Military base dungeon crawl: Need help with game idea
- Thread starter TheFan
- Start date
Prest0
First Post
C. Baize said:
We're reading...
Please do leave a comment. Jerry (the author) put together a really cool game. Your players are going to have a blast. For those who are mostly interested in the maps, yes you can download them for free from our site (www.12tomidnight.com) BUT the Weekend Warriors game is still a good value. You get all the building descriptions that go along with those maps, which helps put everything into perspective.
Brian K. Moseley
First Post
TheFan said:
Hi,
Maybe I can help. Darkfuries Publishing just released Urban Designs: New Glory Naval Base, which has some similarities to the type of base you're envisioning. Here's a free preview for download that has an aerial map, several building floor plans, and descriptive content. It may not be what you're looking for, but the price is right to check it out. Enjoy!
All the best,
Bran Blackbyrd
Explorer
Chainsaw Mage said:First of all, I love your idea. Just reading it gave me tons of ideas for my own adventures. I really enjoy it when people post things like this--makes these boards a great resource.
<SNIP>
Excuse me, I'm off to plan my own game.
Some of us have posted similar, and some not so similar, ideas for modern dungeon crawls in this thread. Everyone should feel free to stop by and add their own ideas, or simply shower us with praise.
Military Base Floor plan?
I've been through a few Navy base admin areas, and my general impression has been... everything is tight. The stairways between levels are built so thin that two fit people can go past each other only by placing their backs to the wall and edging down. The stairs are also covered by non-slip material that can do a number on your shins if you fail a balance check.
Frex, my mother on the way to... something or other when she was a ensign fell going up one of those corridors... ripped the front of her legs up something fierce and she was dripping blood when she finally got to where she was going they told her to go home and fix it up (and delayed whatever it was for a few days).
The hallways, generally, aren't long and straight, because it starts with one building that keeps having additions built on, and they never line up exactly. This is likely different in an underground complex, but those places were generally more classified than my friends could get me into (the USS Blue Ridge's war room is SWEET though, ad the furnace area is amazing).
Rooms are small. The biggest rooms in these kinds of installations tend to be conference rooms and computer rooms. The latter are full of large racks of telephone equipment (in the Navy bases, they had to handle base telephone traffic as well as those to the fleet), and large racks of computer servers.
Equipment is extremely antiquated, especially for the time the base was supposedly open. It takes FOREVER for equipment reqs to go through. In the early 90s, one telecom station in Japan was still using Teletypes, for crying out loud, though not in any great quantity. As far as I know, they're still using, in some places, really old Apples. The Blue Ridge's War Room had just been fitted with some top of the line computers with beautifully huge monitors (from Dell, heh), and only because it's also the flagship of the Seventh Fleet. Navy computer buildings are sometimes named after Grace Hopper (wonderful lady).
In the comm areas, a 70s base probably has a lot of teletypes, or computers with teletype stations.
Don't forget the human elements, like cases of trophies for the departments (for interdepartmental sports competitions, etc). PIctures of the president, the Secretary of Defense, and the head of the military branch on the wall, with pictures of the highest ranking officers. Large stuffed animals (yeah, I know), thing's that the base's last CO liked (if they were a baseball nut, liked painting, had a certain culture they liked, etc).
What KIND of military base it is has some influence on how its laid out.
I have little in the way of advice for this, but something of Large size would be a good idea, especially if you want to allow your players to take tactical advantage of the tiny, tight stairways. Do you want it to require food or just like eating? Light and ventilation are also concerns, since I doubt the military would be pumping electricity though the base. You could make the evil have an aura of a certain size that causes electricity to flow. So maybe within 60 feet of the monster, lights can turn on, computers can be accessed, or whatnot. If the players need something off of one of the computers (too heavy to transport, if you could even unbolt it), the other ones have to keep the monster within that certain radius while someone gets the info they need (printed, since most file formats can't be read on modern computers), and then they can run away or kill it in earnest. In this case, remember password protection, though it could be something as silly as the soldier's kid's birthday, or "admin" or "iamgod". You know how people can be with passwords, especially since it seems this base is before they got really smart with passwords.
