MerakSpielman
First Post
Nice, PC. I might use this sometime. Only problem is, my new group is somewhat math/spacial-deficient, though, so I might have to stick with the simple version.
Piratecat's dungeon design: fun with tesseracts!
Sialia
First Post
Ahh yes. My first thought when I saw Piratecat's post was "AAAAAaaaah! So that's where that really awful dungeon from that old college campaign came from. "Abraxas said:
The GM in that case felt that the puzzle solving was interesting enough that there shouldn't be anything else around to distract us from it, and we should be left to work on it until we solved it, forever if need be.
It was AWFUL.
We were bored out of our minds--we never did find our way out and gave up on the campaign altogether rather than mess with the wretched thing anymore. There are rare times when you would actually rather abandon your characters than spend any more real time experiencing being them. Bored frustrated characters = bored frustrated players with better things to do with their lives.
Not one of us was close to understanding what the thing was, and now that I see it, I still have no idea how playing "guess what shape the GM is thinking of" would have helped us. He insisted that the solution to the trap was geometrical, but I still don't see how there is a "solution" inherent to the trap that doesn't still boil down to "find the right doohickey to frob," which is what we were stumbling around trying to do anyway.
I can't begin to describe how awful an experience this was.
A bad taste left in my mouth that over a decade of decent gaming have not washed away.
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Neat...
I had seen the movies Cube and Hypercube, and always wanted to run something based on them but never knew where to start. I'll use this article as a jumping off point.
I also like the hypercube idea where there is additional unfolding. Perhaps the "end cube" unfolds into an adjoining set of cubes every so many hours or days. And after so many cubes have formed they begind to fold back up. This might allow for a larger ecology that has been somewhat stable for a while, but is now in conflict as groups are forced to move into the territory of other groups to avoid the folding. Such an environment might make for an extended dungeon delve as the characters are placed in the dungeon and then forced to defen themselves as they attempt to find a way out before the whole place ceases to exist.
I had seen the movies Cube and Hypercube, and always wanted to run something based on them but never knew where to start. I'll use this article as a jumping off point.
I also like the hypercube idea where there is additional unfolding. Perhaps the "end cube" unfolds into an adjoining set of cubes every so many hours or days. And after so many cubes have formed they begind to fold back up. This might allow for a larger ecology that has been somewhat stable for a while, but is now in conflict as groups are forced to move into the territory of other groups to avoid the folding. Such an environment might make for an extended dungeon delve as the characters are placed in the dungeon and then forced to defen themselves as they attempt to find a way out before the whole place ceases to exist.
Piratecat
Sesquipedalian
Interestingly enough, when I used this the group interacted much more with the creatures around than with the space itself. They had been caught horribly off guard because they had teleported in expecting to find an injured enemy; instead, they found an illusion just as the trap triggered. Their primary goal was to get the heck out of there.
If I remember correctly they explored about five rooms and got valuable information from the inhabitants. I hadn't put a key into the space, since it was supposed to be a prison and trap. Eventually they (correctly) decided that when the owner came to check on things there must be some way for him to get out, and they learned that one room (A) tended to be the entrance place. They centered their search there, and by careful use of detect magic they discovered an invisible keyhole floating in the exact center of the room. Opening that refolded the hypercube and released them.
If they couldn't figure out a solution, I was prepared to fast forward time several months until another prisoner arrived; the players would have to tell me what they had done to change the local balance of power. Luckily, the need never occurred.
Sialia's and Abraxas' advice is superb. Nothing sucks more than being stuck in a boring space with no one to interact with, and facing a DM that's so pleased with the trap that it's not still fun. If you use this, make the creatures and space itself (for instance, through permanent illusions or veils in some rooms) exciting, and use the trap as a cool background.
If I remember correctly they explored about five rooms and got valuable information from the inhabitants. I hadn't put a key into the space, since it was supposed to be a prison and trap. Eventually they (correctly) decided that when the owner came to check on things there must be some way for him to get out, and they learned that one room (A) tended to be the entrance place. They centered their search there, and by careful use of detect magic they discovered an invisible keyhole floating in the exact center of the room. Opening that refolded the hypercube and released them.
