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[Jack_Bread]

Recently, I've been playing D&D with a friend. For our first few sessions, we've been playing using dungeons generated by donjon kick-in-the-door style. The party currently consists of two of his characters and two of mine. A kobold rogue 1/sorcerer 2(originally rogue 2/sorcerer 2, but she was killed and raised), a human fighter 4, an evolved human necropolitan pact maker 2(200+ year willingly undead woman, she counts as a level 4 character), and a level 5 elan psion.
It's getting boring breaking doors which are usually stuck and killing monsters hidden within with little to no money gained.
I wanted to know if any had any creative traps, puzzles, and the like. I realize I could do this myself, and I am, but I'd like some other ideas.

By the way, make this a real challenge for our level 4 party, because my friend is a true munchkin who knows how to exploit anything he can get his hands on. :\

Thanks! I don't have much time, now, but I will post some of my ideas and how they went with our little group.

EDIT: Forgot to mention that I'm using DnD 3.5. 4e stuff is acceptable, but please say if it's 4e or not.

[piecewise]

try this
http://donjon.bin.sh/d20/dungeon/
Sets up all the traps, monsters and loot for you and give you a map.

[Mishy]

Courtesy of /tg/.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

My dungeons typically end with a boss designed to kill my players, to whom I severely underloot. Its really a wonder how they got this far.

One dungeon, I replaced the boss with a trap designed the murder them. It was funny, really - didn't get a single one of the bastards, though.

The hallway was filled with rotating blades, and the hallways crushed completely, forever. The room has a set of timed falls set in such a way that if you were in the middle, you could only jump into another, or be crushed completely. The pedestal with the hilariously empty chest was locked away in a room with no door, as the rest of the room had collapsed, and began to fill with water.

This is after roughly seventeen heavily poisoned arrow traps went off, dealing severe con damage, and a poisoned scythe cut through the entire room.

I almost got them this time, too
--

good old instant karma room (shamelesly stolen from Red Dwarf)

basically, anything bad you try to do to anything else, happens to you instead. try and set the furniture on fire? nothing happens to it, but all of a sudden your shoes are burning. hit someone with a club? you get knocked out, they're fine. Stuff like that.

Throw in a big, mean, sleeping monster that's also affected by the room. The only way past is to not bother it (never gonna happen) or to wake it up and never attack it, let it kill itself
--

Barely visible (or also enchanted to be invisible, if you want) spiderwire garottes, nooses, tripwires to stumble into.
--

A room full of strangely decorated tiles. Whenever the PCs throw rocks or whatever at them, a mysterious force throws them back.
--

These gave me an idea: a dungeon full of traps that have already been set off, so are harmless.
Combine this with either one minor trap at the entrance, so they're paranoid, or one big trap at the end, so they're unprepared.
--

A pedastle before a dorway with a wicked looking large mask over it. The doorway is large and runed and glowing, and the eyes of the mask thing glow as well.

The pedastle says "What is the source of Happiness? Stand before the path and and anwser. Those who speak truley shall pass into the ______(name)"

Left in a scroll on the pedastle is a bunch of notes from previous adventures with ideas and suggestions (none of which have worked). They detail that the eyes will glow if you anwser wrong and try to fry you. Skeletons litter the area before the mask.

Well anyhow, this doorway isn't sealed. There is no right anwser. All that happens is that speaking tells the trap there's someone to shoot at. You can walk by it.
--

book trap: floor snaps up like closing a book. Add spikes for that classic flavor of death.
--

Actually now I'm imagining a whole fake town built as an elaborate trap-hell leading to a castle built centuries ago by an absolutely insane lord. Every little thing could potentially be a death trap. Benches snap up like venus fly traps, houses full of things like drawers that launch knives out at whomever opened them, or just the drawers themselves get fired out.

Outside is no safer, with streets full of pit-traps, trip-wires, and magical traps. Don't even think about the sewers oh god just don't. In the end the best way to get to the castle if through the tavern, which while horribly trapped actually has a maintenance access tunnel which runs under the city, giving the party a view of what sort of twisted work was going into this insane freaking place. Hints can be left via the various dead the adventurers find about the place as to where to find the tavern or why they'd want to find it.
--

A large pit trap, that wasn't reset.

