Obnoxious Dungeon ideas

[Falcon X]

Make no mistake, this topic is about me being a horrible person to my players. And you can help!

The goal: Create a series of dungeons and cities that destroy a player's dignity and hope in life. Each one should be themed in a way that no sane DM would subject his players to. The dungeons are to be deadly, offensive, or absurd. The only way the players will get through this game is by accepting things as they are and figuring it out.
Bonus Points: State a secret item/power they might find somewhere else to help them get through a particular dungeon. They might have to play this Mega-Man style.
Bonus Points 2: If you can provide some logic as to why this dungeon is the way it is.

Examples:
1. The Cave of Explosive Bees: Just what it sounds like. This is a cave full of all sorts and sizes of bees, and they all suicidally hurdle themselves at the PCs and explode in fiery death. It's a hive mind and the players have to kill the mother bee.
- Might find a vaccuum cleaner and an indestructible bag to put it in. Suck up those small bees before they explode.
- Detect insect spell: because knowing where they are is half the battle.

2. City of the Overzealous Religion: I'll have to think up the tenets of the religion, but think of it like "Westboro Baptist Church became the rulers of a city and then contract madness ratings that slide them towards murder and genocide." Of course, the religion will be one that is normally very good, like the church of Pelor. Your job will be to root out what is causing the problem and murder it.
- The cult is caused by an evil furry demon. I'm thinking Greed from the webcomic Jack (for the gods' sake, don't look it up. Suffice it to say, he is an anthromorphic animal who rules part of hell.)

3. Dungeon of Intruding Tentacles: Yeah, let's not discuss this one online.....
- Magic items include protection and expulsion.

[JumboWheat01]

2. City of the Overzealous Religion: I'll have to think up the tenets of the religion, but think of it like "Westboro Baptist Church became the rulers of a city and then contract madness ratings that slide them towards murder and genocide." Of course, the religion will be one that is normally very good, like the church of Pelor. Your job will be to root out what is causing the problem and murder it.
- The cult is caused by an evil furry demon. I'm thinking Greed from the webcomic Jack (for the gods' sake, don't look it up. Suffice it to say, he is an anthromorphic animal who rules part of hell.)

I approve of an over-zealous religion, where you need to set things down/right. Made more interesting if you have a character that follows that religion.


Anyway, don't forget, obnoxious doesn't mean deadly! Have a dungeon built by gnomes with a lot of good ol' fashioned bucket-o-water traps at doors, pie flinging traps, and other weird things of the like. Their dignity is your plaything. Play with it!

[Aembrosia]

Not the tomb of horrors but the tomb of inconveniences. Everywhere you walk is uphill, if you turn around after walking a short distance uphill the path behind you is magically uphill. There are small invisible blocks of stone scattered throughout the dungeon. You have difficult terrain and have to move slowly (quarter movement) to avoid constantly stubbing your toe. Alright, now that we're moving nice and slow wheel in the stirges, rocktopi, oozes uhhh blink dogs and displacer beasts. There will be a chromatic teleportation circle on the ground in every room. It will spell out the word of another color. You must say either the word of the color or the color of the word before you take an action everytime you take an action or it sends you individually back to the entrance. There is no way to know which is which untill trying. Dont forget the order.

[Douche]

In one of my favorite RPGs of all time, Arcanum, there's a particularly annoying hallway in this one dungeon... It's gotta be like 500 feet, with another trap every 10 feet. First trap, you're like "Ah, snap, silly me". Second trap "Darn it, I just got hit by a trap, wtf?". Third trap "Alright this is getting ridiculous. There can't possibl-" Fourth trap "GODDAMN IT!"... Unless you leveled detect traps, or learned the spell, of course. Then you just walk right by it all.

It's right before the end of the dungeon, so it's not like it ruins everything cuz you're done right after, but it is pretty ridiculous. It also makes sense cuz there's a dwarf at the end, who has been holed up here for decades protecting himself from all the monsters in the rest of the dungeon. He actually gets pissed off at you for setting off all his traps.

And by the way, if it's your first time playing the game, your gear most likely all be broken by the end. Some of the traps (particularly the explosive ones) damage your gear durability... Not to mention there's a lot of stone golems & a fire golem that will mess up your weapons - although axes & hammers don't take as much durability damage from hitting the stone ones... but if you only bought a fancy sword, kiss it goodbye. You're gonna be punching golems by the time you're through with this place. Couple that with the fact that you can't repair items that are fully broken in that game (only things above 0 durability) means that a lot of people lost a lot of shiny gear thanks to that dungeon.



You might also find some inspiration in Sens Fortress, from Dark Souls. It's one big obstacle course of traps. As soon as you walk in the door - boom, pressure plate! Daggers in your face! There's a bunch of pendulum scythes on narrow catwalks, throughout the place, often with lizards standing out of reach throwing lightning at you. One section of the fortress just has you running for your life behind a giant boulder. Oh, and it's the first instance of a mimic in the whole game - so the moment you find a chest you're elated, only to have the thing EAT YOUR FACE. Not to mention the elevator that will slam you into a spiked ceiling if you miss your stop, more pressure plates, and a giant on the roof that throws exploding cannonballs at you. Great fun, the whole thing.

[Aembrosia]

How could i forget rust monsters. Hungry, no, starving, hyper intelligent rust monsters born without the ability to feel fear.

[Falcon X]

Anyway, don't forget, obnoxious doesn't mean deadly!
Good catch. These dungeons can be tame or horribly deadly. The key word here is obnoxious.


Their dignity is your plaything. Play with it!
Sir/Madame, it seems like we understand one another.


Not the tomb of horrors but the tomb of inconveniences. Everywhere you walk is uphill..
I might play this idea around with a series of monsters I came up with for an Aboleth's temple.
Morkoth (http://www.bogleech.com/dnd/morkoth.html): This creepy little guy is great. He lures you into his spiral tunnels which hypnotize people so he can much on them while they are still alive. Try to pull out some good Lovecraftian imagery.
I used this once. My players were sleeping for the night by an old bridge. One of them found a door under the bridge that opened to a small room with a pool of water and the symbol for one of the Demon Lords on the wall. Turns out this was an ancient ad-hock temple by some trolls. They also found a water-breathing device (that it took them way too long to figure out how to use, and there was only one...).
Swimming down into the pool, they found a lizard cave and an underwater puzzle. Getting through the puzzle, they swam into a tunnel that spiraled in an odd manner.
Eventually the underwater tunnel opened into a large room with tunnels branching off from it that all spiral and get smaller. As soon as they start looking around the room and notice the tunnels, they all make a will save or get hypnotized. If they all get hypnotized.... well... you're going to have to find a way for someone to get another will save.
The Morkoth attacks hit and run from sides the conscious people don't expect so they only get little flashes of what it is.
If they survive, one of the tunnels leads to the actual shrine (or the way forward, if it's a larger complex).

Meenlock (http://www.bogleech.com/dnd/meenlock.html): So, this guy is incredible at stealth. He picks ONE of your party members and telepathically taunts the character to try to drive them insane. They might think you are just utilizing insanity mechanics. Eventually, it lures the character off on their own or drag the person off in their sleep. Then, the person is turned into one of them...

Blindheim (http://www.bogleech.com/dnd/blindheim.html): Because how fun is it to fight creatures that make you blind?

Suwyze (http://www.bogleech.com/dnd/forgotten.html): Pretty weak enemy, but with one key ability. Anyone attacking it is made to see the attack through it's perspective, feeling fear of the adventurers who are trying to kill it. It's a magical guilt-trip attack!

