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(TFT) The last dungeon I ever wrote
The Last dungeon I ever made was in the Hobbit holes. The players must
have spent ten or twelve characters each trying to even get into this place.
I mean entire groups of them were wiped out.
At first they found these nice little dry holes high up the crater
face. The place was abandoned. This was long after the chaos wars. They
didn't find anything except abandoned holes until they closely examined the
chimney. The chimneys went really far down, like a hundred meters straight
down. At the bottom, held in the room by two (five wizard locked, triple
bared) iron doors, was a hundred strength fire elemental.
This thing's job was to burn anyone who tried to get into the room via
the chimney. The characters didn't stand a chance. They kept making new
teams and nothing seemed to work. Wait, how did they do it? That's right.
They couldn't get ocean or lake water up to that altitude easily. A water
molotov doesn't do nearly enough damage. Wait how did they do it? Oh yeah,
yeah, yeah, yeah. They filled the chimney with magic rain storms. Ran him
down and rained him out. The doors were almost impossible to open. They
went back to town for some universal solvent. When they got back the next
day there was another hundred strength fire elemental waiting for them.
This one waited in ambush. They had to make another entirely new party.
Anyway. So they finally get through one of the iron doors. On the
other side is a long dark hallway with rows of hobbit archers who can see in
the dark. There were two archers in each megahex from the seventh on to the
fourteenth megahex. They had to make new characters. The reason the
hobbits could see in the dark is they were monsters. They had a third eye
in their foreheads [narrator touches forehead] that gave them mage sight.
Even reverse missiles wasn't effective enough. The hobbits had swords, and
there seemed to be hundreds of them.
When a group of characters found the stairs they went up. Upstairs was
worse. There were rows upon rows of hobbit wizards who would cast one hex
fire and retreat. They could fill a hallway with fire so deep that no one
could get through. They seemed to be able to maintain the fire
indefinitely. There must have been hundreds of them. They were lead by a
hobbit strategist with an 18 DX who had them four to a megahex. The first
two megahexes would cast eight total fires(in case one of the hobbit wizards
failed their DX roll and a hex be missed). Next turn they retreat, and the
next two megahexes do the same. After filling the entire hallway they would
retreat around the corner and take turns being aided by the rest of them.
Once again the players had to make new characters.
Downstairs was worse: caves filled with hundreds of 'Jumping Jackals'.
These large biped jackal looking things could teleport at will during the
renew spells phase. This is a devastating tactical advantage. Unlike
regular old demon movement they could teleport before movement and still
move. There were caves and caves of these things centered aound the bottom
of some huge pit that just went up and up for ever. The players made new
characters after new characters until, finally, they made a break through.
A telekinesis potion and a petard are a deadly combination. They would
drink the potion, have someone light the petard, open the door, and float
the petard down the hall or into the room. Close the door and run. Boom.
You get seven hundred and fifty experience points. They ran back to town
for more supplies. Everyone wanted a taste of that kind of experience.
They were going to kill everything in the dungeon. They had no idea
what was going on. So I started telling one of the players that their
character was having dreams that the entire dungeon was magic item. If they
killed everything then they would de-enchant the item. My sister Becky had
the hardest time getting the others to stop killing. Everyone demanded
another round of telekinesis petards. They wanted more experience.
The entire dungeon was a support community for a magic item. It was a
Quiver of replenishment with +3DX and flaming arrows. The bottomless pit
was the quiver. The Jumping jackals (enchanted monsters with teleport)
returned the arrow to the quiver during the movement phase. The hobbits
represented the _+3DX. The wizard hobbits represented the flaming arrows.
The quiver gave who ever wore it mage sight. When the players finally
stopped playing mad bomber and started negotiating a take over they
discovered the following.
All the hobbit wizards had 4 ST, Alchemy, Chemist, and aid. They
produced two hundred healing potions a month and twenty invisibility. They
had enchantment labs out the wazoo. They could produce three of the 100ST
fire elementals in a day, if they did nothing else.
When the Three eyed strategist leader of the hobbits gave his magical
quiver to Becky's character, the entire loyalty of the dungeon was
transferred to him. The denizens of the dungeon represented the support
community required to make a magic item. After dying over and over, they
finally discovered that even magic weapons were extremely rare and powerful.
If a character encounters some one with even a minor magic item that item
represents an entire community somewhere. Or a city.
Imagine if a magic item represented an entire city. Even a plus one
sword would constitute a major threat. I heard this story about this guy
that had a Middle Earth Role Playing game where one of the players had a
+15% sword, and the other one had a [narrator goes to deep mystical ghost
voice] 'Magical Sword'. It also was a +15% sword. It was exactly the same
in fact, but the GM refered to the first players sword as just a 'plus
fifteen percent sword'. The player told me 'I didn't get it. Why would
mine just be plus fifteen old percent while his was magical?'
The reason most people get tired of dungeon crawls is they kill
everything. They have de-enchanted the magic item. Of course they don't
want the dungeon. Back in my day we got to keep any dungeon we cleared out.
It would become a base of operations. My intent had been to design a
dungeon the players would love to keep.
When they finally went to the bottom of the stairs they found a dead
end. Five reveal spells later they found a gate in the floor. It looked
like the stairs continued down but the gate didn't seem to be on. A scroll
of control gate later they found out the comand words were 'I'm home'.
Inside they found an old dwarven wizard inside a solid gold lab. The walls
were star splashed with strength batteries tied together with golden
tracings and runes. His name was Gigamax, and he had created the hobbits,
the bottomless pit, the jackals, and the quiver. He had forgotten about
them, actually, as the strength batteries had replaced all of his
apprentices. He was pleased to see the quiver in such well kept condition.
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