The most paranoia-inducing dungeon

[NowhereMan583]

When they next visit a tavern, have an old man "have what they're having". He then has a heart attack later in the night.

Just like that, they'll be convinced someone is out to kill them!

By the same token: if they go on a shopping trip before they head into the dungeon, one of the merchants they buy equipment / rations / rope / whatever from seems to abruptly vanish shortly afterwards.

In an open-air market:
"As you're looking for someone to fix up Alice's shield, you notice that Moderately Honest Nick's stall, where Bob bought those waterskins and ten-foot poles, isn't there anymore."

No other NPCs remember the merchant in question, and there are no records of him anywhere. Once they get into the dungeon, when they use whatever they bought from the guy, casually remind them of this.

"I use my ten-foot pole to prod at the flagstones on the ceiling."
"Is that the pole you bought from Moderately Honest Nick yesterday before he disappeared?"
"Yes."
"All right. The stones don't seem to move when you prod them."

If your players are appropriately cautious, this should have the result of convincing them their equipment is cursed, giving them something extra to be paranoid about the whole way through the dungeon. Bonus points if you do this with something they genuinely need (say, the fighter's newly-enchanted sword) and they stop using it at all because they're afraid something will go wrong. Naturally, there's a reasonable explanation for everything.

"Moderately Honest Nick's stall is back? Where did he go last time?"
"Oh, he just packed up for the day and went to visit his daughter. Personal reasons."
"Why didn't anyone remember him?"
"It's a busy marketplace and he's not very memorable."
"Why were there no records of him ever existing when we investigated this last session?"
"Clerical error."
"Why did you keep asking whether we were using Nick's equipment?"
"It's masterwork. I was giving you a +1 bonus whenever you used it."
"A masterwork pole?"
"Nick takes pride in his work."

---

Along the same lines, give a lot of the equipment they find in the dungeon unsettling inscriptions and names.

"The rusted sword sticking out of the skeleton's ribs has an inscription on the hilt in Infernal. The symbols are very small, but if you squint you can see that it is labelled 'Tulzsch-Xothu, the Treacherous Blade.'"
"Great, another one. I'll toss it in the Bag of Holding along with 'Dla-Yekub, Scourge of the Innocent', 'Nianoshoa, the Heretic's Axe', 'Aratach, That Which Shields Only Sinners', 'Nthlyu-Addith, Harbinger of Devouring', and 'Yog, the Apocalypse Caltrop'. We're going to have to get all of these examined when we can find a decent sage."

Some of these items detect as magic, and others don't. All of them should be found in situations that could be taken as hints not to trust them.

"The creature takes a swing at you with its enchanted axe. However, the weapon fails it at the worst possible time, and the nacreous flames that emanate from the blade cause horrible burns on its arms. It falls to the ground screaming." (Naturally, this is perfectly innocent flavor text for a critical fumble -- the axe has no mind of its own and cannot turn on the wielder.)

"As you lift the battered ebon shield labelled 'Aratach' from the stone chest, you hear malevolent laughter from somewhere far away." (The laughter is coming from elsewhere in the dungeon, and is completely unrelated; the timing is pure coincidence.)

"It's a statuette of a demon, carved of a material you've never seen before, with 'Nthlyu-Addith, Harbinger of Devouring' engraved on its base. It is the most detailed work you've ever seen, down to teeth, tongue and toenails. You swear you can see the pores on its abominable flesh if you look closely. Along the base, in the space around the letters, you can see miniscule scenes in bas-relief, carved so finely that you would have to use a powerful magnifying glass to actually make them out. The whole thing is much heavier than it looks like it should be, and almost seems to shine with a sinister inner glow; in your torchlight, it seems to move in a menacing fashion."
"Detect Magic."
"No result."
"Wait a minute -- don't artifacts sometimes detect as non-magical?"
(It really is just a fantastically well-made statue of some stone that isn't common in the region.)

