A Sapient Megadungeon is You (Generic D&Dish fantasy)

[drake_azathoth]

[X] Plan Rein

 

[Alphaleph]

[X] Plan Rein

 

[Heaven Canceler]

[X] Plan Rein

 

[Darkened]

Okay, votes locked for Plan Rein. Sorry about the delay. Last vote count I did had [X] sulk tied and I missed a few posts from there. Then had issues getting in contact with Rein about 1-2 iffy details I needed to clear up. Everything's ironed out and I'll start working on the update.

 

[Darkened]

The wizard pauses as he examines the coin-covered floor for a few moments. You really couldn't quite manage a sea of coins, though you definitely tried, you simply lack the power to create precious coins in inifinite sums, within a given time frame at least. Still, the floor is covered, and the pressure plate hidden. You can practically hear the sound of a crushed wizard already. Or perhaps he'll manage to make it to the end, desperately open the door and enjoy a wonderful meal of spikes to the face. There, his footfalls reach the trapped section of the floor. His booted leg rises, hovering uncertainly over the pressure plate, and then falls with agonizing slowness.

But fall it does, and the distant sound of a rolling boulder cries out for the wizard's death from behind. The wizard's eyes widen as he spins, stumbling over the coins and the slippery floor, to face him. He takes a step back as if to start running, and then points his hand and chants, smiling gleefully.

"Shatter"

And your precious boulder trap explodes into a cloud of relatively harmless rubble. The kinetic force of its destruction sends the wizard slipping, but he doesn't even have the grace to fall and hurt himself. You, you worked hard on that! Does he think giant boulders just grow on trees?

Without a moment's hesitation, the wizard cheerily walks down to the door, opening it casually and taking a step forward, only to blink as a flurry of spikes and arrows rockets out in front of his nose. You'd assumed he would be running for his life, not... not casually strolling down the hallway like this is a vacation! Your trap design was perfect, it's just... just the cheating wizard's fault that it isn't working.

The wizard looks, and sighs. "Errol! Come break these spikes so we can continue." He sounds the slightest bit petulant as he settles in to wait for his companion to eventually catch up.

Errol, proving himself far less cheaty than the cheating wizard, practically impales himself on the spikes as he tries to find the leverage to break them off. But, broken they are, and the wizard begins to continue up the corridor, crawling when he reaches the point where he needs to.

Wonderful, soon your new kobold will take him by surprise and... its leg is sticking out around the door periodically as the bored lizard shuffles awkwardly. Hearing the wizard come, it does do a credible job at trying to hide itself, but the wizard is snickering quietly to himself as he carefully mutters something.

"Shield"

Satisfied with the transparent globe that periodically flickers into the visible spectrum around him, the wizard emerges from the corridor and practically stumbles from the narrow passageway, taken by the sudden fear spell that leaves his limbs shaking as he instinctively turns to run. Your adorably vicious kobolds takes the moment of panic brought about by the spell to club him over the head. Finally!

The wizard's shield crackles into solidity between him and the blow, but it doesn't serve to anchor him in place. The wizard stumbles, stepping just too close to the edge and losing his balance. His eyes widen in what actually looks like alarm! And then the wonderful moment is gone and the wizard regains his calm and his his balance and shoves the kobold forcefully backward rather than risking the time to chant a spell.

The wizard grapples with the kobold as best he can. But, the wizard is an overdressed fop, a man who hasn't spent a day of his life holding anything heavier than a wineglass or ever deigned to engage in any physical labor beyond conveying his own body where he wishes to go. The kobold, on the other hand, is a kobold. Sadly for you, the results could not be more clear as the poor lizard is eventually pushed back over the edge to plummet into the darkness below.

"Well Errol," the wizard sighs as he fixes his hat and surveys the next platforms, "This does seem to be a pick... Oh do watch your step, there's quite a long drop here." The porter, who lacks magical darkvision stumbles for a moment before stepping backward.

"Now this is a problem... I didn't think I'd need any kind of levitation today you see and..."

Errol frowns. "Nothing with which I could attach a rope sir. And it seems a bit suspicious."

The mage nods. "Right you are Errol. Only thing for it's to leave and go memorize a levitation spell I believe." He sighs. Wait, what? The mage isn't going to try to cross the five meter gap to the rock. But... He can't just... just leave like that! That's not right.

The mage and his companion, finding that lighting a camp fire inside the dungeon is rather difficult, instead camp outside your walls overnight. That's...

