Crasical
2011-08-24, 06:31 PM
Designing a dungeon for my group to run through, I've started drawing blanks. Or rather, I don't know how to string the encounters together without making it a blind run without much room for the players to explore... I've got the opening areas thrown together, and I have some ideas for various forces operating in the dungeon, but placing them and pacing them... I need help! :smalleek:
My adventure takes place in a homebrew setting where lots of technologically advanced ruins exist underground, and adventurers are often hired to retrieve them. Artificers and magitech exist, basically.
The Adventure So far:
The adventurers have been gathered with the offer of a job and monetary rewards. They get introduced to one another and their employer, Zheng the Red Minister, one of the vampire officials of the Lotus Empire, in a cave, furnished with food and wine. He initially low-balls them with a paltry bid of gold, opening a skill challenge of negotiation, success getting them a passkey for a checkpoint they must get through and an increased paycheck.
Regardless of success or failure on the Challenge, Zhao politely informs them that one way or another, they will be performing his task, making their way through an etherian ruin and murdering the exploration team that's currently excavating it. He then triggers a pit trap under the table they'd been sitting and eating at, sending them plummeting down. Anyone who is sitting falls without a save, those that are standing get a saving throw to avoid it, though Zhao's goons will attempt to bull-rush them in anyway should they succeed.
When they land at the bottom, a party member has a plot-gizmo from his backstory that will let them unlock a sealed vault door, letting them into a checkpoint room. Unfortunately crossing the threshhold sets off a broadcasted security announcement about the checkpoint being locked-down, and starts a fight. If the players have the keycard from succeeding at the skill challenge, they can bypass this, otherwise they will need to contend with several construct soldiers(warforged), a linked pair of Stonefist defenders, and a construct dog, as well as an automated security crossbow-turret system that can be avoided with an arcana check, disabled with a thievery check, or just destroyed via damage.
Looting the guard room will net them some gold as well as unlocking the far door, letting them into the visitor center, which is not currently occupied by enemies but is in absolutely terrible repair. The players can explore to find some gold, an enchanted crowbar with a 'Silence' spell on it, and a holy symbol of Erathis. However, several floors will collapse if walked on, or buildings will trigger minor rockslides. A patch of doomspore mushrooms are very dangerous to bloodied players, but harmless to those that healed up after the last encounter.
...and from there I've got a blank on where to proceed from. I've got several set pieces and monsters in mind, but I don't really know how to fit them together. I'll list the locations first, then the monsters:
The Outpost Ruins
It's an outpost rather than a full city, but it would have had a lightning rail station, a power generation area to run it, housing and storage warehouses for the merchants, as well as a tavern and inn. It would have been a walled outpost with the checkpoint being one of several leading into the city. The 'Visitor's Center' is there for mechants to visit and stay while they sell their wares or arrange for them to be shipped away via rail.
I want to have them have a fight in one of the generators or a damaged storage section of the power station, so they're fighting as huge electrical discharges occasionally arc through the room. I'm not quite sure how to funnel them into that are though, or what they should fight there. It's another set piece I don't really know how to work into the adventure quite yet.
I'd like to reserve the rail station for the last fight of the adventure, because it gives the players something to follow back to the surface, and the enemies they've been pressured to destroy are there trying to retrieve an important bit of tech from one of the storage cars.
The forces active in the ruins:
1. Forces of Torog. I foreshadowed their appearance as the big obelisk with the holy symbol of Erathis has been defiled with blasphemous slogans and his holy symbol. I'm thinking trapped humans in the outpost who've been corrupted by fungus and mushrooms and turned into shambling monstrocities, possibly chained down or having grown partly into walls in a shrine dedicated to him, Pirates of the Carribean/Davy Jones style. One of the other signs of his presence are centipedes and other crawlies, so centipede swarms would be apropos, as well as possibly something big with the Swarm Shifter template from the undead book attached to it so it's just a giant man-shaped swarm of centipedes rizing from the ground being a visually impressive encounter. A friend suggested that their 'temple' be in the warehouse area, constructed out of smashed/stacked crates covered in mold and full of rats and other creepycrawlies.
2. Etherian Overseer: Using the brain in a broken jar to have a flying/levitating overseer of the outpost that's persisted after it's destruction, think 'Guilty Spark' from the Halo games. One player is an Etherian (one of the people who built this outpost) who was in cryosleep, so it needs to either be so flat out crazy that it doesn't give a damn about him or subtly crazy enough that it 'helps' the party in a way that furthers it's own goals. I really need to give it something cool to do, but I haven't decided what yet.
3. Xiao, a Revenant rogue is leading a mercenary group composed of ... Well, I haven't decided. Either Goblins, Dwarves, Humans, or a mixed group of all three. Maybe even something weirder, like Kenku. (I'm rather fond of the idea of taking the Goblin Sharpshooter and giving him the Mad Alchemist template, so that they have a hand crossbow and 'grenades', and refluffing them as Goblin Commandos.) I'm not sure if I want them to be scouting the area for loot, or all holed up at a central camp, and If I go for a mixed group I'm thinking of having multiple 'leader' figures for each merc band, possibly even with rivalries/hostility toward one another. Xiao is the one that the players need to bring proof of defeat for, and he's operating on the orders of another Red Minister. When Xiao gets to negative HP, he'll surrender and drink a potion to heal himself, then negotiate with the players, who can either kill him and fulfill the contract, leave and ignore their contract, or accept Xiao's offer to decapitate him and take his body to Zheng as proof of contract fulfilled while the goblins take his head back to his master to be raised, then come seek him out so they can start an epic revenge-plot against Zheng. I'm planning on seeing what option they pick before plotting out more of the campaign...
