Building a tower on a MASSIVE scale

[Greyfeld85]

Long story short, I'm building a tower to challenge the players in my campaign. The tower itself needs to be GIGANTIC. Originally, my plan was to have the base of the tower something like 60 squares (300 feet) in diameter, reducing by 5 feet for every floor they go up. However, after thinking about it more I decided that this is just too small for what I want to do.

I want to build a tower that's massive enough that you can't realistically make a detailed grid map for it. I want a tower that's massive enough that you could fit a small town on each floor. I want a tower that's massive enough that the PCs can actually get lost while they try to find the stairs up to the tower's next level.

This sort of undertaking, I'm starting to realize, is more akin to drawing up a city than making individual rooms for a dungeon. I have some general obstacles I'd like to put in their path (each floor will pretty much have its own "theme"), but I'm a little lost on how I'd go about doing that without just blatantly railroading them into it.

I think mapping out each floor would take a ridiculous amount of effort, so I'm wondering if there's an easier way to go about it? Or do I need to just suck it up and get it going?

[Ninjadeadbeard]

If you search after it, the poster Motoko's Ghost once had this as an entire setting. If you saw the Tower from the outside, it looked like a really narrow Mountain.

So...my advice would be to map out a region like you would if the players were campaigning through a large valley or something, but set down some colossal pillars here and there that reach up into the darkness above, and occasionally one of these pillars would have stairs built into them.

If you need a proper Dungeon Crawl, build a doorway into a far wall or pillar side. This leads to the labyrinthine service stairwells. Of Doom!

[motoko's ghost]

If you search after it, the poster Motoko's Ghost once had this as an entire setting. If you saw the Tower from the outside, it looked like a really narrow Mountain.

And that was one of the smaller sizes we settled on, there was one suggestion that it should be an entire demiplane or group of demiplanes

@Greyfeld: yeah mapping out anything that large is too much hassle and it might be better in the long run not to do it, so it can maintain some flexibility just in case you need to add/remove something.

If you're worried about railroading

wait, I just realised...is this tower inhabited or is it fallen to the ages and become unto a citadel of corruption and a monument to monsters?
If so there are any number of reasons the PCs would enter it anyway (xp&gp spring to mind straight away but there could be other reasons).
Perhaps some parts have inhabitants besieged by monsters and the PCs have to rescue them?

I'm looking forwards to seeing how this turns out though

[Greyfeld85]

@Greyfeld: yeah mapping out anything that large is too much hassle and it might be better in the long run not to do it, so it can maintain some flexibility just in case you need to add/remove something.

If you're worried about railroading

wait, I just realised...is this tower inhabited or is it fallen to the ages and become unto a citadel of corruption and a monument to monsters?
If so there are any number of reasons the PCs would enter it anyway (xp&gp spring to mind straight away but there could be other reasons).
Perhaps some parts have inhabitants besieged by monsters and the PCs have to rescue them?

I'm looking forwards to seeing how this turns out though

Ok, here's the gist of the setting in a nutshell to give you an idea of where this is going...

Meskia (the city this game takes place in) is situated next to an immense tower. This city is the central area of recent technological revolution, which is brewing a tech vs. magic standoff that is threatening to explode into all-out war in the streets. The technology itself is primarily being made by goblin craftsmen, who are getting their designs from an unknown investor who scavenges them from the tower.

The tower itself is immense (something like 1 mile in diameter at its base). In a previous age, it was a place of learning, discovery, and experimentation; for both technology and magic. However, the combined efforts of mortals were bordering on the powers of the gods, so they laid siege to the tower.

The long and short of it, everybody dies, and the tower is left to rot for ages with various mechanical and magical defenses still left ticking away inside.

The tower itself has been the drawing point for Meskia, the reason it's grown as a city, especially with the discovery of the mechanical technology. It's become a city that thrives on "adventurers" who want to make a name for themselves. However, there's no record of anybody who's managed to reach the top of the tower; if somebody did reach it, they never came back alive.

So, enter the PCs. A mage (vice-lead of the local magicians' order) hires these individuals to make it to the top of the tower, under the impression that there is something at the top that will help end the brewing civil conflict with minimal bloodshed.

Whew, that was longer than I had originally intended lol.

