Heh. Exactly. That's the bad news.
I'd say that there are two good newses, though (a word of my own invention that makes me sound a little Gollum-ish, sadly):
1) Think of a room like that as being one of the big fights. If you can prep four of those things, you've got a full session. Stuff in between them can be the simple blade traps or dart traps or collapsing walls or whatever, just like your average dungeon encounter has one encounter of "11th-level wizard, his Vrock thrall, a spellcasting naga, a half-fiend basilisk, and five mind flayers" and about five encounters of "1d3 minotaurs".
2) If you like Tomb Raider Legend, you've got your research inspiration right there. If you play a specific section, think about what you had to do, how the level was set up, and what the consequences for failure are. Since you probably don't want to force people to reload for failing one Jump check ("aaaaaaaaaaaaah splat, okay, reload"), you can use the Tomb Raider levels as a starting point and put in additional failure options that aren't fun, but aren't killer, either. For example, that chasm with the spikes at the bottom? Okay, forget that. Instead of spikes, it's water. Right there, that's a lot less damage, and instead of "Okay I just fell onto spikes and died," it's "I fell into water, and have to swim quickly to escape the alligators, but once I get out, I can climb a ladder back up to the tunnel just before the chasm again."
I'd say that there are two good newses, though (a word of my own invention that makes me sound a little Gollum-ish, sadly):
1) Think of a room like that as being one of the big fights. If you can prep four of those things, you've got a full session. Stuff in between them can be the simple blade traps or dart traps or collapsing walls or whatever, just like your average dungeon encounter has one encounter of "11th-level wizard, his Vrock thrall, a spellcasting naga, a half-fiend basilisk, and five mind flayers" and about five encounters of "1d3 minotaurs".
2) If you like Tomb Raider Legend, you've got your research inspiration right there. If you play a specific section, think about what you had to do, how the level was set up, and what the consequences for failure are. Since you probably don't want to force people to reload for failing one Jump check ("aaaaaaaaaaaaah splat, okay, reload"), you can use the Tomb Raider levels as a starting point and put in additional failure options that aren't fun, but aren't killer, either. For example, that chasm with the spikes at the bottom? Okay, forget that. Instead of spikes, it's water. Right there, that's a lot less damage, and instead of "Okay I just fell onto spikes and died," it's "I fell into water, and have to swim quickly to escape the alligators, but once I get out, I can climb a ladder back up to the tunnel just before the chasm again."
