Love the starfish pool. The tarbaby trap is simple and perfect if the sound of creatures approaching promptly ensues. Wish I'd thought of it.
I'm realizing that the whole "you wake up in the dungeon" is elegant in a lot of ways, cuts to the chase, but also has all kinds of intrigue already built in: "How did we get here?"
Wish I could claim the Man of Wounds but that one is Roger the GS': http://rolesrules.blogspot.com/ I'm gonna' have to come up with a suitably clever and creepy monster so you think of it next insomnia session. :)
I like this. It could be a dungeon that exists in a singular micro universe and the only way to enter it is through a dream or the PC's smoking some mystic herb.
I ran this earlier tonight for a couple Red Box Vancouver regulars. They went from the lower right corner straight to the Frost Witch, but she stalled them long enough to get away, then they fought their way back out through the snow leopard men, who had no luck attacking the metal-clad cleric. We had fun. Thanks.
so many squiggly dead end corridors. I'm thinking the dungeon is the inside of a giant stone starfish: the oracles are its ossified dreams, or gallstones. Eventually it poops you out together with some of the evil supplies that float, and you have to explain how you came to be clinging to some wooden torture device to the ship full of pilgrims that picks you up.
April 5, 2011 at 12:30 AM
[Image]1-You woke up here, Jesus, the floor...how does this keep happening? Is there even an exit to this place? Sometimes they make them without exits--you know that, right? Fucking lunatics. What do they even do with these? Dungeons. What did you fucking build these places in some era before the sun cooled down and you were afraid to go outside? Anyway yay surprise you're in a dungeon.
2-This room is full of fucks. They're drunk.
3-This is the room where they hang out and laugh at you for trying to come through the trapped door to the--like, what is that? southwest. Yeah. Mmmm, what is it? mmmm...Reverse door--trying to open it via the handle activates a paralyzing needle trap (and opens the door so they can laugh at you), pushing on the other side opens it clean. Of course then there are all the Snow Leopard men, so what are you gonna do?
4-This is obviously some room no-one gives a fuck about since you can just walk right in. There is a corpse here with needles all up his right side though--and an axe in his face--and his right hand outreached as if to open a door. Maybe soft-pedal that, DMs.
5-This is your mom. Seriously, not a changeling or a face-thief, this is actually your mom, PC. I bet you thought there was going to be some loot this far in. What's she doing in here? I don't know, you have a DM, right? I'm giving him or her a whole effing dungeon, least s/he/it can do is decide what your mom is doing underground one room over from a bunch of drunks. Or were they fucks? Wait, scroll up--drunk fucks, ok. Anyway point is things look bad for your mom. Probably deal or lose points for bad role-playing.
6-Again: Why am I up this early and why am I writing a dungeon? anyway Room 6 must be the beginning of a secret lair because it's behind a portcullis and there's a secret door (in a rather obvious door niche if I do-say-so-myself first-random-dungeon-software-Google-gave-me) behind it. This must be like some guards. No, okay, it's a monster they stuck here. This is that large blue toad on the far right of this picture and it's all hulky and gross and for each 5 hit points it takes it will launch a little gross toad at you out of its bubbling back that will try to pull body parts off you and return them and glubblegub them back into the flesh of the original toad and that heals it. Also has big teeth (the original toad).
The Snow Leopard men sometimes come out of the secret door and throw fat bloated mutant flies to it. Getting past the portcullis requires one of those bend bars/lift gates rolls from page one of the PHB or else being smarter than me when I wrote this.
7-This room has a beer and a pastrami sandwich from Canter's on Fairfax. Oh my god I wish. Actually no it has an illusion of food. It's olfactory and visual and covers up some sort of tarbaby trap thing. Generally that means you're stuck here until he Snow Leopard men or the toad find you and try to eat you but hey maybe write a d20 chart for who finds you and what they do instead.
8-Oh it's behind a secret door. Cracks in the walls. Shoving reveals...millions of gold pieces worth of rare albino iguanas. Only they keen with an unholy wailing noise that Snow Leopard men are really good at hearing when touched. They are only worth gold if you can get them back alive. Also not many people really want to buy pet albino iguanas so you won't be able to sell them all to one dealer in one city. May require some hexcrawling. Plus how far from civilization are you? Fuck if you knew, you woke up here.
9-This is obviously some prisoner. (Who laid this place out and how high were they? Oh, it's an ancient repurposed whatever so, y'know--waves hand--) This is a lonely princess. In her stomach is a small, undigestible sliver of the Moon. If you ever find that out I'll be amazed.
