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Message: <blockquote data-quote="GMMichael" data-source="post: 6270588" data-attributes="member: 6685730">+1.  Dungeonscape was a great book.  Rich Burlew, its co-author, is a great writer.This isn't a creative element, but a recommendation on how to use creative elements:They must make sense.A little consistency goes a long way.  For example: D&D Next's Mines of Madness adventure.  There's a purple worm outside the beginning of the adventure.  I played the adventure at 3rd level.  1) A purple worm doesn't make sense, ever.  2) Even if it did, somehow, make sense; wouldn't a purple worm eat a party of 3rd-level adventurers as a snack, and then eat the rest of the enemies, already in the dungeon, as well?  A purple worm is cool and crazy.  But not consistent, in the least.So to add something creative to your dungeon, set it up first.  Why is the dungeon there, and what was its designer thinking?After that's settled, you can add your creative element.  Let's say, the dungeon is an actual dungeon, quite extensive, and sitting under the ruins of a castle.  Not creative.  But the previous dungeon keeper make a grievous mistake: he imprisoned a geomancer in the deepest, darkest cell.  And the he failed to grant that geomancer due process.This is getting interesting.The geomancer died in his cell, in the middle of a dark, evil ritual.  After all, if you've been abandoned, that gives you plenty of time to perform blood rites.  Now the dungeon is cursed by an earth-soul, meaning any wall can come alive at any time, to do anything.A little more interesting.But you still need to make sense.  So maybe the supernatural wall-events occur more frequently near the site of the ritual.  Above ground, characters think they see a ripple in the stonework.  Further down, stones start to shift underfoot.Add some consistency: no sane person is going to live in a place like this...unless he's a geomancer.  So populate your dungeon accordingly.  No giant vermin are allowed, unless proper amounts of food-chain are present.  Maybe, just maybe, you have skeletons that aren't animated by evil; they're animated by elemental spirits, making them more like elementals than undead.And finally, your creative final encounter.  There's a skeleton in the deepest, darkest corner cell.  IF the heroes can get to him, they'll see the panels of the cell slowly flowing around the skeleton in a sort of animated, stone armor.  The soil flows out of the floor, and up through the skeleton as though it were blood.  But getting to the end-boss isn't easy, you've got to fight your way through animated cell doors, chains and shackles, and really difficult traps (since they're built on magic, not mechanisms) just to get to the source of the curse.By the way, destroying the geomancer doesn't end the curse.  He can just re-form somewhere else.  You must find a way to shed sunlight into the darkest cell, so he'll see the light of heaven, and be able to escape on his own.Consistent.  Reasonable.  And hopefully, creative.</blockquote>

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