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Help with Dungeon Building
themocaw
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
First off, I know you guys don't come to this forum, but if Garret, Jay, Jim, or Stephen from the Schwartze Sonne Campaign are looking at this: dude, spoiler alert, get the fuck out of here.
So I'm playing in a D&D campaign where my Dungeon Master came up with a weird request: "Dude, I know you're creative and fucked in the head, and I need you to build a dungeon. A real mindfuck of a dungeon. The kind of dungeon that makes people get fucked up and go WOAAAAH!"
I said, "Okay, I can do. . ."
"No, no no, don't tell me. . . surprise me. I'll call on you in a week or two. Let me know if you have any questions."
Here is what I have so far:
I said, "Okay, I can do. . ."
"No, no no, don't tell me. . . surprise me. I'll call on you in a week or two. Let me know if you have any questions."
Here is what I have so far:
The Dungeon takes the form of a twelve-story tower with three staircases. . . kind of. What is really going on is that each stair case accesses a different set of floors. So depending on which staircase you go up, some floors will be accessible, others won't.
Gold stairs take you to floors 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, and 11 (the odd-numbered ones). If you go up a flight from floor 11, you loop back around to 1 and vice versa. So you can go upstairs infinitely and never reach the end.
Silver stairs take you to floors 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, and 12 (the even-numbered ones). If you go up a flight from floor 12, you loop back around to 2, and vice versa.
You can already see that there's a problem: if you start on floor 1, there is no way to get to floor 2. Which is where the third set of stairs comes in: the Iron stairs take you to floors 3, 6, 9, and 12 (the ones that are multiples of three). Again, they loop around.
So in order for the players to reach all the floors, they need to take the gold stairs from 1 to 3 to 7 etc., get off on either floor 3 or 9, and then take the iron stairs up or down a flight to floor 2 or 12, switch to the silver stairs, then go through the even numbered floors.
And yes, they will have to go through each of the floors. They need to collect all 12 clock pieces to set a giant clock on the first floor to the right time to get to the top.
Which is where you guys come in: I need ideas for the challenges on each floor. They need to be bizarre and mind-bending, and can be as magical and strange as you like. They shouldn't be insanely hard, though: just surreal and bizarre. Making it clear they're in bat country now.
For example, here is one challenge I came up with:
Gold stairs take you to floors 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, and 11 (the odd-numbered ones). If you go up a flight from floor 11, you loop back around to 1 and vice versa. So you can go upstairs infinitely and never reach the end.
Silver stairs take you to floors 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, and 12 (the even-numbered ones). If you go up a flight from floor 12, you loop back around to 2, and vice versa.
You can already see that there's a problem: if you start on floor 1, there is no way to get to floor 2. Which is where the third set of stairs comes in: the Iron stairs take you to floors 3, 6, 9, and 12 (the ones that are multiples of three). Again, they loop around.
So in order for the players to reach all the floors, they need to take the gold stairs from 1 to 3 to 7 etc., get off on either floor 3 or 9, and then take the iron stairs up or down a flight to floor 2 or 12, switch to the silver stairs, then go through the even numbered floors.
And yes, they will have to go through each of the floors. They need to collect all 12 clock pieces to set a giant clock on the first floor to the right time to get to the top.
Which is where you guys come in: I need ideas for the challenges on each floor. They need to be bizarre and mind-bending, and can be as magical and strange as you like. They shouldn't be insanely hard, though: just surreal and bizarre. Making it clear they're in bat country now.
For example, here is one challenge I came up with:
The party enters a room, and find a number of plates on the floor equal to 2x the number of party members. As they mill around, they discover that standing on a plate will cause it to light up. However, placing a heavy weight on it will not work. Neither will using summoned monsters for DM plot point dickery reasons.
So the players face the problem of trying to get four pegs into eight holes. Here is the kicker: a few minutes after the pcs enter the room, the door opens up again, and ghostly images of the party walk into the room. They do exactly what the PCs had done a few minutes before. A little experimentation will reveal that the "ghosts" are the lingering afterimage of the PCs from a few minutes before. . . and that a "ghost" standing on a plate will cause it to light up just like if a Player Character stands on it.
The solution is to stand on half the plates, then move to the other half, timing it so that the "real" PCs are standing on the plates at the same time their "shadows" are standing on the others.
Thoughts? I have a few ideas, but somehow, I'm sure there are better mindfuck challenges than a giant stone hand that tries to challenge the PCs to a thumb wrestling contest.So the players face the problem of trying to get four pegs into eight holes. Here is the kicker: a few minutes after the pcs enter the room, the door opens up again, and ghostly images of the party walk into the room. They do exactly what the PCs had done a few minutes before. A little experimentation will reveal that the "ghosts" are the lingering afterimage of the PCs from a few minutes before. . . and that a "ghost" standing on a plate will cause it to light up just like if a Player Character stands on it.