There is nothing dangerous about any of these items. Some are minor magic items, some aren't magical at all. They were made by a culture that considered it important for things to have names -- not unusual, given that named weapons are a pretty common fantasy trope. The reason they all seem so... evil is, again, cultural. Some devil-cult or other just happened to be the dominant religion among the people who made these things. However, the obvious conclusion for the players to reach is that there's something seriously wrong with these and they need to worry -- so they won't use any of the new magic items they find.

---

I'm not sure if this next one will induce actual paranoia or just screw with the players unnecessarily, but it's an idea I tried to throw at my players a while back. (They didn't take the bait, unfortunately.)

When they're exploring the dungeon, they discover an incredibly valuable item. Not just "incredible" meaning "very" -- it is so valuable that it's difficult to wrap their brains around. It's worth more than the GDP of the nation in which they live. If the aristocracy of the entire continent banded together and pooled their funds, they couldn't afford it. And it's huge. Let's say... it's a statue, roughly ten feet tall and ten feet wide, carved from a single enormous diamond. It's even somewhat magical: specifically, it's completely and utterly indestructible. No mundane tool can so much as scratch it, and all magic just slides off it.

So now the PCs are, in theory, rich. Not only rich, but the richest people in the world. Except... what do you do with that thing? You can't get a fair price for it anywhere -- whoever you sell it to can only give you a small fraction of its value, and there aren't many people who are willing to shell out huge quantities of money for a glorified lawn ornament. In order to make it an even trade, you'd have to get several Europes in exchange, but that's not going to happen. You can't break it down and sell the material; it's indestructible. It's even a pain to get out of the dungeon; you have to widen each doorway just to get it through. (Gods only know how it got down there in the first place.) It resists magic, so you can't shrink it or teleport it. So they just have this massive unwieldy thing that doesn't do anything except sit there and take up space, but no self-respecting adventurer would leave that kind of loot behind.

They'll have to drag it overland for miles and miles... and then presumably find somewhere secure to keep it, because no matter how unwieldy it is, someone's going to try to steal it, and they don't want to be known as the adventurers who had twelve figures worth of loot stolen from them... so it's just constantly sitting in the back of their heads that they have the most valuable statue in the world locked up in their headquarters and they can't make that benefit them in any way.

Bonus points: Though the workmanship is exquisite, and the materials are obscenely valuable, the statues's not even decorative, because it depicts the mating habits of carrion crawlers and nobody wants that in their living room.

[Strigon]

(About a good page and a half of pure evil.)

I don't know if you're sadistic or just a jerk, but I congratulate you on literally all of that!

Just never invite me to play at your table.

[Keltest]

I don't know if you're sadistic or just a jerk, but I congratulate you on literally all of that!

Just never invite me to play at your table.

Id love to play at his table. I am entirely ignorant of any feelings of immanent doom.

[Cluedrew]

Id love to play at his table. I am entirely ignorant of any feelings of immanent doom.

Afraid? Why should I be afraid? What does that even mean?

In my experience most of these things will even slow my fellows down as they charge to victory. And then the more intelligent of us pull them out of the pit trap. It is a shame that most of the good ones rely the players having some sort of survival instinct, and hence can't be used in any group I have played with.

[Sith_Happens]

Except... what do you do with that thing?

Charge people a more realistically obscene amount of money to look at it, duh.

Bonus points: Though the workmanship is exquisite, and the materials are obscenely valuable, the statues's not even decorative, because it depicts the mating habits of carrion crawlers and nobody wants that in their living room.

You're seriously underestimating the decorative value of "made of a single giant diamond." It could be a statue of the Orc Centipede giving birth to Cthulhu and people would still want it in their living room.

[Drakeburn]

Throwing out another idea here, and it is one that might not necessarily need a dungeon.

Imagine this:

The adventurers are going through what appears to be your average dungeon. Inside however, a certain detail creeps everybody out: everything appears to be facing the adventurers, or at least looking at them. Statues, pictures, masks, helmets, suits of armor, skulls, etc. Technically anything that has a face, that is worn on or over the face, or has eyes.