Death Minnow (http://www.bogleech.com/dnd/forgotten.html): It's a small guy, but it swims up to you and all of a sudden it's mouth gets big enough to swallow you, which it does. Then, it turns back to it's normal size. Rumored to be made by Aboleths.

Flumph (http://www.bogleech.com/dnd/flumph.html): Because after all you put them through, they run into this thing and won't be able to be convinced not to kill it :)



...there's a dwarf at the end, who has been holed up here for decades protecting himself from all the monsters in the rest of the dungeon. He actually gets pissed off at you for setting off all his traps.
And by the way, if it's your first time playing the game, your gear most likely all be broken by the end.
Love the ideas. This guy reminds me of a dwarf I once made for 3.5. He had an obscure class variant from Dragon Magazine called Demolitionist. Basically, it applied Sneak Attack to structures and constructs, which meant I applied it to sundering weapons and armor. With an Adamantine War Pick, he was quite impressive.
Sample battle: Dwarf sunders armor, cleaves into sword, cleaves into now-low-AC enemy face. (Yes, I chose to interpret it that way.)

Maybe he could have some pet rust monsters and the trap structure you talked about...

[Yagyujubei]

How about a dungeon where every floor, ceiling and wall was made of indestructible trampolines? aside from being totally obnoxious, it would be ridiculous fun I bet too lol

[lylsyly]

built by gnomes with a lot of good ol' fashioned bucket-o-water traps at doors, pie flinging traps, and other weird things of the like. Their dignity is your plaything. Play with it!

I love this :Thumbsup: A level full of Taunting Kender who keep disappearing when you get too close ?

[Pfhagthyeh]

A long-haul dungeon of multiple layers in the forest, inhabited by Rust Monsters and Arumvoraxes (little gold-eating badger monsters) and starved dire beavers. Some of the minibosses include more powerful rust monsters, maybe a xorn or two, and powerful oozes. The traps all include needles, acid, and smashing/crushing things. At some point there should be a spellcaster who loves to cast Shatter. The final boss? Of course, it's a black dragon (of appropriate age for the party level). Above the dungeon's door is an inscription in elvish that reads "Kiss your stuff goodbye."

[imaginary]

There is of course the obvious Escher (https://www.google.com/search?q=esser&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj-v-WNn_fPAhXnqVQKHXJvAvYQ_AUICCgB&biw=1493&bih=920#tbm=isch&q=escher+illusions) dungeon filled with illusions and circular logic.

One idea that sprung to mind is a dungeon full of cursed magic items. Imagine having to fight through animated versions of all the various magic items in the DMG. And the worse part is not being able to use any of them.

[Mitth'raw'nuruo]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labyrinth_(film)

[JAL_1138]

From an older thread, allow me to present The Room of Gygax.


The Room of Gygax:

The floor has three Trappers on it, a patch of brown mold, and a puddle of water with a Crystal Ooze in it.

Two walls have two Living Walls each; the others have two Grey Oozes each.

One of the two statues of screaming demon faces on the wall near the exit has a Sphere of Annihilation in its mouth. The lever to open the exit is in the other. The sphere of annihilation is unique--it does not destroy inanimate objects, such as 10ft poles, polearms, iron spikes tied to a rope, etc.; only creatures are harmed. Unseen Servants, Mage Hand spells, Telekinesis, summoned creatures, and animated objects cannot interact with either statue; it is as if each was protected by an impenetrable, invisible dome extending about a foot in front of the statues.

The exit is set into a 10x10 recess with a Gelatinous Cube in it.

The ceiling has four Lurkers Above, four Piercers, and a patch of green slime.

In the entry hall before the room proper, paralytic gas will take effect after 3 rounds (no save). Characters will detect their movements feeling sluggish before escape is impossible. On the 4th round, characters fall prone, completely paralyzed but conscious. On the 5th round, a large stone oliphaunt statue on large stone rollers will flatten anything in the entry hall, reducing anything in it to chunky salsa. If the edition uses death saves, the characters fail them automatically. (Note: Polymorph and Wild Shape in certain editions will not help. The character will revert to their natural form upon the initial squashing, still be paralyzed, and then be squashed again by the statue's second roller).

There is a false door on one wall of the entrance hall which, when opened, will fire a spear like a crossbow bolt. Dex save to avoid. The spear travels to the other side of the room in a straight line and vanishes if it does not impact a character or creature. If the spear hits, the character must pass a Con save (or Fort save, or save vs. poison, depending on edition) or die. The trap resets when the door is closed again.

The room has five chests in it. One contains a poison dart trap (cannot be disarmed from the outside of the chest), save vs. poison (or Con or Fort save depending on edition) or die. Another contains twenty venomous snakes. Another contains twenty Crawling Claws. Another summons a scimitar-wielding skeleton which attacks the party. The final chest is a Mimic.

The hallway past the exit has four Rust Monsters and a Carrion Crawler in it.

[Gastronomie]

The Realistic Castle, ideas taken from actual castles in the Japanese Sengoku era. Re-fluffed as a Hobgoblin fortress or something.

The first point to note is that straight after crossing the moat bridge, the gate entrance does not directly lead into the castle itself. Instead the path in front of you turns to the left (or right).

But before you can actually get to the corner, there are guard posts lining the path on both sides, firing from above through holes in the walls of the second floor (it's impossible to attack back, unless you have something like Fireball, because the entrance to the guard post is on the other side). The only reason the adventurers don't die on the spot is because they have sackloads of HP that unrealistically allow them to endure being shot by arrows and guns dozens of times.

And if you do manage to get to the corner, first you will be shot from behind (again, from the guard posts), and next, there are foot soldiers who come ambushing you from the side, readied beforehand and hiding just around the corner.

And after killing the foot soldiers, you realize there's another corner upcoming. You feel like going back home. After being peppered by bullets/arrows/firebolts again from both sides of the road, you turn the corner - and again, there's a corner.

And you haven't even got into the castle yet.

See, there's a reason why it's often said that in war, the attacking side needs three times the soldiers of the defending side to successfully conquer a stronghold. In real life, it's impossible for a random band of adventurers to really take over an enemy fortress, unless the fortress is created to be as stupid and easy-mode as possible.

In a high-magic campaign, there will also be Glyphs of Warding everywhere, and say, there will be Casters in the guard posts, who will use stuff like Counterspell and Hold Person to troll the infiltrators. Faerie Fire will be triggered upon any intruders coming inside, since invisible enemies are truly terrifying for strongholds. ...And so on. Spells like Earthbind might also be used. Even the spells that are terrible for player characters are invaluable in actual war.

[Gummibaer]

They have to bring a Giant Goat to the end of a dungeon filled with Lava pits, traps and stationary monsters. The Goat has a fear mechanic so it moves away from the Players and they have to do it sheperd Style or the Goat moves right into the next Lava pit.

[Herobizkit]

In one of my favorite RPGs of all time, ArcanumArcanum is an amazing game full of rich theming and strong mechanics but a HORRIBLE interface. I wish I knew programming; it totally deserves a remaster.


You might also find some inspiration in Sens Fortress, from Dark Souls.Sens Fortress can go S a D and die in a fire. Don't make your players do a Sens Fortress. One trap and suddenly they're creeping and searching every 5 feet til the game's over.

Back to the OP:
Make a cube maze, 80' (16 squares to a side) crafted mostly out of cheese (walls) and crackers (floors). Bonus points for using different colored cheese to mark certain areas.

Also, they have no tools, so they must dig with their hands and/or eat their way through.

Also, the cheese is on the table of a Giant.

