Hit Me With Your Set Pieces!

[Zappo]

From the Abyssal Campaign (link in my sig):

The Temple of Insanity. Located on the jungle layer of Demozg, the Temple of Insanity is both a religious place and a palace for Demogorgon. From the outside, it looks like a step pyramid, which merges midway with an enormous statue of the demon lord, standing in place of the tip. Two vrocks patrol the entrance, and only Demogorgon's petitioners and priests are allowed to enter without being attacked. The fiends know who is a petitioner, because noone else would be able to navigate the traps leading to the main entrance, or to avoid using the four secondary entrances (which aren't really entrances as they loop back on themselves).

But the inside has no relation at all with the outside. Two of the Temple's rooms include:

The Great Hall: a huge spherical hall, its internal surface is entirely covered with stairs, narrow ledges and archways. As you climb the stairs in any direction, gravity shifts so that you can climb on all points of the sphere. If you enter an archway, you can see another identical room on the other side - but in truth, that is just another point of the Great Hall. Hooded petitioners perform endless processions, slowly walking up and down the stairs and chanting praises to Demogorgon. The only way to get out is to follow them into one of the Ritual Rooms.

The Audience Chamber: this chamber could be the true physical inside of the Temple. It seems to be the inside of a pyramid, with the center of the room being occupied by a wide square pool of water. On each of the room's four triangular walls, ten rutterkin fiends are nailed to the stone in a triangular pattern. Their heads have been set on fire, turning them into living, screaming torches. Their howls of agony echo in the chamber forever. The light they shed is equal to that of a lantern, so that the center of the room, the water pool, is kept in the dark. Whenever, during one of the blasphemous rituals, one of the petitioners manages to kill the officiating priest and escape to this chamber, Demogorgon appears, rising from the water. If he deems him worthy, he makes him his new priest. Otherwise, he turns him into a rutterkin, nails him to the wall, and sets his head on fire.

 

[Joshua Randall]

Stolen from The Three Musketeers:

A battle on a frozen over lake. Optionally, the ice can be thick enough that it won't break (but still requires Balance checks to maneuver), or it can be thin enough that it could crack at any time (which would require a Reflex save not to fall through into the frigid water). Moving around on the ice would be sufficiently difficult that just getting an attack against a foe would be an accomplishment. A successful Bull Rush or Trip would be even more desireable than normal.

Stolen from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade:

The PCs are grappled by a grapple-riffic monster while aboard an out-of-control chariot or wagon that is careening toward a cliff. They can use Animal Empathy to calm the frightened horses, but it should be a difficult check -- especially as they would also need a Concentration check to use the skill while bouncing around on the vehicle. Meanwhile the monster keeps trying to grapple and pin them, intend upon dragging everyone with it to eventual doom when the vehicle launches over the cliff and tumbles hundreds of feet to crash in spectacular fashion. If you want to be mean, call for Balance checks for any PCs who escape the grapple to see if they fall off the vehicle to the razor-sharp rocky ground.

Stolen from Star Wars Ep. III - Revenge of the Sith

Spoiler

The PCs battle an evil villain in a volcanic region suspended above a massive river / waterfall / lake of molten lava. Whatever magic was keeping this area intact has failed (maybe the villain made it fail, or maybe the PCs inadvertently did so), so the PCs must contend not only with extreme heat (cf. the Environment rules in the DMG) but with occassional bits of the ground falling away to plummet into the lava (Reflex save or fall off, not to mention splash damage from the lava). If a sufficiently large chunk lands in the lava, it takes several rounds to get burned away, resulting in a smaller and smaller fighting platform. (Kind of like in the later levels of the videogame Joust... and come to think of it, villains mounted on giant ostriches would be hella cool... as would a giant hand reaching up from the lava to grapple people and drag them under... but I digress.) The PCs could attempt heroic Jump checks to leap from a burning/sinking platform to another one or onto the nearby riverbank.

Obviously, all of the above work best at lower levels, when the PCs can't just use dimension door or fly to avoid the problematic environments.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Another good source for lifting sets- Alfred Hicthcock.

Re-imagine the fight scene on top of Mt Rushmore from North by Northwest. Better make those Dex checks...

Use different critters to recreate the attack in the house from The Birds (the attacks from all angles, the confusion, the low visibility).

 

[Quickleaf]

Some locales from an adventure I'm writing:

A holy city in the heart of the oldest city district, where only the sanctified and their guests may enter, unarmed and ritually cleansed.

Chariot arena during a national competition, during which nobles send innuendo to each other and warlords plot a coup.

In the middle of riots, squeezing through mob of protestors demanding justice.

A steamy bath-house where politicians (and dissidents) meet.

Isolated leper community under quarantine; any who enter aren't allowed out, and the only way in is disguised as a beggar.

Amidst the horse steppes, where bands of nomads roam. At one point the PCs find themselves amidst a wild stampede.

On a raft (or not) navigating a raging river with archers sniping from above.

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

I posted this in a thread where Joshua Dyal was looking for some ideas for an adventure in a ...

Mining Town

The town is built right into the bluff itself - the mines go directly into the cliff face, and the town only extends a block or so out. Buildings are tall, and carved right out of the stone. The town extends up and down the cliff, with steep stairs interconnecting levels the closer you get to the cliff face, and scaffolding-like wooden and metal connecting them on the outside edge of the cliff (for vertigo-inspiring dizziness). Buildings seem to swallow up the narrow alleys between them, and between the shadows from the buildings and that from the cliff, its almost always swathed in dim light (make the town face west, and you can have the fading sunset illuminate the entire town at once).

Interesting battles can take place in the narrow alleys and steep stairs, and especially on the scaffolding stairs on the outside edge, where wind, creaking wooden planks, and slightly swaying metal scaffolds will scare the bejeesus out of everyone. The 200 ft. drop won't hurt, either. So to speak.

Give the townies max ranks in Climb - they're used to swinging all over the scaffolds like jungle gyms, so they seem to always be able to get ahead of the PC's who have to be more careful...

 

[Chaldfont]

Interesting battles can take place in the narrow alleys and steep stairs, and especially on the scaffolding stairs on the outside edge, where wind, creaking wooden planks, and slightly swaying metal scaffolds will scare the bejeesus out of everyone. The 200 ft. drop won't hurt, either. So to speak.

Give the townies max ranks in Climb - they're used to swinging all over the scaffolds like jungle gyms, so they seem to always be able to get ahead of the PC's who have to be more careful...

This is similar to a city I had in a campaign that sits astride a waterfall plunging hundreds of feet to a lake below. There are massive locks and hoists built into the side of the cliff to allow boats and cargo to pass the waterfall. The scaffolding of the locks is so large that there are taverns, shops, apartments and the like embedded in it.

Here's another one: The Krikzak

The Krikzak is a carven stone obelisk covered in eldritch runes. It sits in a natural cavern bisected by a bottomless chasm. No one knows who created the Krikzak or why but the local orc tribe uses it in their trials-by-combat. Each wound dealt by a slashing or piercing weapon within 30 feet of the Krikzak causes the victim to lose an additional 1 hit point per round. This bleeding can be stopped with a DC 15 heal check or any cure spell. The blood from these wounds streams through the air into the runes of the Krikzak, causing the obelisk to glow ominously.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

That reminds me...

I placed an Obelisk outside of a Drow fortification: if you tried to pass it without the right mystical symbol upon your person, you were shrunk to the height of 1". Only a wish or a certain object within the Drow keep would restore a minimized person...and the Party had no wishes.

The entire adventure was like an adventure from Land of the Giants, but with magic. At some point, the party killed a cat (in self defense) and animated its corpse to ride through the city...