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Voltage89
2020-11-12, 10:40 AM
Hello everyone :D I am planning out a dungeon that has time shift elements mixed into it. The story behind it is that it was an ancient research laboratory that researched time shifts and time travel. One of there experiments went horribly wrong, and thus the entire facility became attacked by monsters. The dungeon now is quiet and still, the air within is stagnant, except for when the occasional ghost walks by. These are not monster manual ghosts though, they are just spirits from the past that are locked here.

So the goal of the dungeon is to have players shifting from the present to the past and then back to the present again. Each room will have two versions (a past and a present). My question is...
How would you dictate when the dungeon shifts from past or present. I know Runehammer from Drunken's and Dragons had this same idea, and he had the players make checks against despair. When they analyze things from the past, they can shift back to the past if they fail to many of these checks. I personally really like this idea, but then how would combat work. If they are fighting something from the past, would they shift back to the present? Just wondering what ideas others have to make a dungeon like this. Thanks!

Onos
2020-11-13, 04:39 AM
You could look at having "Rifts" of some description in certain rooms which the players can activate or pass through to reach a different time period. Depending on how convoluted you want to make this you could even make some or all of these Rifts one-way.

Are you allowing the party to sense/see/whatever the other timeframe? For example, if the corridor is collapsed in the future, will the party be able to determine this while moving through the same corridor in the past? There's a fair few ways you can work this dungeon depending on the general idea you're going for.

Voltage89
2020-11-13, 11:41 AM
You could look at having "Rifts" of some description in certain rooms which the players can activate or pass through to reach a different time period. Depending on how convoluted you want to make this you could even make some or all of these Rifts one-way.

Are you allowing the party to sense/see/whatever the other timeframe? For example, if the corridor is collapsed in the future, will the party be able to determine this while moving through the same corridor in the past? There's a fair few ways you can work this dungeon depending on the general idea you're going for.

I thought about having rifts, but if the players learn that the past is much more dangerous than the present, they might not go through them much at all. And if the corridor was collapsed in the past, there would obviously be remnants of that in the present.

rferries
2020-11-16, 04:36 PM
The shifts could be beyond the players' control, e.g...
-a shift every hour
-a shift every 1d4 x 10 minutes
-a shift only at plot-relevant times e.g. whenever they acquire a key or enter a chamber where something important/tragic happened in the past or whenever the villain wills it

The shifts could be player-controlled, e.g...
-a shift whenever they enter a portal or walk down a hallway in a particular direction
-a shift whenever they cast a spell of a particular level or theme (esp. haste, slow)
-a shift whenever they make a mental ability check (esp. Wisdom or Charisma) to "force" the change

Some combination of the above e.g. a shift every 1d4x10 minutes unless they make a Wisdom check to prevent/accelerate it.

I would avoid having the shifts happen during combat, except maybe during a boss battle for flavour (the surroundings rapidly decaying/restoring due to the boss generating the shifts) or mechanics (e.g. the boss using differences in the past/present terrain to gain tactical advantages or conversely being tricked by the PCs).

As an aside - how will the map work? Will you have two sets of maps (one past, one present), and reveal only the portions that they've explored in each timeframe? Presumably altering the past dungeon will influence the present dungeon e.g. planting a seed in the past produces a present tree the PCs can climb to reach a higher level etc. You could even have a future dungeon along with the past and present haha.

I really like this idea!

Onos
2020-11-17, 06:22 AM
I'd suggest having the "obstacles" in the future - such as the collapsed passageway suggestion - and the combat encounters in the past. You are designing the dungeon after all, stacking one of the time periods as being much easier than the other sort of defeats the purpose of having a time shift scenario.

ParasocialTroop
2020-11-24, 11:26 AM
There is a adventure module called House of Paper Shadows by Bedrock games. I haven't played it myself but it has a time sword and a calendar to change events related to the dungeon if the players use the time sword. I assume the time sword only works in the dungeon.
The time shifting portion is removable for their module, so they put a surprising amount of work in to make it run-able.

It might have some ideas if you wanted to make the time travel have a little more choice by the players than the two phases option. But I like the idea of having a boss combat across time.

Cool stuff, hope it turns out well.

sleepyhead
2020-11-27, 07:24 PM
There's a part of titan fall 2 where you have to get through a laboratory while shifting from past to present at will. In the past you'd have to fight security guards and at the present monsters who took over. The ability to do it at will allows you to choose the oppent you fight. Also having it at will with an item allows you to set puzzles up such as if there's a security check point thats sealed shut, you could go to the present then travel through the hole the monsters created.

Dire Moose
2020-11-27, 10:11 PM
If you want to see it implemented more extensively, The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword actually features a lot of timeshifting areas.