What's the Star Trap Dungeon?

Star Trap is my attempt at a old school megadungeon that is relatively cohesive for 4th Edition D&D.

Megadungeon means many things to many people, and has various subtle overtones. My straight up definition of a megadungeon is that it is...

• A large network of small scale locations. Technically underground, but that's not an absolute.
• A place large enough in scale and story to run a whole campaign within it.

 Star Trap adds a bunch of extra assumptions...

• Encounters are not linear in power.
• Areas can and should be devoid of hugely interesting features.
• Things that eat each other do not live next to each other.
• The party can find friends or at least temporary allies within the depths.
• Players should feel that death might lurk around the next corner.

I've also stolen a big fat leaf from Robin D. Laws Armitage Files sourcebook in that Star Trap details several ways of using foes, labelled Helpful, Harmful, Disdainful. Unlike the official 4e adventures Star Trap doesn't place foes on a battlemap for each encounter, although advice is given as to tactics on occasion. Dungeon Masters are better placed to decide on where monsters start than adventure writers and I've always find putting figures on a battle mat more time consuming when following someone else's plan. WotCs 4e strategy means that the online monster compendium means you don't have to list the stats of monster in every encounter either, allowing DMs to print out stat cards as they need.