Maze Arena Battle Campaign

[DJ_draken07]

Hey Guys,

Here's a Campaign Idea I was thinking about and I Wonder what you guys think about it.

-------

Rumors have been heard in the town that the party will be in, One of these rumors was a City not too far from here is hosting a Maze Arena Contest.

The maze is set up with Traps , Monsters and God knows who what...

4 PCs will go in and 4 NPCs will also go in.

Who ever is left standing wins the prize

and The Prize is a Wish. Granted by a Powerful Spellcaster who is hosting the Event.

-------

Whats you guys think of this? Anything needs to be worked on? Think I should make some interesting twist plots and other things?

I would love to see some feedback

Thanks for reading,

Draken

 

[Saagael]

That's a really cool way to introduce some major characters/villains.

Perhaps the spellcaster is using this as an excuse to get rid of the PCs or NPCs, and is working for some previous bad-guy the players slighted.

A little farther from the norm and we get an eccentric mage who enjoys messing with people, and the wish they get at the end isn't in fact a wish. Maybe it is some kind of curse or other macGuffin to tie the players to a larger goal.

I was ran a game where the players participated in an arena tournament (think gladiatorial combat) and to prevent death a wizard created a anti-death rune. If the player died, his consciousness was recreated as it was at the creation of the stone. The players thought this was the best idea ever and wanted to keep some for themselves. To their surprise, they found out that when they died something had gone wrong; horribly horribly wrong. Their bodies were switched around, whatever I could think of to screw the players up (mechanically they just switched characters for an adventure). The only way to return to normal was to find some magic reagents for a spell.

Maybe you could incorperate some form of anti-death ward before the event. If the wizard is powerful enough to cast Wish, then this is probably in the same league. You could have the PCs and NPCs switch bodies upon death, having them play completely new characters for a bit.

 

[DJ_draken07]

That's a really cool way to introduce some major characters/villains.

Perhaps the spellcaster is using this as an excuse to get rid of the PCs or NPCs, and is working for some previous bad-guy the players slighted.

A little farther from the norm and we get an eccentric mage who enjoys messing with people, and the wish they get at the end isn't in fact a wish. Maybe it is some kind of curse or other macGuffin to tie the players to a larger goal.

I was ran a game where the players participated in an arena tournament (think gladiatorial combat) and to prevent death a wizard created a anti-death rune. If the player died, his consciousness was recreated as it was at the creation of the stone. The players thought this was the best idea ever and wanted to keep some for themselves. To their surprise, they found out that when they died something had gone wrong; horribly horribly wrong. Their bodies were switched around, whatever I could think of to screw the players up (mechanically they just switched characters for an adventure). The only way to return to normal was to find some magic reagents for a spell.

Maybe you could incorperate some form of anti-death ward before the event. If the wizard is powerful enough to cast Wish, then this is probably in the same league. You could have the PCs and NPCs switch bodies upon death, having them play completely new characters for a bit.

thats a pretty good Idea.. im making a huge list of what I can do with this campaign but that was really freakin sweet.

Im trying to draw out a awesome maze but so far its turning into crap lolol

 

[Saagael]

Im trying to draw out a awesome maze but so far its turning into crap

Maybe you just don't map it out. Is the area going to be a hedge-maze or dungeon rooms or something even crazier. Something I've been trying to create is an algorithm based dungeon (or a purely random dungeon), where the rooms you visit are randomly generated based on the room you just left.

I haven't yet built an algorithm to generate rooms, but it is easy enough to make tables for room shape, room contents, monsters and treasure. Say on a d8, a 1 is a triangle, 2 is square, 3 is pentagon, etc.

It's an easy way to really screw with your players. Of course you'd need to have permanent rooms that never change (entrance, exit, maybe some other weird things like a vendor shop or a chapel).

What you're trying to make sounds like more of a hedge-maze though: one really large room divided by walls. I find the best way to create something like that is to make the shape. Is it a square, octagon, circle? Then make the entrance and exit places. Maybe the goal is to get to the center, and once both parties are there (thoroughly worn down by fighting through the maze) the wizard forces them to battle each other or something bad will happen.

But once you have the entrance and exit you can start building random hallways to that lead back and forth and every direction. Make sure there aren't too many dead-ends because those are boring (maybe a dead end teleports you somewhere else when you walk through the end wall) and there should be plenty of black-space in between the corridors. Put in a few large chambers where traps or monsters will be hidden, etc.

