Megadungeon Book Club - Dungeon of the Bear, part 2
Overview
So two things stand out to me about the key for the dungeon, so I'll mention them here and not for the other levels.
The keys alternate between fairly terse descriptions and slightly longer winded ones, usually with explanations from the author about why or what something is the way it is. I like this a lot. None of them are actively verbose, and unlike stuff written by Gygax, Bear Peters does not appear to be interested in throwing a thesaurus at you.
The dungeon is keyed using capital letters for rooms, lower case letters for traps/pressure plates and numbers for sub-room notations. I don't like this. Floor 1 is not even all that big, and it already has to reach AA and BB as annotations because it ran out of letters in the alphabet - a problem easily solved by simply numbering the rooms instead.
Floor 1
Okay we are now onto the dungeon proper! And the dungeon opens straight away with a classic - a pressure plate right at the entrance that then triggers a rolling boulder. Curiously, a lot of the traps that deal damage in the dungeon do it as the difference between your Saving Roll and the target number if you failed the roll. As such a lot of them are actually quite mild, all things considered, if you have characters with decent Luck scores. Room A continues the trend with also being an elaborate trap (look at this, it even needs a diagram), monsters and treasure all in the same room.
At least to me it is not exactly clear where the 2d6 worth of monsters are supposed to be hiding. Maybe in 1?
Speaking of treasure, I really like both of the ones in this room. The first one is the, and I quote, "infamous Badger Gem." Which is a large and expensive diamond that, when touched melds into the body of the person touching it and transforms them into a badger. They stay as one until they are exposed to sunlight, in which case they revert back to human (and holding the gem). While it's meant to be a kind of "gotcha!" treasure...I'll be honest I can imagine all kinds of useful ways for players to exploit one of their party members being able to transform into a badger by simply stepping into darkness.
The other is a bit more of a classic - the Seven League Boots. They make you faster, are impervious to all kinds of nasty stuff, can fit anyone, but also get permanently attached to you if you put them on, and can not be removed while the character is still alive.
The floor continues with numerous traps, an occasional enemy and even some twists like a giant serpent that is actually a lady cursed by a gem of polymorphing. Apparently those are an actual theme on this level - see the infamous Badger Gem, this one and then in Room O another gem that turns the person touching it into a cave bear. This last one is curious because it also forces the player to automatically attack his friends, which the other ones don't. It also sets them at Monster Rating 175 which is likely a TPK for a level 1-3 party in T&T (the recommended range for this dungeon). There is also the vampire with the ruby ring, which is another gem turning someone into a monster (in this case - a vampire).
There are also a whole bunch of magically locked doors. That is very much an artifact of this being written for T&T and not D&D. In Tunnels & Trolls the spell Knock Knock is a level 1 spell (meaning that all Wizards start by automatically knowing it) and costs just 2 Strength, an incredibly cheap spell by the standards of the system. As such magically-locked doors become not so much a hard obstacle requiring dedicated tools to overcome, but a simple drain on resources.
Conversely, several of the rooms are themselves a form of trap via powerful monster. Both R and Q have monsters with MR 100 (and in one case with an added bonus for a weapon, the other the monster just straight up grows stronger and eventually the room fills with water and drowns the party), which similarly to the Cave Bear transformation are basically just TPKs in most cases. Then there is the aptly labeled Hall of Horros which contains numerous pressure plates that open secret side-doors that do all kinds of fun shit like firing gold-plated crossbow bolts at the party, releasing enemies (some of which, again, would likely be a nearly automatic TPK if fought directly) and so on. I actually kind of like this bit - it's almost a hyper-condensed dungeon inside the dungeon itself.
Speaking of, the vampire encounter in the Hall of Horrors is quite interesting and offers another clear contrast between this and a standard TSR fare. If a person puts on the ruby ring and becomes transformed into a vampire, they don't stop being a PC. They simply have to adjust to the reality of needing human blood in order to survive, and also losing their shadow (they can still walk around in sunlight, which I do like). In a TSR module, at least the ones I've seen, more often than not a transformation of any kind just leads to the PC being put under the control of the GM as an enemy, and now effectively dead.
Curiously the monsters in this dungeon are kind of all over the place in terms of power. There are things like orcs and ogres which are fairly sensible, some alligators and venomous snakes and so on. But then there are some of the above mentioned enemies or traps that turn players in enemies with ratings of 100+ which are fairly tough if not impossible for a party at this level, and going into outright absurd with a 500 MR Chimera at the last keyed room.
Oh one last piece of treasure I'd like to highlight is this sword:
I quite like this thing, it's VERY powerful, but also quite harsh depending on what situations the party finds themselves in. But then again having a character who doubles their adds in total darkness and also can see perfectly in it? that I am not sure is entirely a downside in a dungeon-delving game!
So overall - this is very much what I would expect from a T&T dungeon. Enemies are all over the place, the whole thing is a funhouse monster zoo with all kinds of random shit simply living in small enclosed rooms waiting for someone to step on a pressure plate or walk into the door. I do like the variety of enemies, but I will say I have one big glaring issue with this - Floor 1 does not have any goddamn bears in it. Yes there's that gem that makes a PC into a bear, but that doesn't count!
Also, one last note - the level definitely feels like it was written in sequential order. Despite there being several ways in which you can approach a bunch of these rooms, the way writing simply assumes you are going in alphabetical order like the key is written out. Which also presents a very hilarious situation where in room A the DM is supposed to pick which type of monsters show up when the room trap is sprung, depending on how powerful the party are.....and then halfway through writing the dungeon it looks like the author just gave up any pretensions of that and simply started throwing TPK encounters at the party for shits and giggles.