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View Full Version : Help me design the game!



Superglucose
2008-11-14, 12:05 AM
So I'm running a one-shot where a squad of marines is stuck in a building protecting ~ 50 assorted civilians and needs to find their way out before a nuclear bomb goes off. I have a huge monster for them to face off against (which they can't beat and are supposed to run from, unless they set up a good ambush and get a little lucky), and I have this idea where every puzzle or room they complete they'll get to select a clue out of a hat. Clues can either be hints to what the code of the nuclear bomb's disarmer is, what the weaknesses of the monster are/how to beat/evade it, or pieces of the map (a carefully made jigsaw puzzle). The concept is similar to that of Saw, only without the gore and stuff like that.

There are a lot of teams competing, and they're told that only one team gets to live. The team the PCs will be on has the most people of any team, and so the good characters will understand that getting their team out is the most important, and the evil characters will obviously want to leave. What they don't know (and what some of the hints will point to) is that everyone is allowed to leave safely... it's just a lie to make the different teams fight each other.

So I need some good puzzels. Saw-type puzzels, only I'd prefer to have as little mutilation as possible. Also ideas for encounters they could have. I have one idea where there's a team that went berzerk and is simply killing everyone else on their way out of the building. So at one point the PCs will encounter the remnants of one of the teams running away and the crazy team gunning them down. If the PCs stop the berzerk squad without killing them they'll get oodles of info (after all, the berzerk squad's been collecting for a while), if they don't stop them they'll miss out on a super-important piece of information, and if they do stop them by killing them they'll get some information (one piece of which is super-important).

Thanks!

Vagnarok
2008-11-14, 11:38 AM
It sounds like you've got a good start. Do you just need puzzles and other ideas now? If so, maybe I can lend a hand. *thinks*

Did some evil mastermind set all of this up or something? if so the following ideas will make more sense.

Ok so here's an idea: Maybe every group in the building has been told that their group is the largest. That way each one will try their hardest to get out even though all the groups could be roughly the same size. This could lead to some interesting consequences if two groups managed to get into a more diplomatic situation.

You could put the entire adventure on a clock, say 2 hours or so? I'd recommend stopping the clock for combat and then counting the rounds and subtracting an appropriate amount of time that way, otherwise you'd waste all of the PCs' time.

The PCs could find a door that only stays open when a person puts on a heart monitor and then touches 2 electrified metal handles. The handles deal 1d6 for every second that the door is open. When the heart monitor doesn't detect a heartbeat, the door closes after 2 seconds, crushing whoever is still in the doorway for 10d6 points, reflex DC 15 for half damage, 25 for quarter damage. (of course, the of the PCs could always put on the heart monitor and then use another way to complete the circuit!)

If something is chasing the PCs, give them a strict timelimit to solve the puzzle. For example, let's say that they're being chased by some huge thing, and they have to connect wires in the correct order in under 30 seconds otherwise this monster will tear them apart. The puzzle would be very difficult to solve in the time allotted, but there's a catch: If one of the PC's puts their arm into this little slot, the door will open and then everyone can get through. A sensor in the slot will be able to tell if it's a human arm, and when an arm is inserted, a blade will chop off the arm about halfway up the humerous (upper arm bone).
This could lead to some interesting moral consequences/discussions: Should they use a marine's arm, or a civilian's? Or a civilian that wasn't part of their group to start with? Evil characters would say to use the civilian's arm with the rationale that if they don't, the marines might not be able to protect them anyway. The good characters wouldn't want to use a civ, so they'd probably want to sacrifice their own arm. It'd be interesting to see if the evil characters would fight the good ones over this and force the civ's arm into the slot.

I hope that that wall-o-text wasn't too much. Maybe you'll get some use out of these ideas.

Good luck, it sounds like a fun adventure!

rayne_dragon
2008-11-14, 03:48 PM
I've never seen any of the saw movies. However this link (http://www.thievesguild.cc/traps/) may help you. Some of the ideas are pretty interesting, I particularly like #59 Max & Nora. You can always tweek them to suit your scenario as well.