When they try to jump over it, they find out that the floor directly after the pit trap is on a counter-balanced hinge - ie if you jump onto the square right after the pit trap, it tips backwards and dumps you in. 10ft after the 10ft trap is the hinge. When it tilts up, the 10ft ceileing is completly blocked and the trap is set in that position.
--

A trap flings rotting meat, slowly, at whomever activated the trap. It's easy to dodge, so they do. Meat flies past PC into a pit or something, rousing the horror sleeping below...
--

After meandering through a labyrinth of traps and ambushes in a thieves guild, my part stumbled upon an empty room. It was completely empty.

The Perception checks begin to fly all over the place. They're freaking out, tossing rocks into the room, poking the ceiling with a 10 ft. long pole, trying to detect magic, etc. After the rogue gets a particularly high Perception check, I point out that there's a hairline crack in the wall.

Without so much as skipping a beat, the goliath warden charges headfirst into the crack, slamming his body into it. He beats the tar out of himself and manages to "widen the crack ever so slightly."

In reality, there really was nothing there. The game was moved up a few days on me, and much of the dungeon wasn't finished, so I planned to kill some time but seeing how far this could go. The players nearly killed themselves making noise and slamming spells and weapons into nothing, causing more people to examine the source of the clamor.

After about 20 minutes, the sorcerer looked up at me, seeing my smirk for the first time. "That's the most evil trap tonight."
--

DM: Rocks fall from the ceiling. Roll reflex.
Wizard: Got a 5.
Rogue: I got a 26!
DM: K, wizard, you see the rocks fade away right before they hit. You also see the rogue diving headfirst into a pool of acid.
--

a 10x10 room with a metal grate flooring

the doors lock and slowly a platform under the grate rises... with a gelatinous cube sitting on it
--

A mummy's curse makes the PCs two-dimensional, forcing them to navigate the previously ignored murals on the dungeon walls from the first part of the adventure.
--

Perfect timing for this thread, I was just in the middle of cooking up a variety of low-tech traps to confound my players when they attempt to assault a fortress next game.

It's a rare-magic game, so I'm going for simple yet effective. So far I've got:

* classic foot traps, with poisoned and barbed spikes underneath collapsible sections of floor

* simple closing gates that trap the PCs in a particularly dangerous section of corridor, with spearmen ready to attack them through slits in the walls. Also, murder holes in the ceiling, from where the setting's equivalent of Greek fire can be poured down.

* if one of the PCs manages to dive under the closing gates in the nick of time, a pit trap awaits right on the other side, containing a hungry tiger

* deadfalls of all sorts, including varieties of the classic swinging log trap

* false stairs leading to the "uppermost" level, where the PCs will likely assume the leader to be hiding

* ordinary stairs, but strategically placed to slow the PCs down and trap them in crossfires from nearby archers

I'm aware these may seem awfully bland compared to all the fancy magic/high fantasy traps usually found in these threads, but the defenders don't really have any mad wizards around and have had to rely on their own low-tech tools instead. Any suggestions of other devious yet plausible traps would be very much appreciated.
--

Everything can be solved with the standard 10 foot pole every adventurer should have.If not, then throw in the 50 feet of rope every adventurer should have.
--

How about an obvious trap in a corridor, but it actually isn't what it seems like, instead when you set it off, the effect happens 10 foot in front of the switch, namely where you are standing when you try to set it off pre-emptively with your 10-foot pole.
--

Another Dark Heresy one. Actually this is something I'm currently writing for a campaign. I've mentioned it before but it fits here. I'll cut out all the background filler.

Set in an Art Gallery (IN A SPACE STATION), each room of the gallery level of the station has fairly innocent art works and a bunch of nobles of various numbers in each studying them intently. They seem distracted a little but are happy to answer any questions. Fairly stock-standard stuff really, just a vase with flowers, or a painting of a hive from the distance. Each room with one art piece.