Then comes the monster/trap placement. Design a few encounters that all have some central theme (maybe a few satyrs, dryad and a centaur for a forest/fey theme). As you're making the level you can envision the rooms and you'll probably end up finding ideas of how to torture the PCs. A good way to get an eclectic mix of obstacles is to look at numerous dungeon delves and just rip the puzzles straight from those adventures.

 

[kitsune9]

Hey Guys,

Here's a Campaign Idea I was thinking about and I Wonder what you guys think about it.

-------

Rumors have been heard in the town that the party will be in, One of these rumors was a City not too far from here is hosting a Maze Arena Contest.

The maze is set up with Traps , Monsters and God knows who what...

4 PCs will go in and 4 NPCs will also go in.

Who ever is left standing wins the prize

and The Prize is a Wish. Granted by a Powerful Spellcaster who is hosting the Event.

-------

Whats you guys think of this? Anything needs to be worked on? Think I should make some interesting twist plots and other things?

I would love to see some feedback

Thanks for reading,

Draken

There was actually a module written that kind of falls in this story idea. I think it was called Maze of Madness. The PC's had to travel up to this arctic city for some reason and they were thrusted into a maze-like arena with a horrendous monster at the end. The inhabitants of this arctic city were about as vile and crazy as can be and the module was definitely R-rated mod. You may want to just check that one out. I think RPGNow has it on sale.

So let's make this a bit twisted.

First off, it's the party vs. NPC party to survive the maze. No holds barred. Winner takes all. The Party needs the wish because there is a great need to save a dying village from a plague. The NPC party needs the wish because they seek to resurrect a slain paladin who is considered a grand hero between two countries that are about to go to war. If this paladin were to show up, the countries would like cease their hositilities for the moment to speak with this great hero and then a peace accord would be worked out.

In the NPC party one of them is a family member of one the PC's, such as a brother, sister, father/mother (retired adventurers themselves but the need was great to come out of retirement). This will conflict with one of the PC's to either be forced to fight with their comrades or switch sides. Of course, one of the other NPC's has a desire for the wish all their own because they've fallen on hard times, gambling debts, lost their youthful vigor, etc. This NPC plans to betray the NPC party members at the most expedient moment.

The wish is a total sham--pay no attention to the man behind the curtain kind of thing. No one ever defeated the monsters, traps, God-knows-what in the maze. The maze is an elaborate con of some guy who managed to put in monsters to collect the loot. The con man knows that the monsters will have their fill of Fresh Adventurers and their "leavings" will consist of all the pretty coins and gems that don't digest very well. The con man knows when and where the monsters like to hunt and where they roam so it's easy for him to rummage through the dung to collect his rewards. As far as the town is concerned, they think the contest is legitimate, but just that no one has ever won. The con man can be just someone who is too clever for their own good or actually a BBEG in the guise of a man such as a demon, efreeti, or dragon, or whatever.

The maze isn't really a maze, but a temple to some vile demon god. The PC's are actually the willing, but duped sacrifices. Again, no one ever "wins" the wish, because the participants are fed to a deific aspect of the demon god.

Okay, here some issues though that a DM has to consider if you implement all this double-dealing.

A Paladin's ability to detect evil. If the PC's deal directly with the those who have knowledge of this con, chances are they will glow EVIL. Well, that's not going to work so send in a neutral contact agent who is just simply doing their job of promoting the maze and contest.

Divination spells--for players who have arcanists who want to check out the maze, well take a look at the types of divination spells that "break" your mod or at least reveal the truth before the PC's even step one foot in the maze. Come up with cryptic answers for spells like commune, etc. For spells that can be blocked with lead, make the doors have such lining. For PC's who say, "Oh a maze, that's cool. We'll just go ethereal and walk through the maze, bypass all the monsters, and get the prize." Well, that's nice, but they discover that the maze in the ethereal sits on a giant portal that sucks them into a random plane or maybe there is an ethereal version of the maze, but filled with even more nastier things. Orrrr.....if you go back to the "honest" version where there really is a wizard with a wish at the end of the contest, then the wizard simply states, "No cheating! Don't use any of these spells X, Y, Z, etc. or you lose!"