So I've got this gigantic black book containing the latest iteration of Rappan Athuk in S&W format. I was thinking about running people through part of it as a pick-up game using pregens and LL+AEC+MF. Is that something people would be interested in playing? I don't want to submit it for an official time slot, since there's really no way to tackle a megadungeon in a fixed time. My thought would be to start PCs at the entrance and let the players explore until a logical end is reached (e.g., TPK, everyone runs away, significant encounter finished). There's an insane amount of material to explore, but this would give players a taste.
I've played in megadungeons a few times at conventions - a couple times in grodog's and Mythmere's and once in Philotomy's. It's not a problem. You start somewhere, maybe the front door, maybe level X, and when the time's up, the game's over. No big deal. Just make sure your game description points out this is a megadungeon romp - that it will not have a "plot" that resolves because of PC actions during the session block. The only plot is get some treasure and stay alive until the end of the session. I could see doing off-the-grid gaming for other reasons, but I haven't seen the megadungeon format itself present any problems. Naturally, YMMV.
I've done megadungeons a couple times, too. Last spring, I just plopped the players outside of Stonehell and told them they the treasure hunters and were there to do some preliminary explorations. The goal was to port it back into my home game, having my players somehow get their hands of the map these guys made of the top floor (and possibly run into them as NPCs -- there was some crossover between the two groups). Unfortunately, my home game kind of fizzled out, so "part 2" never really happened (at least, not yet). Next week, I'm running Barrowmaze at a local con. I'm giving them a task to find a famed magic item in the dungeon, but leaving it wide open. If they get lucky, they might be able to stumble into the room during the 4 hour slot. If not, I have plans for an NPC party to have already retrieved the item for a rival magic user. Either way, the session should wrap up with a battle with the NPC party attempting to block their exit or the PC party trying to take down the NPCs (or people running all over the dungeon all willy-nilly or the PCs teaming up the the NPCs to try to take out both of the hiring MUs, or ??!??). You can never trust your players to do what you expect, which is what makes this the best game in the world, right?
You could submit the mega dungeon crawl as an event. You can request longer time slots as well- 6 or 8 hours and make it epic. The advantage is that you will have guarenteed table space and you will give people the opportunity to plan on playing in your game. Also if all the slots don't fill up, people go and look for the free seats in upcoming events each morning. So I say go for it!
How about this? Would folks be interested in playing in an "official" time-slotted game in Rappan Athuk entitled "Let's Go Down the Well"? Everyone knows the dire warning not to go down the well at Rappan Athuk. A convention game would seem like the perfect opportunity to find out why not! I'd run the game with pregens and either some version of S&W or Labyrinth Lord with AEC. The system really doesn't matter if players are familiar with some version of old-school D&D. I would provide spell descriptions for spell-casters and have all class abilities defined on hand-outs. Players would go down the well and see if they can get back out (preferably alive and with treasure). Please let me know if you are interested.