1. You could redo your first three rooms to catch them off guard, but the wizard would almost certainly realize something was suspicious if the dungeon had an entirely different layout next time around.
[ ] Leave them the same, you still have the back three to kill that cheater
[ ] Modify them. (Describe modifications.)

(Really sorry it took so long to get this out. Hope to get back on track from here.)

 

[EternitynChaos]

[X] Leave them the same, you still have the back three to kill that cheater

 

[Yzarc]

changed

 

[Carrnage]

Why not just spawn creatures? no evidence they didn't wander in.

 

[ReinZero]

Darkened, would re-doing any room have any attached costs outside of modifications? Would swapping a triggered traps into decorations be viable? Also, any boulders spare to load?

I'll get up a plan when I wake up. We need to redo rooms though still... depending on answers of course.

 

[iamnuff]

instead of leaving them as is, we should add something that we can make it look like he missed the first time.


same room layout, same look, but one extra thing, a book perhaps, or just a trap that didn't go off the first time, no he knows what to expect, we can catch him by surprise.

 

[Deathwings]

Here's a plan : reset all the traps, maybe even add new ones and then spawn some kobolds fiddling with a non-reseted trap in the next room they go in. That way, rather then going "Um, this Dungeon is quite strange" they'll instead go "Motherfucking Kobolds reset the traps ! FUUUUUUUU-".

 

[Grosstoad]

Here's a plan : reset all the traps, maybe even add new ones and then spawn some kobolds fiddling with a non-reseted trap in the next room they go in. That way, rather then going "Um, this Dungeon is quite strange" they'll instead go "Motherfucking Kobolds reset the traps ! FUUUUUUUU-".

Click to shrink...

And have them run away farther in when the party spotted them.

 

[Gnarker]

If I might make a suggestion? How people have been going about it doesn't quite seem like the optimal approach. Ideally, you want all sorts of adventurers coming in, from the highest mage to the idealistic peasant, and you also want them to keep coming. So here's my proposal:
A layered dungeon, where the upper levels are pretty safe (normally), but the lower you go, the higher the danger.

-So up top a mix of cave systems and abandoned mineshafts, inhabited (visibly) by kobolds and wild animals, with visible precious ores and gems to continually lure miners and the occasional party hired to finally clear out all these infestations but never quite succeeding. The continual skirmishes should provide us with a steady stream of low-level deaths, while the kobolds' stashes, abandoned minecarts and the raw minerals should nonetheless continually bring in new food. Occasionally we can spice things up by ghost infestations or an upwelling of monsters from below.
-Below, big caverns with real monsters, guarding their stashes, the alchemical reagent parts of their bodies, maybe some rarer minerals, and dead spelunking parties, with occasional ruin bits to lure archeologists to the next layer, which is
-An abandoned city, with the old defenses still partially active. The cities tombs and sewers could be inhabited by old ghosts and the like, and perhaps a dragon sleeps on his stash somewhere.
-Under the city maybe there's an abandoned evil temple or so, which may lead on to a mystical plane of doom, and so on.

The important thing is, there's an initial lure to maintain continuous interest in the place, with successive levels for each class that they can feel comfortable frequenting, with the occasional deaths that we nab being freak accidents and sudden, unexpected attacks that have to be cleared out again, with expansions and sidepaths explainable by them not having been found yet, and occasionally new side-entrances being found to explain the steady influx of goblins and wild animals.

So, the overall strategy depends on the exact types of layer chosen, but initially it would be best to level layout and monsters. and look into 'natural' traps; Cave-ins that give people some time to try to flee, mine gas, flash floods, terrain hazards like pitfalls and guano, etc.
As for the wizard, I'd recommend that he find dead adventurers and kobolds to explain their deaths as bad luck and incompetence, and old minecarts, ore veins, to make it known that the place is mineable, with one or a few caved-in paths to suggest bigger size.

 

[Grosstoad]

Long plan is long.

Click to shrink...

Paragraph spacing please.

And for your information, currently we are limited to a few rooms only.


EDIT: Also, I can't remember if we had changed this, but an initial idea was to use the spirit trapped in wizard's place to elaborate/imply that the place was a nexus of portals, so switching rooms is normal occurrence, unless you have specific keys or rituals that leads you to specific rooms.

 

[Gnarker]

And for your information, currently we are limited to a few rooms only.


EDIT: Also, I can't remember if we had changed this, but an initial idea was to use the spirit trapped in wizard's place to elaborate/imply that the place was a nexus of portals, so switching rooms is normal occurrence, unless you have specific keys or rituals that leads you to specific rooms.

Click to shrink...