[JumboWheat01]

Back to the OP:
Make a cube maze, 80' (16 squares to a side) crafted mostly out of cheese (walls) and crackers (floors). Bonus points for using different colored cheese to mark certain areas.

Also, they have no tools, so they must dig with their hands and/or eat their way through.

Also, the cheese is on the table of a Giant.

...I need to share this one with my DM.

[Falcon X]

They have to bring a Giant Goat to the end of a dungeon filled with Lava pits, traps and stationary monsters. The Goat has a fear mechanic so it moves away from the Players and they have to do it sheperd Style or the Goat moves right into the next Lava pit.
Goats and Lava! I like this idea a lot. Horrible themes can be memorable.



Make a cube maze, 80' (16 squares to a side) crafted mostly out of cheese (walls) and crackers (floors). Bonus points for using different colored cheese to mark certain areas.

Also, they have no tools, so they must dig with their hands and/or eat their way through.

Also, the cheese is on the table of a Giant.
This sounds great, though it conjures up several different ideas.
1. Are you inside the maze with really high cracker walls? If so, when you reach the sides, does gravity change (like Acheron), or do they have to drop or dig downwards?
2. Do they have to dig through the whole thing, only stopping when they come to walls, then having to change directions and dig another way?
3. Can there be a magic that requires you to EAT the cheese as you dig? (Note, that much cheese is not fun on the bowels)
4. What is the negative of having it be on a giant's table?

Now I'm picturing a party chewing through a maze for days on end, diarrhea-ing about once an hour. This is a layer of hell itself.
I think you've won best idea so far.

[LunarDrop]

There's a dnd green text out there somewhere about a dungeon with unlimited mimics. The rug is a mimic, the chest is a mimic, the ladder is a mimic.

[CursedRhubarb]

You could be evil and make them run a version of the Water Temple from Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Lots of finding keys to doors that can't be picked, Strength checks to move heavy object so hold switches, torches that need to be lit to open doors or passages but if the water rises they get snuffed out. Forcing them to try and solve the puzzles and deal with swimming and changing the water level to go back and forth over and over will drive them mad. Only to be rewarded with a boss fight where they have to get it out of the water to whittle it's huge hp pool down and all it's attacks are low damage, but either grapple, throw, or knock them about the room. 😀

[Aett_Thorn]

I am building a one-off story for my group that is the home of a Gnomish Artist, that also happens to be a wizard skilled in Illusions and Enchantments.

The party can pretty easily obtain a map of the house, mainly because it doesn't matter, as the doors from room to room do not lead into the next adjacent room, but move the party around the house fairly randomly (at least that is how it will appear). Also, there are many things that the party will need to use the Investigate skill to find, but also plenty of items where Investigating will lead to additional challenges (such as being sucked into a painting of a labyrinth, or locking them into their current room until the can answer certain riddles). There will also be "artworks" around the house that are actually things like golems or gargoyles, while others are just ordinary artworks but they do various things if they are damaged, such as summoning elementals that are mad that their "house" just got destroyed. Basically, the plan is to make the party so jumpy about any decision that they may try to skip over various parts of the house, only to find that they actually needed something from four rooms ago and they need to go back.

However, I am peppering in a lot of fun things as well. So despite the house being frustrating, it will also be enjoyable from a meta-game perspective. Many items do silly, prankish things, like causing the character's underwear to disappear, or cause the whole party to be attacked by animated cream pies. There are also several illusionary enemies in and around the house that have different effects based on how well the characters attack them. So, for instance, I have an axe-wielding barbarian illusion. If a melee character scores a really good hit on it, it disappears and causes them to overbalance, and fall into the lake below. However, if you just barely get a hit on it, it simply disappears.

[JumboWheat01]

You could be evil and make them run a version of the Water Temple from Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Lots of finding keys to doors that can't be picked, Strength checks to move heavy object so hold switches, torches that need to be lit to open doors or passages but if the water rises they get snuffed out. Forcing them to try and solve the puzzles and deal with swimming and changing the water level to go back and forth over and over will drive them mad. Only to be rewarded with a boss fight where they have to get it out of the water to whittle it's huge hp pool down and all it's attacks are low damage, but either grapple, throw, or knock them about the room. 😀

Oh come on. Even evil DMs have standards they don't cross...

[CursedRhubarb]

Oh come on. Even evil DMs have standards they don't cross...

But it's so tempting...

[JAL_1138]

Oh come on. Even evil DMs have standards they don't cross...

Yeah. Evil is one thing, but there's a line. The Water Temple (have to throw in my obligatory catchphrase: WATER=BAD) is so far past the line it's in another zip code. And I say this as someone whose favorite published module, as both a player and a DM, is the original version of the Tomb of Horrors. :smalltongue:

[Aett_Thorn]

You could also go with the idea of giving the players a dungeon where there are absolutely no enemies. Make fully detailed rooms, elaborate places where enemies should be hiding, plenty of evidence of monstrous occupation, and a decent helping of ominous noises. By about the tenth room the players should be so paranoid that something big is coming that they'll just start fighting themselves.

[Falcon X]

You could also go with the idea of giving the players a dungeon where there are absolutely no enemies. Make fully detailed rooms, elaborate places where enemies should be hiding, plenty of evidence of monstrous occupation, and a decent helping of ominous noises. By about the tenth room the players should be so paranoid that something big is coming that they'll just start fighting themselves.
I like this idea. I like that my players get to the end and say, "That was it? We just spend 4 hours making useless search checks. That was the stupidest thing I've ever done. I hate you."

Of course, I like to add, several dungeons later:
- "How are we supposed to beat the dungeon of intruding tentacles."
- "You guys were too stupid to find the magical belts of nil-impregnation. Baron von Vladingtonham made them for his daughter because she was a ******* (Loose woman)."
- "Wait... Baron von Vladingtonham? You mean that stupidmansion that we spent 4 hours exploring with nothing in it?"
- "Yeah, on the twelfth floor, there was a wall you had to bust down. I marked it with an X."
- "I don't remember an X."
- "There were two candlesticks laying across each other to form an X."
- "It was the dude's junk room. There was stuff laying every which way everywhere."
- "Not my problem. Maybe you should have been paying attention..."

[edit] The item needed from Baron von Vladingtonham was the key item to beating the water temple.

[CursedRhubarb]

The dungeon without enemies sounds fun. What about adding two wands that only work in the dungeon, one of Flesh to Stone and one of Stone to Flesh. Toss in pressure plates that require a very heavy weight to press so they have to keep petrifying each other to get through. Easy puzzles only needing 1 petrified, and hardest leaving all but one person petrified to solve it after having to stone/sunstone people multiple times. Toss in some other things like while one is held down, the next room is affected by a reverse gravity spell so they have to press a switch on what was the ceiling.

[smcmike]

3. Dungeon of Intruding Tentacles: Yeah, let's not discuss this one online.....
- Magic items include protection and expulsion.

Dungeon of the Grabby Hands - every surface is covered by stubby orange hands that grab and grab, sort of like the coat-hangers in Willy Wonka, only worse.


Actually, a dungeon entirely based upon Willy Wonka would be pretty obnoxious, particularly if the Oompa Loompas sang each time a party member was picked off.


Or, Dungeon of the Moral Quandaries - no fights, no puzzles, just endless ethics hypotheticals and judgy looks.

DM: You enter a nursery full of baby orcs. What do you do?
Player: Um, I'm not killing any babies today. We'll just pass through.
DM: By ignoring the baby orcs, you have consigned them to a slow death by starvation. Change your alignment to chaotic evil, monster.

[SLIMEPRIEST]

Check out "doom cave of the crystal head children" by james raggi. I just ran it for our old-school game. It frustrated them until they made a huge mistake and annihilated themselves. Tpk. It for osr but you could easily convert it and it's free.

[Falcon X]

Or, Dungeon of the Moral Quandaries - no fights, no puzzles, just endless ethics hypotheticals and judgy looks.

DM: You enter a nursery full of baby orcs. What do you do?
Player: Um, I'm not killing any babies today. We'll just pass through.
DM: By ignoring the baby orcs, you have consigned them to a slow death by starvation. Change your alignment to chaotic evil, monster.
So beautiful. If my players weren't already monsters, this would be great.
On second thought, one of the monsters is a paladin. I think this could be good.

[N810]

Wizards tower full of mimics,
tables, chairs, chest, doors, lamps, brooms, ceiling, floor, walls, rooms, npcs, etc...

[DMThac0]

Tower of the Fourth Wall

What if Deadpool and She-Hulk were narrating a D&D campaign as Players?

Player conversations that are RP based have no impact on the actions of the game. OOC chatter will work, referencing a players character sheet, anything 4th wall breaking.

Player: I sneak attack the kobold, I rolled a 17.
DM: Nothing happens.
Player: As in the weapon passes through him or what?
Player 2: I think it would be cool if we could just toss this kobold at the rest of the enemies and topple them like bowling pins.
DM: The kobold shoots across the room knocking all of the rest of the enemies behind him around....

If an out of game object ends up on the map it then becomes something in the game. Many an adventurer knows about the evil, colossal, and furry cat dragon of lore.

Phones, television shows, radio, anything in the real world is fair game to introduce into the dungeon.

[Breaklance]

Teleportation traps just everywhere. Send you back to the beginning of the dungeon or back to town or to the middle of nowhere.

introduce a suicudally depressed npc who also has a superiority complex so basically Marvin the robot from hitchhikers guide to the Galaxy

In one set of rooms play sound effects. Rimshot any joke made. Play studio applause or the "aww" sound. When players disarm a trap make a game show sound "Bing Bing Bing" and when they trigger a trap the counter game show sound "bzzzzt" then narrate everything they do with a loud obnoxious game show host voice that they hear in character.

He'll maybe just make them appear in a dungeon style newly wed game show.

Classic brain swap style trap. You see yourself across the room and look down to notice your hands are green. Your now playing the half Orc barbarian and he's playing your half elf bars but still have your own personality.

A puzzle which involves playing a board game to complete and thus move on to the next room. You then whip out the actual board game and make them play it. Dnd characters being forced to play chutes and ladders.

[SillyPopeNachos]

A space station (long abandoned by the Black Dominion) in Spelljammer, because the party needs to be careful about being too destructive lest they literally burn through oxygen too fast or breach the hull. The station's mobility/positional stabilizers are off-line, with the station drifting toward a black hole (the time limit will be DM fiat). The layout is a shifting labyrinth, and the party is being stalked by a Worm That Walks made from winged Illithid Larvae.

[Aett_Thorn]

You could also give them puzzles like a living chess board, except all of the pieces move differently than in the real world. For instance, Knights move like Rooks, Pawns move like Kings, Queens move like Pawns, etc. Moving a piece wrong results in getting a shock for 1d6 damage.

Or you could even make it so that the rules are of a completely different game. So a chess board where you actually need to move the pieces like checkers. A poker game being played for a treasure map but the goal of the game is to get as close to 21 in your hand without going over. I mean, it's not like games in the game world would develop just like they have in the real world.

[Falcon X]

Tower of the Fourth Wall
I like this idea. It might need some development, but I like it. It would get seriously awful if the whole campaign was this way, but a single dungeon... Or even a monster that produces a field affect would be great.
Ex. Every time you step within 500 ft. of an owlbear, the effect starts.


Classic brain swap style trap. You see yourself across the room and look down to notice your hands are green. Your now playing the half Orc barbarian and he's playing your half elf bars but still have your own personality.
A classic, but one that can be abused so bad....


A space station (long abandoned by the Black Dominion) in Spelljammer, because the party needs to be careful about being too destructive lest they literally burn through oxygen too fast or breach the hull. The station's mobility/positional stabilizers are off-line, with the station drifting toward a black hole (the time limit will be DM fiat). The layout is a shifting labyrinth, and the party is being stalked by a Worm That Walks made from winged Illithid Larvae.
Ooooohhh. Getting transported to a spacestation and chased by an abomination while having no clue how to actually survive or do anything in a spacestation. I like it. Let's develop it.

[lylsyly]

I once took a group I was DM in a BECMI Known World Campaign thru a gate and instead of the city it was supposed to lead to (they had used it before) they ended up on a 200 ton far trader broken down in interstellar space and ran a traveler game.

Please note: This was a purely evil act on my part. I had been running that campaign for close to 18 years, was tired/bored/done in by it, but they didn't want to leave it.

One player quit outright but the rest of them had a blast.

[JakOfAllTirades]

I once ran a D&D group through a tesseract dungeon. Fun and games!

The guy trying to draw a map of the thing was ready to kill me by the end of the session.

[MagicMask]

A puzzle which involves playing a board game to complete and thus move on to the next room. You then whip out the actual board game and make them play it. Dnd characters being forced to play chutes and ladders.

A group I played with a few years ago did a modified version of the Karazhan dungeon from WoW. Instead of the "chess" event that was in WoW, there were strange magic tokens placed around the room. Whichever one we touched we played a different game. I think the DM had us play "Clue", some party game on the Wii, and I think there were one or two others. When we beat the game (playing againt the DM) that token became a magic item for us. I have been thinking of doing a similar event with a new group I'm currently playing with.

[lylsyly]

I once ran a D&D group through a tesseract dungeon. Fun and games!

The guy trying to draw a map of the thing was ready to kill me by the end of the session.

Was it Baba Yaga's Dancing Hut?

[smcmike]

I once ran a D&D group through a tesseract dungeon. Fun and games!

The guy trying to draw a map of the thing was ready to kill me by the end of the session.

Nice. I was thinking it might be fun to make a dungeon that is physically impossible, just to see if the mappers caught on - every room is a perfect pentagon, with five doors into adjacent identical pentagons.

[gfishfunk]

Obnoxious:

- Dungeons of Ill-Equipped Kobolds: the dungeon is a series of rooms where poorly equipped kobolds throw themselves at the players without any strategy. The DM narrates that it is obvious that the kobolds are mostly children and the elderly. At the end of the dungeon is a group of records showing that the kobolds feared zealots sent to kill them, and detailing how the kobolds were actually just lichen farmers, and were exploring philosophy and culture.

- True sewers: a pure maze. No enemies. Constitution rolls to avoid vomiting and getting sick from the fumes. Feces everywhere.

- Sky Glass Bridge Maze: The entire maze is 'visible', except for the floors. There are no walls or rails. Most of the platforms are 10' x 10' and nearly translucent. Enemies are invisible.

[Rerem115]

There's always the Pyramid (http://ancardia.wikia.com/wiki/Pyramid) from ADOM. Secret doors for days, three levels, and a decent boss fight at the top. The traps can ensure item destruction, and you can choose whatever monsters you feel like.

[Falcon X]

Dungeons of Ill-Equipped Kobolds
Speaking of ill-equipped kobolds, my favorite spell in 3.5 was the "Summon Blind and Deaf Kobold" cantrip from the 3rd party supplement Bride of Portable Hole: Book of Neurotic Fantasy.
A 1HP kobold appears. It is blind and deaf. You can shove it in a direction you want it to start walking.


I once made a dungeon of a kobold illusionist and his demon cows.
- The players found a job posting to find out why cows were disappearing. They follow the trail to a dungeon where they see a really shiny crystal on the ceiling. Unknown to them, this crystal enchanted them and they fell asleep.
They then went into a series of rooms that got increasingly more difficult, and some people died. When they ALL died, they woke up at the beginning and went through the death challenge again.
The players would win if they either actually made it to the end or they realized what was going on and made a will save.
Then they woke up under the crystal and proceeded to a boss battle of illusionist and demon cows.

[JakOfAllTirades]

Nice. I was thinking it might be fun to make a dungeon that is physically impossible, just to see if the mappers caught on - every room is a perfect pentagon, with five doors into adjacent identical pentagons.

Terreracts are kinda like that, but worse. In a 3D dungeon, you make four right turns and you're back where you started.

In a 4D tesseract, you make only three right turns, find yourself back in the same room, and you're walking on one of the walls!

[tomjon]

If anyone remembers dragon magazine from way back. I ran a module that had the kamikaze kobold core. I think it was named after the red dragon that owned the kobolds and Flame was his name. The point is its great to see a high level cleric use holy word to kill 20 1/4 cr monsters to save his skin. Just to humble the high and might with the lowest level cr you can find is worming to the dark recesses of my soul.

[JumboWheat01]

If anyone remembers dragon magazine from way back. I ran a module that had the kamikaze kobold core. I think it was named after the red dragon that owned the kobolds and Flame was his name. The point is its great to see a high level cleric use holy word to kill 20 1/4 cr monsters to save his skin. Just to humble the high and might with the lowest level cr you can find is worming to the dark recesses of my soul.

It's things like this that make me glad kobolds don't have some sort of hive-mind thing going, where they start increasing in CR as the number of kobolds increase. Imagine the horror of like a swarm of CR 10 kobolds coming at you...

[RumoCrytuf]

I once took a group I was DM in a BECMI Known World Campaign thru a gate and instead of the city it was supposed to lead to (they had used it before) they ended up on a 200 ton far trader broken down in interstellar space and ran a traveler game.

Please note: This was a purely evil act on my part. I had been running that campaign for close to 18 years, was tired/bored/done in by it, but they didn't want to leave it.

One player quit outright but the rest of them had a blast.

18 YEARS?! By the Hells. I can barely get through 1 without growing tired. Fellow DM, You have my respect.

[Segev]

A multi-level dungeon that is slowly filling with water, with the exit on the bottom floor. Anything in the water is also in an anti-magic field.

[smcmike]

A multi-level dungeon that is slowly filling with poop, with the exit on the bottom floor. Anything in the poop is also really gross.

[Aett_Thorn]

Dungeons that are correctly sized for their occupants.

Hunting through a Kobold lair? Congrats, you have to crawl through the tunnels. And your tremendous strength just broke the lever that drops the drawbridge because you applied too much force to it.

Attacking a Giant's home? DM: "In order to get the bridge to lower, you need to pull a lever." Player: "Okay, I pull the lever." DM: "The lever is ten feet above your head and you can't reach it. Sorry that the giants didn't accommodate your puny man-form when designing their house."

[Falcon X]

A multi-level dungeon that is slowly filling with water, with the exit on the bottom floor. Anything in the water is also in an anti-magic field.
Actually that sounds like a pretty neat puzzle and not necessarily obnoxious. They can easily discover what the problem is, so it's just a matter of finding a non-magical way to accomplish it.


A multi-level dungeon that is slowly filling with poop, with the exit on the bottom floor. Anything in the poop is also really gross.
Now that right there. That's disgusting.
I might have to use this for the Oozing Temple in Out of the Abyss.

[Mith]

If you do sewers with open channels and walkways to either side, would it be worse to have the entire channel to have a collossal ooze that has filled the channel, and regulates and purifies the sewage and storm water as it runs through the channel, or a giant but mobile ooze that swims? In the first idea, you are engulfed as soon as you fall into the channel, but it could be a fairly obvious hazard, but the other one you fall in, and feel a pressure wave coming towards you for one round before getting body slammed by an ooze.

[Sir cryosin]

Dungeon of minor inconvenience. Legend says that lord (insert name here) --------- . Had a Fortune of 5 kings and when he passed a way. He left all his gold to his son but when his son when to spend is newly acquired gold he found out that every bit of precious metals were painted stones and what not. So people though that the king put all his gold in his tome. But hen the son when in to the tome he found all the gold and richest but once again it all fate. But this time it was a colony of mimic's that the king keeper as pets. The son not having his father's Fortune could not Finance his kingdom and lost it. BUT he was determine to find his father's real tome and claim all the richest. But no one has every heard from him after that. The kings tomes are found every know and then but. After a few people try to go in people quite.

So that the backstory, now for what in this dungeon. THis is only one of the many.

In a few hallways are filled with caltrops and they are compact that you can get through them with out taking damage. The effects are your slowed to moving have speed and every 5ft you take 1 point of damage.
The hallways that don't have caltrops have ball barings.
Other traps in the dungeon are a room that smells so bad that you spend your action throwing up. In one room your charmed to were you fall in love with the first person you see. Another room our effected by the slow spell.

[Sicarius Victis]

Take a really complicated, difficult dungeon. Then once the players have defeated it, reveal that they were are stuck in a Draketooth-style illusion and they've been sitting in the first room all along. Then, once they get to the next room for real, stick them in another illusion almost just like it. Just different enough that their memories of the first illusion won't help them beat the second. Repeat until the players finally manage to get through each room. Then reveal that it was the wrong dungeon the wole time.

Of course, it was a legitimate deity of trickery doing it the whole time, so they can't even take revenge.

[Doorhandle]

Sens Fortress can go S a D and die in a fire. Don't make your players do a Sens Fortress. One trap and suddenly they're creeping and searching every 5 feet til the game's over.



I would disagree even though I fear Sen's Fortess more than I fear Anor Londo. The traps, with the exception of a mimic, are fairly obvious if you go at walking pace. They'll hear the boulders before they see them, the arrow traps have massive, obvious buttons by D&D standards, and the giant swinging axes are immediately visible. Plus, the walkways won't be anywhere near as annoying because players don't suffer knockback as much in D&D, so there's low risk of falling.
Finally, there's the added bonus that P.Cs can force monsters into the traps.


More on topic: this dungeon sound like exactly what you asked for. Cave crickets for everyone!

Bruno's Cruel Dungeon. (http://eyerayofthebeholder.blogspot.com.au/2013/09/brunos-cruel-dungeon-make-your-players.html?m=1)

[JellyPooga]

I would disagree even though I fear sen's fortess more than I fear anor Londo. The traps, with the exception of a mimic, are fairly obvious if you go at walking pace. They'll hear the bolders before they see them, the arrow traps have massive, obvious buttons by D&D standards, and the giant swingone axes are immediately visible. Plus, the walkways won't be anywhere near as annoying because players don't suffer knockback as much in D&D, so there's low risk of falling.
Finally, there's the added bonus that P.Cs can force monsters into the traps.

The real kicker about Sens Fortress isn't that it's actually that hard, it's that you can see the "traps" coming a mile off and you still die trying to get past them. To translate it into D&D terms, the "swinging blades" might have a knockback effect and a massive to-hit modifier, but no Perception check to spot and no way of disarming. The only way past them is timing, which is made problematic by the presence of enemies. Same goes with the rolling boulders and stone giant bombs, really. Once you know they're there, it's a cinch to avoid them unless a monster manages to hold you up.

Setting up something like Sens Fortress in D&D wouldn't be too hard and whilst it could be frustrating for players, it could also be an excellent opportunity to pull out some non-lethal traps (after all, D&D doesn't let you respawn at a bonfire when you die!); have the swinging blades do only a little damage, the tar beneath the walkways cushion your fall and so forth.

Make it a constant series of "re-set" or "back to the start" traps, but make them varied. A trap that blocks your progress forward (e.g. a portcullis) that can be reset, but only by backtracking past a bunch of other pain-in-the-butt traps to a lever, for example, forcing the players to navigate those traps not only once, but twice more in order to progress, is the sort of thing I'm talking about. For extra lulz, have them discover the lever on their way through the first time around and hint that it might open a secret door or something, only to have it be what drops the portcullis in the first place. Players being Players, you know they'll pull that lever and Players being Players, they'll also work out what you've done to them when they come to the portcullis (be ready with your DMG-Shield for when they start throwing erasers and cheetos at you).

[Cl0001]

You could also go with the idea of giving the players a dungeon where there are absolutely no enemies. Make fully detailed rooms, elaborate places where enemies should be hiding, plenty of evidence of monstrous occupation, and a decent helping of ominous noises. By about the tenth room the players should be so paranoid that something big is coming that they'll just start fighting themselves.
I love mind games. My favorite trap I ever made was just a room that they got locked in. It has one torch in it and a lever. A timer counts down from 12 and the players start freaking out. They pull the lever and the timer restarts. Once it gets down to 3 the room starts to shake. After it's gone down to 0 a stone wall opens up. To make it better I made it under an anti magic field and made the lever deal 1d4 Lightning damage per pull.

[Shining Wrath]

The Dungeon of Reality TV contests.

Can you eat a cockroach to exit this room? Not too bad? Make a Constitution save to avoid the Poisoned condition for 1 hour.
Crawl through 50 feet of Jell-o. Not too bad? The next room is the room of Carnivorous Feathers, you didn't really want to be sticky in here ...

Et cetera.

[CursedRhubarb]

"Whoopee's Terrible Yet Oddly Cush Gauntlet"

Dungeon is a simple maze with a treasure room in the middle. No creatures or monsters inhabit the maze. The walls, floors, and ceiling are all identical and instead of the usual stone, earth, or wooden materials they are completely covered in what appears to be soft, pillowy, bubbles about 1ft in diameter each.

Upon stepping or pressing a bubble it momentarily deflates with the sound of wet orc defication, accompanied by the release of a Stinking Cloud spell that is centered where the bubble was flattened. Afterwards the bubble then re-inflates itself. Randomly,(roll a d20 and on a 1 or 20) the sound is instead a soft "pssshhhhhh".

The party must try and get to the treasure and take what they can before being overcome by the ever growing clouds.

Con saves for days! And once they start failing them, maybe some Dex or acrobatics checks to avoid falling in the mess (and setting off yet more bubbles)

[Traab]

The Grid Dungeon. Basically, the entire dungeon is a couple floors worth of fully enclosed rooms, with a teleportation device in each corner. There is no way to tell the rooms apart unless you encountered something there, so for instance you might find yourself in a room full of dead goblins you killed a little while ago, or an empty treasure chest. For "fun" have the rooms rotate every so many times they use a teleporter. Make them have a nervous breakdown trying to keep the map straight as they slowly figure out their way to the center chamber with the macguffin in it as they not only have to figure out where each teleporter pad leads to, but adjust for the room rotating in such a way that the bottom left teleporter pad is no on the bottom right. Give them bonus loot if they dont stab you before they reach the middle. Then run away after reminding them they now have to find the door out of here. The bigger the grid, the more mind warping insanity. Good luck figuring out two floors of 8x8 rooms, with 4 teleporters each, that rotates randomly. Especially since not every room will have stuff in it.

[JackPhoenix]

The real kicker about Sens Fortress isn't that it's actually that hard, it's that you can see the "traps" coming a mile off and you still die trying to get past them. To translate it into D&D terms, the "swinging blades" might have a knockback effect and a massive to-hit modifier, but no Perception check to spot and no way of disarming. The only way past them is timing, which is made problematic by the presence of enemies. Same goes with the rolling boulders and stone giant bombs, really. Once you know they're there, it's a cinch to avoid them unless a monster manages to hold you up.

Setting up something like Sens Fortress in D&D wouldn't be too hard and whilst it could be frustrating for players, it could also be an excellent opportunity to pull out some non-lethal traps (after all, D&D doesn't let you respawn at a bonfire when you die!); have the swinging blades do only a little damage, the tar beneath the walkways cushion your fall and so forth.

Make it a constant series of "re-set" or "back to the start" traps, but make them varied. A trap that blocks your progress forward (e.g. a portcullis) that can be reset, but only by backtracking past a bunch of other pain-in-the-butt traps to a lever, for example, forcing the players to navigate those traps not only once, but twice more in order to progress, is the sort of thing I'm talking about. For extra lulz, have them discover the lever on their way through the first time around and hint that it might open a secret door or something, only to have it be what drops the portcullis in the first place. Players being Players, you know they'll pull that lever and Players being Players, they'll also work out what you've done to them when they come to the portcullis (be ready with your DMG-Shield for when they start throwing erasers and cheetos at you).

That doesn't work that well in a tabletop game without railroading. If you block the character's path with portcullis, they'll try to lift it, then break it, then to break through the wall, then to teleport through, change into something small that slips through the holes or search for a way around. Characters have much greater freedom than in computer games. You can make the portcullis to heavy to be lifted, indestructible just like the walls and inside antimagic field, but then it start increasingly sound like bad GMing.

[Doorhandle]

More dungeon ideas:

*Grimtooth, of Grimtooth's traps fame, has a dungoen with all the trap-based nonsense you would expect.

*A dungeons, that it just one long corridor filled with hundreds of doors, with varying traps or issues with each.

*Red light/Green light: a dungeon bathed in bright light that constantly changes color. Whenever it goes red, everyone has to stay still or they will be stunned when it goes green again.

[JellyPooga]

That doesn't work that well in a tabletop game without railroading. If you block the character's path with portcullis, they'll try to lift it, then break it, then to break through the wall, then to teleport through, change into something small that slips through the holes or search for a way around. Characters have much greater freedom than in computer games. You can make the portcullis to heavy to be lifted, indestructible just like the walls and inside antimagic field, but then it start increasingly sound like bad GMing.

The old railroad tracks are not, necessarily, a sign of bad GMing. Sometimes they're a useful tool to advance the story and in this case, can be used to reinforce the resource depletion of a party without extending the game time excessively.

Traps are a challenge the first time around and may use up party resources. They also take time to solve. When you can just ask for a bunch of rolls and spells/items expended, skipping the player investigation because they already know what they're doing, you can put your players in a position for a harder fight than if they had those resources. That's a useful GM tool and sometimes you just want to skip to the good stuff.

Yes a series of varied encounters can be fun, but it can also feel like pointless grinding; there's no harm in reducing it to what it really is if you're trying to reinforce a sense of urgency or literally have limited real time.

[JackPhoenix]

The old railroad tracks are not, necessarily, a sign of bad GMing. Sometimes they're a useful tool to advance the story and in this case, can be used to reinforce the resource depletion of a party without extending the game time excessively.

Traps are a challenge the first time around and may use up party resources. They also take time to solve. When you can just ask for a bunch of rolls and spells/items expended, skipping the player investigation because they already know what they're doing, you can put your players in a position for a harder fight than if they had those resources. That's a useful GM tool and sometimes you just want to skip to the good stuff.

Yes a series of varied encounters can be fun, but it can also feel like pointless grinding; there's no harm in reducing it to what it really is if you're trying to reinforce a sense of urgency or literally have limited real time.

Sure, some railroading is often helpful with moving the story forward, I know it from my own group where players sometimes get stuck and have no idea where to go next (not that there isn't anywhere to go, it's a semi-sandbox game, so the problem is too many possible options). I was talking about the specific example, D&D characters have much more options than PC's in a video game, and when the GM needs (or wants to) force the character to the only allowed track (returning back to the lever), he'll have to start negating those options in more and more contrived ways. That's bad GMing.

[JellyPooga]

Sure, some railroading is often helpful with moving the story forward, I know it from my own group where players sometimes get stuck and have no idea where to go next (not that there isn't anywhere to go, it's a semi-sandbox game, so the problem is too many possible options). I was talking about the specific example, D&D characters have much more options than PC's in a video game, and when the GM needs (or wants to) force the character to the only allowed track (returning back to the lever), he'll have to start negating those options in more and more contrived ways. That's bad GMing.

I concede the point; the example was at fault and I agree that it would be bad GMing to stomp on Player creativity. It doesn't have to be a portcullis, though; a wall of handwavium magic, a titanic boulder or giant gear/cog (one for when you set it up inside a giant clockwork mechanism...one of my favourite settings for a "trap" dungeon); there's a lot of possibilities that each have their own foils for the players to come up with. That or the Players follow the tracks, roll the dice and proceed; their choice.

[Doorhandle]

Not so much a dungeon as an encounter, But:

*The Goblin Phalanx: Get a horde of goblins with the Swarm-fighting feat. Equip them with Tower Shields, Long-spears, Shortswords, and throwing weapons of your choice. Fill a 9x9 square with these goblins(4x9= 36): Larger hordes have larger squares. One goblin in each outside square (2 at the corners) will use the tower shield to grant full cover, while the rest use their long-spears for opportunity attacks or regular attacks, switching to melee weapons when the players close. Anyone not in long-spear range throws things at the players. Have the whole square advance on the players.

In summary: 36ish goblins with total cover and 4+ to hit, as well as reach. Anyone adjacent to one of the middle squares is going to be attacked by 7 short-swords, 10 long-spears, and 7 thrown weapons: Excluding any damage they took to get there in the first place.

Bonus points/added difficulty: Give the goblins tripping weapons, stand still/improved trip feats, as well. Use alchemical items for thrown weapons (tangle-foot bags, alchemist's fire, all the good stuff). Have some of the goblins use their shield to cover them for attacks from above. Use teamwork feats/the 3.5 equivalent. For the ultimate screw-you, shove them in a corridor so the players can't get past them:

It'll be like 300, only the players are the Persians.:smallbiggrin:

[Shining Wrath]

Dungeon of Time

Remember the magic door in the Hobbit that could only be opened when the last sunlight of autumn fell upon it? This obnoxious dungeon features multiple doors with similar "when the time is right" locks.
And the times are separated by days or weeks or months.
Therefore, the party must open a door, pass through, and then wait for the next door to be openable. No going out of the dungeon and coming back; the whole thing is absolutely teleport proof and the doors can't be propped open. If you go back out, you have to wait for the "right time" on each door in sequence to come back in.

The upside? When the party exits this dungeon, every party member will know all the skills and languages that any other member can teach them.

[Shining Wrath]

Not so much a dungeon as an encounter, But:

*The Goblin Phalanx: Get a horde of goblins with the Swarm-fighting feat. Equip them with Tower Shields, Long-spears, Shortswords, and throwing weapons of your choice. Fill a 9x9 square with these goblins(4x9= 36): Larger hordes have larger squares. One goblin in each outside square (2 at the corners) will use the tower shield to grant full cover, while the rest use their long-spears for opportunity attacks or regular attacks, switching to melee weapons when the players close. Anyone not in long-spear range throws things at the players. Have the whole square advance on the players.

In summary: 36ish goblins with total cover and 4+ to hit, as well as reach. Anyone adjacent to one of the middle squares is going to be attacked by 7 short-swords, 10 long-spears, and 7 thrown weapons: Excluding any damage they took to get there in the first place.

Bonus points/added difficulty: Give the goblins tripping weapons, stand still/improved trip feats, as well. Use alchemical items for thrown weapons (tangle-foot bags, alchemist's fire, all the good stuff). Have some of the goblins use their shield to cover them for attacks from above. Use teamwork feats/the 3.5 equivalent. For the ultimate screw-you, shove them in a corridor so the players can't get past them:

It'll be like 300, only the players are the Persians.:smallbiggrin:

The Persians didn't have Evard's Black Tentacles available :smallwink:

36 goblins at 50 XP each is 1800 XP. Multiply by 5 for there being 36 of them (unless there's a lot of PCs) makes the effective difficulty of the encounter 9,000 XP, or roughly CR 12. If there's any full caster in the party they have access to 6th level spells; there's a lot of bad things you can do to a 3x3 square with 6th level spells. Even at 1,800 XP that's a CR 5 encounter; Fireball is on the table.

If you want this to be a deadly encounter for a lower-level (or no full caster) party, which they have to somehow outsmart, it's very annoying :smallsmile:

[Doorhandle]

The Persians didn't have Evard's Black Tentacles available :smallwink:

36 goblins at 50 XP each is 1800 XP. Multiply by 5 for there being 36 of them (unless there's a lot of PCs) makes the effective difficulty of the encounter 9,000 XP, or roughly CR 12. If there's any full caster in the party they have access to 6th level spells; there's a lot of bad things you can do to a 3x3 square with 6th level spells. Even at 1,800 XP that's a CR 5 encounter; Fireball is on the table.

If you want this to be a deadly encounter for a lower-level (or no full caster) party, which they have to somehow outsmart, it's very annoying :smallsmile:

Eeeh...probably. I would say you could have the unoccupied goblins hold their tower shields up to protect their "top edge," giving them cover from the fireball. But if the players call B.S on that I'd let them.
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/23/40/45/234045f6daa5af197bd6d8461be38698.jpg

[tieren]

Rubik's fortress:

Fortress is a cube 300 feet high, wide and deep. Each face of the cube has no windows or doors and every 100 by 100 square foot area of surface is a different color. by touching a particular face and saying the command word party is teleported into the first room.

Room is a 100 foot cube with openings in the center of each face which adjoins another room (no openings in the outer wall), and by center of the face I mean vertically as well. From the first room they can go forward left right or up. There are rungs built into the wall extending vertically and horizontally from each opening but to get to the one going straight up would involve hanging from them like monkey bars.

The walls of any room adjoining the exterior of the structure are the same color as the panels on the exterior of the fortress. The walls of any room adjoining the center cube of the fortress are black. The black walls surrounding the center cube are immune to all types of damage and prevent all travel, including extra planar and astral travel.

Whenever the party passes through an opening into a new room, all rooms in the fortress in the same plane as the party's direction of travel, rotate 90 degrees, one minute after the last party member enters. If the party splits up or don't all enter nothing happens.

One minute after the rooms shift a portal opens in the absolute center of the room and a number of creatures are teleported in hostile to the party which would themselves constitute a medium to hard encounter for the party.

Random portals also open occasionally to introduce other encounters if the party stays still too long.