The acolytes are seeking the one who runs the station, so they inevitably end up in his quarters, and find he seems a regular art lover, nothing too horrible. He even has a book on the critique of art sitting there open on his desk, though some of it does seem a little hard to understand. Fortunately there's a cypher sitting next to it, so the acolytes can see what the fuss is.

The book in question, in spite of looking entirely innocent is actually a book on Ateanism, the study of the 'equation' for art that leads people accidentally into the arms of Slaanesh. Various other discoveries of this to be true are found in a secret passage easily found in the room.

So the information is gained, but the gallery itself must be passed again to leave the station. Each and every room has had its glamour cast off, and each picture of art and those looking at it are twisted and depraved in some manner. The flowers are bursting with sweet nectar that the nobles debase themselves under, getting high on physical contact, flipping out and trying to attack anyone who they think might be trying to take their place. To those that have READ the book though, this looks even worse, for they understand the art and they see what the flowers are, they know what is in the liquid, the needles scratch against their brain as the scent fills their nostrils. On top of this, the effect of having read the book and understanding even a fraction of what was written in it could have far-reaching effects in the future. It could be beneficial in identifying architecture being made to create chaos portals or places of fell worship, but it could be a constant temptation that drives them sick every time they look at a work of art. They have forbidden knowledge and it will cause them a great deal of trouble for all the good it does them.
--

A ridiculously long Rube Goldberg device that seems to put the PCs in mortal danger at nearly every step, then just drops confetti on the party.
--

How to be an asshole GM in an ero rpg.

Strange statue of a bent forwards female, beckoning someone to join her. Upon inspection of the statue two things become apparent.
The first is that there are five buttons on the statue. Two pressure plates on the ground just behind her, one on each of her buttocks and one inside her vagina.
The second is that the enchantment makes the metal statue feel pliant and alive though it obviously does not move aside from the mechanical parts upon it. These parts open the door and it locks open once all five buttons are pressed.

So either the party co-ordinates pushing the buttons and someone reaches up for the tricky one with their fingers, or the more obvious answer is that one adventurer takes the "Go from behind" position. Perhaps he has to give it a few good shoves to hit the button.

At this point the door opens, the enchantment is broken rendering the statue metal and cold again and the statue raises up at the hip abruptly, bashing the back of its metal head into the face of the button-presser.
--

 The party travels through a room with a giant mural of a battle on each side. At the far right of the battlefield is a castle with a large shiny key and a portal. At the bottom of the mural are a bunch of pieces of chalk.

Now, the party progresses for some rooms, getting to one that needs a giant, shiny key.
In the middle, on the floor, is a portal to the world of the mural (and you can see through) with a rope falling down the middle
If the players go through, they realize that they're in the mural since, as they look off far into the distance, they recognize the room the passed through earlier.

Climbing back up the rope gets them back into the room, and they have to traverse the entire mural (which is impossible w/o drawing on the mural with the chalk to basically "cheat" your way to victory
--

Rooms upon rooms of presure pads, Each pad causes a pillar to jut sudenly up at crotch height. Taken from that kick to the balls dungeon someone made a while ago.
--

Andrew, if you should happen to be reading this thread, STOP!

I had a trap set up for my PCs as they are going through "The thieves test" in a wizard tower (owner of the tower thought thieves are the scum of the earth, and invited them to come and die for his amusement at the promise of great treasure at the end).

One of the rooms was pretty simple in design but had the potential to take forever to figure out, and could be dangerous.

The PCs arrive (via teleportation circle) in a small room (20'x20' wide), in front of them, on the other side of the room is a door. Upon examining the door they find it is not trapped in any way on this side and open it. Opening the door activates a trap on the other side of the door, causing the room they are in (and the small hallway the door opens up into) to fill with water rather quickly.

The hall way leads to a door that has no door knob, and has been sealed with an arcane lock and can only be broken down with a strength/thievery check over 40 (makes it so the PCs can't just break down the door, etc.).

