u/Evelyn701

Are there any published (mega)dungeons where players start in a middle layer of the dungeon, and the challenge increases as players go upward or downward?

I'm currently designing my first homebrew megadungeon, and it seems like it will have that sort of layout, so I'm looking for other dungeons as inspiration to help me conceptualize and map out the place. Most dungeon design stuff assumes players move downward (and face harder challenges as they do), so figuring out a bidirectional dungeon has been a bit of a challenge.

Looking for a chill system to run a game of SciFi spaceship salvagers, almost like dungeon crawling in space (I'm thinking of the old Annic Nova traveller adventure, for instance).

Obviously there's a lot of great scifi systems out there that could be made to fit - Traveller, Mothership, Orbital Blues - but they're more pulpy and action oriented. I'm looking for something more Citizen Sleeper or Hardspace: Shipbreaker than Cowboy Bebop or Firefly, with few (if any) combat rules. Something that runs easily with a custom setting and isn't ridiculously crunchy is preferred as well.

Thanks!

Currently doing pre-campaign prep for my first proper non-oneshot OSR game. I have a strong idea of the themes and aesthetics I want to explore, and have been planning to do a hexcrawl in a wild, dangerous area.

The problem I'm running into is it seems like dungeoneering is still the "main event" of my hexcrawl. Besides dungeons, there's just towns, non-dungeon monsters to interact with (which are basically mini-dungeons if they are met in the monster's lair) and extra landmarks/npcs that are cool for a few scenes at most.

Am I missing something? Does hexcrawling really contain a campaign in itself, or is it just a way to add extra adventures/challenges/moments between dungeon delves?

I'm a GM who doesn't have a lot of prep time, but still wants to run some games. My go-to in this situation is always a fantasy megadungeon or hexcrawl, since those require a lot of upfront prep but can be prepped in an hour or less between individual sessions.

Are there other types of games with a similar prep curve, requiring lots of upfront pre-campaign work but easy to maintain session to session? I'm especially interested in scifi and other non-fantasy genres, but that's not a hard requirement.

I'm not really looking for specific game systems, moreso just types of campaigns.