Requires a special material to damage, like silver or gold. Maybe it regens all damage not dealt by silver, and it still has a small scar where a desperate soldier flug a silver cross at it (perhaps leading the characters to believe it is harmed by holy symbols rather than the metal itself).
That's all I've got, hope it helps.
TheFan said:
I've been through a few Navy base admin areas, and my general impression has been... everything is tight. The stairways between levels are built so thin that two fit people can go past each other only by placing their backs to the wall and edging down. The stairs are also covered by non-slip material that can do a number on your shins if you fail a balance check.
Frex, my mother on the way to... something or other when she was a ensign fell going up one of those corridors... ripped the front of her legs up something fierce and she was dripping blood when she finally got to where she was going they told her to go home and fix it up (and delayed whatever it was for a few days).
The hallways, generally, aren't long and straight, because it starts with one building that keeps having additions built on, and they never line up exactly. This is likely different in an underground complex, but those places were generally more classified than my friends could get me into (the USS Blue Ridge's war room is SWEET though, ad the furnace area is amazing).
Rooms are small. The biggest rooms in these kinds of installations tend to be conference rooms and computer rooms. The latter are full of large racks of telephone equipment (in the Navy bases, they had to handle base telephone traffic as well as those to the fleet), and large racks of computer servers.
Equipment is extremely antiquated, especially for the time the base was supposedly open. It takes FOREVER for equipment reqs to go through. In the early 90s, one telecom station in Japan was still using Teletypes, for crying out loud, though not in any great quantity. As far as I know, they're still using, in some places, really old Apples. The Blue Ridge's War Room had just been fitted with some top of the line computers with beautifully huge monitors (from Dell, heh), and only because it's also the flagship of the Seventh Fleet. Navy computer buildings are sometimes named after Grace Hopper (wonderful lady).
In the comm areas, a 70s base probably has a lot of teletypes, or computers with teletype stations.
Don't forget the human elements, like cases of trophies for the departments (for interdepartmental sports competitions, etc). PIctures of the president, the Secretary of Defense, and the head of the military branch on the wall, with pictures of the highest ranking officers. Large stuffed animals (yeah, I know), thing's that the base's last CO liked (if they were a baseball nut, liked painting, had a certain culture they liked, etc).
What KIND of military base it is has some influence on how its laid out.
TheFan said:
I have little in the way of advice for this, but something of Large size would be a good idea, especially if you want to allow your players to take tactical advantage of the tiny, tight stairways. Do you want it to require food or just like eating? Light and ventilation are also concerns, since I doubt the military would be pumping electricity though the base. You could make the evil have an aura of a certain size that causes electricity to flow. So maybe within 60 feet of the monster, lights can turn on, computers can be accessed, or whatnot. If the players need something off of one of the computers (too heavy to transport, if you could even unbolt it), the other ones have to keep the monster within that certain radius while someone gets the info they need (printed, since most file formats can't be read on modern computers), and then they can run away or kill it in earnest. In this case, remember password protection, though it could be something as silly as the soldier's kid's birthday, or "admin" or "iamgod". You know how people can be with passwords, especially since it seems this base is before they got really smart with passwords.
Requires a special material to damage, like silver or gold. Maybe it regens all damage not dealt by silver, and it still has a small scar where a desperate soldier flug a silver cross at it (perhaps leading the characters to believe it is harmed by holy symbols rather than the metal itself).
That's all I've got, hope it helps.
Everyone has had good suggestions for the maps. To chime in on the other areas:
1) Ditto folks who talked about the magic bullet, the FX-knowledge that only they have. Also consider that this project could have been mothballed. If nothing that the army had at the time could hurt it, think of what the army has these days that's different. Maybe all it had was an electronic shield that could be penetrated and deactivated with the proper radio frequency, and new advances in cryptography make it a two-round project rather than a two-hour project (and the transmitter must be within thirty feet, unobstructed, of the target). In the old days, this meant that the scientists were trying to ping the monster's shields while marines were trying to hold it at bay for hours at a time... not gonna happen. But today, twelve seconds is doable.
