Shades of Green
Explorer
Magic pump and a waterfall flowing up - I *LOVE* this!
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NOW LIVE! Into the Woods--new character species, eerie monsters, and haunting villains to populate the woodlands of your D&D games.
Your dream dungeon...
- Thread starter steeldragons
- Start date
Iron Sky
Procedurally Generated
Our group has never tended towards "dungeon" play. I think in 17 years of gaming, we've had no more than 3-4 dungeons that took more than 1 session to complete(though if you count sci-fi games on spacecraft, that number increases dramatically).
The highlights would be:
[sblock=Koganusan]The largest dungeon our group has ever done was when our group hit Paragon in our first 4e game and our DM turned Koganusan into a massive dungeon. It was great because he took actual journals from the write-up, actual art elements from the game, and made a flow-chart map of the place so we could go almost anywhere.
The little bits and pieces from the AAR gave the place a ton of flavor that made it seem really real, and the fact that we were given descriptions of art on wall carvings and treasure we found made it even more immersive. For example:
"The wall panels are covered with pictures of dwarves kneeling before elephants with plaintive gestures. The elephants are trampling the dwarves.
The bracelet is engraved with pictures of a mandril menacing a dwarf. On the inside is an image of a water flooding a dwarven dining hall."
It was also hazardous as hell. For example:
My ranger got hit by a nasty trap that hit you with a bear trap round one, the bear trap shot up 30' into spikes on the cieling on round two, a nozzle bathed you in flame on round three, and then the bear trap let go and retracted with lightning speed on round four, causing you to fall 30' and start it over again. He managed to step into 3 of those traps in one fight(he's a bit impetuous).
It was awesome. The dungeon having a rich history really came through to the point where uncovering more bits of the story of what the hell happened there was our prime motivation - over treasure and xp even; remarkable for our group of powergamers.[/sblock]
[sblock=Starship sabotage]In the (only) GURPS sci-fi game I ran, the group were all the entourage of a diplomat on a starship heading to a colony that was seceding from the empire. On the way there, terrorists sabotaged the hyperdrive and blew up most of the crew deck, leaving the players as the only really capable people in a crew of civilians able to stop the terrorists. It had some neat moments like:
*A 0-g fight in a hallway against a military-grade cyborg with magnetic clamps anchoring it.
*A desperate battle in the engine room when they leaped out of a crawl space and had a point-blank range battle where every bullet miss could damage a critical engine component and leave them stranded permanently. It got more exciting when the fire suppression system came on, blanketing the room with foamy fire-suppressant "snow" and reducing visibility to 5' - and then gravity generators kicked off again...[/sblock]
[sblock=Mini level 1 TPK dungeon]I did manage to *almost* TPK a group of 1st level adventurers with a dungeon that consisted of:
*a 30' ladder leading to the beginning of the dungeon - unfortunately, the last 5' had broken off and required an acrobatics check to swing to the platform from the last rung and avoid a fall into a spiked pit
*a 10' wide, 20' deep pit
*a 10' wide, 10' deep pit with spikes in it and a portcullis that slammed shut whenever something was leaping across the pit (requiring fast action to avoid bouncing off of it and falling into the pit)
*a skeleton on the far side of the portcullis throwing puny magic missiles at them the whole time (they had no one with a ranged attack)
It was like a comedy of errors. They ended up killing the skeleton with rocks and the paladin dragging everyone else's unconscious or dead bodies back to the surface(everyone fell into at least 1 pit and several were dropped in them accidentally while unconscious).[/sblock]
There are a few more, but the main things I've learned from these few experiences we have had with dungeons are:
[sblock=Notes]*If you have traps, make them mostly visible challenges rather than "screw-you" wandering damage. This also psychologically prepares the players so when an unspotted trap does go off, they are annoyed that they missed it rather than annoyed at the DM for springing something out of the blue at them.
*Environmental effects make encounters more tactical and/or limit options - environmental effects that don't start until the middle of the encounter make it more dramatic (flooding with water, walls/scaffolding collapsing, rain/snow/equivalent suddenly falling, etc).
*An environment with a bit of real world (I.E. grounded in the game's history) detail, a story, and some element of mystery or unknown behind it will pull players in to a dungeon faster than the most fabulous treasure or expectation of experience.[/sblock]
So, in summary, my ideal dungeon would be:
*realistic
*lived-in
*grounded in the world's history
*mysterious
*dangerous
The highlights would be:
[sblock=Koganusan]The largest dungeon our group has ever done was when our group hit Paragon in our first 4e game and our DM turned Koganusan into a massive dungeon. It was great because he took actual journals from the write-up, actual art elements from the game, and made a flow-chart map of the place so we could go almost anywhere.
