Megadungeon Book Club - Dungeon of the Bear, part 3
Overview
Onto floor 2! This one I'll split in two, as we are only reading part of it for this week of the book club.
And hilariously it opens up with this quote:
Let's not forget, the last room on Floor 1, a floor intended for characters of level 1 to 3 in T&T, had a Monster Rating 500 Chimera in it, with a +10 dice bonus, and a poison attack that kills you in 5 turns if you don't heal it. And this thing was also guarding one of the two entrances deeper into the dungeon.
Anyway, with this nonsense out of the way, the introduction to the level does actually have a very interesting thing to say regarding character advancement in T&T. As Monster Rating is directly tied to how much XP a character gets for defeating the monster, higher level characters end up fighting higher rating monsters, which in turn just means they get more and more experience faster. So Bear Peters suggests an interesting solution to that, via Room I on the floor, a room full of innumerable (or at least 1000) snakes, each one of which has only MR of 5, but can easily kill any character that falls in their pit. Conversely defeating all of those snakes does not give the characters 5000 points of XP, but just 5 - as the text says "Killing any one particular snake is as much of a challenge as killing all of them, as it really was just doing the same thing over and over." An interesting approach to XP distribution for sure.
Another useful thing I'm picking up from this and should definitely implement in my own megadungeon is the fact that monsters can in fact have more dice based on the gear or abilities they have. The Chimera gets +10 dice for having two heads to attack with, ogres and trolls and other enemies get the benefit of dice from their weapons. This kind of solves the minor issue with T&T where a higher monster rating also makes a thing hard to kill, whereas sometimes you just want it to deal more damage.
Oh and one last thing - This floor, along with the previous one, both seem to have these long, winding hallways in them. Which is not that out of the ordinary, except the dungeon does not have wandering monsters. So why waste people's time then?
Floor 2, part 1
The dungeon proper begins with a couple of fairly standard at this point T&T encounters - A chained demon (that I swear to god just looks like a Deodand from the Dying Earth in the art) with a magical chain holding it back, but also the door to the room is itself magic to stop people from just shooting into the room, and then an ambush by a bunch of mummies who are apparently immune to all except fire damage, and magical attacks only work if the GM decides that's a thing they want.
Both of those very much continue the trend of Floor 1 of the absolute Funhouse Dungeon vibe that Dungeon of the Bear has. Well there's also the monster armor which is....an armory for the monsters with monsters in it, but that one's fair enough.
Those mummies btw were guarding another mummy's tomb (which does not seem to be reanimated, mercifully) which contains...yet another gemstone that, when touched, transforms the person holding it into some kind of beast! In this case - a Warg! This transformation is a bit more involved than the others, offering explicit modifiers to the character's stats when in Warg form, which also only seems to be in effect when the characters is inside this dungeon and nowhere else. Kind of an odd stipulation if you ask me, compared to some of the other transforming gems.
Room D of the dungeon just straight up has an error as it describes a pair of ogres, and then refers to them as trolls.
That's about it. It's kind of just a room with some monsters. The trap right after this room in the key order also refers to a c' section which is not labeled on the map (but you can tell which one they probably mean by just looking at it so that's fine).
Room F offers a much more interesting encounter then. It is a large room with a throne in it, its back turned to the door. In the chair is a Gorgon. As the text says
Anyone who looks at the figure in the chair...zingo, stoned again!
That is definitely one way of putting it. However if the party enters the room and closes the door, two things happen - a gas (which is not explained in any way) fills the room which turns the Gorgon into stone, and turns any stoned living beings back into flesh. It also drops a 10 ton block of stone right outside the room, trapping people in it.
Except the room right next to this one is behind a very thin piece of dungeon wall, so if the party can figure that out they can maybe dig their way out of it.
This is honestly a neat trap, though the utterly arbitrary magical gas that somehow fixes things just has the same vibe as a lot of the T&T traps and especially Grimtooth's Traps - things that exist only to fulfill a specific person for the puzzle or trap and make zero fucking sense otherwise and get to a point where you can no longer even take anything happening seriously and it just becomes a farce. I mean Gygax is rightfully derided for giving undead shit like amulets that protects them from being turned, but T&T is basically only that, all the time.
The room near this one also has another magical gem (this one stuck in some kind of ooze which for some reason also has MR of 500) which now subverts the trend by not transforming anyone into anything.
Room I, the one with all the snakes I mentioned above, also has another fairly typical old school dungeon trend - Treasure which is made worthless so as to not have to deal with players...ya know, actually succeeding at playing the game. Among the giant pile of snakes is the Golden Adder, who's venom turns anyone it bites into gold. The text then makes it immediately clear that the Golden Adder, quote:
...dies in captivity in an incredibly short time - less than 10 minutes. Milking it for its nasty venom is pointless, as it loses its potency within 3 minutes.
Like what is this shit? First off, how is this adder trapped in a hole in this dungeon not in captivity already? Not like it can get up and walk out. Secondly, why even put it here if you don't want players to do shit with it? I mean I know why - so if someone falls in the put of snakes they get instakilled by being turned into a gold statue and that serves as treasure. But yeah this shit is lame, it's lame when Gygax does it, it's lame when Bear Peters does it here. Either let people use the fucking treasures you give them, or just don't give them the treasure.
The dungeon continues with numerous rooms with monsters and/or traps like a super-strong Orc (he has a magic ring, so you can also be super strong, that's good!), another Vampire (along with a ruby that presumably turns you into one yourself) and a bullshit attack from an ice elemental that, as written, absolutely, definitely freezes the first character into the room solid without any chance for a Saving Roll. They do get to do a SR to not shatter and die. There's yet another gem here that does not transform anyone, but instead can summon an ice elemental of your own to help out your frozen buddy. Oh yeah and this gem ALSO melts into the person who picked it like most of these others do.
Another trap that I find a bit odd is one where there's a 150 ft pit which has some oh-so-clever play with a tripwire (turns out you WANT to trip the tripwire for this one!) and the text being very insistent that any character who falls in it just automatically dies, and if a player argues their character can survive, you should ask them if they'd jump down 150 ft.
Yeah that's...all well and cool except wizards can cast fly spells and oh yeah one of the core fucking kin in Tunnels & Trolls are the faeries, who naturally fly. So no, there's plenty of fucking characters who should be able to survive this drop.
Then we get to Room Q, one of the entrances into the dungeon. To just hammer home the whole point of "This is just a fucking carnival funhouse" entering this way gets your character sliding down a shaft and into a frictionless slide that runs for A WHILE and then just loops around several times before spitting the characters into Room Q on this floor...and likely hurling them at a wall of spikes opposite the shaft.
Like this is just so stupid and insane I kind of love it, no notes.
Oh and nearby there is a pressure plate that drops a bunch of rocks from the ceiling, and also releases.....an orc (who again somehow exists in this walled off ledge waiting for this trap to spring) who...look lemme just quote the text again.
Further, on the ledge above was an Orc who, at this sparkling opportunity, swings down and twists the nose of the character who made the saving roll by the greatest amount! This experience is worth 50 pts. The Orc then flees at top speed into Chamber R before any attempt can be made to stop him.
Again, this is stupid and insane - no notes.
We finish up this part of the read with Room S, the smithy of a dwarf who has a pet dragon as his business partner to help heat up his forge. He's mostly friendly and in fact has magical weapons for sale (FOR SALE sign and all, obviously).
All in all I have yet to see any bears in this dungeon so far, and it's starting to be a bit of a disappointment. I mean it's right in the name, come on! Hopefully next week when we continue with Floor 2 we might get to some bears in this, supposedly, bear-themed dungeon.