I’ve always been fascinated with landscapes that defy common frames of reference. I guess that’s one of the reasons why, when I draw dungeon maps, megadungeons draw my attention most of all. If a dungeon is the scene for a single dungeon-delving adventure, however long, a megadungeon promises almost limitless adventure. Megadungeon is dungeon multiplied until the prospect of seeing or visiting it all starts to seem impossible.
But there’s another kind of adventure that I’m interested in, and that’s megastructure.
I’ve just released a short adventure for Isotope, The Hendeson Ruin. You can get it on Drive-Thru RPG, or support my Patreon and get it for free!
Wither megastructure?
A megastructure is a building of complex of buildings so large that you can’t grasp all of it at once. Think the Mines of Moria, Rendezvous with Rama, the ringworld of Halo, or for that matter, New York City. The classic D&D module Dwellers of the Forbidden City, with its lost city map, captures some of what a megastructure can be.
An arcology as imagined by Paulo Soleri
The Italian futurist architect Paulo Soleri coined the term “arcology” to describe his vision of a single structure capable of encompassing an entire city—homes, schools, infrastructure, factories, power facilities, and more. His amazing illustrations of these cities have a powerful romantic appeal to me. I’ve always wanted to make a game about exploring these kinds of environments.
Dwellers of the forbidden city
The main difference between megadungeon and megastructure adventure is procedural. A megadungeon is dungeon writ large, but the procedures of play remain similar—a sequence of rooms, threats, challenges, and landscapes that are dealt with one by one by interacting with individual details—monsters, traps, furniture, and so on.
Zoom out
Part of megastructure adventure is bringing the sheer size and variety of the environment into play all at once. It’s about that moment when, at the end of a long climb through an underdark tunnel, the explorers emerge on a ledge overlooking a vast underground city with hundreds of crumbling buildings and potential adventures. How, as a game master, do you handle that moment?
Better check those radiation readings
The first technique I’ve been using to create this feeling is zooming out. When you zoom out, your goal is to make the world feel bigger. Find a frame of reference or a detail that fits where the characters are at right now. This may be a building, a person, or the characters themselves. Then zoom out to something that makes this detail look small.
Here are some examples from Isotope:
The overgrown highway you’ve been following turns into a massive cloverleaf, roads stretching in all directions. Hundreds and hundreds of abandoned cars fill the intersection.
A bleached pillar in the middle of the prairie that turns out to be the base of a massive rib bone stretching hundreds of feet into the air. A way away you can see another, and another after that, forming an impossibly huge rib cage.
An abandoned shopping center, full of drifting sand, some shops empty and bare, some looking as though their owners just stepped out.
A maze of houses all the same, some falling into ruin, some showing signs of ramshackle repair, some almost consumed by bizarre plants and vines.
An underground conduit opens into a massive corridor, as long as you can see, lined by an endless row of identical doors.
The ancient suspension bridge, 10 lanes wide, has evolved into a bustling market town, full of strange mutants, bizarre wares, overseen by oddly-garbed robot-priests.
Exploring an underground ruin, you open a panel and find yourself in a vast domed city, full of weird futuristic buildings and canals, some falling into ruin. Strange birds and creatures make their way through lush vegetation.
Zooming out make the world seem big, but it can be a stressful moment for the players and the game-master. Traditional adventure games thrive on the “what do you do next” ethos. Describe the scene and wait for the players to act. But what do you do when you’ve got a whole city, thousands of doors, or an entire shopping mall to explore?
When you’re zoomed out, don’t punish them, harass them, or hit them with damage. Being zoomed out is about the environment as a whole. Let them experience the environment with a degree of freedom. Make it clear to your players, that it’s OK to say “we wander around the mall a bit and see what’s there.”
When you’re zoomed out, stick with big details—what’s the landscape like, what are the big landmarks, how does it feel to be here. It’s not that there aren’t dangers or treasures to be found, it’s that we’re not dealing with those things right now. And when it is time, we zoom back in.
A portion of a huge illustration of the interior of Kowloon City in Hong Kong
Zoom in
At a certain point, it’s time to zoom in. Knowing when can be tricky, but there are some clues to watch for. Typically, you want to zoom back in when the fiction calls for it, when something new is revealed, or the players ask.
Sometimes you’ll know. As the game master, you can zoom in whenever you think it’s time. It could be a random encounter, some rash behavior that creates risk, or just something cool you want to focus on. Sometimes it will happen because something changes—they enter a new place, or some urgent detail like a monster or a treasure demands their attention. Most often it will happen because the characters ask for it, for example, when they say “do any of the houses look interesting?” or “can we eat any of the plants?” Pay attention to the questions that characters ask. If the answer is a detail, you’re probably zooming in.
When you zoom in, pick a single element at the character’s scale and flesh it out. Give them something they can look at, plan for, or interact with right now. Here are some examples:
A hitchhiker beside the road, still far off, but growing nearer by the minute.
A narrow path leading down the ridge, a seemingly safe way to enter the ravine below.
An abandoned storefront, partially covered by security shutters, the interior partially looted but still showing a mix of camping goods and canned food.
A market stall overseen by a patchwork robot. Most of the items are broken and useless, but near the back you glimpse what appears to be a functioning gatling laser!
A single house stands out—the lawn is well manicured, the windows are intact, and the front door stand, bizarrely, open.
As you open one of the doors, a fluorescent light springs to life revealing a rusting metal desk and chair in which is seated a moldering skeleton in a decaying uniform.
You’ve been walking all afternoon when, without warning, the trees ahead part and a huge Negasnake charges right at you!
The point of zooming in is to give them details to interact with, opportunities to explore, and dangers to avoid or overcome.
If you zoom in and they’re not interested or decide to move on, it’s usually OK to zoom out again.
I have found these techniques really useful for working through what were otherwise awkward moments in my games. Zooming in and out aren’t anything new. Lots of game masters do it instinctively at the right time. When characters prepare for a journey, it’s normal to zoom out. When they arrive at their destination, or encounter something on the road, it’s normal to zoom in. Cities often include lots of zooming in and out.
In a future post, I want to share more techniques for megastructure adventure, including how I handle repeated elements (like hundreds of houses, or thousands of cars), what travel rules I use for journeys in a megastructure environment, and some random tables I’ve made along the way.
Reading your examples of zooming out brought to mind the closing scene from Planet of the Apes (1968). When Taylor stumbles onto the top of the Statue of Liberty poking out of a dune, the viewer’s mind zooms out—not in space, but in time. Time or space, doesn’t matter. That feeling is the same: a rush of emotion that would be platinum at the game table. Another one, also from a movie: the perspective is not of space nor time, but metaphysical, “Why do my eyes hurt?” “You’ve never used them before.” (The Matrix, 1999)
I have been doing this for years - I refer to it as changing scale instead of zooming in and out, but it is the exact same concept. I wonder if it is something we picked up or formulated way back when.