Edit: To answer one of your questions I never actually touched on: I originally intended to have some tribe or something or other live on one of the floors of the tower, but I had a hard time deciding how I could logically have that happen without something incredibly stupid like, "Oh, our ancestors just happened to avoid that slaughter by pure luck."

Editx2: I feel I should point out a couple pieces of meta knowledge for the sake of completeness. The tower itself is built out of a sort of magic-dampening stone. Magic doesn't work on it, or through it. However, the PCs will have limited access to the outside world while climbing the tower, due to a prototype two-way mechanical teleportation device the goblins recently completed.

[helik4888]

There is a Korean comic series called "Tower of God" it is super interesting and there some similarity except in this series each floor of the tower is akin to the size of the American continent and the known tower is only 120 floors with many more above that.

in one of my old games I had a magical tower that existed for the PC's to grind and get some treasure. they could only go into the tower once a week and after 5 floors there was a rest floor for them. On each floor there was a different environment with a different monster challenge for the party. Once the monsters were dead the stair would appear to the next floor. However moving through the Tower there was this constant narration by what they dubbed "The spirit of the Tower." I really liked the idea that the building had a personality of its own and was trying to get something out of the PC's.

For a sense of flourish give each level of the tower a theme of some sort. For instance have a floor of the tower be this massive plain with an artificial sun. Have a floor be frozen or made of flaming mechanical spiders. Give each floor a sense of purpose and have it tell just a little bit of the story just with the setting.

one idea is have them find journals or pages of someone's diary from their attempt to climb the tower. each page gives a little bit more of a clue as to the purpose of the tower is. or have one party member see the "ghosts" of the former inhabitants of the tower.

[motoko's ghost]

@Greyfeld: maybe the "tribe" is part of an expedition to attempt to recolonise the tower that ended up getting trapped by the monsters and devolving?(or evolving, depending on how you want to play it)

[Greyfeld85]

Hmm... it might make sense if I place them after the frozen wastes.

As it stands, I'm going to have each floor of the tower be a different theme unto itself. Currently, I have the "Great Scrapyard," where the floor is covered as far as the eye can see with broken and malfunctioning technology, or just designs that never panned out. Probably with some sort of automaton or warforged guards to prevent scavenging. And I also have "The Frozen Wastes," with a perpetual snowstorm and cold-weather beasties roaming around; and a portal to the plane of ice sitting open in the center of the floor.

Still looking for more floor ideas, but I think I could put the tribe on the floor after the frozen wastes. It seems dangerous enough that adventurers without a way to teleport out would be sufficiently "stuck" at that point.

[helik4888]

Look to examples from other Planes of existence to get good ideas. with enough magic or technology you can replicate anything so go big or go home.

Floor of Law - where taboos result in damage and death for those that break them.

Floor of water - just have a floor filled with water with small pockets or air.

Floor of perpetual darkness - only creatures with blindsight live on this floor. and only high level light spells can cut through the darkness.

Clockwork floor where PC's have to "time" there movements between gears.

Floor of illusions making the PC's constantly question what is real and what is false.

and one of my personal favorites, floor with giant flaming mechanical spiders that maintain the delicate technology left behind

[Greyfeld85]

What about staircases? I originally considered having the stairs running along the outside of the tower, but I quickly realized the problem with that: Any character over level 5 can just fly to the top floor that way.

So obviously the staircases to the next levels need to be inside the floors. But should I put each staircase approximately in the same place of each floor? What's the best way to get the players to find the staircases on each floor without resorting to spending days rolling spot and survival checks? Should the staircases themselves pose some sort of puzzles or hazards, or should I just grant the players access to the next floor when they find them?

[Ninjadeadbeard]

What about staircases? I originally considered having the stairs running along the outside of the tower, but I quickly realized the problem with that: Any character over level 5 can just fly to the top floor that way.

So obviously the staircases to the next levels need to be inside the floors. But should I put each staircase approximately in the same place of each floor? What's the best way to get the players to find the staircases on each floor without resorting to spending days rolling spot and survival checks? Should the staircases themselves pose some sort of puzzles or hazards, or should I just grant the players access to the next floor when they find them?

The Staircases always appear at the horizon whenever the PCs reach the next level. They staircases are always on the opposite side as the last, forcing players to cross the floors before they can move on to the next. And some appear to have been warded with cryptic riddle-spells (so you can delay your players and have them run around solving a puzzle).

