Dungeon Brainstorming- "Out of Order"

[chronoplasm]

OK, so there are two doors colored red and blue. To open them, there are two keys hidden in the dungeon, one red, the other blue. You would think there would be an obvious solution to this problem. In fact, those two doors will only lead you around in circles. The trick is to use the keys on the wrong doors.
When you put the keys in the wrong doors, you set off traps that will actually create an unintended detour.
Blue Key+Red Door= A hammer swings down from the ceiling and crashes through a wall to reveal a treasure room.
Red Key+Blue Door= A trap door opens up dropping you into a room below. You were supposed to fall on spikes, but you splash in water instead. At some point one of the walls in the pit broke and allowed the room to flood, so you can now swim through the hole to get to the next area.

I'd also like to put an ice theme in this dungeon. The idea is that the cooling machinery in the place broke, so now the place is frozen. Vents will occasionally open up to blast frigid air at you, sometimes pushing you across the slippery floors.

Basically though, this is a dungeon where nothing functions like it was originally supposed to when the Ancients built the place.

I wonder if you guys have any ideas or suggestions for such a dungeon?

[Sequinox]

It's cool. To help, I would wonder just what it was originally for, then find ways that it could malfunction. If you need, help, you can find some advice here.

[phoenixcire]

What you need to do is figure out a way to make new traps out of the malfunctioning ones.

Swinging hammer crashes through wall revealing a glorious treasure room. The adventurers step through the hole, dumbfounded by their stroke of unbelievable luck. Suddenly, the room's ceiling starts to cave in. The adventurers leap back into the hallway to avoid the falling debris. With the treasure room reblocked, they decide to go the other route.

After they fall into the water and swim into the next section, they come out into a marble room that quite obviously used to be covered in ice. Now, though, the ice is melted(which explains the water in the spike pit). The party must go across a floor riddled with obvious pressure plates. The only problem is that the floor is now slippery from the water. One of the party slips, lands on a plate and sets off a lighting trap that just so happens to be so decrepit that it now points at the floor. All characters who are touching the floor, and the water on it, are subject to lighting damage.

[chronoplasm]

Well, basically the Dungeons in my setting are huge machines built by beings called the Ancients to collect up chaotic magic and use it to create a magical substance called marrow. In its raw state, the marrow picks up bits of dreams and memories and congeals to form the random monsters that populate the dungeons.
The dungeon still does that, but all the features designed to keep the monsters contained have fallen victim to entropy and now the monsters wander freely and grow out of control.

The traps serve two purposes:
1) Keep intruders out.
2) Keep monsters in.

The temperature controls were originally supposed to keep the monsters comfortable and pacified, but now the freezing temperatures have forced the monsters to adapt and become more dangerous.
Pit traps and electrified barriers were put in place to keep the monsters within designated killing areas so that it would be easier to harvest them for marrow.
Now these traps are more hazardous to adventurers.
I like the electrified water idea.

[phoenixcire]

Are you the "Steam Dungeon is actually a monster" guy?

[chronoplasm]

Are you the "Steam Dungeon is actually a monster" guy?

No, that was other people's idea (to make the dungeon a monster), but I am the "Steam Dungeon guy".

I'm planning for this to be the first part of the super dungeon that the steam dungeon is part of, which is why I wanted the ice subtheme.

[Fako]

You could have fun with sliding doors... have one stuck in the open position, and as a party member walks through, it triggers the door's open program. However, the sensor is faulty, and will attempt to rapidly close on the victim (Reflex save or stuck/damaged/sliced in half, dependent on your ruling).

Exploding cooling pipes could be dangerous, and could potentially cause showers of icicles to fall on the party if one on the ceiling blows.

Icy floors are always fun, but Ice-covered trap doors are better... It would allow the "lighter" members of the party to pass by unharmed, only to have the fighter smash through the trap due to the weight of his armor.

On the topic of armor, frigid temperatures can cause problems with all the joints that allow freedom of movement. Unless they "thaw" regularly, you could impose speed/armor penalties as their protective gear ices over (think Ironman). Granted, this depends on just how cold the area is...

If snow is formed in any areas (maybe an area built to allow for constant rainfall?), it can be used to easily hide anything you want beneath it... be it a beastie, trap, or treasure...

For the hammer, can I recommend that, after it smashes the wall, it then proceeds to snap off its hinges and fall onto the party? Depends on how cruel you are though...

Fire spells could be very hazardous in here... if the monsters crave any source of heat they can find, any use of spells with the [Fire] descriptor might as well be a neon sign saying The Heroes Are Here!.

Just a few ideas... I hope they help... I'll post more if I think of any...

[chronoplasm]

Icy floors are always fun, but Ice-covered trap doors are better... It would allow the "lighter" members of the party to pass by unharmed, only to have the fighter smash through the trap due to the weight of his armor.

That could screw up a lot of the traps.
I could see things like giant bear-traps that completely fail to go off when activated.

I can imagine a lot of undead creatures living in this area, but frozen in blocks of ice. You might have to melt the ice with fire magic to pass, but doing so thaws out the monsters inside.

Hmmm... Perhaps the party can find a switch that turns the cooling system off and turns the heaters on. Imagine the kinds of chaos that can cause.

[Fako]

Hmmm... Perhaps the party can find a switch that turns the cooling system off and turns the heaters on. Imagine the kinds of chaos that can cause.

Well, cave-ins are my first idea...which could potentially re-write the entire layout of the dungeon if the ice has burrowed through that much of the structure...

I like the idea of frozen undead... you might want to use the heat draining one from Libris Mortis if you have access to it, I don't have the book on me right now, but I think it's called a "Bleakborn".

If you do use the heating feature, Water Elementals that have been trapped in the ice could escape, providing enemies in rooms that were already visited.

Also, it would mean that the traps that didn't work (Like the giant bear trap you mentioned) would start functioning, making escape as lethal as entrance, a la "Prince of Persia: Warrior Within"...

[chronoplasm]

That would be cool. Perhaps in the beginning of the dungeon there is a strange icy bridge you have to cross. When you get there as you make your escape, you find that the bridge has thawed out and it actually turns out to be an Ochre Jelly that froze while it was trying to cross between two ledges.