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View Full Version : The dungeon that is a puzzle



RealMarkP
2014-04-09, 07:18 PM
I want to run an idea by some of you because it's complex. Comments, suggestions are always welcome.

My players are a bunch of Engineers. Problem solving is in their blood. So, I have cooked up an idea that will surely drive them mad.

Purpose: The main purpose of this dungeon is to serve as a "lock" to a vault. If you can get past it, you can have the loot. The secondary purpose is to provide a skill-based challenge for the players.

Description: It's a dungeon that is comprised of a series of closely-packed rooms, say, about 25 of them. The walls of all the rooms touch the walls of other rooms. Each room has at least two doors (sometimes up to five or size) that lead to adjacent rooms. Rooms are not always square.

What I plan on doing is making the dungeon dynamic based on the actions of the players. At the beginning there will be a switch. The switch toggles the dungeon layout. Each room gets toggles from A to B and back to A again (unless occupied).

Each room, with the exception of the starting and ending room, will have two states. The switch will control it. Any unoccupied room has it's layout toggled between the two states. Occupied rooms stay constant as to not trap the players. Door locations stay constant, but the contents of the room will change. This can be anything from walls being in different places to the floor changing from stone, to lava or acid. Or, the room could be full of water in one state, and a bottomless pit the next. One could be full of positive energy, another negative... The possibilities are numerous.

Some rooms will have stairs going up to other rooms, which if switched in a particular order, can actually create an environment similar to an Escher painting (http://www.crystalinks.com/EscherAscendingDescending.jpg). I'm thinking, for the sake of making it logical from a mechanics perspective, each room is a pocket dimension of some sort and the doors just toggle between the dimensions.

Other than the environmental challenges each room can present (ie. cliffs, traps, lava, etc), what kind of creatures would live here? The dungeon is a series of pocket dimensions, so food and life might be difficult to come by? I'm thinking that the adventurers of yesteryear got trapped here and their ghosts are wandering aimlessly. Oozes are always fun.

Target level is 2-4.

Suggestions and comments are welcome.

Living_Dead_Guy
2014-04-09, 08:01 PM
My first thought is that it might be to easy.

If the only control is in the starting room then at least one person needs to stay there. With each room having a binary state you can look into the room and if there is any visible hazard, yell back to flick the switch and then flip it back in 10 sec. That way one person can enter the room and prevent it from returning to a hazardous state. The party strings out and investigates as much as possible while mapping. With only 25 rooms reaching the end will not be difficult, unless 1 you can not hear anything from room which the door is closed. 2, You have to navigate all 25 rooms which will string out the party.

My biggest suggestion would be to add some combat, if the players are having difficulty it relive some stress and give them time to think things through while doing something else.
Allow the controls to be taken with them. It will be a dull session for the person taking orders in the beginning room, let them all explore.
You may need to clue them into the fact that hazards will not return if the room is occupied. I would never take the chance to discover that rule on my own. Without that rule though the dungeon would be much more difficult if not impossible.

I'll try to think of more tonight. It would be nice to see a map and key.

RealMarkP
2014-04-09, 09:15 PM
A few points, some you touched on already.

1. I'll make the button transferable. It might be a good plot hook that draws the party to this particular dungeon. I'll see to it that some information be given.

2. When the doors are closed (and they automatically close when the button is pressed), you can't communicate since each room is it's own pocket dimension. I don't believe there is any spell at low levels that allows communication over dimensions.

3. I'm having trouble coming up with ideas for what types of creatures they can face in this dungeon. Oozes and the reanimated bodies of slain adventurers might be a few, but I'd like some variety. I'm relying a lot on the terrain itself to be a challenge (ie. one door being 50ft higher than floor, large pits, spikes, etc).

4. The party won't know the different layouts before hand. They will have to discover each room and it's binary counterpart as they go. Also, there will be a "fog of war" effect when the button is pressed. Essentially the rooms won't be visible if doors are closed.

5. You put far too much faith in my party's ability to map things out :). They have not done it thus far, and I doubt they will be carrying parchment on their characters to draw the dungeon out.

6. This will be the final level of a dungeon; there will be plenty of combat prior to this.

J-H
2014-04-09, 09:37 PM
What happens if they prop doors open or run a rope line through the doors behind them?

Bestiary:
Trolls
All undead
Creatures summoned upon entrance to a room
Basilisk(s)
A Doppleganger (if the party splits)
Anything plant-based (fungus, Myconians if they still exist, etc)
A water-based room could tie in to a small water-based ecology with Skum, Merfolk, etc.
Giant/monstrous bugs
Will-o-wisp
Vargouilles

Anything with a normal diet and metabolism could be fed by a Create Food trap (or similar device) but would probably be rather mad from boredom.

stupiddDice
2014-04-09, 09:52 PM
Make sure that you are very concise with your descriptions, while the puzzle may look relatively straightforward from a top level view, it is a different matter for your players. Just be warned that there is a high risk that they could spend hours on this if they just can't figure it out.