Say the party is passing through a hallway of suits of armor. The suits of armor look normal at first, but when they come back to the hallway (or one of the adventurers look back after they passed), they'll see all the suits of armor turned towards them.

Or when the corpses of slain adventurers they're passing by looks as though they're watching them.

This can be especially great for haunted dungeons, or a wizard's place.

[NowhereMan583]

You're seriously underestimating the decorative value of "made of a single giant diamond." It could be a statue of the Orc Centipede giving birth to Cthulhu and people would still want it in their living room.

"My word, Reginald! What is that dreadful thing?"
"That, my dear Jocasta, is Abominable Teratogenesis, the crown jewel of my collection. I gave three-quarters of my estate to some adventuring ruffians for the privilege of displaying it this season."
"Its blasphemous contours are causing my optic nerves to vibrate inside my skull!"
"Yes, but it is carved from a single giant diamond."
"How gauche."

[Bard1cKnowledge]

Pretty much the entierty of the joco song creepy doll

"And the doll disapprovingly asks if you really need that much honey?"

[JAL_1138]

*One thing I'd take issue with is the lack of description indicating the +1 for the pole. Unless they'd never handled one before, they'd know it was a superior-quality item to the ones they normally buy, I think, without needing any kind of check. I'm perhaps overly-informative to players, though, so take that with a grain of salt.

*Related to the notion of having the players make random checks, periodically roll dice behind the screen, look down, ponder a bit, and resume narration. The die rolls mean nothing.

[NRSASD]

You know Jal, I'm surprised that you haven't mentioned the dreaded water cat. It seems right up your alley, being a feline familiar that lives in water.

[Lord Torath]

You know Jal, I'm surprised that you haven't mentioned the dreaded water cat. It seems right up your alley, being a feline familiar that lives in water.

Got a possible sewer-themed dungeon on the horizon, initiated by Rats And Things fleeing the sewers. I'll have to keep this guy in mind. (The other option is a swamp-quest for star metal - Gee, I wonder where I got that idea? - to forge into a sword. Sorry, JAL, neither of these look good for you...)

How about an ocean voyage where the only non-ship encounters are sighting of whales, dolphins, and other marine life, none of which actually want to eat the PCs? Or at least don't want to try to get though the ship to do so. Poor JAL would always be waiting for the one encounter that isn't benign...

[JAL_1138]

You know Jal, I'm surprised that you haven't mentioned the dreaded water cat. It seems right up your alley, being a feline familiar that lives in water.

Dragon Magazine content didn't get used much in the 2e games I played in, so I was unaware of its existence. However, it is clearly an unholy abomination to be avoided at all costs. Or killed, but engaging would be a terrible idea without being relatively high level and having a Stoneskin spell up.

[JAL_1138]

Got a possible sewer-themed dungeon on the horizon, initiated by Rats And Things fleeing the sewers. I'll have to keep this guy in mind. (The other option is a swamp-quest for star metal - Gee, I wonder where I got that idea? - to forge into a sword. Sorry, JAL, neither of these look good for you...)

How about an ocean voyage where the only non-ship encounters are sighting of whales, dolphins, and other marine life, none of which actually want to eat the PCs? Or at least don't want to try to get though the ship to do so. Poor JAL would always be waiting for the one encounter that isn't benign...

Dolphins are evil.

[Zavoniki]

Not exactly a dungeon, but on a similar note:

The PCs are part of a military/espionage organization that does secret shadowy stuff(even better if they are involved in something that they don't quite understand/know how to control, ALA Delta Green and the Cthulu Mythos).

They get their mission briefing that an outpost has gone dark and stopped sending its daily reports. The PCs need to go in to ascertain the situation.

When they arrive, everything appears fine, and the outpost occupants don't even think there's a problem, as they've been able to send their reports out fine. The PCs will then, being the mistrustful sorts, burn down everything.

What happened? The wire responsible for sending messages back home was accidentally cut/blew out/whatever. No enemy action or strange mystery has occurred.

I'm pretty sure close to 100% of the time this scenario leads to either a TPK or the entire Outpost dead.

