D&D 5E Help Designing Shrinking Dungeon

[Trit One-Ear]

Hey all,

My heroes are making their way towards my latest dungeon, and boy do I have a fun concept for this one.

The dungeon is fairly run down, and initially involves a series of seemingly simple challenges, all of which feel pretty underwhelming. The heroes arrive at the McGuffin they're seeking in the inner chamber... only to find it is an illusion. Instead, they are cursed and shrunk down to about 1/12th their normal size!
They must now progress back through the dungeon, facing the same challenges, now much more threatening.

Great concept! In execution... I'm having some trouble. Here are some of the ideas I've had so far:

• Reskinning high-level beasts and monstrosities as various insects/vermin they can ignore on their way in.
• Things like puddles or small streams become lakes and raging rivers.
• An animated chess board changes from a logic puzzle to a battlefield between two golem armies (and our heroes are caught in the crossfire)
• I think the final boss will be a "gigantic" goblin (or similar), which will be a Shadow of the Colossus style epic showdown.

I have two main concerns.
1 - This is not enough to fill a whole dungeon
2 - My party is fairly high level (will be 12 by the start of the dungeon), and many of them have flying capability. Many of the fun obstacles I could think up rely on non-flight movement for them to be... actual obstacles. Would it be a hugely negative feeling to have those abilities "shut off" by something in the dungeon for the sake of the gimmick?

Any inspiration, insight, criticism, or other ideas y'all have are welcome!

Trit

 

[Eyes of Nine]

Love this concept and what you already have...
Maybe they just need to get across 2-3 human size rooms, instead of back through everything.
Also, you could potentially have them moved (trap door opens with chute or something). It might be cool if you do move them to not tell them that they have been shrunk, they have to figure it out.
Ants can look like Ankhegs.

Here are some more ideas:

• Ant Lions
• Someone going through and sweeping a room.
• Anteater
• Rats
• For flying, you can mention that there are lots of mosquitoes, bees, and dragonflies as they go in. And BATS. If they plan to fly, they will meet mosquitoes that can suck their blood out in a jiffy, bees that if they get stung, the poison may be brutal or deadly; and dragonflies - pretty nasty (but could make cool mounts if they can figure out how to get them on their side). Oh yeah, and Bats just LOVE little flying things.
• Oh wait, 1/12th is about 6" (15cm). Maybe insects aren't such a big threat. Although maybe they are. I guess if I was 15cm tall, a 1-2cm honey bee is about the size of a possum or badger to a human. That's pretty scary if it's flying at you with nasty venom.
• Steps are a challenge when you are only 15cm tall.
• Who set this curse/trap? What is their purpose? Maybe whomever it is has need of some small folk; or likes to eat them; or something else - perhaps they could be getting chased by whomever that is.
• Since they are small, at least they can hide better. Perhaps they get ADV on Hide checks against creatures of Small or larger size if they have at least half cover?

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Any inspiration

There's a level on the Dungeon of the Mad Mage (Undermountain) quite similar to this. If you haven't already, I recommend checking out Maddgoth's Castle, and how it handles this (for example, Tiny creatures don't shrink, so in the Castle you can fight a Homunculus and a Fairy Dragon that are the size of Large creatures).

 

[Bill Zebub]

Lovely, purring cat on the way in. "Awww....isn't he cute...."

"Looks like there's a collar with a bell on this table. Should we put in on him?"

"Why on earth would we do that?"

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Lovely, purring cat on the way in. "Awww....isn't he cute...."

"Looks like there's a collar with a bell on this table. Should we put in on him?"

"Why on earth would we do that?"

Because of this?

 

[Bill Zebub]

Actually inspired by this:

(Actually, the collar on the table with the bell on it should have the name "Mr. Wuffles".)

 

[el-remmen]

Look for Chadranther's Bane from Dungeon #18 (July/August 1989) - not a dungeon setting but same basic idea (heroes shrunk down). One of the most memorable adventures I have eve run - there is an encounter with a weasel that is essentially a dragon from the perspective of the tiny PCs!

 

[Lakesidefantasy]

How many hours of gameplay do you want out of this dungeon? The way I see it, you don't need much to get the point across. Maybe 3 or 4 encounters.

You've got a flying problem. No big deal. One of the encounters could be a flying battle. The heroes are 6-inches tall so an owl might be a good opponent. Or maybe a hard-of-hearing, half-blind old woman with a broom and a serious fear of bats.

You can mitigate the flying with a simple closed door. It's too heavy for them to open and they're too big to squeeze under, so they're going to have to brave one of the many rat holes to circumvent it. At that point, you've got them on the ground and you can challenge them with rats, snakes, and scorpions, maybe cockroaches too. And of course, at the other end of the rat tunnel awaits the old lady's cat who is attracted by all the ruckus.

But that's a lot of combat. Maybe an initial conversation with the old woman where they try and convince her they're not just talking bats; or worse, house faeries plotting to steal her shoes. Maybe a mousetrap, maybe not. Maybe, when they reach the maguffin, it's sitting as bait in a "giant" mousetrap. This would be the first clue that something strange is going on.

 

[Lakesidefantasy]

I would suggest using something I call 'impressions'. To hammer home the fact that they are small and the normal-sized creatures are huge, I would suggest painting the cats, rats, old lady etc. as slightly grotesque and sinister. Depending on your point of view, things make a different impression on you.

I did this in a game where we were transformed into tiny, anthropomorphic, animals like foxes and squirrels. The bird of prey we observed before our transformation was just a bird. After the transformation it became a raptorial murder-bird with red eyes and slavering jaws. I even described puffs of smoke emanating from its razor-sharp beak.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I seem to remember an adventure in White Dwarf in the 1980s that had PCs shrinking down to adventure in a nest of intelligent ants.