The trick to the room is that you tell the PCs when they open the first door that the knob is loose in their hands, and feels like it could fall off if they aren't careful. This knob is only on the side of the door facing the 20' room, and not on the reverse side. Using this (magical) knob, it functions like a skeleton key and opens the next door before the room floods and the PCs drown. (exit to the room is another teleportation circle).
---

The bait item sits on a pedestal rising out of a shallow pool of water. If you try to step into the pool while carrying any weapons on your person, bars with rise out of the floor to block your path. However, if the item is taken from its pedestal, all the bars will rise. However, turns out some of those bars were also barring a gate under the surface of the water, holding back a certain aquatic entity who hasn't gotten any in years.

Correct way to avoid the trap is to have someone tie a rope around the item, and then pull it out of the pool from outside the bars.
--

Alright, how about an obvious pit trap that triggers prematurely, but when the players jump over the pit, they realize that gravity is reversed, which sends them into a previously ignored, deep chasm on the ceiling, causing falling damage.

The only way to escape the chasm is to navigate a maze upside down. When successfully navigated, gravity rights itself, depositing them head first into the hallway (causing more falling damage,) and the pit trap has been reset.
--

Get the setup to one of those blasted "Two talking doors and one tells lies, find the right door", but after getting the players all ready to confront this age old riddle just have them be elaborate face-carvings in doors and see how long it takes for the players to realise they've been had.

It could be part of a dungeon that has a theme that is basically "BBEG has a plan, stalls heroes so they arrive at the time he's ready for them".
--

I think I'll stick with my favorite. Giant squeaky hammers activated by pressure pads.

Doenst do any damage, but good for making fun of the weeaboo rogue for failing to find the traps because he tried to be as naruto as possible.
--

I ran a super-trap filled ancient temple. The final room contained a humming orb on an ornate pedestal. Legend said that contact with the orb granted you what you desired, be it treasure, knowledge, power, godhood. ANYTHING, it was the most powerful transmutation effector in the multiverse. And conveniently, would take you back outside of the dungeon with your prize.

One after another they touch the orb.

I pass them a note asking "what do you want?"
They respond on the note. I pass them a new note saying "The power of shifting reality is staggering, do you go with it, or attempt to resist?"
They go with it, and have opted not to save.

If you wanted to be a real dick, it's just an orb of annihilation, so forget making them think they're being rewarded (no save) and just destroy them outright.

[Jack_Bread]

try this
http://donjon.bin.sh/d20/dungeon/
Sets up all the traps, monsters and loot for you and give you a map.

we've been playing using dungeons generated by donjon kick-in-the-door style

Yes and it's quite good, but it uses the DMG traps.

Courtesy of /tg/.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

*snip*

OoooOooh. Looks good.

[MrRoboto75]

  Look into a book called Dungeonscape.  It includes rules for things called Encounter Traps, basically its a huge trap meant to be sprung, acts for several rounds, and hopefully gets the whole party involved in dodging, smashing, dispelling, or disabling the device.  It also gives Boon Traps, which instead of harming players, helps monsters by buffing.  Then again, it gives you ideas for other stuff too, so yeah.

  Knights of the Dinner Table Magazine always had a section for traps, and is planning to sell a book with all articles released so far.

  Just because its a trap, does not mean it hurts.  you could use traps to slide rooms, lower portcullises, make chutes, and generally reroute and slit the party.  Look up the spell Leomund's Trap, it makes something appear trapped but isn't.  Silence spells negate most spells (vocal components).  Darkness makes range and darkvision useless.  And those are all 2nd level spells.

[LeoLeonardoIII]

OK first off, you need to introduce some variation in the dungeon environment. But these changes will be WEIRD. So you need a reason for the dungeon to be so strange. The best one I've found is "this place is the castle dungeon of a mad wizard!" It's as cliche as it is effective.

First off, you need to map things out ahead of time. You can use random rolls for inspiration, but you can place things also. Sort of follow the random tables for purposes of how much treasure to give, or what Challenge Rating of monsters to use. With some exceptions, which I'll mention later.