10-Snow Leopard man guards. 2d4? Too many? d4+1? Ok, d4+1. The trapped door to the south is just like the one south of room 3.
11-Oh my god how many more rooms are there? I asked the mapping thing for a "small" dungeon...ok this room is actually a gigantic oven. What's being cooked? You don't find out until room 18 because seriously why does the mapping software put room 11 next to 18?
12-Evil supplies.
13-This is the room where they breed the fat mutant flies. They eat them as grubs and the toad eats them as flies. Actually, did you know that the Carrion Crawler is just the pupal stage of a giant black fly that tries to kiss you and suck the air from your lungs? Each Crawler splits into two flies at gestation. So anyway point is this room is just a ball of grub Carrion Crawlers and some rotting vegetation for them to eat. Opening the west door too hastily will cause them to fall upon you. (Why not just have a carrion crawler as a guard and forget the Toad? Shut up, mythic underworld, remember?)
14-This room is full of Hate. Literally. The frost witch who rules these particular Snow Leopard men believes in removing their berserk hatred in order that they can function more efficiently as a fighting unit. This room is all carved and rune-y and stuff and there's candles and anyway if you walk in here you feel hate for whatever you see.
15-Almost done I hope. What's in here? I don't know...spare weapons. Worth some gp I guess. A torch? Stuff stolen off dead people. Some random lame amount of gp.
16-Concealed behind this secret door is The Oracle. It's a greenish-bluish pool-viscous. You drop something in it and it spits back information about it. The information appears in the form of a whispering starfish. You have to put it right next to your ear. Going down in the pool is crazy and you get glommed onto by all these smart starfish and it's weird.
17-This is where the Frost Witch is hanging out in Maximum Polar Frazetta style. She is protected by a man of wounds which is some monster from either rules rolls roles or Telecanter and I am too tires to link anyway you know about google already or you wouldn't have found this blog while looking for porn so I'm gonna just assume you can handle it, already, kiddo?
18-Kitchen. Full of half-dead carrion crawler grubs and leopard men trying to butcher them. Was it worth it? Man I'm tired...
The next level should have a little statue of Demogorgon behind a hidden door that if you touch it then maggots pour out (of the statue not the door) that is the beginning of a big underground temple the witch is down here looking for and also a room that if you stand in the circle in the middle of it you fall in love with whoever you see.
"Why Am I Awake And Writing This Dungeon?"
8 Comments -
i think you stumbled across something... trying to make sense of such a random dungeon layout, it's more of a Dungeon Degenerator.
no exits. no sense. just self-contained navel-gaze-maze with traps and secret doors.
really love the whispering starfish sages.
April 4, 2011 at 10:24 AM
"What did you fucking build these places in some era before the sun cooled down and you were afraid to go outside?"
Yes, but there were forty of them, so it was pretty hot out.
April 4, 2011 at 10:26 AM
Love the starfish pool. The tarbaby trap is simple and perfect if the sound of creatures approaching promptly ensues. Wish I'd thought of it.
I'm realizing that the whole "you wake up in the dungeon" is elegant in a lot of ways, cuts to the chase, but also has all kinds of intrigue already built in: "How did we get here?"
Wish I could claim the Man of Wounds but that one is Roger the GS': http://rolesrules.blogspot.com/
I'm gonna' have to come up with a suitably clever and creepy monster so you think of it next insomnia session. :)
April 4, 2011 at 10:29 AM
I like this. It could be a dungeon that exists
in a singular micro universe and the only way to enter it is through a dream or the PC's smoking some mystic herb.
Might have to steal this from you ;-)
April 4, 2011 at 11:47 AM
5 hardcore gamers said: "cool!"
682 others was too afraid / disgusted to say a word.
April 4, 2011 at 2:36 PM
I would like to see a random table that generates the sort of Evil Supplies you think are helpful for committing Evil.
April 4, 2011 at 8:09 PM
I ran this earlier tonight for a couple Red Box Vancouver regulars. They went from the lower right corner straight to the Frost Witch, but she stalled them long enough to get away, then they fought their way back out through the snow leopard men, who had no luck attacking the metal-clad cleric. We had fun. Thanks.
April 5, 2011 at 12:08 AM
so many squiggly dead end corridors. I'm thinking the dungeon is the inside of a giant stone starfish: the oracles are its ossified dreams, or gallstones. Eventually it poops you out together with some of the evil supplies that float, and you have to explain how you came to be clinging to some wooden torture device to the ship full of pilgrims that picks you up.
April 5, 2011 at 12:30 AM