See https://www.dragonsfoot.org/forums/viewtopic.php?p=2267080#p2267080
Thanks for the interest, folks. I'm the writer/designer of AV. We're excited that AV is still finding a home.
Someone asked above about where I placed AV in the Wilderlands.
TL:DR? I never placed AV in a hex in the Wilderlands, although portions of the cultures and peoples that formed the initial dungeon were clearly inspired by JG.
Longer explanation:
I should probably clarify. I may have said I had 'set' Arden Vul there, but that's probably a bit of an exaggeration. The Wilderlands was my favorite published setting, ever since I first encountered it back in the early 80s. So when I set out to devise a big dungeon I always figured I'd place it in the Wilderlands. But tbh I never got around to 'placing' AV in the Wilderlands, for a couple of reasons. One was that I began designing the dungeon in a break from active gaming (I had some long road trips with a 9-yr old and would often 'daydream' about cool-sounding design elements on them - e.g., the troll lifts). When my group reconvened, the dungeon was pretty primitive - really just level 3 (or parts of it),and without any sense of backstory or history. I didn't burden my players with world info at that point, going instead for the classic 'you're in a village and there's a big dungeon nearby'; it didn't really matter at that point where the village or dungeon were located. I figured I'd make it up as my players progressed, including deciding on a hex and filling in the regional background based on player interests. In terms of the dungeon, the design also emerged from a pretty disparate set of unconnected encounters and ideas. For ex., an early group ignored all my warnings about going too deep (partly because of the danger factor, but also because I hadn't written anything for those levels yet!) and insisted on going down a big shaft; so kinda on the spur of it I came up with the giant skeletons sitting in a big chair who were able to fire certain projectiles (I'm being oblique for spoilers), and one of the 2nd-level PCs ended up impaled on the shaft of the wall (I actually wrote that PCs demise into the final product; you can find the corpse still impaled on the wall ... somewhere). It was a fun moment with the group (who wisely fled in terror), but I then had to incorporate that improvisation into the dungeon concept (who were those skeletons? etc.). Another one of these early spontaneous creations was Kerbog Khan and his unusual voice and creatures. So early on there were a lot of moments like this, where kinda random things would get incorporated either because I thought they were cool or because of active game play.
As with any big project, though, there came a time when all of it had to make sense, or else I'd simply be recreating the World's Largest Dungeon (ugh). So at about the time I started talking to Joe Browning, that is, about 5 years after I'd dreamed up some of the early levels and my players had explored some of them, I became aware of two things. If Andreas and I were going to publish it, it would be wiser for it to be entirely original, and not located in an existing setting; this meant that the world elements - cultures, deities and especially names - should be original. The other was that to make it work well as a product, there would have to be consistency and backstory that explained (for those who cared!) all the elements that had been accreting to that point. This required a major rehaul on my part, and at the conceptual, linguistic, and historical levels. Now I know that gamers may not care much about that, but I did; I wanted it to feel like a 'real' setting, that made sense and had a plausible history (if that makes sense). So, for ex., even though in my home campaign the human barbarians had been called Tharbrians and Skandiks til that point (Wilderlands names), I had to sit down and rename them (Thorcins and Wiskins), and then come up with rough cultures for them. I also had to rename and rethink the pantheons for all the races. And, since the Archonteans had been becoming increasingly fleshed out in my mind, I had to work together all the different adventuring elements into a hopefully-satisfying backstory (without making a railroad, and without neutering the adventuring fun). So it was at that point that, both for commercial and design reasons, I consciously stripped away any of the vague Wilderlands elements that had always sort of sloshed around in my mind as a tribute to Bledsaw.
Someone asked above about where I placed AV in the Wilderlands.
TL:DR? I never placed AV in a hex in the Wilderlands, although portions of the cultures and peoples that formed the initial dungeon were clearly inspired by JG.