Spoiler: basic features (click to show/hide)

Here are some basics. To make an interesting section of the dungeon, vary one or some of these features in that section. But try to keep everything else a standard. The early parts of the dungeon should be standard, with later parts varying more based on how far away they are.

Surfaces: (Standard: Cut blocks, cool, damp)
Rough hewn stone / smooth polished stone / carved / mine-tunnel (hewn stone with wooden supports)
Freezing / Cold / Warm / Hot / Searing
Dessicated / Dry / Moist / Dripping

Foliage: (Standard: Slight slime)
Nothing / slimey / mossy / mushrooms and fungus / small leafy plants / phosphorescence

Temperature: (Standard: Cool)
Freezing / Cold / Warm / Hot / Searing

Noises: (Standard: Echoing)
Magical silence / Silent / Faint tapping / moaning / dripping / running water

Smells: (Standard: Musty)
Smokey / rotting flesh / rotting plants / sulphurous / acrid / sewer

Light Level: (Standard: Dark)
Torch sconces (lit/unlit) / melted candles / creepy glow / floating lights / everything glows / magically deep darkness

Air: (Standard: Stale)
Poisonous / bad-tasting / fresh breeze from surface / breeze from below / misty / ozone / explosive gasses

Ceiling height: (Standard: 10')
Crawlspace (small creatures crouch, medium crawl, no larger), short (5', large creatures crouch), very high (20'), cavernous (30')

Hall Width: (Standard: 10')
Very narrow (small creatures or smaller), cramped (5'), broad (20')

Moisture: (Standard: Damp)
Flooded to ceiling / neck-height / hip-height / knee-height / ankle-height

There are probably more features you can identify to vary.

Spoiler: special features (click to show/hide)

Now you can add in things like secret doors, locked and/or Wizard Locked doors, traps, puzzles, tricks. Really go out there, including things like elevator rooms that travel between floor without people noticing, or rotating rooms that reveal different hallway exits depending on their position. Large water-traps.

Place monster lairs all around, in places where you think monsters would like to lair. Then put those monsters on a random encounter list along with entries for strange happenings (like a gust of wind coming through that extingushes all torches). Have one entry on your random encounter table for a creature from one level above (from outside, if you're on Level 1) and one entry for a roll on the table for the level below.

Remember that as a mystical and strange Underworld, the doors will open for resident creatures but not for PCs. The monsters probably also know about some of the secret doors, and will use those that they know of. There can also be connections between rooms that the PCs can't use (say, passages full of life-draining blackness, which Undead can use but PCs won't want to, or tiny tunnels that the Giant Rats can use but PCs are too large for).

Place large groups of monsters in large rooms, and individual monsters in small areas. This puts them at the utmost tactical advantage, which they would likely choose for their lairs. Make sure the lair has a way to get out to the dungeon exits up and down without running across a trap - unless it's a trap that those creatures set (such as kobolds with tripwires or spiders with webbing).

Concentrate the loot in the lairs, but leave some scattered around elsewhere. The goal of the adventurers is to get the loot, which means outsmarting or sneaking past or defeating the lair's guardians. You should also put treasure behind trapped areas or under puzzles, as these are unlikely to have ever been opened by the residents.

Make sure you use elevation in your dungeon. Have rooms that plunge down an entire level (without an exit into that level) and the PCs must negotiate their way across somehow or else find another way around. Have ledges higher up, or pits, with interesting things in them. Creatures with missile attacks will favor such places, as they can fire downward with impunity upon creatures who have no missile attacks.

Spoiler: general points (click to show/hide)

Draw your map for a level, making sure you have a couple ways in and a couple ways down to the next level. You can have a passage down skip a level, so it goes from Level 1 straight to Level 3 for example. It's also fine to have many passages be hidden behind secret doors or debris or something.