[Keltest]

Not exactly a dungeon, but on a similar note:

The PCs are part of a military/espionage organization that does secret shadowy stuff(even better if they are involved in something that they don't quite understand/know how to control, ALA Delta Green and the Cthulu Mythos).

They get their mission briefing that an outpost has gone dark and stopped sending its daily reports. The PCs need to go in to ascertain the situation.

When they arrive, everything appears fine, and the outpost occupants don't even think there's a problem, as they've been able to send their reports out fine. The PCs will then, being the mistrustful sorts, burn down everything.

What happened? The wire responsible for sending messages back home was accidentally cut/blew out/whatever. No enemy action or strange mystery has occurred.

I'm pretty sure close to 100% of the time this scenario leads to either a TPK or the entire Outpost dead.

Maybe its just my group, but theres always the one person who isn't the DM who thinks burning everything isn't a good idea for some reason. Even more inexplicably, people listen to him.

[Bard1cKnowledge]

Maybe its just my group, but theres always the one person who isn't the DM who thinks burning everything isn't a good idea for some reason. Even more inexplicably, people listen to him.

What? No bad people, you don't burn down villages.

You burn the crops :D

[DigoDragon]

Maybe its just my group, but theres always the one person who isn't the DM who thinks burning everything isn't a good idea for some reason. Even more inexplicably, people listen to him.

That first part is me. Second part not so much.

[MeowfaceMcGee]

When the Pc's enter a dungeon, their torches go out. No mundane attempt to relight them succeeds. If they use a magical source of light, an ear-splitting scream emits from deep inside the dungeon.

5/6 of our members have darkvision =w=

[dspeyer]

Directly above the lurker... is another lurker.

In fact, one room has a ceiling 10 ft higher than the hallway in, and the excess space is entirely lurkers. There's a doorway out in the upper half of the room, accessible once all the lurkers are out of the way.

[Kami2awa]

Even better if it was a misspelling of "Tomb of Honors" XD

Dare you enter... the Tomb of Horace?

(Horace was a level 1 fighter who died fighting 3 goblins. There's nothing special or dangerous in his tomb at all.)

[Kami2awa]

Something really weird that, apart from being weird, doesn't do anything. Like a bunch of roses growing out of solid stone, or a campfire in the middle of the room that doesn't consume it's own fuel. A dead body that's not animate, but is never in the same place twice.

True plants growing in the dungeon at all would be suspicious. Where do they get light?

Sounds whose source can never be found (there was even a random table in the old DMG for these). This could even be explained away as odd acoustic reflections from elsewhere in the complex. Ditto scents, which could diffuse through cracks from just about anywhere.

Another corpse that was clearly killed by a HUGE monster (maybe in a very narrow area that no such monster could get into). The PCs will never encounter this monster.

Footprints (inhuman?) on the floor. They don't go anywhere and their source is unknown.

Minor earthquakes that shake the dungeon from time to time. They have no mechanical effect but should worry the PCs if they consider the possibility of cave-ins or similar.

Someone is following them, just outside the range of whatever kind of vision they have. They can never be caught or identified.

[Douche]

I'll share a story of how the DM messed with us.

My group was travelling through the plains during the rainy season. We had encountered several hobgoblin warbands in the past few days. When looking for a good place to find shelter for the night, we happened upon a single room hobgoblin crypt with crude paintings on the walls and 2 sarcophagi. Instead of resting, the party decided to immediately bust open a sarcophagus and loot the corpse inside (we got a gold crown and a +1 longsword out of it so that was nice) it caused a wraith to come out of the corpse and begin attacking us.

After killing it, I insist that we take our rest before busting open the second sarcophagus (which I'm against anyway, being a cleric. Didn't want to disturb the dead, nor fight another wraith). All throughout the night, the first person on watch felt a faint scratching coming from the second sarcophagus. Next watch, me and the fighter were on watch, we heard the scratching too and thought we saw the lid move, so we started piling all the weight we could onto the lid and sat down on top of it. Still moving.

