Post/Author/DateTime	Post
CookieFiend 04-02-07, 10:31 PM	Ok so I'm starting a campaign based on this one giant dungeon that has a mind of its own. I think of it as a giant underground Rose Red (Steven King) I just wanted to hear your ideas on a huge ever-changing dungeon. How do I keep players from going to far into the dungeon without blocking them off. I've got some good blocks for low levels but once the wizard gets Dimension Door, thats all over. Also some good adventure ideas would be appreciated. I need ways to incorporate my main minion. He's the first villain they meet and is a slime lord, who commands the clean up crew for the dungeon. Any idea's on ooze ideas Plus I need something thats driving all the lesser monsters out of the dungeon This creates my first encounters with fleeing monsters then cleans out the dungeon for bigger monsters. I was thinking some sort of power just reactivated the dungeon. The problem with that is why hasn't some bigger NPC just destroyed it, If you got any ideas to help me plz share.
GoriceXII 04-03-07, 03:12 PM	One thing that comes to mind is a film from over ten years ago called Cube. I don't know if you've seen it but it is a perpetually shifting dungeon, in effect. (spoiler below) All the rooms are made of what seems to be glass panels set in metal that are perfectly cubical. At midsection of each side (including floor and ceiling) is a metal door with a bar shaped handle which upon turning causes the door to pull to the side. There are rungs along two sides of a short tunnel that leads to the next door which on being opened reveals another cubical room. All the rooms have a faint light glowing through them which is a different colour in each case. Along the little tunnels are regular bands of metal on which are written numbers that at a glance appear to all be patterns of prime numbers. However in some of the rooms there is a trap. They are activated by various means--sound, pressure, change in temperature, etc. The traps are deadly--it is possible to dodge some of them but they are all killer traps like: 1. A sort of metal curtain mesh rises swiftly from the floor and is razor sharp so as to slice the victim to little chunks. 2. A similar one but it drapes down like a net and tightens 3. A panel opens and acid sprays in the direction of the doorway. 4. A panel opens and fire blazes across the doorway path. 5. needle sharp pike length steel rods suddenly just out of nearly every panel in the room, all aimed towards the center. Another insidious thing is that the rooms MOVE. There is a constant groaning and rumbling sound that you can't figure out until you realize that you may have been going full circle. Like a gigantic puzzle the macro cube keeps moving and adjusting itself. It is possible to avoid the pattern and get out but extremely difficult. Around it is an unbreakable shell which has space enough to allow the cubes to move and adjust. At a certain point there is a door out--so you have to find a way to be in the right cube room at the right time for it to align with the door.
Return of the Flumph 04-03-07, 03:26 PM	Th dungeon itself could be driving the lesser monsters out to make room for more powerful, worthier minions. If this is an intelligent, self-regulating dungeon, blocking the PC's off shouldn't be hard to do. It can move walls into position (think of the ambush from the first Matrix movie), flood certain rooms or levels, open chasms in the floor, grow walls of fire in doorways, or just rearrange the hallways to make them nearly impossible to navigate (until the PC's return with the appropriate spell, at which point they will make much progress, until the dungeon designs a new obstacle). Think of the Metroid games, only have the landscape deliberately shift to hinder them.
Kyle_the_DM 04-05-07, 12:45 AM	Dang, beaten to Cube. I designed a shifting dungeon that really through m players of once, but it was also kind of hard to run on my side as well. Here's what I did: I used a random dungeon generator (Jamis Buck's) and randomly made 36 relatively small dungeons and printed them on card stock. Then I cut them out and divided them in to stacks of four and numbered them 1-4 in each stack. Every time the dungeon shifted I rolled 1d4 for each of the nine areas and layed down the corresponding map. The random maps don't line up right and connect all the time but if you leave a 5' space in between the areas you can fudge a hallway and connect them. It didn't take much on my part to get on my players' nerves that's for sure. A Deepspawn would be a cool monster to have inside the dungeon. It could pump out a ton of different monsters or even humanoids to pester your players.
Sylvaroth 04-05-07, 01:46 AM	I seem to remember a product that describes such dungeons as the final life phase of doppelgangers!?