So you wanna be the guy who gets out of this hellish nightmare.

[Xuincherguixe]

It's a little late, and I'm not thinking too straight, but I had a thought.

Many of you have probably played I wanna be the guy. This gave me a horrible idea for a dungeon.

The party has to go through a lot of completely excessive traps. And chances are they're going to die. Constantly. This is the really evil part. Even death will not release them from this hell. And every time they die, someone else at random in the world takes their place.


Not quite sure how I can really translate it into a dungeon, but I'm sure I can think of something. Still, I thought I'd share the this to all you sadistic dungeon masters out there.

[Tengu]

Tomb of Horrors, friend, Tomb of Horrors. You can download it for free from the Wizards' website. Just add the part about death not being a release and make them trapped inside, like the cliche but good entrance door closing behind them when they enter.

[Tempest Fennac]

How does Tomb of Horrors work? It would probably be a good idea to have several spare character sheets to use as replacement characters.

[Niknokitueu]

Many years ago a series of trap books came out, with traps varying from merely lethal to guarranteed gory death.

I personally owned "Traps Ate", and would giggle at the very prospect of sending my players (of the time) through even one of those concoctions.

A hint if you are serious about running a lethal game: worth having the same characters go through it again on a TPK (bound to happen if it is that lethal), with full memory of what they had done wrong before.

...Then at the end of the adventure, take away experience depending on how many times they died... :smallevilgrin:

Have Fun!
Niknokitueu

[Tempest Fennac]

The experience idea could be interesting if it's used to determine the level the party would start at if you went on to start a propper game (taking Exp. away from the entire party would be a good idea to avoid having 1 party member on, for instance, level 10 while someone else would be on level 4).

[Dark Knight Renee]

Xuincherguixe:
*snip*
The party has to go through a lot of completely excessive traps. And chances are they're going to die. Constantly. This is the really evil part. Even death will not release them from this hell.
*snip*

Niknokitueu:
*snip*
A hint if you are serious about running a lethal game: worth having the same characters go through it again on a TPK (bound to happen if it is that lethal), with full memory of what they had done wrong before.
*snip*

I'd suggest keeping the same characters altogether instead of new ones if they're dying that often, except that it takes a special kind of player to roleplay a character dying repeatedly. Most players would see auto-resurection as a boon and proceed to abuse it, with no thought as to how a real person (the character itself) might respond to dying horribly and repeatedly.

My sister and I had a lot of fun with this kind of scenario, but that said, it was more a narrative game rather than one based on a system like D&D. That, and we're highly sadistic towards our characters...

[Jimp]

I think it's a pretty lethal concept. I like the idea of the players remaining the same character with full memory of what they did. When they die they could reappear at magical resurrection points but only if their bodies are recovered and brought there by other party members. It could be an insane torture process where the only way out is to make it to the end, the challenge is knowing how much pain everyone has to go through to even make it.
Think Cube

[Xuincherguixe]

I've given it a bit more thought.

I didn't know you could download Tomb of Horrors (legally at least). And while it might serve as inspiration, half the fun is coming up with sadistic stuff like that.


The other thing. Whenever the players die, they'll find themselves at a previous point in the dungeon. When they get to the point where they just died, they'd find a bunch of corpses in basically the same condition as them. However, the bodies would clearly not be their's. They might be an entirely different species. And, maybe, each time they come back, they find that the previous sets of corpses have vanished without a trace.


For added creepiness, maybe the replacement corpses will have no faces. Which is symbolism. The people who died in their place's identity has been made meaningless. Perhaps later, one of the encounters would be a monster composed of all the lost faces. It's a direction I could go in.