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Shinizak
2013-10-26, 12:41 PM
Hello Giantitp, I was looking for a brain storm topic on a little adventure my players are going to be subjected to. You see, my players have come across the location of an ancient underwater castle that is very special. What is so special about this castle you ask? Well I may or may not have described it as "a living castle who's layout can be described as surreal at the most straight forward of times." Which is kind of difficult (not impossible, just difficult) to do without some feedback. Mind giving me some ideas for corridors, doorways, rooms, etc.

Here are some important things to know about the castle that are set in stone:

System is unimportant, and I will stat anything made here myself, I want the ideas to be unconstrained by numbers.
The castle is underwater, but the players don't need to worry about air loss or anything unless their magic items or abilities are dispelled.
The castle is build into an old underwater valley where light rarely touches.
The Castle is mostly built into the surrounding valley wall.
At the deepest level there is something called "the room of the Envoy" which contains a horrible cthulhu monster from outside the universe. It also contains an opening to the Far Realm outside the universe
There is an ancient vampire at the bottom who regularly visits the Envoy, he is a Mage of foul, impossible magic that is more powerful than most other living Mages on the planet. the down side is that he is perpetually at incredibly low HP since the Envoy's voice burns away matter. Any time he is back at full HP he goes back for another discussion with the Envoy. this has been happening for 700 years.
The Castle has few servants, but those it has are utterly loyal to their master (The previously described vampire)

The Oni
2013-10-26, 12:50 PM
I would say:

design a lot of different rooms, and swap them in and out when the players leave or come back to an area.

When traveling on the non-Euclidean stairways they have to roll Perception checks or veer off the path into an unintended area.

Every so often have them Will Save or take a small amount of Wisdom damage as the constant restructuring and wrongness of the castle slowly gets to them.

You can either be merciful enough with this to let them eventually find the Room of the Envoy in spite of this, or have the castle be completely and insanely convoluted to the point that they can't progress to the final room until they've found your artifact, some manner of eyewear that allows mere mortals to comprehend the real shape of the castle's interior.

Winds
2013-10-26, 12:52 PM
Sounds a lot like an entry in the Castlevania series. Accordingly, several puzzles could work the way they often do in that series-areas that can't be reached without solving puzzles elsewhere, building style that makes it nigh-impossible for normals to get anywhere inside...

Maybe the Envoy is exacting it's will to prevent intruders from getting around, the effect of which could be lessened or eliminated by certain spells or objects kept by the master...just in case. (It's only logical. You don't live to 700+ by not preparing for foreseeable conflict...and I'd think that someone who loses most of his HP to a 'normal' talk would be a bit concerned by the thought of what it could do in a fight.

The Envoy's power might involve anything from holding doors closed even without locks, to flooding areas, to making the doors and rooms connect in ways they shouldn't, or didn't the last time they were used. And releasing Far Realm beings if it learns specifically where the team is.

awa
2013-10-26, 01:01 PM
I once ran a dungeon with warped spacial and temporal effects some of its traits were. Ironically also underwater
The effects turned on and off when on everything was black and white
If you attempted to move directly at something you moved half as fast when going towards it but not directly and at an angle you moved 50% faster

any objects that leave the pcs hand freeze in mid air when the effect ends it continues traveling as if it just left their hand (a floating grenade was a bit of excitement)

water was a solid object like a wall. Inanimate objects were immune to damge when the effect ended all damage delayed took effect instantly.

Monster native to the effect could move while the effect was off and could not be interacted with until the effect started again.

Slipperychicken
2013-10-26, 01:12 PM
Dark neverending hallways, kind of like the one in the Matrix. You could walk/swim past the identical doors for hours and can't see very far ahead,, but if you ever decide to leave, the exit isn't far behind you. You can do the same thing with a spiral staircase which just keeps going down for ever, but you never reach the bottom.

It looks like a door leads into a room, but when you open it, there's just another door behind it. Open that one, and there's another different door. Open enough of the doors (several dozen?) and it's closed again.

Seemingly endless monsters (or other enemies) pour out from a door. Look inside, and it's just an ordinary closet. A bit dusty, but otherwise normal. The monsters bodies are gone.

You could take levels out of the Amnesia series. Thigns like rooms with chest-deep blood which serve as difficult terrain, and dismembered limbs too.

The PCs seem to have been teleported, each into rooms with N-1 monsters, where N is the number of party members. They each have "separate" battles against their own "group" of monsters. However, they were really fighting each other the whole time. Every round is a DC 20 Will save to throw off the illusion. Ideally this would be through PbP or other private chat to keep the secret better.

"Diagonal" movement might sometimes cost the same as (or less than) "linear" movement. PCs and monsters are encouraged to move in weird zigzagging diagonals.

TheStranger
2013-10-27, 07:02 AM
Non-euclidean geometry would be extremely appropriate, which means you should make a flowchart instead of a map. Don't worry about how the rooms are connected. Do the thing where turning around doesn't bring you to the room you just left. Do the thing where you walk down a long hallway and pass the same room again and again. Have windows that don't look back out on the same valley the PCs entered in, or windows in rooms that should be surrounded by solid rock. Things that are far away should seem close, and things that are close should seem far away.

Remember, the Far Realm is unreality. Your players (not the characters) should be taking San damage trying to figure this out. That said, some amount of cause and effect should be in play, so that they don't conclude that you're just jerking them around and start acting completely randomly because it doesn't matter. Basically, it should be trippy, but still grounded enough that the things that live there can manage it.

Sith_Happens
2013-10-27, 10:08 AM
Don't forget your loops! If the PCs don't eventually end up in a room that's in the opposite direction they've been going, you aren't being mind-screwy enough.

sumptesh
2013-10-28, 02:06 PM
For descriptive language you could check out some of Lovecraft's work, it might also help with some additional idea.

You could also toy with rooms and change the orientation of gravity. The players would need to make dex checks to enter and leave a room or else falter moving in/out of the room. Depending on the connections or possibly falling down the Euclidian stairs could yield some interesting out comes.

Potentially changing the orientation depending on how you enter the room leading to encounters with the party oriented on the ceiling and the enemy oriented on the wall or floor, add an appropriate modifier to reflect the effect of the perception on the effectiveness of the attack.

Brookshw
2013-10-28, 02:28 PM
If you don't mind home brew check this out (warning, cherry picking highly advised)

http://dnd-wiki.org/wiki/100_Far_Realm_Occurrences_(3.5e_Other)

I had a lot of fun using this as inspiration in a recent trip to the far plane. Also agreed regarding geometry, entry hallway is escher room, roll a d12 to see what landing your stairs/door take you to. Don't be afraid to be a bit silly, "you pull the book of the shelf and open it, as soon as you do all the paper in it turn to fish and swim off, then the book animates and tries to bite you". Towers on the outside that don't connect to the inside, portals that jump through the place.

Have fun!

Segev
2013-10-28, 02:53 PM
As an overall theme, when designing, try to put yourself in a mind-set of dream- and nightmare-logic. The Far Realms are realms of psychic horrors beyond the ken of man. The Astral Plane may be the "realm of thought," but the laws of that place are not "whatever you think of." The Far Realms have no rules, no laws, save those the mindscapes of the otherworldly entities create.

This castle is not in the Far Realms, but it sounds like it's greatly warped by one specific overwhelmingly powerful Far Realms entity - this Envoy. The castle should thus reflect laws and logic relevant to the thought patterns, subconscious desires, and nightmare-like dreams of the Envoy.

They should follow a narrative path, mixed with associative-thoughts based travel. The geography and architectural sense of the place need have no bearing on physical sensibility. Backtracking is impossible not because the world shifts behind them, but because the world never was solid there to begin with.

Try to design the progression through the castle in much the way you think of a song in your own mind. When you think of a song, you can sing it forwards, but trying to sing it backwards is really, really hard (if you can do it at all). That's the kind of cardinality of direction there should be. Attempting to "backtrack" may take them conceptually backwards, but it shouldn't take them to the same place. It should always be "forwards," even if it is not towards the original goal. Maybe they wander into the first verse again, but still are taking it "forwards" despite having tried to go back through the end.

Re-use elements from prior rooms if they seem to echo in the players' actions. Let sections of hte castle become disconnected and self-contained while they worry the same notion, even allowing them to see themselves as floating in an air bubble about the place. The way out should be breaking the geophysical and narrative cycle, like trying to drive a song that you only know part of out of your head.

Play off their own obsessions, IC. Don't make rooms that "belong to [player X]," but have things that are weird make more sense as a player character interacts with it, and it starts to reflect his expectations at times. But have that be as often a trap as a way out; the Envoy's dreams warp the player characters' world into nightmares, but they're IN them.

Establish some hard-and-fixed narrative "laws" of the Envoy's outlook and perspective; apply them consistently as laws of physics across the place. These should be the only fixed and unchanging surreal elements, aside from the narrative journey-structure that keeps travel through the castle flowing like a song, in the adventure. These represent the Envoy's nature. They aren't in the Far Realm; they're in an overlay of the portion of it as shaped by the Envoy on top of an ocean-bottom palace. It's not chaotic; it's warped to unnatural laws.

