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[Tsuchigumo550]

Hey there guys, I'm wondering if some of you can lay out various traps, tricks, and other elements of your player forts. I'm attempting to build a D&D-ish engine for delving into the depths of a dwarven fort, the first-ever dungeon aiming to be a deeply dug one leading to a battle in the big-top, if you know what I mean.

Stuff that's more adventurer-trap related could be even better, such as a lever activated drowning rooms, or complex traps that aren't always set-and-forget. Stonefalls and cages are all well and good, but pressure-plate activated minecart railguns with a thief bait inside the barrel are always fun. "Ooh shiny" becomes "crunch".

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Also, this is a world of magic. Giving a trap and ways it could be improved through magic, such as having the minecart railgun's second shot have an imbedded Invisibility Gem, or maybe a fake Waterbreathing gem and a flooded passage could be fun things to do, or, for those less adventurous, I'm planning to have no less than three necromantic sub-bosses.

[ImagoDeo]

There are very few limits to what you can do. If you want to make something interesting that I'm not sure has been tried before, how about a line of supports one Z below an alternating line of floor spaces? As follows:

Code: [Select]


sF..
..Fs
sF..
..Fs

s = support on the layer below
F = floor space with a pressure plate linked to the previous floor's support
Literally a one-use passageway. As soon as you hit the first plate, the floor behind you drops. This can force individual adventurers to make a choice between one of two paths.

[Antalia]

I once wrote a D&D 4e adventure using a dwarf fortress as a basis. I threw it into an adventure that was more focused on some noble elves, just as a side quest, but this fortress part was for a full session.

My adventurers came to the dwarf fortress because no one had heard from it for weeks. While investigating, they found a couple of hermits and rotting corpses remaining after an apparent major tantrum spiral and other events that virtually wiped the population.

The fortress was on the seashore and guarded a man-made lagoon full of terrified, sentient captive mermaids. (One of the most striking DF stories I've ever read is the huge 40d thread about mermaid breeding...there's something deeply disturbing, yet somehow interesting, going on there.) The mermaid keeper, a hermit, was basically fine (although creepy, abusive, not very smart, and not afraid to commit acts of casual violence against mermaids). He kept doing his beekeeping and feeding his mermaids, but he didn't know why the dwarves inside the fortress had stopped bringing him more food to give them. He had orders to stay within a certain area and, being terrified of breaking rules, wasn't about to try and find out what was going on.

As the adventurers investigated, they found the fortress had been taken over by a gang of lizardmen cooperating with demons that the dwarves had apparently set loose at the bottom of the fortress. A couple dwarves had been enslaved instead of killed in the attack/tantrum spiral, and were being forced by the demons to fight each other in their own arena.

There were gruesome scenes all over the place--I tried to stick true to DF. There was also a lot of treasure--too much for the adventurers to plunder. I had to go easier on the traps than I would in real DF--otherwise I'd have dead adventurers.

I'd like to DM more settings like that one. DF fits really well to D&D. You can do so much with levers and traps, statue gardens, enslaved sentient creatures, arenas, ponds, reservoirs, engravings, different light levels, treasure rooms, mazes, insane dwarves, animals and enemies of any sort...all kinds of things really. I sure couldn't fit every idea I liked into one session.

Unfortunately I'm more of a storyteller than a builder. The pen-and-paper system helped me there, because I could draw pretty general pictures of traps and rooms and just add detail if it became necessary. So, I guess this probably isn't incredibly helpful since specifics would be needed for computerizing a system--but I thought I'd post anyway since (I love DF-themed D&D! and) the ideas might help.

[Tsuchigumo550]

The reason-for-downfall on my end is... well, since I may run it here, here's a big honkin' spoiler

Spoiler: honk honk (click to show/hide)

A dwarf picks up a tome from a recent invader and learns the secrets to life and death. This dosen't push him ALL the way over the edge, as he's a friendly miner, however, he becomes obsessed with sounds he swears are coming from below. He ventures alone down to the adamantine spire, killing the two guards and raising them to keep watch, as he began his descent...

And thus, he released the very force of Hell upon the fort. From within, demons and dwarves fought with great fervor, while the necromancer himself fought against the head demon of Hell to claim his throne. The fort fell, and no one knows what happened to the necromancer.

In the time since then, local groups such as kobolds have begun to take shelter in the upper floors, however, the lower floors are very much sealed away. An intrepid adventurer may find a way in, and would be nearly guaranteed treasure... though few adventurers wish to disturb such a mass grave, as the rumors circulate, the sole surviving dwarf wishing to say no more.

Adventurers will win the opportunity to guess at what levers do, suffer at the hands of eldritch cave dwellers, and die cold, scared, tired, and alone!