Mix up the treasure. Don't just have coins and magic items. Consider rolling a percentile die, and that is the percentage of any coinage treasure that is instead in some other form. That non-coin treasure could be in gems and jewelry, salt or other spices, fine oils, incense or perfume, fine clothes or whole cloth, books, toys, nonmagical armor and weapons, useful adventuring gear. Also consider changing certain coin treasure hoards into some other denomination that is less or more useful. For example, a treasure of 200 CP and 300 SP could be turned into 200 Bronze Agols and 300 Silver Smerduks. The value is equivalent, if they bring them to the moneychanger, but they need to pay a 20% fee on it. Or perhaps small bars of metal, carefully wrapped as if the owner intended to return for them someday ...

You can draw out maps ahead of time, partial maps of a level that show the exporations of some long-ago adventuring group. These can be given away to the players as treasure, for is not knowledge about the dungeon a treasure? The maps can occasionally show some symbol the players must figure out, or show a secret door they may not have found. The maps might also be outright wrong!

This is a difficult thing, but try to think of ways to include encounters where the players don't have to fight. That is, if they are bloodthirsty, they will try to kill everything regardless. But if they are clever, they could get more out of the encounter by talking and thinking than by destroying it.

Include areas of each level that are beyond the abilities of the PCs to breach. For example, a Wizard Locked door on Level 1. They can easily return to it later, but the first time they encounter it they may not be able to open it. The barrier could be a special lock or spell ward, or perhaps a very tough monster that doesn't move around much (golems are great for this, Undead too). And if they figure out some way to get in, that's fine.

[LeoLeonardoIII]

Some further points:

Write up two levels below where they have been before. That is, prepare levels 1-3, and then when they reach Level 2 then between that and the next session you need to have finished Level 4.

You can do parallel levels, too. They don't need to be all stacked on one another.

You can also change the dungeon to add a passage leading to a side level. This works best if it's an unexplored side area, because parties tend to not explore areas they have already cleared.

Refresh the dungeon, adding new monsters and new treasures if they would bring them (though these transient monsters should be of the poorer variety). In this way you can revitalize a "cleared" level if the PCs let it rest for some months. But if they scour the area occasionally it should discourage new creatures from moving in.

Presence of new creatures can change the dungeon areas they have already explored. For example, the creatures may have left open a secret door in a place they didn't search yet. Or maybe the monster broke through a wall from the other side, where a passage leads to your new level of the dungeon.

Remember to up the ante when it comes to things like this, but leave some sections easier to give a breather. In fact, of the dungeon spaces (rooms, hallways, etc) only 1/3 should contain anything dangerous or valuable. The rest can be unused areas, or have some scattered junk, but these places make the dungeon feel a little more real because the monsters have space between them.

Spoiler: one page dungeon (click to show/hide)

On an 8.5 x 11 sheet of graph paper, 4 squares per inch, mark off the top 30x30 squares. This will be your Level 1. Each square is 10'x10'.

Then below, block off an area for writing terse descriptions of the rooms and traps. Try to write as much as possible on the map, though. It's easier to refer to "Library" than "Room 12".

When you're done, on the right of the map space, write in your random encounter table.

This overview lets you run the game without overwhelming you with information. You want everything available at a glance. A sample room description might be:

Armory: 10 Skeleton. Moldy, dripping water. Rusty arm. and weap. (50 lb, 200 GP if cleaned). Broken sword hilt with ruby (50 GP)

And that's enough for you to run that room. Honest!

The benefit of this is that you compress the dungeon into one page per level. So you can have a 30-level dungeon (remember, if you want a big level you can space them out horizontally) in a small folder.

If the average room is 20'x20', and you have a reasonable number of hallways, and you don't waste large blocks of solid stone area, and you have 1/3 of the rooms contain danger and/or treasure, you should have 12-15 interesting sites per level. If you write denser you can have double that with no problem.

[Cthulhu]

10x10 grid of identical, featureless 10³ foot rooms.  Each room has four levers, one on each wall.  The rooms are actually suspended in a nondimensional space, and flipping a switch teleports everyone in the room to the room adjacent to that switch, with no obvious transition.  Unless they use Detect Magic to pick up the residual magic from the teleport, it seems as if nothing happened.

