Megadungeon Book Club - Dungeon of the Bear, part 1
Over at the Gay Communist OSR Discord Server (I think that's what we're calling it nowadays, now that it is no longer just purple), there has been an ongoing Megadungeon Book Club where people....uh read megadungeons and talk about them. It's a book club. Anyway I joined up this month because the next one drawn at random was Dungeon of the Bear, by Jim "Bear" Peters. This post is going to be a collection of thoughts as I am reading through it.
Overview
The pdf we're reading from (linked above), is a collection of the three levels of Dungeon of the Bear, along with Castle Ward, an above-ground entryway into the dungeon, or just a stand alone adventure site if you'd like to use it that way. Dungeon of the Bear was originally published in separate books for each level.
The reason this one caught my attention is not just because I am currently running a megadungeon campaign using T&T, but also because it is actually extremely rare to find a regular T&T module. Most Tunnels and Trolls modules, of which there are quite a few over the years, are for solo play. A mix of gamebook CYOA actions, arena fights and just various other elements all tied in T&T's simple ruleset. But it is very hard to find examples of the actual multiple player games that people ran using this system, even less so the original Arizona crew that formed around T&T when it was created.
This book is both of those things, and offers a very interesting glimpse into play from back in the day. Dungeon of the Bear, as the book itself points out in its introduction, was first created one month after T&T was first made by Ken St. Andre, meaning that this dungeon is effectively a contemporary of the 70s D&D early gaming scene that the OSR likes to venerate/shit on and fruitlessly fail to emulate in various configurations (depending on which branch of the OSR niche you find yourself in).
Introduction and Castle Ward
So something stood out to me from the very get go reading the introduction.
One month after Ken St. Andre created Tunnels & Trolls and his infamous prototype T&T Dungeon Gristlegrim, the Dungeon of the Bear was born. As time passed, the original Gristlegrim was devastated by the Dungeon Demolition Team of Ugly John Carver in a marathon 22-hour game, leaving the Dungeon of the Bear the oldest made-for-Tunnels & Trolls dungeon in the world.
We already start with a wonderful glimpse into the play culture of the time and place that this dungeon originates from. I am someone who is always fascinated by the small histories of my hobbies and random things I care about, and this shit right here is what I was hoping to find in this book!
Why is Gristlegrim no longer the oldest T&T dungeon in the world? I mean it should be - Ken St. Andre, by the sound of it, wrote that thing before he even printed the 100 or so copies of the first edition of T&T. Why does a gaming group absolutely demolishing a dungeon mean that that dungeon is no longer a thing? Why can't KSA just...keep running it as if that didn't happen for new people? I think the answer to that is the same reason why T&T suggests that the dungeon master should "dig" their own dungeon.
Secondly, 22 hours marathon session Jesus Fucking Wept! How much of that was actual gaming and how much of it was food breaks, power naps and just people shooting up caffeine and other stimulants just to keep going? It was the 70s, you know they'd have the good shit if they wanted it.
The Dungeon Demolition Team is by far one of the better party names I've ran into in people's campaigns. Most groups tend to go for something deeply stupid (The Hedgehogs of Mercy or The Big Boys in my own personal experiences) or cool sounding, but also a bit goofy (example - The Nefarious Nine from the Hill Cantons, which of course never actually had nine members). Good job to Uncle Ugly and his crew I guess!
The other part of the introduction very much gives you the typical for the time spiel about how you can and should indeed just hack up and change things in the dungeon to make it suit you. The various demons in Castle Ward for example do not have any MR, but the text says that you should figure out how tough it is if people simply decide to fight it.
Anyway, onto Castle Ward itself. It begins with a story explaining the origin of the abandoned castle as well as why it was abandoned. The long and short of it was - some barbarian sounding guy kept being annoyed his best warriors would keep going into this dungeon and getting themselves killed, so he built a giant castle to stop people from doing it. Eventually the monsters in the dungeon figured out someone was doing stuff like that and eventually overran and killed most of the people in the castle, before being pushed back. Now the castle is abandoned, save for some demons left around to guard the place left there by the sorceress that used to live there.
Castle Ward doesn't really offer a lot as an adventuring location in and of itself - there's a ruined tower that has some bits of loot in it, but mostly is a risk of players falling through the wood floors. The sorceress's tower is itself still quite well maintained, but all the floors of it are blocked by demons who seem to mostly be interested in wasting players time with weird puzzles and goofy shit like demanding "a rope with no end" or this infamous piece of nonsense:
There is also a well which can be used as an alternative entrance/exit into the dungeon, and also a pond with some gold leeches that are there mostly to fuck with the players.
The main event, so to speak, is the manor house which is mostly empty (save for some skeletons who are just kind of chilling and won't really attack unless messed with), but leads down to the very entrance of the dungeon itself. The entrance to the Dungeon of the Bear proper is guarded by a demon who's instructions are to let people in, but to stop things from the dungeon coming out, or stuff stolen from the Castle being brought out too.
The Castle itself I think is fairly decent as a potential thing to just plop in a different campaign and use for your own purposes. The demons making players do goofy nonsense can be changed to other types of guardians or simply hazards, or left as is if this is what you want to do.
As an entrance to a dungeon, I think Castle Ward works quite well - it helps set the mood and it offers several ways of entering and/or exiting the dungeon, if players are willing and able to find and utilize them (The main entrance, the well, the dry moat leading into the former sewage system).
A random note - Something that struck me when looking at the map is how much Castle Ward and the fortress from the DCC classic Sailors on the Starless Sea kind of look similar.
Castle Ward
Sailors on the Starless Sea
Obviously the similarities are fairly broad - they're both forts, they have towers, they have wells and they are both used as entrances into further dungeons, but with Goodman Games I figure there is more than a 0% chance that this is an oblique reference, rather than coincidence.
One last thing. The pdf we're reading from has some additional maps and materials in the back, including a nearby village to be used as a base of operations, and a map which seems to actively contradict Castle Ward's writing. In Castle Ward the entrance into the Dungeon of the Bear is in the basement of the castle's manor house. But on the other map the dungeon is near by, and completely detached from the Castle, which actively makes the whole point of the Castle's existence meaningless. I've not read those additions in the back, but I'm curious to see if that will be brought up at some point.
Next post will be on Floor 1 of the proper dungeon, once I get around to it.