Your dream dungeon...

[Argyle King]

This is going to be tough to describe without being able to show the diagrams I had drawn up at the time, but I'll try...



Basically, I ran an encounter in which the room was based upon a rubix cube. There were 12 levers in the room. Six of the twelve would cause on of the 6 surfaces (walls, floor, ceiling) to turn. The other six had other effects (traps and etc.) The door to get out was on the ceiling; getting to it required turning the surfaces of the room in such a way so as to line up some of the room features to allow the door to be easily reached.

While it was also possible to use things such as rope, ladders, and etc to reach the door; doing so was fairly difficult while traps and monsters were active.

 

[Haltherrion]

I'd like something a bit creepy, a bit dusty & ancient, with a well executed theme and story that tied it together. Something where you wanted to know what was behind the next door: it might be aweful, most likely dangerous but it would give you another small piece of the puzzle.

 

[Wik]

As a player, my dream dungeon would be a set of ruins, preferably in a jungle or forest setting, with a huge amount of pictures from the GM. And these ruins would be historically influenced (ie, real world history) and would tell a story about the campaign setting's past. There would be no traps in the dungeon, no monsters, and no RP encounter. Just a couple of PCs, in a safe environment, where they are trying to figure out what happened by investigating old ruins.

That sort of dungeon could keep me entertained for hours. Especially if there was no "dungeon" element to it, but rather a set of ruins entirely aboveground, with the only creatures encountered being things like small snakes, parrots, and wild pigs.

As a GM, my dream dungeon is one in which I have a whole bunch of clever tricks and traps, the players figure out around 70% of the traps, but fall prey to the other 30%, without it being a grimtooth's/RBDM situation.

Another near perfect "dream dungeon" for me was a dream only because it let me excel at my favourite part of RPGs - winging it on the fly, without being arbitrary. Basically, it was the Savage Tide campaign, in the early part. One of the NPCs the players fight has "if reduced to X hp, he will attempt to flee". Well, this happened, and he tried to flee - and the PCs let him, so they could focus on the BBEG of the encounter. But then, two rounds later, they gave chase.

There were no notes on that. So I ran the chase, through the city, at night. And the chase seemed to lead (through no planning on my part) to "Ancestor Island", a small graveyard in the middle of the city. And so it turned into a skirmish, with the PCs hunting down a thief in a graveyard very similar to those ones in New Orleans. The whole thing was improvised on my part, and I had a blast running it.

Situations like that, where I can improv but have a set of solid notes to go by, are why I GM.

 

[Redshirt]

I always wanted to run an adventure based on the Blue Temple Vault in the Book of Swords by Fred Saberhagen. So much going on there that would be great to run.

*SPOILER*

The first level rotates so the maze of tunnels only line up to enter at certain times of the day. An illusionary forest that saps your strength. Two warring factions of undead guard's. And the party's greed winning out in the end (I know my player's would have a hard time here).

 

[Herobizkit]

I would also like to see the quest of the One Ring (or similar epics) done in the modern era using d20 Urban Arcana. Bonus points if it involves "people inside the computer world/MMORPG" without singling out the hacker as part of (or the whole reason behind) the quest.

 

[Stumblewyk]

Even though my players fled the dungeon like rats on a sinking ship after being brutalized by the trap in the first room, I still intend to one day run my "Cult of the Spider" adventure:

Ruined, buried temple. Large chambers with high, high ceilings. Disquieting geometries to the architecture. Clues upon clues as to why the the temple, supposedly dedicated to a mysterious spider-worshiping cult now lies empty and forgotten. During the course of exploring the strange ruins, noises can be heard...from above them, from down long, angled corridors, from around corners. Scratching. Hissing. Rasping. As the PCs find they're being unwittingly herded into a large, central chamber of the ruined temple, they finally see the source of the noises - the Spider - an enormous demonic, semi-intelligent spider and her brood of half-demon children.

The first and only time I tried to run it, the dungeon's pressure-plate triggered anti-gravity trap with half-demon large spiders on the roof sent the party packing. They ran like frightened children and refused to return.

 

[Lanefan]

I would like to see a standard DnD party in a modern era city, like the (One Ring) Fellowship traveling through New York City.

Imagine a barbarian having to adjust to skyscrapers and indoor plumbing.
"Hey Throg...don't drink the blue water..o.k. N.n..no! those are not mints either??"

A gnome rogue that learns auto theft.

A wizard that uses a lightning bolt to stop a mugger.

If you can find it, pick up Dragon #100. It has a module in it called City Beyond the Gate that is exactly what you're looking for.

As for my dream dungeon, it's hard to say; other than it has to be a dungeon (I likes me some crawlin'). Some elements I look for as DM are 1) multiple ways of approaching and-or dealing with the dungeon, 2) multiple ways of getting around within the dungeon including vertically, 3) elements of whimsy that can still keep the players on their toes, and so forth.

1) - The Secret of Bone Hill is a great example of this. There's about 6 ways in and out of the thing, some obvious, some hidden; and it's up to the party to decide how to approach it and-or which entrance to use (assuming, of course, they find more than one).

2) - A frequent failing of many otherwise-decent adventures is there are so few ways to get from one level to the next and back, and almost never ways to get from level A to level C bypassing level B; which can be separately accessed from both level A and level C. Note to designers: add more stairs!

3) - one great example from a friend's homebrew: two of the levels had mostly identical floorplans in one section; an illusionary dragon on one level set us up perfectly for the real dragon in the same room a level below...

A pleasant side-effect of adventures like this is that running them multiple times usually gives a completely different result each time, which makes it more interesting for the DM.

Lan-"and tell us in the writeups how long the staircases are"-efan

 

[JRRNeiklot]

I always wanted to run Philip Jose Pharmer's "The Dungeon" - especially the second book. And make one level Riverworld.

 

[The Shaman]

I like water features in dungeons: cave streams, underground lakes, fountains and pools, flooded passages.

In my megadungeon notes, roughly the lower third of the dungeon is completely submerged.

 

[Argyle King]

One encounter I've always wanted to run, but never quite knew how to stat up is as follows:


Far below the floor upon which the encounter takes place is your harmful terrain feature of choice (lava, mine field, sharks... whatever.) The square floor is balanced carefully onto a point; balanced by the weight of statues at each corner; the statues are bolted to the floor so they don't move. However, as PCs (and monsters) move around on the floor, the balance shifts and the floor tilts toward whichever direction has the most weight.

There are also four large chains which run from the ceiling to the head of each statue. These chains prevent the floor from completely falling off of its balance point during weight shifts. While it's not impossible to break the chains (they are very sturdy,) it is ill advised to do so.