The little bits and pieces from the AAR gave the place a ton of flavor that made it seem really real, and the fact that we were given descriptions of art on wall carvings and treasure we found made it even more immersive. For example:
"The wall panels are covered with pictures of dwarves kneeling before elephants with plaintive gestures. The elephants are trampling the dwarves.
The bracelet is engraved with pictures of a mandril menacing a dwarf. On the inside is an image of a water flooding a dwarven dining hall."
It was also hazardous as hell. For example:
My ranger got hit by a nasty trap that hit you with a bear trap round one, the bear trap shot up 30' into spikes on the cieling on round two, a nozzle bathed you in flame on round three, and then the bear trap let go and retracted with lightning speed on round four, causing you to fall 30' and start it over again. He managed to step into 3 of those traps in one fight(he's a bit impetuous).
It was awesome. The dungeon having a rich history really came through to the point where uncovering more bits of the story of what the hell happened there was our prime motivation - over treasure and xp even; remarkable for our group of powergamers.[/sblock]
[sblock=Starship sabotage]In the (only) GURPS sci-fi game I ran, the group were all the entourage of a diplomat on a starship heading to a colony that was seceding from the empire. On the way there, terrorists sabotaged the hyperdrive and blew up most of the crew deck, leaving the players as the only really capable people in a crew of civilians able to stop the terrorists. It had some neat moments like:
*A 0-g fight in a hallway against a military-grade cyborg with magnetic clamps anchoring it.
*A desperate battle in the engine room when they leaped out of a crawl space and had a point-blank range battle where every bullet miss could damage a critical engine component and leave them stranded permanently. It got more exciting when the fire suppression system came on, blanketing the room with foamy fire-suppressant "snow" and reducing visibility to 5' - and then gravity generators kicked off again...[/sblock]
[sblock=Mini level 1 TPK dungeon]I did manage to *almost* TPK a group of 1st level adventurers with a dungeon that consisted of:
*a 30' ladder leading to the beginning of the dungeon - unfortunately, the last 5' had broken off and required an acrobatics check to swing to the platform from the last rung and avoid a fall into a spiked pit
*a 10' wide, 20' deep pit
*a 10' wide, 10' deep pit with spikes in it and a portcullis that slammed shut whenever something was leaping across the pit (requiring fast action to avoid bouncing off of it and falling into the pit)
*a skeleton on the far side of the portcullis throwing puny magic missiles at them the whole time (they had no one with a ranged attack)
It was like a comedy of errors. They ended up killing the skeleton with rocks and the paladin dragging everyone else's unconscious or dead bodies back to the surface(everyone fell into at least 1 pit and several were dropped in them accidentally while unconscious).[/sblock]
There are a few more, but the main things I've learned from these few experiences we have had with dungeons are:
[sblock=Notes]*If you have traps, make them mostly visible challenges rather than "screw-you" wandering damage. This also psychologically prepares the players so when an unspotted trap does go off, they are annoyed that they missed it rather than annoyed at the DM for springing something out of the blue at them.
*Environmental effects make encounters more tactical and/or limit options - environmental effects that don't start until the middle of the encounter make it more dramatic (flooding with water, walls/scaffolding collapsing, rain/snow/equivalent suddenly falling, etc).
*An environment with a bit of real world (I.E. grounded in the game's history) detail, a story, and some element of mystery or unknown behind it will pull players in to a dungeon faster than the most fabulous treasure or expectation of experience.[/sblock]
So, in summary, my ideal dungeon would be:
*realistic
*lived-in
*grounded in the world's history
*mysterious
*dangerous
Bleys Icefalcon
First Post
My favorite, which still stands to this day after all these years, is the Sphere of Annihalation inside the mouth of the large Demon facade in the origional Tomb of Horrors. How many characters willingly stepped into that "portal"....?
Lanefan
Victoria Rules
And if this flooding needs to be triggered from inside, the PCs also have to deal with the side-effect challenge of not drowning themselves in the process. Tons of fun!
Lan-"glub glub glub"-efan
Stormonu
NeoGrognard
For anyone interested, I'm going to be blogging on my development of the "Secret City"
http://www.enworld.org/forum/blogs/stormonu/6343-encounter-budget-roughed-out.html
http://www.enworld.org/forum/blogs/stormonu/6343-encounter-budget-roughed-out.html
steeldragons
Steeliest of the dragons
Awesomeness!
