Help creating a memorable dungeon.

[Zvendels]

Hello.

I will be running a dungeon crawl with 4-5 players, level 3-ish, soon. I wont be planing too much for the session but I want to have some encounters ready.

The setting for the session will be an old dwarf fortress that has recently been discovered by treasure hunters and people from all over are gathering, but only the PC's know how to get into the juicy parts of the fort with all the treasures and fat monsters.

What I want are some good, fun rooms. Riddles, traps, strange monsters anything really. Even a half assed ideas are welcome, anything to get me rolling.

Thanks!

[GilesTheCleric]

Have you looked at some pre-generated sources? Many of the MMs have example encounters alongside the monsters that are pretty decent.

[Zvendels]

I admit, I haven't looked around much, really looking for material that players have tried before and enjoyed. I will sit down and create it tomorrow hopefully, just looking for ideas, and if I'm lucky some work I can use.

[Segev]

Remember to make most of the halls only 6ish feet tall. Dwarves are Medium, but short for it, and a 6 foot ceiling to them would be about the same as an 8 foot ceiling to humans and elves.

This may impose an environmental penalty on two-handed weapons wielded by Medium (or larger) creatures other than dwarves, perhaps -2 to hit?

In the wizard/alchemist lab, there should be half-completed magic items, designed to use experimental alchemical alloys that will take some questing to get the proper ingredients for. Give the party wizard and crafter(s) some ongoing goals to advance towards.

It may also create some mystery, especially if it starts to have a "they left in the middle of the work day and never came back" feel.

[Zvendels]

Thanks for the post Segev,

Great idea with the crafting quest, I will use this for sure.

[GreenETC]

Have a final boss for your Dwarf Fortress. (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ex/20060704a&page=3)

messed that up woops

[Zvendels]

Have a final boss for your Dwarf Fortress.


I think your link is broken, just sends gives me google.

[ArcturusV]

I tend to homebrew a lot of monsters, so I can't really tell you monsters out of the manual that are fun to use. I avoid them like the plague usually.

As a general hint? I'd try to avoid any "Puzzle"/"Riddle" rooms if at all possible. Those things NEVER go well. It's a pain in the ass, brings the game to a screeching halt, and no matter how "obvious" you make the answer, your players will take 2 hours to get to it.

As for things to include? One thing I'd suggest is a scratch armory. This can give a lot of flavor, and if the status of the fort is a "mystery" can drive some narrative impact. What you have is a bunch of impromptu forges. Looking like someone just hastily slapped together rocks and coal to do it, hardly dwarven standards. Include some weapons that are of clearly subpar quality. Maybe they break on a minimal damage roll, or have a -2 to hit. Show places where people had apparently been melting down things like silverware, candle sticks, jewelry, etc, to provide for raw metal ingots. The place looks like it's been ransacked, there's signs the doors and windows (If any) had been barricaded, and the barricades sundered.

This all paints this picture of a last, desperate stand where the Dwarves were literally doing anything they could to arm themselves and make sure what last survivors were there. No bodies int he room might be telling. If you include some odd things like... an unusual number of carved, stone figures in the fortress, it might even make players paranoid about Gargoyles and the like. Even if that wasn't what it was. Maybe it was just goblins and they took all the bodies to feed the babes in the warrens, who knows? But that sort of spooky room can really put players on edge.

[John Longarrow]

If you don't mind using something I had in a previous game, have the PCs encounter a chapel that has been burned to ash, is littered with Dwarven skeletons, and has evil runes carved into the walls. Place smells like an old barbeque joint.

Succubi came here and converted the dwarves to her god of "Happiness and friendliness", then cooked them alive to become a Lillitu.

Have some incorporeal undead hang around, left overs from the de-dwarfing process.

[unseenmage]

Hidden Teleportation Circles that send party members to semi-random locations in the dungeon could be fun. Especially if the party can turn around and use them offensively.

Wondrous Architecture from Stronghold Builder's Guide and Lair Wards from Draconomicon can be a lot of fun too without breaking your game since they're normally not removable from the dungeon.

For your crafter's you can place Animated Objects made of special weapon and armor materials that can be salvaged after the fight with a simple mending or make whole spell.

[danzibr]

From a campaign I'm running:

The Dwarves made a big (colossal) vehicle type thing to fight some evil or otherwise just for self defense. Big monster comes, party has to fight it. Different party members control different parts of the machine, pulling certain levers do certain things, can cast spells or shoot stuff out of it.

[Segev]

Maybe have a sub-sub basement (they're dwarves!) have a semi-flooded floor, and a shaft leading down from that a dozen feet or so. No more than 20. If they explore down there, the one place they'll find corpses in the whole thing is in an open (but otherwise undamaged) Aparatus of Kwalish that has a pair of dwarven skeletons.

Perhaps whatever they found while exploring this underground aquatic cavity had something to do with the fortress's abandonment...

[GreenETC]

I think your link is broken, just sends gives me google.
Thanks, I typed the words twice. It's fixed now, and it's a link to a Dwarf Ancestor, a stone guardian who protects the resting places of important Dwarves or Dwarven monuments.

[atomicwaffle]

define 'memorable'

they will definitely REMEMBER shocker lizards and blink dogs.

[Pokonic]

I once made a giant dungeon that was actually a giant glass cube in some ocean or another, connected to the outside world with portals.

The enemies were simple orcs, but the glass...broke when to much damage was applied to it. This resulted in things. Things like the Kraken waiting outside for the PC's beating on the walls just enough for cracks to be made.

[Zvendels]

Thanks, I typed the words twice. It's fixed now, and it's a link to a Dwarf Ancestor, a stone guardian who protects the resting places of important Dwarves or Dwarven monuments.

Thanks, this is perfect!

[Zvendels]

define 'memorable'

they will definitely REMEMBER shocker lizards and blink dogs.

Shocker Lizards and Blink dogs sounds fun, I'm trying to get some of the players into roleplaying, I want more than just goblins and kobolds, creatures like blink dogs and shocker lizards are pretty much what I'm looking for. Something that is a bigger challenge than hitting a creature a couple of times.

[Zvendels]

Maybe have a sub-sub basement (they're dwarves!) have a semi-flooded floor, and a shaft leading down from that a dozen feet or so. No more than 20. If they explore down there, the one place they'll find corpses in the whole thing is in an open (but otherwise undamaged) Aparatus of Kwalish that has a pair of dwarven skeletons.

Perhaps whatever they found while exploring this underground aquatic cavity had something to do with the fortress's abandonment...

Good idea, I can have a whole different approach when mapping the water supply part of the fortress.