One Monster in a Huge Dungeon

[Endur]

I've been thinking about horror movies. In some horror movies, there is a single bad guy. Imagine the vampire in the castle, or the ghost in the haunted mansion, or the mummy in the tomb, or the werewolf.

But the characters in the movie are usually in a large place. A pyramid, a mansion, a castle, or catacombs with many areas to hide in and move around. Far more than your usual 8.5 by 11" dungeon on a piece of paper.

I'm curious if anyone has done this, and whether the group has liked it or gotten bored.

 

[Vorput]

I ran a maze once with a fiendish advanced mutated minotaur stalking the party... it got kind of old, fast. Part of the problem was I was new to DMing and didn't know how to keep interest- and also keep them moving through the cave.

Anyway- I think it would be a cool thing to do... you'd need lots of interesting, sort of creepy, locations that the party could explore all the while hearing something moving somewhere... maybe they find past victims of the monster, or find it's tracks or something... The monster can't be just a hack-and-slash kind of creature either... it has to stalk them, try to pick them off singly... maybe there are traps about purposefully designed to split up the party.

Imagine a scenario where the rogue, scouting ahead triggers a trap and suddenly a wall cuts off him and the other PCs- make the other characters leave the room, and run the combat between the creature and the rogue- when the party finally gets the door open, have the rogues ripped apart body there to greet them. Alternativly, you could use a guide or cohort or something.

Vorp

 

[JVisgaitis]

I'm curious if anyone has done this, and whether the group has liked it or gotten bored.

One of my favorite movies when I was a kid was The Keep. Seeing it recently, it certainly doesn't hold up as well, but definitely has elements that you are describing. If done correctly, I think it could be really cool and would definitely build tensions until the final battle at the end.

I don't think you necessarily need to have the creature stalking them, but it would help. Just make sure that the locales that you have are interesting and keep the players on their toes. You don't want any room they enter to be "You enter a 10x20 plain stone room with a a door on the east and west wall..."

You may want to sprinkle in some traps to keep them guessing as well as clues to the bad guys weakness or his origins.

 

[xnosipjpqmhd]

I wrote an adventure a while back where mid-level heroes go into some dwarven ruins underground. The vast majority of the opposition consisted of just a handful of low-level dwarves who used traps, secret doors, arrow slits, etc. to very good effect.

The fact that there were a very low number of opponents forced me to design in terms of giving my NPCs maximum mobility and avoiding direct confrontations with the heroes for as long as possible. It's a neat concept, but it can get frustrating for the players if designed TOO well.

Some of those ideas might be needed in the one-monster-dungeon design, too, since as soon as there is a head-to-head battle, one side or the other gets mauled and much of the dramatic tension goes away.

 

[snarfoogle]

Doesn't the vampire usually have some of the local townsfolk under his thrall? The mummy, the fiendish traps that stop graverobbers? I'd recommend some of those to keep the players on their toes.

 

[Dav]

One of my favorite movies when I was a kid was The Keep. Seeing it recently, it certainly doesn't hold up as well, but definitely has elements that you are describing. If done correctly, I think it could be really cool and would definitely build tensions until the final battle at the end.

I have nothing to add to the original poster's premise (though it is neat).

The Keep was originally a novel by F. Paul Wilson. I haven't seen the film, but it doesn't seem that great. The book, however, was most excellent.

 

[davidschwartznz]

Give the players a reason to be there. Perhaps they are looking for something in the dungeon, thus they are compelled to search rooms, instead of waiting the monster out.

Make the rooms interesting, both to search and to fight in. The same foe can fight differently in different terrains.

A small number of similar creatures works better than a single creature. For one thing, the adventure doesn't end if they manage to kill one before the finale.

 

[Schmoe]

I think this will work great if the PC's have a reason to be in the place other than killing the monster. And you need ways to split up the party, such as a sequence of events that the party must cause within a tight time frame, or traps that isolate party members, or even better - a combination of the two. The Aliens movies were great about this.

Picture a group of adventurers exploring a long-forgotten ruin with cryptic heiroglyphs and bizarre construction. The ruin is oddly deserted, and they easily (almost too easily) make it to the heart of the ruins. There they discover that there is no treasure (perhaps the treasure map they had was a decoy), but through environmental clues such as dismembered skeletons, ancient bloodstains, journal fragments, and deciphered heiroglyphs they piece together that the entire place is a trap to feed hapless souls to Nameless Evil (NE for short).

Quickly, the party tries to find its way out but, oh crap, they set off a trap on their way in and the exit is blocked. What's worse, they find that their eyes are stinging and lungs are beginning to burn. The air is becoming slowly more caustic. In just a few short hours, they will all be burned to death by acidic vapors! As the party is trying to find its way out, they stumble on a previous victim with a partial map that shows what might be a control room that can stop the gas. It also shows an alternative exit through underwater passages, but in order to pass through there they will need some sort of breathing aid. Fortunately, further examination reveals an area that might contain scrolls of water breathing, but alas, it's on the opposite side of the ruins. There's time to get the scrolls, get to the exit, or get to the control room, but only one of these goals can be reached before the vapors burn them alive. Immediately thereafter, a party member falls through a locking pit trap into a labyrinthine sub-level. Just then, NE makes a cameo as nothing more than shadowy movement and hissing noises fading into the darkness.

Uh oh. Does the party go rescue their teammate, do they chase after NE, do they run for the exit, run for the scrolls, or run to the control room? There are all sorts of other complications you can add. Perhaps a traitor steals a MacGuffin and runs to the exit, threatening to close it behind him forever. Maybe the NE needs just two more victims as sacrifices before it can unleash a horde of NEs on the world. Whatever it is, even though the NE is the primary source of the terror, the desparate situation is what makes the party split up.

 

[JVisgaitis]

The Keep was originally a novel by F. Paul Wilson. I haven't seen the film, but it doesn't seem that great. The book, however, was most excellent.

Something I'd like to pick up, but on Amazon it says it came out this year. Is this just a reprint?

To stay on topic, the remake of the classic Ravenloft module House of Strahd had the count fight the party through various areas of the castle. So while the villain won't necessarily need mooks, you can have him/it appear from time to time for brief encounters. One I remember was the count appearing at the top of a stairway and lightning bolting the whole party only to quickly take gaseous form and escape through the window. This would also help the party to stay on their toes and keep things interesting.

 

[Mr. Draco]

I'm with Schmoe on this one. The PCs definitely need a reason to be in there besides killing the monster and taking its stuff. If their goal is to hunt the monster, and the dungeon is of any decent size, then it'll either take forever (and get boring) or they'll need huge numbers of NPCs to help them.

As for ideas, a few months ago, I saw the Alien vs Predator movie, and while it's not a terribly great movie, it has some fantastic ideas for a scenario like this. Among them are:

*The dungeon is a three-dimensional, shifting maze. Shifts occur regularly and either follow a pattern or (if you're a real RBDM) are random.

*Multiple NEs. Party kills one and there's still fun to be had.

*Everyone has their own reason to be there. The humans wanted to get a hold of ancient technology. The Predators were out to prove themselves. The aliens wanted breakfast. :-D

The most important thing to keep in mind about running a session like this is (if you're going for creepiness/horror) to keep the PCs out of the know. If all the hard evidence of the NE consists of noises from around corners, movement in the shadows, and surprise attacks on isolated party members, then you're golden. As soon as they can tell that it's a humanoid with fangs that can shape change into a bat or wolf, someone will call out "it's a vampire!" and your carefully crafted creepy climate will crumble before you can say "astounding aliterative assistance!"