm 19th level, and if I can't get to 20th somewhere in this fight I simply won't get there at all.

- I think I may have made an in-game choice that cut off the best possible ending, in that I don't understand why I wasn't able to get an NPC to do something that should be totally obvious to do and should be desired by that NPC specifically. I'll read spoiler-filled walkthroughs after and see what I missed. I used a few already to make sure I didn't waste hours of time (and thank goodness I did - some stuff I needed took a lot of trying even with guides and maps.)

Overall, still a lot of fun. I'm glad I got it and I'm glad to play it.