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View Full Version : Your most memorable/interesting dungeons



Snarfmite
2011-03-29, 04:24 PM
As an addition to my "most memorable encounters" thread, I'd like to hear about the most interesting dungeons you've designed or played in. This could include relatively straightforward dungeons in which an interesting situation occurred. I'm especially interested in terrain and layout, and encounters designed around these.

I haven't run any particularly interesting dungeons so far, so I'll be easy to top, but I might as well start the thread off. I ran a dungeon with a few ideas inspired by or directly lifted from The Book of Challenges. Standard dungeon fare, until a cavernous room with a collapsed bridge extending part way to the other side of a ~40 or 50 foot chasm.

Near the end of the bridge (before the collapsed part) was a rock with strange engravings. A few gargoyles were perched above the entrance to the room, but hidden due to the way the ceiling was shaped. As soon as a few of the PCs went to investigate the rock, the gargoyles swooped down and tried to push them off the bridge. One PC fell down, and was attacked by a Carrion Crawler in waiting. The rock turned out to be a Mimic, which suddenly attacked the other PCs near the edge of the bridge, while the gargoyles continued to harass the PCs with arrows (the party cleric flew and engaged them in some aerial combat).

After narrowly succeeding in that encounter, the PCs found a way to cross the chasm. A few hallways later, the party rogue decides to swig some vodka. The party then comes to a room with a talking door (another mimic, unknown to the party). It tells them to step right up, and answer a riddle. a DC 12 sense motive would tell them something's weird, and sense motive is exactly what our drunk rogue tries to do. She would have succeeded if sober; instead, she senses nothing wrong and runs up to the door, falls in a 20-foot pit trap, and the door (mimic) jumps down after her and starts attacking her, while some gargoyle archers open fire on the party from a side room.

Needless to say, the party was paranoid for a few more sessions that anything and everything they encountered could be a mimic.

dsmiles
2011-03-29, 05:05 PM
One word:

UNDERMOUNTAIN :smallcool:

Tyndmyr
2011-03-29, 07:53 PM
Well, I don't remember it, but my players still refer to "The time when the DM got drunk, and we found all the magic items in the giant beehive".

Akal Saris
2011-03-29, 08:19 PM
My players still talk fondly about "Verminaard's Gauntlet," when they discovered that Verminaard, one of the main villains from Dragonlance, had survived the fall of his fortress and set up a gauntlet of skill and battle challenges deep within Undermountain. Failure in the gauntlet meant death and forfeit of your items, victory meant your choice of three magical items from previous victims. Usually the gauntlet included a game like chess or checkers, a fight against an illusionary doppelganger of the PC, a test of quick thinking, and a battle against a really big opponent like a giant or purple worm.

It was popular enough that another PC later ran it extensively in his own game :smalltongue:

Serpentine
2011-03-30, 12:06 AM
I have two of mine here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=156812) - Morndrax's Labyrinth and the Temple of the Trickster God - all ready and set to go. Dunno about my players, but I'm quite fond of them.

Snarfmite
2011-03-31, 04:19 PM
I have two of mine here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=156812) - Morndrax's Labyrinth and the Temple of the Trickster God - all ready and set to go. Dunno about my players, but I'm quite fond of them.

I've actually seen these posts before, and I plan on running at least one of them. I appreciate you putting the effort into having these things online.

Silus
2011-03-31, 04:50 PM
Personaly, i think my most memorable would be a self-made dungeon/campaign called "The Mad House". I borrowed pretty heavily from the book/movie 1408 and mixed in quite a bit of Lovecraft stuff. As the DM, it was pretty darn fun to run.

veven
2011-03-31, 04:57 PM
I have two of mine here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=156812) - Morndrax's Labyrinth and the Temple of the Trickster God - all ready and set to go. Dunno about my players, but I'm quite fond of them.

Serpentine, your dungeons are amazing! What did you use to make the map for the Temple of the Trickster god?

Serpentine
2011-03-31, 11:11 PM
I've actually seen these posts before, and I plan on running at least one of them. I appreciate you putting the effort into having these things online.Yay! :D Let me know how it goes.
Serpentine, your dungeons are amazing! What did you use to make the map for the Temple of the Trickster god?Adobe Illustrator, and lots of time.
I sketched it out on graph paper first, though.

slaydemons
2011-03-31, 11:16 PM
first one was the one I played in as I died before I could enter the dungeon Dm was nice and let me revive for free (though I know now he was doing the rolls wrong) it was really cool though, he had some sort of magic orb thing that gave us a magic item three orbs getting absorbed by mundane items to become awesome items yeah way cool, also discovered how to really work exp much later after that .

Trellan
2011-04-01, 10:57 AM
A group of players and myself still joke about the "tower of awesome". It was a short dungeon, just a collapsed tower that only had one story left; about 8 rooms in total. It was meant to be a level 1 "mission" that was serving to ease the players into a bit of a homebrew setting.

Now, their employer had informed them that the tower had some interesting research in it, but it was infested with nasty little creatures called moldlings. The things aren't much of a threat, but she is a researcher, not a fighter. Their job is to simply clear the place out so she can get the information she wants. Cut to the tower. The party leader lays out buffs and gives everyone the game plan: clear the tower out fast because his buffs only last a couple of minutes each (homebrew magic system). So, they knock down the first door, barge into the room, and find... nothing. Just an empty room with two doors. Immediately, the party leader chooses the door on the right and barrels through it. The rest of the party follows into... another empty room. But there's another door! Rinse and repeat for about four rooms, and they're at a dead-end with no monsters in sight.

Yeah, thing about moldlings is that they're small constructs. Basically rubble that absorbed enough magical radiation to gain minor sentience. They remain inanimate until something comes near them. Something like a group full of adventurers tearing rapidly through four rooms. Since they hadn't stopped for even a single round in any room, they hadn't had a chance to see the things rising up. They aren't alone in the last room for long. They manage to fight their way back out to the entrance, dragging two unconscious party members out the door, and I cut them a break by randomly deciding the moldlings won't leave the tower. Seemed a logical enough thing to me.

So, they go heal up, rest for the night, and come back the next day. This time, the party leader informs them as they leave their base of operations, they will slowly clear out each room. One by one. So they buff up again, open the door, walk into the front room, and are instantly surrounded by all the moldlings that had simply dropped back into rubble when they left. A couple rounds later, they're dragging unconscious party members out the door again and thanking their lucky stars that the little beasts aren't following them.

They go and heal up again, and storm back to the tower. Their characters are getting pissed (not the players, mind you. They were having a blast. If they were upset, I would have just had the moldlings go back to their original rooms). These things are pretty much the giant rats of this world. They're tiny, they reek something awful, and most people see them as nothing more than pests. And they've handed the party their collective behinds twice now. The party leader stands in front of the door, gives a rousing speech, buffs everyone, opens the door, and promptly gets hit by about a dozen earth bolts (homebrewed magic, akin to magic missile). All the ruckus he had caused while less than five feet away from most of the moldlings had, you guessed it, woken them up. The rest of the party slammed the door shut and healed him out of unconsciousness.

Fourth day, they healed up again, planned AT their base, and finally cleared out the room (they had been gradually thinning the numbers with all but the third attempt).

I kept worrying they'd call foul during the whole thing, but, luckily, they had just as much fun as I did. What was supposed to be a piddly level 1 side mission turned into almost an entire night of campaign and has been largely remembered as one of my best dungeons ever... why can't I do that with the dungeons I put actual effort into? :smallfrown: