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View Full Version : Ideas for a minidungeon



NecroDancer
2017-05-20, 09:19 PM
I plan to run my group through a small abandon temple dungeon. In my world the celestials are constantly fighting off forces from the far realm and the temple was abandoned after lovecraftian monsters attacked and killed everyone in it.

My players don't know that the celestials are fighting lovecraftian monsters so I want this temple to be able to convy that to them as well.

All ideas are appreciated

denthor
2017-05-20, 11:43 PM
This filler material at best have your baddies just 1 hour ahead they took black paint and covered a holy symbol. If the characters wipe off the paint from the wall an angel shows up gives them a bless thst last 4 hours.

At the bottom of the stairs to the Graves there is a bundle that detects magic on a table the spirits after they clear the level give them permission to take them out of the crypt. But first a spirit tells them to return the items. If yhey "steal" the item take them before returning them -2 penalty for a few hours. Negates the bless as well.

Beneath
2017-05-21, 12:12 AM
Best to hit them over the head with the info you want to give them, I think. That could mean, like, having far realm horrors present in the place having desecrated it, for instance, possibly with a temple guardian who is somehow bound.

Some questions to use as starting points for coming up with things (can be better than answers sometimes)

The temple's abandoned, you said. Why was it abandoned?
Who used it last?
What did they use it for? An isolated monastery or hermitage is different from a ritual gathering-place for the initiated is different from a general town meeting hall is different from a place to display the wealth and munificence of its sponsor. Like, the Parthenon and the temple of the oracle at Delphi served dramatically different purposes; the Vatican, Notre Dame cathedral, and a typical neighborhood church serve different purposes. That's setting aside fantastic purposes entirely; a temple built to consecrate a place where the veil between worlds is thin so that only the right kinds of summoning spells can use it is going to be different from any real-world temple
Who built it? What did they build it for? Did their needs change after or during construction?
If it changed hands in its history, how did that happen? Why?
What might the last occupants not know about it that its builders would?

Layout, and possibly special features too, will flow from the answers to these questions.

Yora
2017-05-21, 12:48 AM
I would decorate the temple with big images of angels heroically fighting various far realm horrors. Images that are found repeatedly throughout the place. And then in the furthest room in the back is a big altar and in front of it are the remains of an angel with armor and a sword and several dead tentacled monsters.

It establishes that there was a war between the two and that it was an ongoing thing, not something that ended long before the temple was built.
I would make sure that the dead celestial and the ones in the images are all of the same type so players will make the connection that they are all the same heavenly army. Could be a bit unclear if you mix guardinals and eladrin. The Far Realm monsters can be of any type, as long as they are all obviously slimy tentacle monsters. Having different types of those shows that the war is against the whole Far Realm, not just a single group of alien masterminds.