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This is a repost of "The last dungeon I ever
wrote", the first one was a little garbled. Also,
some of the posts I have made sence then were in
support of some of the details in this story
(hundred strength elemental and such). I hope the
story is more enjoyable this time. Oh, yeah, and
my players (used to my killing them) found the
beging parts to be a comedy.
David Michael Grouchy II
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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