The solution is to stand on half the plates, then move to the other half, timing it so that the "real" PCs are standing on the plates at the same time their "shadows" are standing on the others.
themocaw on
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Second, here's a couple of suggestions.
Have one room wherein the PCs appear to be seperated, each apparently locked into completely identical but alternate rooms. It's in a similar vein to your "ghost PC" idea, but the twist is that the PCs have to figure out that each of them is actually able to affect the rooms of the others.
For example, say there's four PCs, and they're locked into four identical copies of the same room. By walking in the door, they're each teleported to a seperate room (although anyone standing outside sees them all as being in the same room, so nobody will know what happened until they're all inside). Within this room, there's a curious puzzle that requires one to press a sliding wall-stone, while simultaneously pulling a lever on a seperate wall, standing on a specific plate across the room, and striking a gong set in the center of the room. Any of these things done alone, or in any combination other than all four together, either does nothing, or has random "weirdness" effects like the room suddenly going dark for one or more of the party members or phantom traps being triggered that deal no actual harm, but only because they're designed such that the person triggering them automatically manages to avoid them just barely. Illusion effects.
This will essentially force all four party members to communicate with one another without actually being able to contact one another. If they're realy creative they might carve something into a wall or somesuch, but for all purposes except the triggering of the mechanism and direct effects to the structure of the room itself, they're technically considered to be in different places, so merely dropping objects or whatnot won't help. If they successfully ring the gong at the same time as the lever is pulled, the block is pressed, and the plate is stood on, the clock piece would reveal itself.
Another idea is to set up one floor of the dungeon as a museum. The clock piece they require would be set inside an unbreakable case, with all manner of fascinating (but utterly useless in any real practical way) items in other cases. Set up an entire puzzle, possibly, involving finding the right items to break open various cases to get to other items, to eventually reach a massive hammer. Naturally, the entire puzzle is meaningless, the hammer does nothing and the clock-piece-case won't break.
In truth, the only way to break the case is to take it to another floor, at which point the enchantment on it fails and it can be broken with ease.
Another idea is to take an entire room and have it mimic being outside, complete with magical sky, weather, and critters wandering about. These creatures ignore the PCs, but within one of the critters is the clock piece they need. Killing any critter except the one they need to angers all the animals in the area, though depending on your party's level, they shouldn't attack if the party can't beat them.
The clock piece should be inside of the most ordinary, average animal in the room. Everything else should be either larger, smaller, or otherwise different from normal, and the one completely normal animal is the one they have to kill.
Just ideas. They might not be particularly good, but hey, you can always alter them if you see anything you do like. *L*
Which is the intention of course, so good job!
An interesting idea would be to have ghost-versions of the characters show up and start attacking you, but damaging them damages you? Then again, the fight yourself is rather overplayed. Unless it came before the room with eight discs... and then they freak out and start solving the same puzzle all over again.
The Monster Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson
Steam: Korvalain
Hope this made sense. Think of it like the forest part of the first part of Zelda Ocirana (not sure how it's spelled) where you have to follow the music to go the right direction.)
Right next to it, at the 1 O'Clock position, is a glass cutter that radiates magic, behind an impenetrable force field. Of course, the players will assume that to open the glass case, they must get the glass cutter and try to cut open the box.
The truth is that opening the glass box is as easy as waiting thirty minutes without interacting with any pedestals. There is a clue to this on the 12 O'Clock pedestal: after the players start to figure out the rest of the puzzle, someone thinking out of the box should realize the disconnect. If they don't, well. . . that's what the rest of the room is for.
As a clue, the walls and floor are all decorated in beautiful tapestries and carpets featuring crimson fish. A successful Knowledge/Nature check, DC 20, will allow you to recognize it as a crude depiction of herrings. (I know the DC is high, say whoever designed the tapestries and carpets was a shitty artist.)
Here is a list of the twelve pedestals, the text of their plaque, what they contain, and how to open it.
1 Glass Cutter. "Gathers No Moss." Opened by rolling a small stone over the placard.
2 Ink Pen. "Attracts More Flies." Pour honey over the placard.
3 Bird Statuette. "Next to Godliness." Opened by wiping off the placard with the magic kerchief.
4 Two Vials, one filled with honey, the other vinegar. "Tells No Tales." Opened by using the skull.
5 Skull. "Thicker than Water." Opened using the blood vial.
6 Bull Statuette. "Never Boils." Opened using the eye and tea kettle.
7 A small model of a house. "Soothes the Savage Beast." Openable by singing a song. This is the only one you can open at the start.