Fayd
2013-10-28, 03:35 PM
When you are that far underwater, directions lose their importance. (especially when breathing isn't a problem). Think in three dimensions; A hallway may turn "up" instead of right or left, completely 'normally.' It would get disorienting too; if rooms are solid cubes with exists in the same directions, if you get hit by a current and spun, it may be difficult to know which way you've come and which way you've gone.

That's another hazard to consider too: Current. It will pull and push them in particular directions, and with the aid of magic they don't need to make any sense. It could pull them to a particular space, turn them around, disorient them...

anyway, hope my ramblings help.

Segev
2013-10-28, 04:50 PM
Currents are an excellent point. I'd like to add something to that idea: the Envoy might well breathe. And, being a Far Realms thing, it might breathe more like a creature with lungs than one with gills, despite breathing water.

Currents that flow back and forth periodically can make navigation tricky, and would point towards and away from the Envoy at all times. And they'd only get stronger the closer one got.

Magesmiley
2013-10-28, 05:21 PM
Currents are an excellent point. I'd like to add something to that idea: the Envoy might well breathe. And, being a Far Realms thing, it might breathe more like a creature with lungs than one with gills, despite breathing water.

Currents that flow back and forth periodically can make navigation tricky, and would point towards and away from the Envoy at all times. And they'd only get stronger the closer one got.

An interesting twist on this might be waves of reality-altering effects that periodically flow by with these currents, and which grow ever more powerful the closer that they PCs get to the source (aha - a way for the PCs to find their objective through the madness of the castle).

Magic might flare and weaken at various times. The water might boil or freeze, or even temporarily cease to be water (imagine if the Pcs were suddenly swimming through what amounted to a massive gelatinous cube). Gravity could play tricks. Vision could be warped so that thigns 10' away can be seen, but not thigns closer. Etc.

5a Violista
2013-10-28, 10:40 PM
In spooky castles, there's some really cool things I love to throw in:
- Shadows dancing at the edge of vision. Sometimes, they're just nothing; sometimes, they're monsters that slowly get closer to the characters whenever they're not looking.
- Weird blue torches that still burn underwater, in a certain room. However, they go out whenever someone goes too close to them, and they light up again when distance is put between them. This is really cool when creatures are coming down a hallway; the only way the characters can know it's happening is that the torches suddenly go out.
- A fey-like woman who looks forlorn and is desperately looking for somewhere to wash bloodstained clothes. Even though she's underwater, she still can't find somewhere to wash them. She talks with the PCs but doesn't attack them.
- Skeletons with a chain around their leg. They're undead, yes, and they try to attack the PCs, but they can't move further than a certain distance from the wall due to the chains.
- Then, you surprise them with another creature who is chained up, but the chain goes on and on into the darkness...and isn't really attached to anything.
- And so on.

Segev
2013-10-29, 09:31 AM
You know, tweak some of the conventions of cartoon logic in Spongebob Squarepants, and you can make some surreal oddities. In particular, consider how often the characters use sinks and wash their hands in water poured out of them. And have various beverages which behave like liquids do in air, despite the whole thing being under-water.

ReaderAt2046
2013-10-29, 07:49 PM
A few suggestions:

1. The heroes encounter a minor character playing the violin, except that the sound isn't coming from the character but from somewhere further into the castle.

2. A room which is partially full of water. The rest of the volume is filled with air, but the air is on the bottom and the water on the top. Everything else behaves normally, but the air and water behave as if gravity were inverted.

3. A room with some furniture and mooks in it, with one wall a mirror. When the heroes enter the room, they realize that they don't reflect in the mirror, though everything else does.

3b: For added weird, part of the way through the fight, a new person (possibly the aforementioned Mage) appears in the reflection, but not in the real room. If they smash the mirror, they find just another wall.

4. Torches. Burning underwater.

5. A room with "slews", currents of spatial flux that cause players to be moved a certain number of spaces at the top of the initiative order. Mark out in advance where they are and which ways they point, then don't tell the players why they are moving, just that they are.

6. A room where everything except the PCs acts as if gravity were inverted. Chairs on the ceiling, candelabra hanging straight up, etc.

7. They enter a largish, empty, room with the Mage standing on the other side. What they don't know is that the entire room is an intricate maze made out of invisible walls, so they can see him but can't get to him.

8. Doors that connect different rooms going one way than going the other. (I.e. you're in the library and there's a door leading into the den. You pass through it, but from the other side, it clearly connects to the kitchen. You go through again, and you are in the kitchen).

Darcand
2013-10-29, 09:01 PM
Playing with time and space!
-Make the players write down everything their characters say, then read them back in random order three rounds later.

