Morph Bark
2013-04-05, 09:01 AM
To those currently in my group, please stay out, for the sake of our enjoyment of the game. Also spoilers. (That means especially you, Markus.)
Up 'til recently, I had a thread open for the creation and playtesting of NPCs of various homebrew base classes (here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=267254)). As we are now moving the campaign to a more dungeon-crawling-based format, I told everyone there that the services in that thread would be discontinued for that reason, but the suggestion arose to instead continue forward with the creation and use of traps, puzzles and more suchlike. Therefore, this thread! This thread will be for the creation of traps, puzzles and riddles, preferably as best integrated into a dungeon as possible.
Little traps, for instance, are nice and all, but tend to be incredibly boring ("you're poisoned now", "that's it?").
Riddles can be great, but are often poorly executed because they're very hit-or-miss. The players either get it, or don't, and even with clues it can be very hard. Players often don't like riddles for this reason. A riddle at a vital point in a dungeon with clues strewn through previous parts of it that make guessing the riddle much, much easier, though? That's great design. That makes a riddle both tough and easy, but requires more work to make it easy.
Puzzles are an entirely different thing. They're like riddles, but instead of words, there are physical objects to work with. They're like traps, but instead of being hidden, they're out in the open, and you want to trigger whatever it is they do.
I'll provide an example of all of these combined in the form of the
Cavernshrine of Tarrabor
I'd provide the drawing, but I lost it, and with it it might become harder to understand the exact lay-out of the complex.
The Cavernshrine of Tarrabor was the fancy name of an underground dungeon my players encountered at 1st-level in one of our earlier campaigns. The first hallway showed scenes cut out from the stone of dwarven myths of their gods and the seasons, with Tarrabor being the god of seasons and coming in four different forms: Fire (Summer), Stone (Autumn), Ice (Winter) and Water (Spring). In Dwarven, there was also a somewhat-cryptic message below it that said that the keys to the heart of Tarrabor was found in the four seasons.
At the end of the hallway they came to a large, round room that went up a long distance. They noticed a large hole high up on the left, and another high up on the right, while the exit to the room was right ahead of them. Once they crossed the room, however, they found the floors began to move! The floor was in fact made up of two separate platforms, one on the right and one on the left, which functioned like a scale. If a heavy PC stood on one side and a lighter PC on the other, the heavy PC's side would drop and the other side would go up. This made for a balancing act to get everyone across, where they found a button on a pedestal next to the exit, which locked the two platforms in place and prevented them from moving.
In the room ahead was a large gate with a large dwarven statue over it. The gate had two keyholes in it, but there were no keys. The players turned back and figured that they'd like to get to the holes high up on the left and right. Fiddling around with the platforms, they got one high up enough by putting the heaviest PCs on the other platform, attaching a grappling hook to the platform that was to go up, and then hitting the switch (one PC staying behind to operate the switch). Doing this, the PCs that went down on the other platform discovered another hole there that led to a hallway filled with piles of ashes and a bowl filled with wood and oil, waiting to be lit. What they didn't know, was that in the hole high up on that side was a room filled with a large pool of water that was frozen over, with the key hidden at the bottom of the pool. If the fire were lit, the pool would thaw and the key would become accessible. (The room would become incredibly hot, however, requiring that they get out immediately or succumb to the nonlethal heat damage. Lighting the fire also animated fire pixies from the piles of ashes.)
On the other side there was also a room at the bottom, which they later discovered. In this room, there was a switch. Flipping it would cause the room to become incredibly cold, but in the room above it, where there was a second pool of water, the water would be frozen over, allowing access to a ledge where there was the second key. However, if they accessed this room before flipping the switch (or upon going back and flipping it again), they could swim through the water to a deeper part and find some treasure. Furthermore, one of the walls was actually a gelatinous cube with another treasure room behind it, but the cube would become stuck and frozen over if the switch were flipped.
Upon gaining the keys, the party could open the gate, but I forgot what I had figured out for what would happen after that. A good idea could be to include books earlier in the game that reference a friend of Tarrabor who was turned to stone and that upon unlocking the gate the statue would come alive and start fighting the party whilst shouting "SAY MY NAME!" and it would only stop once either destroyed or they say the name of Tarrabor's old friend. In the room beyond there'd be either magic items relating to each of Tarrabor's seasonal forms, or a minor artifact called Tarrabor's Heart, which would change its form and power every season.
Of course, anything you post here doesn't need to be as big as a whole dungeon like the Cavernshrine of Tarrabor, as long as they are easy enough to integrate into a bigger dungeon. Let us all get cracking!