Floor ideas:

• Floor of Wonder
  
  This floor appears much like a dream, a land of enchantment, full of whimsical characters, like white rabbits, march hares, mad hatters, hookah-caterpillars and headhunting queens. At any rate, it'll give you an oppurtunity to run a particularly...wonderful adventure.
• Floor of Death
  
  Anything that dies on this floor is returned to horrible un-life. PCs will constantly fight undead while on this floor, and if they fall they immediately rise as intelligent undead but with their personalities and free-will intact. A Resurrection spell reverses the effect. Leaving the floor will also be difficult as their is a cadre of clerics roaming this floor, not even bothering to verify the undead state of their victims.
• Floor of Sky
  
  This floor is an endless abyss of clouds and floating islands. All characters on this floor gain Fly with Clumsy Maneuverability. This floor is also crawling with various, deadly flying monsters and the islands are covered with small villages of commoners.

[Greyfeld85]

• Floor of Sky
  
  This floor is an endless abyss of clouds and floating islands. All characters on this floor gain Fly with Clumsy Maneuverability. This floor is also crawling with various, deadly flying monsters and the islands are covered with small villages of commoners.

While I don't want just random groups of people living in the tower (since it sort of flies in the face of the entire lore of the tower), I've been considering a floor where you're automatically afflicted with some sort of flight or antigravity spell. Turning it into a gauntlet of flying beasts with the occasional floating island to rest and recuperate sounds pretty perfect.

[Greyfeld85]

While I think about it, magic is really easy to make floors out of. Making things work "because of magic" is an easy catchall, and I can simply make any fantastical theme I want without it sounding all that outlandish.

On the other hand, getting mechanical-only floors are going to be difficult without having the themes overlapping. The Great Scrapyard was pretty much my big "technology" idea, but anything beyond that, I'm not really sure.

I thought about filling one floor with hundreds of tech teleporters, where the players would have to piece out the correct path of teleporters to get to the staircase, but I'm not entirely sure how I would lay out that sort of grand puzzle without turning it into an annoying "trial-and-error" sort of thing.

I could create a room of Tesla Coils that zap random parts of the room. Though the problem with that is I need to come up with other dangers that are properly thematic in case they just load up on electricity resistance. I could throw in some shambling mounds, though that wouldn't hold true to the theme. I could do storm elementals, though that'd run into the same problem with electricity resistance I would think.

[Ninjadeadbeard]

I could create a room of Tesla Coils that zap random parts of the room. Though the problem with that is I need to come up with other dangers that are properly thematic in case they just load up on electricity resistance. I could throw in some shambling mounds, though that wouldn't hold true to the theme. I could do storm elementals, though that'd run into the same problem with electricity resistance I would think.

Beyond navigating a minefield of Tesla Coil traps, the players could also contend with Golems (tweaked for Electric Immunity) who roam the floor. And the players' only help is a slightly unhinged Lich who favors lightning spells and straight lines, but is otherwise a nice guy.

[Greyfeld85]

Beyond navigating a minefield of Tesla Coil traps, the players could also contend with Golems (tweaked for Electric Immunity) who roam the floor. And the players' only help is a slightly unhinged Lich who favors lightning spells and straight lines, but is otherwise a nice guy.

I'd like to avoid mixing magic and technology until they get toward the top of the tower. My idea is that the tech and magic experiments were separated by floor. This also fits with the current premise of the game where tech and magic are at odds and separate from one another. Though the top few floors should probably blend the two more and more. Basically, they'd be the floors where experiments to blend the two were taking place.

That said, golems could be set on the Tesla Coil floor as mechanics to fix the coils whenever they start breaking down. And pseudo-guards to protect them from tampering.

[Eldest]

A factory floor, with various melted iron flows and some very ticked warforged who were made to enjoy forging things and protect the forge. However, since there are no orders for things to make, they instead "protect the forge" rather agressively by attacking anybody on the floor. Even better if the way through to the stair is supposed to be clear, but the warforged blockaded it so you have to divert through the factory.

[Greyfeld85]

A factory floor, with various melted iron flows and some very ticked warforged who were made to enjoy forging things and protect the forge. However, since there are no orders for things to make, they instead "protect the forge" rather agressively by attacking anybody on the floor. Even better if the way through to the stair is supposed to be clear, but the warforged blockaded it so you have to divert through the factory.

So... I'm recreating the factory scene from Star Wars? :P