-Gravity that affects each person differently; one character walks on a wall, another the floor, and the rest the ceiling, but everyone views their room as being right.

-Go old school and have combats where none of the miniatures are allowed to move and the players have to keep track of where everything is in their heads. Leave the minis frozen on the board like a bad MMORPG lag spike the whole time and update the scene every 1d4+1 rounds.

-A fight against multiple enemies set in 10 parallel dimensional rooms, every round everyone moves 1d10 "rooms" along the spectrum.

-noises down a long hallway, when the PCs reach the source they realize it was their own voices that they heard.

-rolling a 20 perception check requires a will save vs wis damage.

Darcand
2013-10-29, 09:08 PM
Playing with time and space!
-Make the players write down everything their characters say, then read them back in random order three rounds later.

-Gravity that affects each person differently; one character walks on a wall, another the floor, and the rest the ceiling, but everyone views their room as being right.

-Go old school and have combats where none of the miniatures are allowed to move and the players have to keep track of where everything is in their heads. Leave the minis frozen on the board like a bad MMORPG lag spike the whole time and update the scene every 1d4+1 rounds.

-A fight against multiple enemies set in 10 parallel dimensional rooms, every round everyone moves 1d10 "rooms" along the spectrum.

-noises down a long hallway, when the PCs reach the source they realize it was their own voices that they heard.

-rolling a 20 perception check requires a will save vs wis damage.

AMFV
2013-10-30, 12:43 AM
One thing that helps me with atmosphere is to have a lot of effects that have no direct gameplay bearing. OOC you can have the players make many many unnecessary spot and listen checks (or your system's equivalent.) Make sure that there are many rooms that seem to be obviously trapped, but are not.

As far as overall weirdness, you could do like a Zork maze thing, where rooms don't always lead back to the same rooms and doors are flexible. Also play with time a lot, have time flow differently in different places and try to split the players up (that's always fun), you could also make temperature variations, even in the same room, have it range wildly in temperature, with no real mechanical effect. Have the players occasionally lose equipment and then refind it later in other rooms, a spooky thing (don't overdo this though). Periodically switch whether the rooms are on the upper or lower floors. Have background sounds, like voices in other languages or backwards but when they get there there is nothing.

Those are most of my off the top of my head suggestions.

Rabidmuskrat
2013-10-30, 03:01 AM
You should also be thinking what it is that the players must accomplish. Must they kill the Envoy? I'm thinking a being with the ability to destroy matter just by speaking might be on the level of a lesser deity and beyond the characters. Or at least, he should be beyond the level of the characters.

The Far Realms aren't evil, they are just... Tuesday. With added sprinkles. Perhaps make the Envoy a 'puzzle' to be solved, not a monster to be smacked. As in, how do you escape his room before it decides to begin explaining inverse quantum theory to you (wis damage) in a matter destroying voice (hp damage). The true enemy would be the vampire which is encountered shortly after bypassing the Envoy.

I'm thinking the Envoy itself, whatever it looks like (mass of writhing tentacles? Perhaps a bit conventional) is of indeterminate size. His entire room is of indeterminate size. He is on the horizon and distance is difficult to determine, and it appears to get no closer as you walk closer to it. Escaping the 'room' would involve closing your eyes and imagining the exit right in front of you, then stepping forward or something. Be sure to drop some hints about it though, and allow things like teleport or such to work as well. Perhaps in the things he says. I would think how to leave is the first thing he says to new visitors.

Fouredged Sword
2013-10-30, 02:42 PM
A door that opens into a rose garden under the open sky, surrounded by circular tall obsidian walls. There are 5 doors along the wall, one you came out of, and 4 more. Two suns, one red, one yellow, sit above the horizon. Magic doesn't work in this space, and the walls are too hard to climb out.

The area is safe, and there are no threats or challenges. This is simply a transition area between spaces.

Seriously, alter the area. This place is a hole in the world, and it crosses many areas. Make 3-5 different areas that work under different rules. The party should be encouraged to learn the rules and determine ways to move forward.

Areas made of glass and crystal, that all living things are invisible per superior invisibility. Blind beasts with unseen jaws and scent hunt through the crystal halls.

A dark cave that all light is 1/4th as bright, and darkness clings like mist. Darkvison and low light vision do nothing. The creatures here have long reach and pull your characters into the dark. The creatures themselves cannot see in the darkness though, and perhaps the safest thing is to hide in the darkness.

A space that everything is red, blue, or yellow. Red and yellow things are incorporeal to one another, but blue things can interact with everything. The party discovers that they are red or yellow, and must overcome faceless golems of various colors, some with the ability to change color at will.