Longer explanation:
I should probably clarify. I may have said I had 'set' Arden Vul there, but that's probably a bit of an exaggeration. The Wilderlands was my favorite published setting, ever since I first encountered it back in the early 80s. So when I set out to devise a big dungeon I always figured I'd place it in the Wilderlands. But tbh I never got around to 'placing' AV in the Wilderlands, for a couple of reasons. One was that I began designing the dungeon in a break from active gaming (I had some long road trips with a 9-yr old and would often 'daydream' about cool-sounding design elements on them - e.g., the troll lifts). When my group reconvened, the dungeon was pretty primitive - really just level 3 (or parts of it),and without any sense of backstory or history. I didn't burden my players with world info at that point, going instead for the classic 'you're in a village and there's a big dungeon nearby'; it didn't really matter at that point where the village or dungeon were located. I figured I'd make it up as my players progressed, including deciding on a hex and filling in the regional background based on player interests. In terms of the dungeon, the design also emerged from a pretty disparate set of unconnected encounters and ideas. For ex., an early group ignored all my warnings about going too deep (partly because of the danger factor, but also because I hadn't written anything for those levels yet!) and insisted on going down a big shaft; so kinda on the spur of it I came up with the giant skeletons sitting in a big chair who were able to fire certain projectiles (I'm being oblique for spoilers), and one of the 2nd-level PCs ended up impaled on the shaft of the wall (I actually wrote that PCs demise into the final product; you can find the corpse still impaled on the wall ... somewhere). It was a fun moment with the group (who wisely fled in terror), but I then had to incorporate that improvisation into the dungeon concept (who were those skeletons? etc.). Another one of these early spontaneous creations was Kerbog Khan and his unusual voice and creatures. So early on there were a lot of moments like this, where kinda random things would get incorporated either because I thought they were cool or because of active game play.
As with any big project, though, there came a time when all of it had to make sense, or else I'd simply be recreating the World's Largest Dungeon (ugh). So at about the time I started talking to Joe Browning, that is, about 5 years after I'd dreamed up some of the early levels and my players had explored some of them, I became aware of two things. If Andreas and I were going to publish it, it would be wiser for it to be entirely original, and not located in an existing setting; this meant that the world elements - cultures, deities and especially names - should be original. The other was that to make it work well as a product, there would have to be consistency and backstory that explained (for those who cared!) all the elements that had been accreting to that point. This required a major rehaul on my part, and at the conceptual, linguistic, and historical levels. Now I know that gamers may not care much about that, but I did; I wanted it to feel like a 'real' setting, that made sense and had a plausible history (if that makes sense). So, for ex., even though in my home campaign the human barbarians had been called Tharbrians and Skandiks til that point (Wilderlands names), I had to sit down and rename them (Thorcins and Wiskins), and then come up with rough cultures for them. I also had to rename and rethink the pantheons for all the races. And, since the Archonteans had been becoming increasingly fleshed out in my mind, I had to work together all the different adventuring elements into a hopefully-satisfying backstory (without making a railroad, and without neutering the adventuring fun). So it was at that point that, both for commercial and design reasons, I consciously stripped away any of the vague Wilderlands elements that had always sort of sloshed around in my mind as a tribute to Bledsaw.
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Re: An Introduction to The Halls of Arden Vul (Megadungeon)
I prefer f2f gaming, so the pandemic put our campaign on a hold for the past 2 years. In Jan 2020, though, we had a huge moment. After many years of play in and around AV (and beyond! to the City of Brass, to Archontos, to the southern continent of Magae, etc.), my players returned to AV and decided to take out the Set Cult. They pushed into Level 3, into areas they'd not visited before, and a massive fight ensued in the main temple of Set. There the heroes did pretty well against guardsmen and lesser priests, until High Priestess Stephania arrived. Due to some bad rolling, and a judicious use of fire on the part of Stephania, the main PC magic-user was slain. That's pretty much where we left off. A sort of pyrrhic victory for my guys - they put Stephania to flight, but are now seriously lacking in the arcane department.
We are planning to start up again in September, f2f. I'm not sure yet whether we will start again with the old PCs (who ranged in level from 5-11), or whether we will start a new campaign. If the latter, I'm also unsure whether AV will be the tentpole.
In terms of conversion, it's really up to you and your style as a DM. I am a pretty flexible DM, and don't worry too much about such things. For me it would be a breeze, as I'd mostly convert or make it up on the fly. If you are more btb, then it might take a bit more to accomplish. I've also always been a 1e guy, so I'm not sure what the conversion to basic would entail. I wouldn't think it would be too hard, certainly not as hard as a conversion to 3e or 5e.
We are planning to start up again in September, f2f. I'm not sure yet whether we will start again with the old PCs (who ranged in level from 5-11), or whether we will start a new campaign. If the latter, I'm also unsure whether AV will be the tentpole.
In terms of conversion, it's really up to you and your style as a DM. I am a pretty flexible DM, and don't worry too much about such things. For me it would be a breeze, as I'd mostly convert or make it up on the fly. If you are more btb, then it might take a bit more to accomplish. I've also always been a 1e guy, so I'm not sure what the conversion to basic would entail. I wouldn't think it would be too hard, certainly not as hard as a conversion to 3e or 5e.
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