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Post by rorrik on Jul 14, 2015 15:19:50 GMT
This is great! I'm always looking for ways to make a campaign play out without having to have any idea where it is going, and this makes it make total sense to steal the player's ideas. I've had some groups that need a really strong hook to get moving and they might hang up on something like this, but I might just steal this artifact idea for a dungeon or something for one of the more self-driven groups. Every night they fight demons/monsters and every morning towns people are killed. Well what it turns out is the town is curse. The towns people look like monsters to visitors at night and vistors look like monsters to townspeople at night. Only the few that decide to go out at night end up in a battle. This idea is amazing, I would love to see the players' faces when they realize what is going on. Would they still be getting paid? Or would the mayor refuse payment since they keep letting people die? My players were once hired to stop a cult in a small town and after killing a third of the population in the course of wiping out this cult, they skipped town without asking to be paid...
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Post by friartook on Jul 14, 2015 20:02:24 GMT
I recently joined a new group, and we're going to be rotating DMs every month or two. I've been mulling over what I want to do when my turn comes up. The idea I'm leaning toward is inspired by the 90's horror flick Sphere. In the movie, the characters encounter an alien artifact that makes their thoughts and dreams come true, but no one realizes this is happening until the end. I know you're suffering from a lack of spare time, but may I recommend reading the book Sphere, by Michael Chrighton? I read it and loved it; I found the movie to be a pretty piss-poor adaptation. The book is full of nightmare fuel.
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Post by friartook on Jul 14, 2015 20:22:39 GMT
An idea:
Damned if You Do, Damned if You Don't: This would fit as a sub-campaign to a larger survival/horror campaign. The PCs come across a village in a barren wasteland. The surrounding county is full of all manner of horrible monsters and aberrations; it is a wilderness of terror and nobody lives there. The PCs were forced to travel through this no mans land to reach (insert destination here). In the distance they see a solitary peak, sort of like a skinny Devil's Tower. At the base of this peak is a village, a prosperous farming community in the middle of horrorscape. The PCs rest there for a few days. During their stay, a local woman gives birth. That night, the players see a village elder walking the baby up a winding path that leads to the peak. The path ends a the edge of a plateau on top of the peak. There are two structures on the peak, a small alter right at the end of the path, and a structure of pinkish crystal in the center of the plateau. The elder leaves the baby, squalling in terror, on the alter and practically runs down the path. He bumps into the PCs, and encounter happens where it is revealed that something powerful lives in the crystal structure that feeds on psychic energy. The villagers sacrifice the firstborn of each family to this creature, who in return, uses its psychic powers (amplified by the crystal structure) to keep the horrors of the wasteland away from the village. The PCs must choose: do they let this horrible bargain stand? If they find it too morally reprehensible, how do they plan to deal with all the villagers who will die without the protection offered by the being? Oh, and if they do decide to attack the crystal structure, they find a powerful psychic humanoid...and about 100 mindless children, ranging from infant to teenager, under its control to fight.
(more to come later as edits)
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Samuel Wise
Demigod
Ready to Help...
Posts: 989
Favorite D&D Class: Warlock
Favorite D&D Race: Mousefolk
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Post by Samuel Wise on Jul 15, 2015 17:06:33 GMT
Last time I DMd I decided to foreshadow the evil Nesting dolls. (I am DMing a one player campaign). In this campaign we started with a prologue that had the player (an orphaned elf known as Brynn) beginning as a child, working with his brother John in a brewery. His brother was injured in an explosion and secretly, mysteriously left before the player found him. The King offered to adopt Brynn, but Brynn refused (the players decision), instead taking house with an old, cat-loving lady. Soon afterword, Brynn stole a Nesting doll from the old lady. When he opened it: out popped a demon. Brynn was so horrified and panicked, he chucked the doll into the depths of the forest. The demon soon ran off on its own nefarious plans. One of the several different paths he can explore next session will be to investigate the creepy cat lady who has a plethora of Nesting dolls (though a lot else had happened that session, so we'll see).
