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Saturday, April 18, 2015

I have a hangover and this dungeon hates you

Last night I overindulged and now my everything feels gross. Sherief Gaber wants ideas for ways to make his players miserable without making them fight things. Turns out these things go well together. Here's my response.

Simple things:

A river to cross, and no bridges or boats (danger of being swept away, metal rusts, paper ruined, food rations ruined, excess weight increases chances of drowning)

A rainy night and a bad tent (again, damaged equipment, but also risk of hypothermia, and it's more or less impossible to sleep well, if at all, when your bed roll is soaked)

In the morning after all this bullshit you discover several poisonous spiders have laid eggs in your armour. Do you dare try to get them out?

Also in dungeons everything that takes time also uses up light (and vice versa. Light is dungeon-time.) Fill the darkness with awful things.

The bridge across the underground chasm is long and weak. It looks like it can just barely support one lightly - encumbered person at a time, and they'd better not run. Also something is snoring below.

And good luck getting all your stuff through that crawlspace. And mind the stalagmites, they're sharp.

This hallway is flooded four feet deep.

Basically just drown them.