Brock Savage wrote:

Handy Haversack wrote:

our last session of Maze of the Blue Medusa

You run Maze of the Blue Medusa in Hyperborea? I'd love to hear more. If I ran MotBM I'm afraid the players would feel like they are exploring a massive, weird, and deadly piece of performance art instead of a dungeon. I had to read it a couple times to really "grok" it.  "Genius" isn't the right word to describe MotBM but it's definitely smart, innovative, evocative, and a little pretentious. It's only $5 on RPGNow and worth every penny.

We have had six sessions in MotBM. One-line recaps:

• Every room is trying to kill us. And I don't like the sound of the Protocols of Antipathy, either.
• Does it take all gods that long to get out of the mercury room, Shame Brin?
• Once you know what the Protocols of Antipathy are, they kind of suck. RIP, Ulva
• Where on this map does it say whether Chameleon Women are easier to talk to when they're drunk or when they're dead?
• Does your dog need his balls? Because the invisible song demon we set free is telling me to do some pretty crazy s***!
• I can't die! I just turned evil! RIP, all the young dudes.

I see what you're saying, but, honestly, once you're in the mix, MotBM plays like many other dungeons. It's really very combat-heavy! Or at least the random encounter rolls we got led to a lot of combat. Chameleon Women are *tough*.

I didn't find anything particularly difficult about running it either in Hyperborea or with AS&SH. The fact is, it's not "in" Hyperborea or really anywhere else that anyone would already be playing. It assumes a portal to the world of the dungeon, which itself contains a portal to the world the dungeon's mythology is based on (and the dungeon in turn constitutes the mythology of that world).

As a DM, I definitely found some challenges running it, but there are also things I really, really like, esp. as compared to other big dungeons. The rooms are massive. Nothing is empty. And there are very few map-based challenges that require detailed mapping from the players. So I can describe rooms without bogging down in the minutiae of measurements. Now, I like careful mapping revealing hidden locations as much as the next guy, but it's also fun to have a dungeon that behaves differently and saves the challenges for the room content that's right there for the characters to see.

Also, every room is a challenge. It does not let up. This leads to some great game play. My group tends to roll without much healing available, and watching them realize how far they were from an exit was pretty great as they would debate taking on one more room.

Once the characters found the map, I printed it out and laminated it for the players, which, unlike in many dungeons, led to more and more interesting choices rather than just revealing where the bad guy is.

I think the thing I have done the worst job of so far is actually managing what's going on in Fellchapel on Brigands Bay while the characters spend so much time in the world beyond the painting. They managed to earn an apartment and even accrued some vaguely loyal live-in help, but I should do a better job tracking things that go on in their absence. They have enemies, after all.

And I guess the hardest part of the dungeon as written for me is managing and remembering the personalities and goals of the various NPCs and factions. The cheat sheet at the back helps, and, as often happens, I find that once my players get a hold of this stuff, we manage to keep the balls in the air just fine through their carefully constituted mixture of greed, cowardice, pigheadedness, and paranoia. I mean, they do the hard parts.
 

I'm starting this Friday! Will be situated in New Vinland!

Zulgyan wrote:

I'm starting this Friday! Will be situated in New Vinland!

Cool!! Keep us updated!