Well, that's probably enough of a wall of text. Any ideas, anyone?
My adventure takes place in a homebrew setting where lots of technologically advanced ruins exist underground, and adventurers are often hired to retrieve them. Artificers and magitech exist, basically.
The Adventure So far:
The adventurers have been gathered with the offer of a job and monetary rewards. They get introduced to one another and their employer, Zheng the Red Minister, one of the vampire officials of the Lotus Empire, in a cave, furnished with food and wine. He initially low-balls them with a paltry bid of gold, opening a skill challenge of negotiation, success getting them a passkey for a checkpoint they must get through and an increased paycheck.
Regardless of success or failure on the Challenge, Zhao politely informs them that one way or another, they will be performing his task, making their way through an etherian ruin and murdering the exploration team that's currently excavating it. He then triggers a pit trap under the table they'd been sitting and eating at, sending them plummeting down. Anyone who is sitting falls without a save, those that are standing get a saving throw to avoid it, though Zhao's goons will attempt to bull-rush them in anyway should they succeed.
When they land at the bottom, a party member has a plot-gizmo from his backstory that will let them unlock a sealed vault door, letting them into a checkpoint room. Unfortunately crossing the threshhold sets off a broadcasted security announcement about the checkpoint being locked-down, and starts a fight. If the players have the keycard from succeeding at the skill challenge, they can bypass this, otherwise they will need to contend with several construct soldiers(warforged), a linked pair of Stonefist defenders, and a construct dog, as well as an automated security crossbow-turret system that can be avoided with an arcana check, disabled with a thievery check, or just destroyed via damage.
Looting the guard room will net them some gold as well as unlocking the far door, letting them into the visitor center, which is not currently occupied by enemies but is in absolutely terrible repair. The players can explore to find some gold, an enchanted crowbar with a 'Silence' spell on it, and a holy symbol of Erathis. However, several floors will collapse if walked on, or buildings will trigger minor rockslides. A patch of doomspore mushrooms are very dangerous to bloodied players, but harmless to those that healed up after the last encounter.
...and from there I've got a blank on where to proceed from. I've got several set pieces and monsters in mind, but I don't really know how to fit them together. I'll list the locations first, then the monsters:
The Outpost Ruins
It's an outpost rather than a full city, but it would have had a lightning rail station, a power generation area to run it, housing and storage warehouses for the merchants, as well as a tavern and inn. It would have been a walled outpost with the checkpoint being one of several leading into the city. The 'Visitor's Center' is there for mechants to visit and stay while they sell their wares or arrange for them to be shipped away via rail.
I want to have them have a fight in one of the generators or a damaged storage section of the power station, so they're fighting as huge electrical discharges occasionally arc through the room. I'm not quite sure how to funnel them into that are though, or what they should fight there. It's another set piece I don't really know how to work into the adventure quite yet.
I'd like to reserve the rail station for the last fight of the adventure, because it gives the players something to follow back to the surface, and the enemies they've been pressured to destroy are there trying to retrieve an important bit of tech from one of the storage cars.
The forces active in the ruins:
1. Forces of Torog. I foreshadowed their appearance as the big obelisk with the holy symbol of Erathis has been defiled with blasphemous slogans and his holy symbol. I'm thinking trapped humans in the outpost who've been corrupted by fungus and mushrooms and turned into shambling monstrocities, possibly chained down or having grown partly into walls in a shrine dedicated to him, Pirates of the Carribean/Davy Jones style. One of the other signs of his presence are centipedes and other crawlies, so centipede swarms would be apropos, as well as possibly something big with the Swarm Shifter template from the undead book attached to it so it's just a giant man-shaped swarm of centipedes rizing from the ground being a visually impressive encounter. A friend suggested that their 'temple' be in the warehouse area, constructed out of smashed/stacked crates covered in mold and full of rats and other creepycrawlies.
2. Etherian Overseer: Using the brain in a broken jar to have a flying/levitating overseer of the outpost that's persisted after it's destruction, think 'Guilty Spark' from the Halo games. One player is an Etherian (one of the people who built this outpost) who was in cryosleep, so it needs to either be so flat out crazy that it doesn't give a damn about him or subtly crazy enough that it 'helps' the party in a way that furthers it's own goals. I really need to give it something cool to do, but I haven't decided what yet.
3. Xiao, a Revenant rogue is leading a mercenary group composed of ... Well, I haven't decided. Either Goblins, Dwarves, Humans, or a mixed group of all three. Maybe even something weirder, like Kenku. (I'm rather fond of the idea of taking the Goblin Sharpshooter and giving him the Mad Alchemist template, so that they have a hand crossbow and 'grenades', and refluffing them as Goblin Commandos.) I'm not sure if I want them to be scouting the area for loot, or all holed up at a central camp, and If I go for a mixed group I'm thinking of having multiple 'leader' figures for each merc band, possibly even with rivalries/hostility toward one another. Xiao is the one that the players need to bring proof of defeat for, and he's operating on the orders of another Red Minister. When Xiao gets to negative HP, he'll surrender and drink a potion to heal himself, then negotiate with the players, who can either kill him and fulfill the contract, leave and ignore their contract, or accept Xiao's offer to decapitate him and take his body to Zheng as proof of contract fulfilled while the goblins take his head back to his master to be raised, then come seek him out so they can start an epic revenge-plot against Zheng. I'm planning on seeing what option they pick before plotting out more of the campaign...
Well, that's probably enough of a wall of text. Any ideas, anyone?