Up 'til recently, I had a thread open for the creation and playtesting of NPCs of various homebrew base classes (here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=267254)). As we are now moving the campaign to a more dungeon-crawling-based format, I told everyone there that the services in that thread would be discontinued for that reason, but the suggestion arose to instead continue forward with the creation and use of traps, puzzles and more suchlike. Therefore, this thread! This thread will be for the creation of traps, puzzles and riddles, preferably as best integrated into a dungeon as possible.
Little traps, for instance, are nice and all, but tend to be incredibly boring ("you're poisoned now", "that's it?").
Riddles can be great, but are often poorly executed because they're very hit-or-miss. The players either get it, or don't, and even with clues it can be very hard. Players often don't like riddles for this reason. A riddle at a vital point in a dungeon with clues strewn through previous parts of it that make guessing the riddle much, much easier, though? That's great design. That makes a riddle both tough and easy, but requires more work to make it easy.
Puzzles are an entirely different thing. They're like riddles, but instead of words, there are physical objects to work with. They're like traps, but instead of being hidden, they're out in the open, and you want to trigger whatever it is they do.
I'll provide an example of all of these combined in the form of the
Cavernshrine of Tarrabor
I'd provide the drawing, but I lost it, and with it it might become harder to understand the exact lay-out of the complex.
The Cavernshrine of Tarrabor was the fancy name of an underground dungeon my players encountered at 1st-level in one of our earlier campaigns. The first hallway showed scenes cut out from the stone of dwarven myths of their gods and the seasons, with Tarrabor being the god of seasons and coming in four different forms: Fire (Summer), Stone (Autumn), Ice (Winter) and Water (Spring). In Dwarven, there was also a somewhat-cryptic message below it that said that the keys to the heart of Tarrabor was found in the four seasons.
At the end of the hallway they came to a large, round room that went up a long distance. They noticed a large hole high up on the left, and another high up on the right, while the exit to the room was right ahead of them. Once they crossed the room, however, they found the floors began to move! The floor was in fact made up of two separate platforms, one on the right and one on the left, which functioned like a scale. If a heavy PC stood on one side and a lighter PC on the other, the heavy PC's side would drop and the other side would go up. This made for a balancing act to get everyone across, where they found a button on a pedestal next to the exit, which locked the two platforms in place and prevented them from moving.
In the room ahead was a large gate with a large dwarven statue over it. The gate had two keyholes in it, but there were no keys. The players turned back and figured that they'd like to get to the holes high up on the left and right. Fiddling around with the platforms, they got one high up enough by putting the heaviest PCs on the other platform, attaching a grappling hook to the platform that was to go up, and then hitting the switch (one PC staying behind to operate the switch). Doing this, the PCs that went down on the other platform discovered another hole there that led to a hallway filled with piles of ashes and a bowl filled with wood and oil, waiting to be lit. What they didn't know, was that in the hole high up on that side was a room filled with a large pool of water that was frozen over, with the key hidden at the bottom of the pool. If the fire were lit, the pool would thaw and the key would become accessible. (The room would become incredibly hot, however, requiring that they get out immediately or succumb to the nonlethal heat damage. Lighting the fire also animated fire pixies from the piles of ashes.)
On the other side there was also a room at the bottom, which they later discovered. In this room, there was a switch. Flipping it would cause the room to become incredibly cold, but in the room above it, where there was a second pool of water, the water would be frozen over, allowing access to a ledge where there was the second key. However, if they accessed this room before flipping the switch (or upon going back and flipping it again), they could swim through the water to a deeper part and find some treasure. Furthermore, one of the walls was actually a gelatinous cube with another treasure room behind it, but the cube would become stuck and frozen over if the switch were flipped.
Upon gaining the keys, the party could open the gate, but I forgot what I had figured out for what would happen after that. A good idea could be to include books earlier in the game that reference a friend of Tarrabor who was turned to stone and that upon unlocking the gate the statue would come alive and start fighting the party whilst shouting "SAY MY NAME!" and it would only stop once either destroyed or they say the name of Tarrabor's old friend. In the room beyond there'd be either magic items relating to each of Tarrabor's seasonal forms, or a minor artifact called Tarrabor's Heart, which would change its form and power every season.
Of course, anything you post here doesn't need to be as big as a whole dungeon like the Cavernshrine of Tarrabor, as long as they are easy enough to integrate into a bigger dungeon. Let us all get cracking!