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View Full Version : The dungeon makes the man



kingcheesepants
2020-08-11, 07:50 AM
I've been thinking about a short story I read a while ago called Diamond Dogs (part of Alastair Reynolds' Revelation Space universe) in which *spoilers* a group of explorers investigate an alien building in which they have to solve a bunch of puzzles. As they continue in the building the puzzles get harder and harder and the penalties for not completing them correctly or in a timely fashion become more and more extreme. Furthermore the actual building itself becomes less and less hospitable as they go on. Well long story short to get to through the building the explorers have to give up most of their flesh and augment themselves to be extremely specialized in solving puzzles. (Thus becoming the diamond dogs of the title) it is heavily implied that the building itself is designed to encourage people to bring in more and more metal and circuitry and such and uses those things to build itself. I thought the idea was really cool and I want to try to implement that into a game. Presumably a one shot as I think it would be difficult to implement this into an actual campaign especially if it's going to radically alter the player characters. The setting of the story is a futuristic hard sci-fi but I think the core idea of a gradually increasing in difficulty puzzle dungeon where you have to give up yourself to get through could work in a fantasy or cyberpunk setting too.
So my question to the community is would you be interested in running this kind of puzzle dungeon and how would you implement it? I'm especially thinking of how one might show the players needing to augment themselves and give up pieces of themselves in order to continue through the dungeon. Maybe if it was a fantasy setting something like binding yourself further into a pact with an eldritch being or maybe needing to seek out forbidden knowledge or offer up parts of themselves and fuse with the dungeon in order to live? Let me know what you think could work.

GentlemanVoodoo
2020-08-11, 01:27 PM
I've been thinking about a short story I read a while ago called Diamond Dogs (part of Alastair Reynolds' Revelation Space universe) in which *spoilers* a group of explorers investigate an alien building in which they have to solve a bunch of puzzles. As they continue in the building the puzzles get harder and harder and the penalties for not completing them correctly or in a timely fashion become more and more extreme. Furthermore the actual building itself becomes less and less hospitable as they go on. Well long story short to get to through the building the explorers have to give up most of their flesh and augment themselves to be extremely specialized in solving puzzles. (Thus becoming the diamond dogs of the title) it is heavily implied that the building itself is designed to encourage people to bring in more and more metal and circuitry and such and uses those things to build itself. I thought the idea was really cool and I want to try to implement that into a game. Presumably a one shot as I think it would be difficult to implement this into an actual campaign especially if it's going to radically alter the player characters. The setting of the story is a futuristic hard sci-fi but I think the core idea of a gradually increasing in difficulty puzzle dungeon where you have to give up yourself to get through could work in a fantasy or cyberpunk setting too.
So my question to the community is would you be interested in running this kind of puzzle dungeon and how would you implement it? I'm especially thinking of how one might show the players needing to augment themselves and give up pieces of themselves in order to continue through the dungeon. Maybe if it was a fantasy setting something like binding yourself further into a pact with an eldritch being or maybe needing to seek out forbidden knowledge or offer up parts of themselves and fuse with the dungeon in order to live? Let me know what you think could work.

Depends on fantasy or sci-fi.

If your main thing is one central location for time crunch puzzle solving then for fantasy set up a scenario where the players obtain some form of valuable items that a very well known money changer will pay them in gold at more value than they should. In reality the money changer is a demon form the abyss who is essentially havesting souls based on their greed. Should they take the offer the players are instructed to make the change in a room where the puzzle request begins. The demon likes a bit of sport and agrees that if the players can escape by solving puzzles in a finite time perod they go free. If not their souls get dragged into the abyss.

Same set up could be done for sci-fi but change it to where they complete a task for a creditor and retrieve a valuable item only then to have a goon squade appear at the creditors place of business. Fight ensues in which an AI is activated to secure the building and will kill what is deemed all intruders (aka not the owner or employees) in a manner of time. Only way is to escape is to solve puzzles to get out of the building or shut down the AI.

paddyfool
2020-08-24, 05:02 PM
This generally lends itself well to horror, in whatever setting.

If you're playing 3.5, I think maybe the fleshgrafting rules and/or various undead / lycanthropy rules could be applied to some kind of diabolical trap dungeon that's designed to lure in dashing heroes and only release them when they've become something monstrous. Whereupon they could then be faced with the choice of some combination of (a) trying to regain acceptance in the realms they came from, in which they're generally met with fear and loathing, (b) signing up with team evil, (c) questing for a cure, even at the cost of a downgrade in power, (d) hiding out somewhere quiet for the rest of their existence, or (e) trying to pass as normal.

In WFRP, it's probably even easier. Have the players get trapped in some spell effect left by a daemonlord of Tzeentch that only lets them out when they've acquired a mutation or two.

Make sure the players are on board with their characters getting messed with before you start, of course. EDIT: Explicitly so. Maybe suggest they build characters with some form of non-evil alignment that they'd like to see messed with. Give them some choice in the nature of their individual transformations too; don't just randomly go mummifying the rogue and lichifying the barbarian.

EDIT: In D&D, maybe have the dungeon feed them a line about transforming them into evil beings to "restore balance in the universe". Total bs of course, but the PCs don't have to know that.

kingcheesepants
2020-08-27, 05:27 AM
Some good ideas in general thank you. I was envisioning this as something like the focus of a one shot or very short campaign. Have any of you run this kind of dungeon before? I think that it has a lot of roleplaying potential and could make for some interesting and unique stories. Any good ideas on what kinds of puzzles in particular might necessitate modifying oneself?

evilmastermind
2020-08-27, 05:18 PM
Damn I'd love to play that! But the dungeon should only be a starting adventure of a whole campaign.
You could make the players start as commoners, or level 1 n00bs. Make them enchance their character through choices, sacrifices and suffering so when and if they get out of that nightmare, they're ready to face the challenges the open world has to offer. Setting is irrelevant, what you can't explain with magic you can do it with sci-fi, or aliens, parralel worlds... there's always a credible story to justify what's inside a dungeon

evilmastermind
2020-08-27, 05:25 PM
Some good ideas in general thank you. I was envisioning this as something like the focus of a one shot or very short campaign. Have any of you run this kind of dungeon before? I think that it has a lot of roleplaying potential and could make for some interesting and unique stories. Any good ideas on what kinds of puzzles in particular might necessitate modifying oneself?

I haven't run anything similar, but it reminds me of pieces of other experiences I had as player or dungeon master during the last 5 years.
I recently played an rpg called Kingdom Death, in which players find themselves in a dark and paradoxical reality and they have to sometimes sacrifice friends and part of their bodies to please or defeat enemies that are 90% of the time out of their league... very inspiring dark settings; I was scared all the time!

paddyfool
2020-08-28, 01:07 AM
I haven't, no.

Was just wondering how a warforged / android / cyborg might play in such a dungeon. Less of the body horror, more machineshop fun.

aglondier
2020-08-28, 05:07 AM
Doing it in Shadowrun, the Renraku Arcology shutdown. Have the players make cutting edge, wired to the gills, uber-runners. Then generate the baseline characters as ordinary people. The shutdown happens, and the ordinary people are put through a hellish gauntlet, gradually acquiring the skills and cyberware as the AI experiments on and tests them. By the end of it they have become the hardcore runners they generated at the outset, but hopefully appreciate it more 😈