Which is why I was advocating leveling layout and as of yet only providing hints at a potentially profitable mine via veins in the wall and caved-in further paths, with new discoveries being explainable by being dug into, appearing in cave-ins, or being previously hidden by shadows and inconvenient position.

The Portal Nexus is an interesting idea for further below I guess, but with it adventurers can never be quite sure where they'll end up, which defeats the 'comfort zones for everyone' thing.

 

[Jiven]

[X] Leave them the same, you still have the back three to kill that cheater

 

[Nyrath]

[X] Leave them the same, you still have the back three to kill that cheater

Seems the best option to me. Anyone kept track of how many trap and monster slots we've used up?

Updated vote below

 

[Heaven Canceler]

Just reset the traps, maybe add a few more here and there to make it look like he overlooked them the first time around, then make the last space into an absolute deathtrap!

 

[Adyen]

Maybe reset the traps that used something but not the ones they "broke", and then add a hidden doorway somewhere earlier that leads to new traps?

 

[Darkened]

Darkened, would re-doing any room have any attached costs outside of modifications? Would swapping a triggered traps into decorations be viable? Also, any boulders spare to load?

I'll get up a plan when I wake up. We need to redo rooms though still... depending on answers of course.

Click to shrink...

No attached costs aside from revealing yourself and the like.

Leaving triggered traps would cost the trap. Not sure what you mean by any boulders spare to load, but you can add in more boulder traps and the like.

 

[Carrnage]

No attached costs aside from revealing yourself and the like.

Leaving triggered traps would cost the trap. Not sure what you mean by any boulders spare to load, but you can add in more boulder traps and the like.

Click to shrink...

Can we spawn some mooks without revealing ourselves, make it look like they just came in.

 

[ReinZero]

No attached costs aside from revealing yourself and the like.

Leaving triggered traps would cost the trap. Not sure what you mean by any boulders spare to load, but you can add in more boulder traps and the like.

Click to shrink...

Revealing is actually avoidable for what I'm considering.

And what I'm asking is...

1) Can triggered traps be adjusted to be decoration that resemble said traps exactly?
2) Do we have any boulders we can use to reload the boulder trap in room 2?

Anyhow, plan drafting atm. Going on chat now.

 

[Darkened]

You can leave them dysfunctional, but they're still counting against your total.

As for boulders, yes.

 

[ReinZero]

[X] Plan Fuck You Wizard

[X] Modify them. (Describe modifications.)
---[X] Leave the 1st room unchanged.
---[X] Reload the Boulder in the 2nd room, however it is [/i] no longer connected to the pressure plates in room 2- except for the last four steps, but that's still 'physically' tied to the original pressure plate used previously. In other words, it requires direct pressure on one of those last four steps to trigger, while appearing completely harmless before then still.
---[X] Instead, a pressure plate is to be inserted after the immediate entry into the 3rd room's corridor... which triggers a spike trap from the left (from the doorway's perspective) while an arrow trap from the right fires as well.
---[X] Furthermore, the broken spikes from before is to be attached to a pressure plate- in other words, that 'wall' is now a pressure plate that triggers when one attempts to climb it, thus triggering a arrow trap from above and below (ie. shooting downwards & upwards respectively). It's also meant to be tied to a Fear spell tagged alongside the trigger- in turn also tied with a spike trap that spears upwards through gaps within the broken spikes. In the event of failure, it still blocks off return trip route.
---[X] In addition, the ledge in the third room's sides is to be extended so a pair of kobolds can be properly hidden out of sight even when slacking, and they are to be manually overseen so they don't screw up again. The Fear spell is to remain intact under the same conditions as before. Oh and you know the section of that corridor that leads into the room after ascending? slippery floor it is. That is, slippery -backwards- which triggers a arrow trap positioned from behind that first forward at the person otherwise entering the ledge.

 

[Yzarc]

[X] Plan Fuck You Wizard

 

[Nyrath]

[X] Plan Fuck You Wizard

Err, on reflection this seems like work out better.

 

[shadowward]

[X] Plan Fuck You Wizard

 

[WastingPixies]

[X] Plan Fuck You Wizard

YEAH!

 

[Drakebane]

[X] Plan Fuck You Wizard

 

[Gnarker]

Do we really want to kill the wizard? I mean, sure, high yield, but it's still only one person and we'll likely get just as much from an entire lower-level party without the extra hassel, and if someone really powerful bites it, that's going to scare away the easier prey. So feed him misinformation that lets us look low-risk high-reward, doubly effective because he's an expert of sorts and thus is going to be listened to, and then let him go.

[X] Leave them the same, you still have the back three to kill that cheater