The fortress is otherwise devoid of any interior features, no furniture or food. Any attempt by any PC to leave the fortress through an exterior wall or by teleportation results in the entire party being expelled from the fortress and the re-randomization of all the rooms and exterior color panel.

If the party can successfully navigate the fortress to the point that all of the exterior color panels are shifted to matching positions, openings appear in the black walls. Upon entering the center cube there is a deadly encounter and an incredible treasure hoard.

In the real world DM has a rubik's cube on the table and turns it appropriately every time the rooms shift until the party solves the puzzle or starves to death.

[Segev]

Passphrase-locked doors. Each door has a specific passphrase about as lengthy as the Pledge of Allegiance. Which you will require the players to speak properly each time they want to go through said doors. Possibly guarded by sphinxes who know full well their riddles are technically just passphrase-cues, but hold to the forms anyway. And love it when somebody messes up. Because at worst they can insist they try again. And at best...snack time.

Edit: This is inspired by my first DM ever, who had really powerful but weirdly cursed weapons in his dungeon that we were exploring. The paladin in our party got a sword called "Patriot's Light." Every time he drew it, it compelled him to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. This took 1 round of time in-game, and out of game however long it took the player to actually say it.

When he remembered, he drew it before entering a room where we expected combat, and it was at worst mildly annoying. When he didn't, or we were surprised, it cost him his first round. But the DM made him recite it IRL each time. It was amusing to us, but this could become obnoxious to a table if done "right."

[Afrodactyl]

I recently did a game wherein my players entered a dungeon that was a labyrinth. I rolled a d4 when the players entered (my timer), and then every time the timer hit zero, the walls would move around the party, and then I rerolled the die.

The entry and exit were both fixed, so I knew where they were, but the party had no idea of the size of shape of the labyrinth. Once I added in traps, the party would start panicking and trying to Indiana Jones their way under the now closing walls in front of them because they knew what was directly in front and that it was presumably safe.

[Falcon X]

Dungeon of Time

Remember the magic door in the Hobbit that could only be opened when the last sunlight of autumn fell upon it? This obnoxious dungeon features multiple doors with similar "when the time is right" locks.
And the times are separated by days or weeks or months.
Therefore, the party must open a door, pass through, and then wait for the next door to be openable. No going out of the dungeon and coming back; the whole thing is absolutely teleport proof and the doors can't be propped open. If you go back out, you have to wait for the "right time" on each door in sequence to come back in.

The upside? When the party exits this dungeon, every party member will know all the skills and languages that any other member can teach them.
I like this idea a lot. It's thematic and beautiful. I wonder if the players could leave one guy in the cave while the others adventure? Or they may just have to make food runs.
If they leave someone behind, that's when he Mind Flayers decide to show up for their monthly gathering. Dead PC. Shouldn't have left him alone.
For food runs, they might all go together once they realize how this is going to go down. You still should make them role play through the accumulation of feces, sanity checks for claustrophobia, and maybe have it go so long they run out of food even if they've prepared. Exit and do it again. Or eat Bob to get through the last 10 days...

Without the "can't leave" feature, there might actually be a tasteful and non-obnoxious way of using this in an adventure. Interesting idea.

[Shining Wrath]

Eeeh...probably. I would say you could have the unoccupied goblins hold their tower shields up to protect their "top edge," giving them cover from the fireball. But if the players call B.S on that I'd let them.
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/23/40/45/234045f6daa5af197bd6d8461be38698.jpg

The mental image of a horde of goblins with tower shields on their heads while black tentacles erupt from beneath their feet is enormously amusing. But even if you want to stay with 3rd level spells- are those shields metal? They sure look metal. I wonder what a lightning bolt does? If I'm DM and the wizard wants his lightning bolt to arc from goblin to goblin I'm hard pressed to say it doesn't happen.
Stinking Cloud would certainly inconvenience them. A Cleric with Spiritual Guardians up taking the Dodge action could walk to 5' away from the phalanx, take only a few ranged attacks made at disadvantage, and then hit the first two ranks for 3d8 each.

[Shining Wrath]

I like this idea a lot. It's thematic and beautiful. I wonder if the players could leave one guy in the cave while the others adventure? Or they may just have to make food runs.
If they leave someone behind, that's when he Mind Flayers decide to show up for their monthly gathering. Dead PC. Shouldn't have left him alone.
For food runs, they might all go together once they realize how this is going to go down. You still should make them role play through the accumulation of feces, sanity checks for claustrophobia, and maybe have it go so long they run out of food even if they've prepared. Exit and do it again. Or eat Bob to get through the last 10 days...

Without the "can't leave" feature, there might actually be a tasteful and non-obnoxious way of using this in an adventure. Interesting idea.

If you want the non-obnoxious version, the Magic Dingus of Enormous Power is at the center, the party needs it to Save The World, and the problem is that everyone else wants it, too. So while the party is waiting for doors to open, they have to hold their position against Bad People attacking from the rear. Sort of a Raiders of the Lost Ark vibe, where the party wants the Ark but so do Nazis. Reduce the time duration of waiting to hours rather than days, throw in wandering monsters that attack everyone, require Intelligence[Skill] checks to know how to open this next door and when the time will be right - could be lots of fun.

[SillyPopeNachos]

Ooooohhh. Getting transported to a spacestation and chased by an abomination while having no clue how to actually survive or do anything in a spacestation. I like it. Let's develop it.
Honestly the time limit will likely be flexible, only becoming a big issue if the party kills said abomination. The sense of dramatic tension should remain the same regardless of changing sources.

[JackPhoenix]

The mental image of a horde of goblins with tower shields on their heads while black tentacles erupt from beneath their feet is enormously amusing. But even if you want to stay with 3rd level spells- are those shields metal? They sure look metal. I wonder what a lightning bolt does? If I'm DM and the wizard wants his lightning bolt to arc from goblin to goblin I'm hard pressed to say it doesn't happen.
Stinking Cloud would certainly inconvenience them. A Cleric with Spiritual Guardians up taking the Dodge action could walk to 5' away from the phalanx, take only a few ranged attacks made at disadvantage, and then hit the first two ranks for 3d8 each.

What ranged attacks? The goblins are holding their shields over their heads, aren't they? How are they making ranged attacks at the same time?

[JumboWheat01]

What ranged attacks? The goblins are holding their shields over their heads, aren't they? How are they making ranged attacks at the same time?

Spitwads. No damage, but high on obnoxious annoyance factor.

[Shining Wrath]

What ranged attacks? The goblins are holding their shields over their heads, aren't they? How are they making ranged attacks at the same time?

The original idea had the back rank using ranged attacks.

[JackPhoenix]

The original idea had the back rank using ranged attacks.

I know, but they can't both use ranged attack and hold their shields over their heads to get cover against Fireballs. The formation is either AoE fodder, or protected, but pretty much harmless

[RumoCrytuf]

I know, but they can't both use ranged attack and hold their shields over their heads to get cover against Fireballs. The formation is either AoE fodder, or protected, but pretty much harmless

Oooh! OOH! How about we have the party facing a pit in some sort of labyrinth, and the goblins (in their harmless tank state) Push forward. The players Need to figure out how to get past the goblins before they fall off the cliff (and into whatever despairing things that lie below)

[Segev]

A giant ant colony that has normal ant colonies EVERYWHERE inside it, so that every surface - wall, floor, ceiling, tunnel mouth...everything - is constantly covered in an inch-thick carpet of normal ants. And they get in EVERYTHING. Limited mechanical effect, but they're omni-present and make everything difficult terrain. Possibly impose the swarm "distraction" rules on anybody standing in them as they crawl up your legs and get into your armor.