Or maybe it can only be hurt by weapons or ammo coated with a specific alloy -- the alloy was understood scientifically, but couldn't be produced in any great quantity back then. Today, it can be bought from craft stores as a good-but-not-great variant of pewter and added to bullets with a simple craft check.
So it's not that today's military can't handle it -- it's that they're not trying to anymore, because the project doesn't exist.
3) As for what it is... they're 5th level? Depends on how ugly you want to be.
Nice: It's a minotaur with DR 30/that special magic bullet stuff
Mean: It's a form of cattle injected with alien RNA that enables it to replicate asexually via parasitic infection of a host, defend itself with optical blending pigments and thick hide, and emit a caustic gas that induces silicon crystalization in any organic compound it hits. (In other words, it's a Gorgon with a +12 racial bonus to hide and the ability to hide in plain sight, plus a bunch of minotaurs that were created from killed human victims.)
Nasty: Said alien RNA contained a failsale protocol that caused instinctive behavioral reactions. The minotaurs, working under the gorgon's direction, are constructing an automated killer robot that is designed to destroy all non-alien-affected life it encounters. The device takes the form of a giant floating mechanic sphere with a number of flexible energy-emission turrets and a main energy emitter that disrupts all electronic devices in a cone area in front of it. (In other words, it's a technobeholder. )
EDIT: Yeah, a technobeholder would completely kill the 5th-level party. Unless you gave the 5th-level party a lot of grenades and nerfed the beholder (had it be only partially online, give it nothing but energy rays that did 3d6 damage, etc). And your party would freak.
1) Ditto folks who talked about the magic bullet, the FX-knowledge that only they have. Also consider that this project could have been mothballed. If nothing that the army had at the time could hurt it, think of what the army has these days that's different. Maybe all it had was an electronic shield that could be penetrated and deactivated with the proper radio frequency, and new advances in cryptography make it a two-round project rather than a two-hour project (and the transmitter must be within thirty feet, unobstructed, of the target). In the old days, this meant that the scientists were trying to ping the monster's shields while marines were trying to hold it at bay for hours at a time... not gonna happen. But today, twelve seconds is doable.
Or maybe it can only be hurt by weapons or ammo coated with a specific alloy -- the alloy was understood scientifically, but couldn't be produced in any great quantity back then. Today, it can be bought from craft stores as a good-but-not-great variant of pewter and added to bullets with a simple craft check.
So it's not that today's military can't handle it -- it's that they're not trying to anymore, because the project doesn't exist.
3) As for what it is... they're 5th level? Depends on how ugly you want to be.
Nice: It's a minotaur with DR 30/that special magic bullet stuff
Mean: It's a form of cattle injected with alien RNA that enables it to replicate asexually via parasitic infection of a host, defend itself with optical blending pigments and thick hide, and emit a caustic gas that induces silicon crystalization in any organic compound it hits. (In other words, it's a Gorgon with a +12 racial bonus to hide and the ability to hide in plain sight, plus a bunch of minotaurs that were created from killed human victims.)
Nasty: Said alien RNA contained a failsale protocol that caused instinctive behavioral reactions. The minotaurs, working under the gorgon's direction, are constructing an automated killer robot that is designed to destroy all non-alien-affected life it encounters. The device takes the form of a giant floating mechanic sphere with a number of flexible energy-emission turrets and a main energy emitter that disrupts all electronic devices in a cone area in front of it. (In other words, it's a technobeholder.
)EDIT: Yeah, a technobeholder would completely kill the 5th-level party. Unless you gave the 5th-level party a lot of grenades and nerfed the beholder (had it be only partially online, give it nothing but energy rays that did 3d6 damage, etc). And your party would freak.
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