If they couldn't figure out a solution, I was prepared to fast forward time several months until another prisoner arrived; the players would have to tell me what they had done to change the local balance of power. Luckily, the need never occurred.
Sialia's and Abraxas' advice is superb. Nothing sucks more than being stuck in a boring space with no one to interact with, and facing a DM that's so pleased with the trap that it's not still fun. If you use this, make the creatures and space itself (for instance, through permanent illusions or veils in some rooms) exciting, and use the trap as a cool background.
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Pielorinho
Iron Fist of Pelor
I used it in a game once, thanks to Piratecat. It was pretty fun, although I discovered that Find the Path is a terrible spell 
. I really had to work to make sure the players got what they needed out of the prison, after the cleric pulled that spell out.
My setup involved an extradimensional prison used for big nasties; due to a fluke, the PCs and the enemies they were fighting were sucked into the prison into separate rooms. Each door was guarded by a symbol of weakness, to which the guardians were attuned; the doors could only be opened by the keys that the guardians carried.
The guardians were heavily modified chain-demons with powers similar to the scary prison guards in Harry Potter: they could shake you with fear from a gaze attack, they would gesture with their keys to make magical chains wrap around you (a hold person-ish spell with a reflex save instead of will), and they could animate chains that hung on each wall to attack. They themselves were constructed entirely of coiled chains and locks.
There was a central control room with a gate leading out to the Ur-Prison: an open immense cavern in which thousands of these guardians floated and from which there were hundreds of gates to similar tesseract prisons. The gate was the only place from which a plane shift could work successfully.
The prison-dimension did have some advantages: prisoners couldn't die while there (all wounds regenerated at a rate of 1 hp/hour until the prisoner reached 0 hp), and all checks to escape were at a penalty (whether you were trying to escape a grapple, escape from chains, or escape by running away).
But as I said, the PCs short-circuited the whole thing by casting Find the Path. My advice? Run the adventure before they hit 11th level.
Daniel
. I really had to work to make sure the players got what they needed out of the prison, after the cleric pulled that spell out.My setup involved an extradimensional prison used for big nasties; due to a fluke, the PCs and the enemies they were fighting were sucked into the prison into separate rooms. Each door was guarded by a symbol of weakness, to which the guardians were attuned; the doors could only be opened by the keys that the guardians carried.
The guardians were heavily modified chain-demons with powers similar to the scary prison guards in Harry Potter: they could shake you with fear from a gaze attack, they would gesture with their keys to make magical chains wrap around you (a hold person-ish spell with a reflex save instead of will), and they could animate chains that hung on each wall to attack. They themselves were constructed entirely of coiled chains and locks.
There was a central control room with a gate leading out to the Ur-Prison: an open immense cavern in which thousands of these guardians floated and from which there were hundreds of gates to similar tesseract prisons. The gate was the only place from which a plane shift could work successfully.
The prison-dimension did have some advantages: prisoners couldn't die while there (all wounds regenerated at a rate of 1 hp/hour until the prisoner reached 0 hp), and all checks to escape were at a penalty (whether you were trying to escape a grapple, escape from chains, or escape by running away).
But as I said, the PCs short-circuited the whole thing by casting Find the Path. My advice? Run the adventure before they hit 11th level.
Daniel
Destil
Explorer
Fun with gravity...
Take two objects of equal mass through the hypercube in such a way that they get relative gravities in opposed directions, then place them against one and other and weld ‘em together. You’d have a ‘weightless’ object. Unfortunately I don’t see this as a way to support any weight since it would upset the equilibrium of forces needed to keep such objects in place if you apply any force to them. Still may have some applications for the creative, however.
You could simply place them one underneath the other. As long as they stay in place they would support each others weight, but tip them a little and they’ll slide out of place. Maybe some sort of locking mechanism that could be triggered to whatever you want it to be so the two halves slip apart.