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Post by rorrik on Jul 15, 2015 19:08:34 GMT
The PCs must choose: do they let this horrible bargain stand? If they find it too morally reprehensible, how do they plan to deal with all the villagers who will die without the protection offered by the being? With my players, they would most likely want to fight the crystal creature, and then this would become an escort quest where they try to save as many of the villagers as possible as they lead them through the wilderness. I've had mixed results in escort quests like this, but as long as the villagers have a couple useful people (priest with some healing and undead turning, for example) it makes it less onerous. The DM Min-Maxed Too!? This idea is somewhat related to DM_Mitch's players having to fight their own evil characters that they made really powerful. What if adventuring parties have become enough of a nuisance to the local authorities that they've invested in a specialized police force meant for dealing with adventurers? The local police are now backed up by NPCs with PC class levels and specialized for taking down Wizards, Clerics, Fighters, and Rogues. As is all too common, the players get in his bad side and find themselves up against a party with a similar CR to them and hand picked to counter their party makeup. I'm doing this now for an upcoming campaign where the players are a noble family of gnomes and mostly magic-users. The Emperor has a large police force, but he also has a smaller force of special police he uses primarily for arresting nobles who are specially trained to neutralize families like the party. The campaign will begin with an attempt to arrest 2 of the party members and an NPC and if it escalates, the fight will be a challenging one.
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Post by joatmoniac on Jul 16, 2015 16:03:42 GMT
With my players, they would most likely want to fight the crystal creature, and then this would become an escort quest where they try to save as many of the villagers as possible as they lead them through the wilderness. Your entire post is a good one, and it could definitely make for a very intense battle when everything the players use is countered by the evil party. The quoted portion made me think of Oregon Trail, and how someone is definitely going to die of dysentery on that escort quest.
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Post by rorrik on Jul 16, 2015 17:12:04 GMT
With my players, they would most likely want to fight the crystal creature, and then this would become an escort quest where they try to save as many of the villagers as possible as they lead them through the wilderness. Your entire post is a good one, and it could definitely make for a very intense battle when everything the players use is countered by the evil party. The quoted portion made me think of Oregon Trail, and how someone is definitely going to die of dysentery on that escort quest. I know escort quests have a really bad reputation in video games, but they've gone pretty well for me at the table. As long as I give a dozen of the NPCs names and manipulate things so they get close the PCs, the players come to love them and fight to protect them. On of my current partied had no meat shield, but I ship wrecked them with a bunch of sailors and now they try to avoid letting the sailors play meat shield because they know their names and have saved their lives, been saved by them, and watch them make heroic charges under hails of arrows. It's still work to keep the sailors alive, but now they do it happily.
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Post by arnil on Aug 31, 2015 11:53:27 GMT
How about a cultist willingly allows himself to be used as a sacrifice that has a tentacled extra dimensional horror implanted in his undead corpse. Changing it from undead to abberant. And the creature can grapple you and attempt to devour you in the open slits in the corpse. dungeonsandtulu.wordpress.com/
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Post by friartook on Jan 26, 2016 18:56:06 GMT
Speaking of Nightmare Fuel...(caution, lyrics are a bit NSFW)
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dmonic
Commoner
Posts: 16
Favorite D&D Class: Assassin
Favorite D&D Race: Boring Human (... Or Warforged maybe)
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Post by dmonic on Feb 2, 2016 21:20:04 GMT
Okay; This is a Rough idea I had a long time ago for a Horror Labyrinth/Maze Dungeon, It's designed to separate the party, and to be a Mapper's nightmare.
The maze is built of seemingly unique seeming hallways and rooms, but in fact, these hallways and rooms are repeated over and over throughout it, What's worse, is that there are stealthy teleportation traps, that can move you without you realizing you've been moved (No flash, no sparkle, just a instantaneous shift from point A to Point B. Some of these traps are designed to move the whole party (If they're getting too close to the end without having solved the puzzle/found the key/whatever) Others of these teleportation traps are designed to pick off party members one by one, sending them to an Identical section of maze elsewhere,
Oh, and did I mention the race of faceless Dopplegangers trapped within the Maze?
When separated from the party by one of these traps, there is a good chance that they'll still be in the same marching formation that they were in previously, but that their party is now composed of Dopplegangers taking the forms of their friends perfectly, all except for their eyeless pale faces - The PC will NOT be told they've been separated (the other players will be told to be silent by note, text, or gesture), They'll continue to walk in formation until they try to interact/talk with a Party member/turn around/do something that would cause them to look at the face of one of their friends, at which point, the jig is up, the faceless horrors are described to them, they realize they're alone, and the Horrors attack. (And Hopefully, you know, this doesn't result in a TPK over time).
... If I were really really mean, There would also be regular Dopplegangers in addition to faceless ones, that seek to replace party members in order to finally be able to leave the dungeon.