I asked the rogue for the crown back, and the fighter had the sword. We respectfully put it back into the first sarcophagus (at least until we finish resting). The disturbances seemed to stop... Long rest over, we prepare ourselves to open the second sarcophagus and light up whatever is inside. As soon as the lid is moved, I cast sacred flame, paladin swings in there for a smite. Suprise round over, DM reveals.... that the sarcophagus is completely empty. Thinking there might be a tunnel underneath, we try to smash the bottom... Just dirt underneath the sarcophagus.

No loot, no skeleton, no wraith. Alright, screw it. Rest is done, lets leave. After, we ask the DM "what was the deal with the scratching?!?" he says there was never anything there, he was just messing with us. It worked

[MrStabby]

Will o' wisps are pretty good.

Something seen in the distance. Something known for leading people into traps. A faint light flickering ahead - maybe enough to illuminate some detail or other that is gone when the party approaches. The part knows it is being watched.

Add in the patter of tiny feet at the edge of earshot, an ominous slow ticking, the hollow clang of a door closing behind the party and then silence. Everything they sensed before is just gone. No light, no sound, no smell.

[Strigon]

Will o' wisps are pretty good.

Something seen in the distance. Something known for leading people into traps. A faint light flickering ahead - maybe enough to illuminate some detail or other that is gone when the party approaches. The part knows it is being watched.

Add in the patter of tiny feet at the edge of earshot, an ominous slow ticking, the hollow clang of a door closing behind the party and then silence. Everything they sensed before is just gone. No light, no sound, no smell.

As a DM who has always felt swamps were sorely underused, Will-O'-The-Wisps are some of my favourite tools; they have the rare ability to instill a creeping fear, one that starts out silent, until that little voice in your head grows louder and louder.
Is that the lights of the town you're looking for ahead? Is it a cabin? Whatever it is, it's a welcome respite from this cursed swamp!
Where did the lights go? Did we lose our way?
Ah, there they are! ... Are they moving?

Et cetera, et cetera. It's really quite a joyous thing!

[Tarlek Flamehai]

A broken summoning circle.

Stuffed animals, preferably poorly made and of things that would otherwise be terrifying (hydra, jabberwocky, beholder, etc).

Untraceable giggling or nursery rhymes.

An empty human skin.

[MrStabby]

An empty table set for dinner. Each place has a plate with a rune on it. One plate is broken. There is a faint smell of sulphur in the air.

[JAL_1138]

Numerous small_{wake up}clues that the PCs are_{please wake up}under the thrall of a lich_{this isn't real}or aboleth_{WAKE UP}and are really just_{this isn't real} moldering away instead of_{WAKE UP} adventuring, and have been for years...

[PrincessCupcake]

An extremely attractive woman in fine quality-but-very-revealing clothing behind a heavily locked door. She is bound by a long silvery chain attached to her ankle, but otherwise looks fairly well treated. The room she is in has a bed, fine furniture, a bath suite, and a table with two chairs. When the PC enter, she tries to hug whoever gets close and clings to them. If freed from her chain she sobs with joy and wants to leave the dungeon immediately. If the PCs try to detect magic, they get traces of illusion, abjuration, and transmutation magic, from her and the room. If she is targeted by Dispel Magic, roll a d6.
1- nothing appears to happen. (The magic was keeping her clothes clean.)
2- an Alter Self spell fades and she is revealed to be some kind of monstrous humanoid appropriate to the dungeon.
3-It turns out she is a Lawful Good Tiefling Cleric.
4- a Disguise Self fades and she turns out to have freckles or scars or something.
5- she vanishes entirely, leaving only the chain holding her sitting on the floor. You hear her laugh joyously.
6- the room suddenly changes. The fine clothes and furniture become rotted fabric and wood. The metals tarnish and rust. And where the girl was sitting/standing/laying, she is replaced by a moldering skeleton.

Or come up with your own equally trolly/sadistic ending.

[goto124]

Freckles and scars aren't attractive?

[PrincessCupcake]

Freckles and scars aren't attractive?

Dangerously so.