8 Magic Kerchief. "Mightier Than the Sword" Opened using the ink pen key.
9 A small statuette featuring an eye and a teakettle. "Where the Heart Is." Opened using the house.
10 A small vial of blood. "Taken by the Horns." Opened using the bull statuette.
11 Small Stone: "Worth Two in the Bush." Openable by anyone holding the bird statuette.
12 Clock Piece: "Heals All Wounds. Flies When You're Having Fun. Is Money. Is On Your Side."
If the players should open all of the other eleven pedestals and discover the glass cutter doesn't work, give them a few minutes to stand around acting confused. When they run out of ideas, say, "Fast Forward Button On the World: After about half an hour of arguing in this vein, the box suddenly opens." Let everyone make Wisdom checks, and then pass a note to whoever rolls highest that says, "Reading the placard again, you realize the solution was "time," and the entire puzzle was a red herring." Point out the tapestries and the carpets and wait for the groans and the thrown popcorn.
If they should figure it out, and decide to sit and quietly wait for the box to open, congratulate them and silently resolve to get back at them on the next puzzle.
Depending on how nice you are, you may want to allow wisdom checks to point out that something is "off" with the 12 o'clock pedestal.
Make sure to let us know what your final decisions were and how it goes!
As for puzzle ideas...I'm inexperienced with this, so bear with me. What about puzzles which require resource management? For instance, there is a switch (or clock piece) affixed to a high, inaccesible ledge. Perhaps some innocuous feature in the tower, such as spiderwebs in one corner or a fountain coming from the wall would grant spider climb, and allow them to reach it. Simple compared to the rest of what I've read, but hopefully you can complicate the loose idea a bit.
A strange fate that this thief in the dark should so gorge himself on man's words
His brilliant language and it's sturdy foundation.
Yet, never once would he pause to reflect in meditation,
Poetry, philosophy, and prose, all to serve digestion.
When they try to answer, they find they cannot speak, and won't be able to until they find and destroy a bookworm (a...a magic bookworm) in the dictionary out front.
I intend to steal this--it's good enough, and yet simple enough that it'll work with my players. I hope to use it in a Shadowrun game. Matrix metaphors and astral quests were designed for this kind of awesome.
Maybe something where each times you cross one of them, it disappears, and the exit continually shifts to a different side? I can't think of a way to solve it though.
EDIT: Okay, I was thinking. You have each person walk over a different bridge, until the exit appears behind someone in the party. Then you either leave them to find a way to rescue their compatriots, or place a magic "put stuff back" lever somewhere. The mindfuckery is that they don't know where the exit will end up, and they might gradually panic as they find themselves trapped.
So here I am trying to solve this stupid bridge problem because I've never seen it before and love puzzles, and I get frustrated because I can't find the solution. Giving up I google for the answer, and find that there is no solution... it's impossible. >.<
As for the difficulty of the puzzles, my group does do those quite often, although in general, we don't do it as well as we could. Which is why I'll probably cut out the "clock museum" puzzle. It's fun, but it'll take up way too much time, and I've got one session to run this one-shot adventure. I'll save that one for later.
Regarding the Seven Bridges: I like the idea that the only way to solve the puzzle is to leave one party member behind: here is the idea: when the players enter the room, the seven bridges all briefly flash, then disappear. Once all seven bridges are gone, a portal in the center of the room appears. As they cross a bridge, the bridge vanishes behind them and reappears within a certain length of time. Because of the way the bridges are arranged, there is no way to cross all seven bridges if they move as a single group: they need to leave one person somewhere else to cross over the last bridge and open the portal for the others.
Kudos if they figure out that this is "real life" and not a puzzle, and the obvious solution is for someone with a decent Swim skill to just swim across one of the channels and meet them in the center island. Otherwise, our poor bastard who got left behind sits out the next puzzle and meets them in the staircase afterwards.
Just to make a narrative suggestion, but if you want them to immediately grasp this idea and not assume the bridge collapses are a permanent unresettable fixture, you might consider describing them as "collapsing, then immediately beginning to rebuild themselves magically brick by brick."
Just a little more tactile description to focus them on the real strategy of the puzzle, it popped into my head so I thought I'd comment. Then again, I've had a couple players in the past with rather fatalist outlooks on any problem solving so I tend to think around that these days ("No, the noise you're hearing is clearly the wind, not a trap; it's a cold and windy night. No, not deathly cold, a normal sort of cold. Just relax and let the others keep watch- No, I didn't say they're being attacked, they're just keeping watch, now put your axe down and shut up. Well, if you just set it down by your feet, you're not going to lose it in the dark, now are you?").