Thanks for sharing the development, Stormonu. Very interested in seeing how it goes.
Someone lay some XP on Stormonu...I'm busy having to spread it around (for, like, EVERYone whose posts I regularly like and want to reward).
--SD
Stormonu
NeoGrognard
Awesomeness!
Thanks for sharing the development, Stormonu. Very interested in seeing how it goes.
Someone lay some XP on Stormonu...I'm busy having to spread it around (for, like, EVERYone whose posts I regularly like and want to reward).
--SD
Thank you all, I have a new entry up - EN World: Your Daily RPG Magazine - Stormonu
...and the promise of more
TheUltramark
First Post
the climactic battle vs the evilist wizard ever, our group had fought this guy a half dozen times and he weasled away every time. His fortress, on the realm of shadow, was the size of a village. 20 foot thick walls, looming over 40 feet high, it seemed impregnable.
That battle alone, from getting in, to searching for the bad guy, to fighting off his undead minions, to fighting off his living minions (and this was back when minions had hit points) to finally getting our mitts on the bad guy lasted at least 3 months of once a week play. - - We finally kill the guy, lop of his head, and take it outside to show the mob of evil denizens, boasting "how tough is your lord now" - - we threw the head at them (about a year later-real life time- 'the bad guy is back, he is a lich now....you should have destroyed the body, not thrown his head to the crowd' - whoops)
as far as pre-packaged ones, elemental evil and horrors are both good, but I liked Dragon Mountain an awful lot - that took us about 6 months start to finish
That battle alone, from getting in, to searching for the bad guy, to fighting off his undead minions, to fighting off his living minions (and this was back when minions had hit points) to finally getting our mitts on the bad guy lasted at least 3 months of once a week play. - - We finally kill the guy, lop of his head, and take it outside to show the mob of evil denizens, boasting "how tough is your lord now" - - we threw the head at them (about a year later-real life time- 'the bad guy is back, he is a lich now....you should have destroyed the body, not thrown his head to the crowd' - whoops)
as far as pre-packaged ones, elemental evil and horrors are both good, but I liked Dragon Mountain an awful lot - that took us about 6 months start to finish
Evilhalfling
Adventurer
The Tesseract
This was a fun one - 60'x60'x60' rooms, gravity direction changed with every room. Doors could be in 25' away from any adjoining surface, found at ground level or open out into a 60' fall. Some had floating platforms controlled by thought, lots of stairs, or in one case filled with water.
The party struggled through 5-6 sealed rooms then entered a damaged control chamber, the entire dungeon flipped inside out SO I showed them this and there were 6 more 60x60x60 rooms. The second set was inhabited by fairly powerful wizards, all trapped inside. They had divided into cliques, struggling over territory and dwindling supplies.
The map was based on an unfolded cube - File:Tesseract2.svg - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
I think it exploring it took 3, 6hr sessions - one player figured out exactly which rooms led to where, but his logic in no way resembled how i had put it together.
The tesseract had two doors out one on each side of the inversion, and was used to travel quickly from one side of the continent to another. One of the feuding wizards was eventually converted to good, and became a major ally, while 2 others had reoccurring roles. My Tesseract had no effect on time as it was rotated through an alternate universe rather than the temporal dimension.
This was a fun one - 60'x60'x60' rooms, gravity direction changed with every room. Doors could be in 25' away from any adjoining surface, found at ground level or open out into a 60' fall. Some had floating platforms controlled by thought, lots of stairs, or in one case filled with water.
The party struggled through 5-6 sealed rooms then entered a damaged control chamber, the entire dungeon flipped inside out SO I showed them this and there were 6 more 60x60x60 rooms. The second set was inhabited by fairly powerful wizards, all trapped inside. They had divided into cliques, struggling over territory and dwindling supplies.
The map was based on an unfolded cube - File:Tesseract2.svg - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
I think it exploring it took 3, 6hr sessions - one player figured out exactly which rooms led to where, but his logic in no way resembled how i had put it together.
The tesseract had two doors out one on each side of the inversion, and was used to travel quickly from one side of the continent to another. One of the feuding wizards was eventually converted to good, and became a major ally, while 2 others had reoccurring roles. My Tesseract had no effect on time as it was rotated through an alternate universe rather than the temporal dimension.
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