Since even when an object has no effective weight it still has mass this could make for some nasty traps. With something strong enough to set a truly massive object into motion ‘horizontally’ (a heavy spring mechanism or some counterweights… this could also be used to produce clever systems of balancing counterweights) and no friction to worry about aside from air resistance sliding wall traps could suddenly take on a whole new dimension (pardon the pun). Combining some of these weights with an immovable rod or three could also produce some interesting works, like a pendulum that swings in full circles… make one of the chambers a vacuum (I’ll post a custom spell I designed for just such creative applications in house rules if I get around to it, ‘Airless Barrier’) you could have a perpetual motion machine setup inside of it.
Bring two bars of iron through the hypercube so they have opposite specific gravities, melt them down and mix them. You could create alloys with a wide variety of relative gravities. Most likely going through a portal again would reset the relative gravities, though. For a truly large hypercube (say where each cell is a demiplane several miles across) this could have some very interesting applications as well. Weightless throwing weapons and ammunition comes to mind (unlimited range increments, going by the weightlessness rules in the MotP). Or axes where the half is made of material with a relative gravity that pulls it upwards, giving it a very different balance (and allowing some nasty downward chops, I’d wager). With a very heavy material like adamant you could create a free-standing tower shield for instance. It would be a bit of a pain to lug around but would most likely barely get knocked around at all by blows from missile weapons, almost like having it on an immovable rod (and since you’re not holding it you wouldn’t be subject to targeted spells while standing behind it), mobile cover.
Take two objects of equal mass through the hypercube in such a way that they get relative gravities in opposed directions, then place them against one and other and weld ‘em together. You’d have a ‘weightless’ object. Unfortunately I don’t see this as a way to support any weight since it would upset the equilibrium of forces needed to keep such objects in place if you apply any force to them. Still may have some applications for the creative, however.
You could simply place them one underneath the other. As long as they stay in place they would support each others weight, but tip them a little and they’ll slide out of place. Maybe some sort of locking mechanism that could be triggered to whatever you want it to be so the two halves slip apart.
Since even when an object has no effective weight it still has mass this could make for some nasty traps. With something strong enough to set a truly massive object into motion ‘horizontally’ (a heavy spring mechanism or some counterweights… this could also be used to produce clever systems of balancing counterweights) and no friction to worry about aside from air resistance sliding wall traps could suddenly take on a whole new dimension (pardon the pun). Combining some of these weights with an immovable rod or three could also produce some interesting works, like a pendulum that swings in full circles… make one of the chambers a vacuum (I’ll post a custom spell I designed for just such creative applications in house rules if I get around to it, ‘Airless Barrier’) you could have a perpetual motion machine setup inside of it.
Bring two bars of iron through the hypercube so they have opposite specific gravities, melt them down and mix them. You could create alloys with a wide variety of relative gravities. Most likely going through a portal again would reset the relative gravities, though. For a truly large hypercube (say where each cell is a demiplane several miles across) this could have some very interesting applications as well. Weightless throwing weapons and ammunition comes to mind (unlimited range increments, going by the weightlessness rules in the MotP). Or axes where the half is made of material with a relative gravity that pulls it upwards, giving it a very different balance (and allowing some nasty downward chops, I’d wager). With a very heavy material like adamant you could create a free-standing tower shield for instance. It would be a bit of a pain to lug around but would most likely barely get knocked around at all by blows from missile weapons, almost like having it on an immovable rod (and since you’re not holding it you wouldn’t be subject to targeted spells while standing behind it), mobile cover.
MerakSpielman
First Post
Let me get this straight... if you mixed a 50-50 specific gravity-ratio chunk of metal to make it weightless, it would weigh nothing but still have mass. So it would float on its own in midair, but you have to work against its mass in order to move it? If it's truly weightless, does that mean you can pick it up, toss it in the air, and it would float upwards forever? I'm trying to understand this...
Joshua Randall
Legend
Just remember: in 3-space, the direction to the enemy is always down. (Thanks, Ender's Game!)Piratecat said:
Random musing...
PC: "I cast reverse gravity."
DM: "Uh oh."
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