For example, the players are in room (0,0).  They flip the switch on the east wall, and are seamlessly teleported to room (0,1).  One of the rooms contains a teleporter that leads out.  There should be some indicator, preferably cryptic, that tells the players what's going on, and which room is the exit, but it should be designed so that they only figure it out after they've flipped the switches a bunch of times and have no idea which room they're in.  Optionally, add traps and monsters to some of the rooms to spice things up.  Optionally, make it a 10x10x10 grid and watch your PCs starve to death.

[sonerohi]

Force the party to break up or face painful, painful traps. Some of them are actively coming towards them. Make a single person head down an ominous, boss monster-y corridor. If the party debates too long, the traps get them. If they decide on the fly, they might choose an ill-equipped person. The boss is a rat feasting on the corpse of the real boss. Mad loots abound. Room is destroyed after leaving (hope you have high carrying capacity). Other players have been in a labyrinth. A boring one. The center is the goal, with stairs to the top of the structure. A hatch closes once they are up top. Boom. Nefarious.

[Soadreqm]

Optionally, make it a 10x10x10 grid and watch your PCs starve to death.

You remember the movie "Cube" by Stanley Cubrik? 'Twas a good film.

[LeoLeonardoIII]

Optionally, make it a 10x10x10 grid and watch your PCs starve to death.

You remember the movie "Cube" by Stanley Cubrik? 'Twas a good film.

Hahah yeah ... "Cuberick" did that? I never knew that. There are apparently two sequels.

[Nivim]

Spoiler: A large temple, probably too much (click to show/hide)

 There is an alter at the front of a ~40'x70' room, the room may have many rows of benches or mass ritual supplies scattered about. Upon the altar is a single golden chalice (or something similar) that the players are supposed to get. The entire room and all objects contained appear well kept (possibly new and plush), yet it is empty of anyone. The players walk up to alter (no traps, although a secret door behind the alter with a messy study would fit). However, when the players attempt to pick up the object on the alter, a surprised priest appears in front of them, surprising them. A moment later, he will attack them with something that forces them back, and the army of acolytes and nasties behind them will also attack. The nasties can be whatever fits, but they should probably be powerful summons of the religion. The player's should be able to notice the appearance, and get away if they make a run for it and defend themselves. However, when they go back down the hallway that brought them to the temple room, they will find the rest of the dungeon is somewhat different, and when (or if) they reach the entrance, they will only find a closet, bedroom, or study. The object brought them to a ~custom plane of existence, and the priest is the only one that knows how to get them back. The dungeon should have an exit somewhere (to some odd, livable landscape), and more places to hide and recuperate. The priest should sleep some time, and be alone some time. If the players happened to kill the priest...they might be able to use the texts. If you want to add a time limit, make the plane inimical to life.

I'm sure I am remembering this from somewhere, but I'm not sure where.

[alway]

You could always do something like this: http://www.darthsanddroids.net/episodes/0339.html

[ein]

I used a trap recently that dumped a clear, water-like fluid on the PCs.
The fun really began when they fought the boss of the dungeon, a baby red dragon.

[Red Fortune]

My friend complained that I was giving him too many simple "kill monsters to unlock next room" situations... I felt a little ashamed, so I designed a room.

When the PCs enter, they notice a group of 10 resigned looking goblins, who watch them warily. There is a cracked runed pillar in the center of the room, which two symbols, one of a spirit, and one of a giant goblin warrior; there also seems to be some energy field around the room, centered on the pillar. The door at the opposite end of the room has something carved on it.

One of the goblins tries to reason, but can't be understood, he points to the door, and then himself, says something, mimes a throat-slitting action and then points at the door. The more goblins that are killed, the brighter the runes glow and the louder the pillar hums. If all of the goblins are killed, the pillar shatters, and a giant goblin spirit warrior emerges, who is a very, very tough battle. After the spirit is killed, the PCs walk up to the door, they see that it is slightly ajar, they note that the carvings were goblin graffiti, and that there is a smell of goblin urine on it, no magical residue can be detected on the door, and there's no lock.