valadil
2011-02-21, 03:11 PM
Alright, so I don't do a lot of dungeons. I think that sticking your players in a hole for 3 months is an awesome way for them to forget the plot of the game. But I'm trying very hard to go against the grain of my old habits, so I've put them in a dungeon.
And now I don't really know what to do.
I'm not going to use spoiler tags, but if any of my players see this, please keep out. You know who you are.
This dungeon is a big extraplanar lock. It must be bypassed to enter the vault and retrieve the MacGuffin. It has a section on each of 8 planes. The sections are similar in layout but not identical because that would be boring. Each plane has a switch to activate. When the right switches are thrown in the right order, the vault in the middle opens up. Straightforward, no?
There are two puzzles to figure out. What switches to throw and what order to throw them in.
Now, I don't want to go with the standard riddle. I've never liked riddles in this context. It doesn't make sense that the bad guys with seemingly limitless resources would design a vault for their treasure and let anyone in if they could solve the riddle. Instead, what I would like to do is have a series of seemingly innocuous clues left out in the open. Individually they don't really mean much, but together they'll solve the puzzle.
I think most of the clues will come from how the bad guys enter the vault themselves. It's rather hazardous so they send slaves to throw the switches. There will be a few escaped slaves hiding throughout the place. They'll have some information, but not much.
For instance one of the slaves escaped on the plane of water. He doesn't know anything else about the dungeon, but he knows that when the bad guys come looking for him, they pass his area twice before returning for a more thorough search. In actuality they couldn't care less about him, the clue is that they have to hit a switch on either side of this room and then hit this one. This also implies that this room isn't first or second.
On another plane there's a group of pirates who are also trying to break in. They claim to know the final element, but haven't figured out any of the rest. They'll offer to split the treasure with the PCs if the PCs can find the rest. If the PCs want to read into it, the pirates are likely camping out the last room themselves waiting to jump whomever knows the sequence and is unlocking the vault. If the PCs make that assumption, they'd be correct.
Unfortunately that's all I've got for clues. I'd like to include some more that depend more on the elements themselves and not just their positions. I've drawn a blank on this one for months though, and game is on friday. So far they've only been to one of the planes, but I really should drop some real clues for them this week.
The planes I'm using are fire, acid, cold, poison, necrotic, lightning, psychic, earth, and water. Technically those are 4e damage types instead of planes (except for water, but that made for a more interesting dungeon than thunder). They loop, so you can go straight from water to fire.
I should also point out that throwing the wrong switch and resting will cause respawns. Some amount of brute force may be necessary to get through the puzzle, but I don't want the PCs relying on it from the beginning.
And now I don't really know what to do.
I'm not going to use spoiler tags, but if any of my players see this, please keep out. You know who you are.
This dungeon is a big extraplanar lock. It must be bypassed to enter the vault and retrieve the MacGuffin. It has a section on each of 8 planes. The sections are similar in layout but not identical because that would be boring. Each plane has a switch to activate. When the right switches are thrown in the right order, the vault in the middle opens up. Straightforward, no?
There are two puzzles to figure out. What switches to throw and what order to throw them in.
Now, I don't want to go with the standard riddle. I've never liked riddles in this context. It doesn't make sense that the bad guys with seemingly limitless resources would design a vault for their treasure and let anyone in if they could solve the riddle. Instead, what I would like to do is have a series of seemingly innocuous clues left out in the open. Individually they don't really mean much, but together they'll solve the puzzle.
I think most of the clues will come from how the bad guys enter the vault themselves. It's rather hazardous so they send slaves to throw the switches. There will be a few escaped slaves hiding throughout the place. They'll have some information, but not much.
For instance one of the slaves escaped on the plane of water. He doesn't know anything else about the dungeon, but he knows that when the bad guys come looking for him, they pass his area twice before returning for a more thorough search. In actuality they couldn't care less about him, the clue is that they have to hit a switch on either side of this room and then hit this one. This also implies that this room isn't first or second.
On another plane there's a group of pirates who are also trying to break in. They claim to know the final element, but haven't figured out any of the rest. They'll offer to split the treasure with the PCs if the PCs can find the rest. If the PCs want to read into it, the pirates are likely camping out the last room themselves waiting to jump whomever knows the sequence and is unlocking the vault. If the PCs make that assumption, they'd be correct.
Unfortunately that's all I've got for clues. I'd like to include some more that depend more on the elements themselves and not just their positions. I've drawn a blank on this one for months though, and game is on friday. So far they've only been to one of the planes, but I really should drop some real clues for them this week.
The planes I'm using are fire, acid, cold, poison, necrotic, lightning, psychic, earth, and water. Technically those are 4e damage types instead of planes (except for water, but that made for a more interesting dungeon than thunder). They loop, so you can go straight from water to fire.
I should also point out that throwing the wrong switch and resting will cause respawns. Some amount of brute force may be necessary to get through the puzzle, but I don't want the PCs relying on it from the beginning.