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Post by Lurkieloo on Mar 26, 2017 1:41:09 GMT
I really like doing changing dungeons and often include moving sections. This is one where I went whole hog on it: The Rotating LabyrinthHate to resurrect, but I looked for this post after listening to the DM-Spastics Bonus episode and was floored. The posts were back in 2014 and it looks like the dropbox links from the crowdsource results have gone 404. That said, I thought I would get a feel for what it would take to re-implement form scratch as a walk-through. Here is the first step of encoding: there are 7 x four position pivots, there are 5 of the larger half-moon slices that can each fill one of 5 slots and 7 of the smaller half-moons for seven slots. The math works out to 4^7 possible unique combinations of pivots in which sit 5! large half-moon combos and 7! small half-moon combos. Oh no, maths! That is 16,384 x 120 x 5040 = 9,909,043,200 unique layouts possible in this dungeon as drawn. Almost 10 million (billion, Sir)... 10 billion configurations... muahaha muahaha muahaha! Basically, it requires a 16-bit integer to code for the rotations and another to code for the slice positions. I will have to look at the complexity of the possible single step transitions, since they vary according the pivot positions. At most, each slice can only stay in its current slot or swap with another slot, so 14 possible slot outcomes, and 21 possible 90 degree rotations (counting no movement). 14 x 21 = 294 transitions for each starting point. That is manageably sparse.
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Post by rorrik on Jun 23, 2017 16:05:44 GMT
I really like doing changing dungeons and often include moving sections. This is one where I went whole hog on it: The Rotating LabyrinthHate to resurrect, but I looked for this post after listening to the DM-Spastics Bonus episode and was floored. The posts were back in 2014 and it looks like the dropbox links from the crowdsource results have gone 404. That said, I thought I would get a feel for what it would take to re-implement form scratch as a walk-through. Here is the first step of encoding: there are 7 x four position pivots, there are 5 of the larger half-moon slices that can each fill one of 5 slots and 7 of the smaller half-moons for seven slots. The math works out to 4^7 possible unique combinations of pivots in which sit 5! large half-moon combos and 7! small half-moon combos. Oh no, maths! That is 16,384 x 120 x 5040 = 9,909,043,200 unique layouts possible in this dungeon as drawn. Almost 10 million (billion, Sir)... 10 billion configurations... muahaha muahaha muahaha! Basically, it requires a 16-bit integer to code for the rotations and another to code for the slice positions. I will have to look at the complexity of the possible single step transitions, since they vary according the pivot positions. At most, each slice can only stay in its current slot or swap with another slot, so 14 possible slot outcomes, and 21 possible 90 degree rotations (counting no movement). 14 x 21 = 294 transitions for each starting point. That is manageably sparse. I can't believe I never did the math. I think there may be a slight effort in that the second largest circle and two of the small circles can only rotate to two positions, so only 1 billion and change, I think. Sorry I've been off these forums for so long, I recently made a document and video to help make the labyrinth more easily. Might get around to a digital version in the near future.
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Post by joatmoniac on Jun 25, 2017 7:00:27 GMT
Hate to resurrect, but I looked for this post after listening to the DM-Spastics Bonus episode and was floored. The posts were back in 2014 and it looks like the dropbox links from the crowdsource results have gone 404. That said, I thought I would get a feel for what it would take to re-implement form scratch as a walk-through. Here is the first step of encoding: there are 7 x four position pivots, there are 5 of the larger half-moon slices that can each fill one of 5 slots and 7 of the smaller half-moons for seven slots. The math works out to 4^7 possible unique combinations of pivots in which sit 5! large half-moon combos and 7! small half-moon combos. Oh no, maths! That is 16,384 x 120 x 5040 = 9,909,043,200 unique layouts possible in this dungeon as drawn. Almost 10 million (billion, Sir)... 10 billion configurations... muahaha muahaha muahaha! Basically, it requires a 16-bit integer to code for the rotations and another to code for the slice positions. I will have to look at the complexity of the possible single step transitions, since they vary according the pivot positions. At most, each slice can only stay in its current slot or swap with another slot, so 14 possible slot outcomes, and 21 possible 90 degree rotations (counting no movement). 14 x 21 = 294 transitions for each starting point. That is manageably sparse. I can't believe I never did the math. I think there may be a slight effort in that the second largest circle and two of the small circles can only rotate to two positions, so only 1 billion and change, I think. Sorry I've been off these forums for so long, I recently made a document and video to help make the labyrinth more easily. Might get around to a digital version in the near future. So many quotes inside quotes. Glad to see you back! The other thing is that Morgan and I are sad because we couldn't find the files for that 3D version of the labyrinth anymore, and my heart died a little that day, haha. I really want to get this together and run it at a con! We should totally chat about that.
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