The most paranoia-inducing dungeon

[MrStabby]

I wonder how many of these I can use? I was looking for ideas so went to the start of the thread and worked through. I was thinking to just do this as a theme and to see how many of these ideas I can link together in a campaign.

Of all of the entries here, which are peoples favourites?

[noob]

I have no idea.
what is the one you prefer?

[Resileaf]

The PCs enter an abandonned house, searching for an item that an old woman back at the village asked them to bring her. Asking around town gave them no information of import about the house, just that it's been abandonned for a while.
The house is at first glance normal. Dust everywhere, rotting furniture, cobwebs and everything. They go to the second floor, and find among the rooms one door that is barred very thoroughly from the outside. At least three or four planks of wood are keeping it from being opened. The item the old woman asked them to bring her isn,t anywhere else in the house, so they try to enter the room. Tear out every plank, open the door... On the other side is a completely empty room. No furniture, no objects, no nothing. Everything is silent.

The players go back down the stairs, and find the main room to be covered in fresh blood, even though they entered the house alone. The front door is ajar, and the weather outside has turned from bright and sunny to cloudy and windy. The trees have lost their leaves, and the wind whistles mournfully through the bare branches. As they step outside, one of the players hear a disembodied voice say "Thank you" in their ear, then nothing. Upon returning to the village, the old woman is gone, and the entire town seems much more miserable than it used to be. No one will speak with the player characters.
If the players do not open the door, upon going downstairs, they'll hear a loud bang from upstairs, then nothing. Heading back up to see what that was, they will see the barred door slightly cracked in the middle, like something tried to burst through it from inside but didn't manage to.

[Ornithologist]

Okay, here are some things I did in one of my campaigns:

Some background. This is a low magic/steampunk fantasy game, kinda had a call of cthulu vibe, but without the sanity loss. There was a secret society that was following/ attacking the players, the main bad guy was a member who had gone rogue, and gotten the PC's framed for his thefts from the society. One player learned a magic spell to toss her Rune stones to foretell the future. I let her ask me 3 yes or no questions once per session. They would spend about a half-hour during every adventure trying to figure out the right questions to ask. I would give out bad information two times out of 3 because of poorly worded questions.

It kept them in the dark on certain things and put them under the impression for almost 2 months of real world weekly game sessions that the secret society of people chasing them, attempting to assassinate them, and sicing undead/werewolves on them worked for him instead of trying to find him through them. Asking the right question was really almost impossible.

Same Game: all Magic was done through Rune-focusing and mostly under the control of the secret society. There were three major rune categories - Lightning, Undeath, and Lycanthropy. Figuring out which Runes were activated/activatable as traps and which were just for marking important society secrets was sometimes difficult to figure out.

Also Same game: different character has a disadvantage where she sleep-builds trinkets that have a tendency to explode or shoot daggers out (her idea). After a certain point, she started awakening to mechanical statues that would predict the future. One was a statue of a woman in a cry of pain with oil pouring from her eyes and mouth, into a drain at the bottom to be recycled. Another was a stylistic statue of a 2 people, with one stabbing the other in the back. it had enough motion to it for the knife arm to move and the victim to fall over dead. The victim looked sort of like the player in question. One critical knife wound to the back later, and we have one PC that literally avoids sleeping as long as possible. She would sleep when she passed out from exhaustion. (The PC needed to skip a session or two and asked if I had a way to write her out for it. She spent the next two sessions in bed recovering.)

Different campaign: Replaced one party member with a shapeshifter (diddn't kill the party member, just kidnapped them.) Pulled a Darths and Droids and gave the PC extra XP for every hint they pulled off that the character was replaced, when the the party didn't notice. The party chaos was good times.

[Segev]

In any room where the party spends more than half an hour, one of the walls has a | mark on it. Each time they look away and look back, another | has appeared. ||
|||
||||
||||
|||| |

etc.

Or, maybe it increments by more than 1 at a time. It could increment by random amounts.

Alternatively, have them appear only when the person who took first watch has awakened the person taking second watch, and he notices them. They weren't there the last time the first watchman looked.

[elanfanboy]

Hey, this is a pretty neat thead, can I be a part of it?


When you enter the dungeon, you see water trickling from cracks in the walls, the water runs down into a centimeter wide stream through the center of the hall that leads further into the dungeon (turns out there’s a slight slope). As you continue further into the dungeon, the water suddenly stops running. What could this mean?

[Danoobie]

Glowing floor tiles. This actually occurred in my game, where the tiles in the room the PC's were sleeping in began to glow. They fled the room and lost a night's sleep as a result.

The glowing was harmless. They don't know that, though.

As the players are proceeding through the dungeon, just start idly rolling some dice behind the DM screen,
and after about 20 seconds start casually inquiring what defensive stats certain players have. That should
get the pot stirring.

[noob]

As the players are proceeding through the dungeon, just start idly rolling some dice behind the DM screen,
and after about 20 seconds start casually inquiring what defensive stats certain players have. That should
get the pot stirring.

You do not need that all the times.
If you usually do that then when there is a dungeon which does not tries to make tension,tension creates itself.

[Gravitron5000]

I wonder how many of these I can use? I was looking for ideas so went to the start of the thread and worked through. I was thinking to just do this as a theme and to see how many of these ideas I can link together in a campaign.

Of all of the entries here, which are peoples favourites?

It's pretty paranoia inducing when the dungeon comes back to life after being dead for 2 years