Or they could solve it immediately, who knows.

Living_Dead_Guy
2014-04-10, 04:47 AM
From what you've added I would suggest changing a couple of things the first is not making them pocket dimensions.

If you were to run it as a 5x5 room layout the party would be able to use logic to solve the puzzle.


http://i884.photobucket.com/albums/ac43/MihrYazd/55Empty.jpg


By making each dimension separate you are presenting them with a total of 48 rooms that follow no logical progression and would be a nightmare to map.

Example
The starting room would be labeled 1, it has 2 doors and can't be toggled.
Door 1 leads to room 2A, which is a lava filled room were they can see 6 doors.
They can close the door, toggle the switch, and now its room 2B a water filled room with 3 doors (or is it the same 6 from 2A?)
Door 2 leads to room 3A a negative plane that drains life, and has 4 doors.
They can close the door, toggle the switch, and now its room 3B a positive plane filled room with 3 doors (or is it the same 4 from 3A?)


http://visalakshiramani.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/040726-5x5.gif


To make things worse you know your party doesn't map things out. It may take several sessions and I think it will be solved by luck not logic. I foresee the party becoming lost and frustrated. Finally there is no alternative solution if the party can't solve the puzzle. The barbarian may want to use his hammer and smash the walls down. Each room being their own dimension this would have dangerous consequences.

I will add more after work.

Storm_Of_Snow
2014-04-10, 08:00 AM
Ever seen the movie Cube? Six completely unrelated people wake up in a 3-D maze of identical rooms, some of which are filled with lethal traps, others move around, and they have to work together to get out.


If they'd stayed where they started and waited, they'd have got out easily, as they were in the room that regularly moved to the position next to the exit. And the stress of the situation causes them to turn on each other, to the point where the only person to escape is an autistic-savant man.


There was also a sequel and a prequel I think, neither of which I've seen myself.


3. I'm having trouble coming up with ideas for what types of creatures they can face in this dungeon. Oozes and the reanimated bodies of slain adventurers might be a few, but I'd like some variety. I'm relying a lot on the terrain itself to be a challenge (ie. one door being 50ft higher than floor, large pits, spikes, etc).

Undead, yes. What about golems or other non-living monsters?
A Gelatinous Cube and/or other scavengers to deal with corpses
Illusions?
The last surviving members of a previous adventuring party, who're completely insane.
Trolls (as they can regenerate, would they suffer from starvation?)
Water Wierds and similar magical constructs if you have water based puzzles (say there's a room with a fountain and they need to divert the water from it into a barrel or other container to weight down a platform so they can get to a door).
Elementals?



6. This will be the final level of a dungeon; there will be plenty of combat prior to this.


That's kind of worrying, if they're going through a combat zone and suddenly hit a point where thinking it through predominates, there could be a massive shock to the system.

Anyway, some ideas for other things you could try:
Move the rooms around
Have the characters teleported between rooms
Use illusions to present the idea that people vanish from a room they've just entered, or other magic so that they are not in exactly the same reality as each other (think of Kirk trapped between dimensions in The Tholian Web).
Split the characters up when they enter a room, so that character A has to do something to allow characters B and C to continue, then B does something which allows C to continue, and A has to do something else, then C, and A has to go back to the first thing and undo it... Especially if you have a character trying to do something that they don't really have the skills to do, and thus have to approach it laterally in some way.
Use multiple toggle switches - big switch #1 makes some changes, then big switch #2 makes others and reverses some of #1s, big switch #3 makes more and sets other changes into a third state...

The biggest issue is probably going to be keeping the states of everything accurate for yourself.

If you ever saw The Crystal Maze (late 80s/early 90s British game show originally hosted by Richard O'Brien - if not, there's probably extracts or maybe even whole episodes on certain video hosting sites), there's probably some ideas for puzzles that you could use in that.

Talos
2014-04-10, 08:49 AM
Ok here is my concern, You say your target levels are 2-4. some of these rooms with acid or lava will have DoT damage. your Mages and thieves and cleric will be in trouble. If you make them alternate dimensions like you say will your clerics or churchy type people be able to contact (i.e pray for spells and such) their deity to get prayers answered. A water filled room would be dangerous too no water breathing spells at second level. I believe.

I love the idea though. I think for a low level party you as the DM will have to be very forgiving.