Help me tg! I'm spontaneously running a dungeon crawl for my friends, we're going through this abomination of a dungeon...

help me tg! I'm spontaneously running a dungeon crawl for my friends, we're going through this abomination of a dungeon, help me come up with encounters and shit! give me ideas for what to throw at my guys, anything goes! lore, small stories, sad endings ,dead corpses, anything you can spawn out of your brains!

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dandwiki.com/wiki/Grog_of_Substantial_Whimsy_(3.5e_Equipment)
donjon.bin.sh/d20/dungeon/
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why

first post best post

fun

Make up some competing monster factions in the dungeon. Will give it structure and help you make thematic encounters. Have some big dumb unalign monsters too.

What you need is the Grog of Substantial Whimsy.

> dandwiki.com/wiki/Grog_of_Substantial_Whimsy_(3.5e_Equipment)

Firstly, I might set the dungeon up as the intensely magical remains of a ruined Mage City, which would explain its huge size and labyrinthine layout: each "room" on the map can be a room, building or courtyard and each "passageway" on the map can be a passageway, alley or street depending on what feels most atmospheric and appropriate as your players progress.

>Make up some competing monster factions in the dungeon. Will give it structure and help you make thematic encounters. Have some big dumb unalign monsters too.

There is another gang of treasure hunters roving the city, that are searching for the same relics and wonders that the PCs are. The two groups keep running afoul of each other, to comedic or dramatic effect. For extra fun, give them the same classes and opposite alignments of the PCs.

thanks dudes, this is great. i'll sprinkle some abhorrents and mutants and ghosts over the city, maybe some wizards selling shit. this'l be great.

If it's a Mage-City that has suffered from a magic-related cataclysm, you can feel free to go a little wild with the types of setpieces and encounters that your players come across:

- The vendors can be ghosts themselves, or can be magical constructs that behave like badly coded videogame NPCs that can be gamed or could potentially glitch out and become combat encounters.

- Different streets and courtyards can experience different weather conditions that might imperil the PCs in some way. Perhaps there are various kinds of elemental monsters in residence there.

- Reality has grown wonky in the ruins, and different special or temporal anomalies can exist that trap the PCs in different parts of the city and require some lateral thinking in order to help them escape.

- Ancient guardian golems roam the streets, and have identified the PCs as intruders and will "evict" them unless they can be destroyed, disabled or supplied with the proper passcodes.

i like the temporal fuckery, might pull something titanfall 2 / dishonored 2-esque thing, switching between times to make your way around.
both times being dangerous of course, as the 'earlier' time being in the middle of the war/cataclysm.
Could make a reocurring character that's some wizard stuck in several timeloops at once, all over the city, as well.

You could potentially find some inspiration in the modern "Prince of Persia" games if you really want to go full-bore with the temporal shenanigans.

Maybe it was the detonation of a literal "time bomb" that destroyed the city and unstuck it in time in the first place.

hmm, yeah, that could be the final cataclysmic thing. could make a plotline out of the players finding out what the fuck actually happened. thanks broski.

No worries mate! Glad you were able to find some inspiration!

OP, just saying this, but you need one room with Lasers. Just Lasers.

...room with a temporal distorsion of a fuckload of wizards shooting rays at each other. forever.
duly noted.

>...room with a temporal distorsion of a fuckload of wizards shooting rays at each other. forever.
Some rooms, streets, and courtyards scattered throughout the city remain locked to the exact moment that the time-bomb went off, freezing all the combatants of the cataclysmic mage-war in place. The spells they cast still hang in the air, waiting for an unwary PC to bumble into them, setting them off like traps.

In other locations, the war is still actively being fought in real-time.

Wh-what have you done? Those options are forbidden for mortal use!!!

that sounds great. guess this is now a campaign about time wizardry and it's devastating consequences.

I kinda wish I could play in this campaign.

>guess this is now a campaign about time wizardry and it's devastating consequences.

The PCs could run across themselves, or alternate versions of themselves as they get really deep into the temporal anomalies of the ruined city. They could be helpful NPCs in social encounters. They could be enemies in combat encounters. They could be dead of some future peril, and their bodies hold clues to bypassing it. They could even be "extra lives" for your players if their "prime" characters get killed.

Also add memories from the past of the PC's, but everything twisted into sad oor violent variations.Psychological torture, if you will.

>Also add memories from the past of the PC's, but everything twisted into sad oor violent variations.Psychological torture, if you will.

I can see this fitting into the "time-shattered city" theme we've been building on, but I'm not entirely sure how. Maybe something like, an "art gallery" full of nothing but windows looking out over interesting time periods and historical events? Some of these windows just so happen to look out onto tragic events in the PCs' pasts.

not even tragic, but twisting and melding them, like they return home one day to find their parents murdered, or their spouse cheating, or their life as they know it hitting rock bottom and so on

Also, you know you have to add demons of any type, because magic attracts them or whatever.Bound, unbound, any element and whatever passes your mind

Maybe it's a "Gallery of Possible Futures"

god, you guys are just twisting me now. i feel like i'm going to become so evil as a DM because of this.
it's going to feel so good, isn't it

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Remember the Grog! It's hilarious, and your players will love it!

I'd like the OP image in a useable size if at all possible.

>Also, you know you have to add demons of any type, because magic attracts them or whatever.Bound, unbound, any element and whatever passes your mind

Time magic might have been what destroyed the city, but it wasn't the only school of magic that its residents studied. When everything went to hell, it probably released a bunch of wizards' "pet projects" like demons, elementals, constructs and the like. And of course, all of these would helped, harmed or enraged by the temporal distortions throughout the city. You can use this to weaken truly terrifying high-powered enemies to make them better suited to your PCs' levels, or to strengthen low-powered enemies and inconveniences into unexpectedly challenging encounters.

can't really supply it to you anymore, but you can make one just like it in donjon's thing. round, huge size, dense layout (i think). donjon.bin.sh/d20/dungeon/
play around with it and you can get all kinds of crazy shit, like this

Don't forget your necessary cultist faction!Demons gotta be worshipped by idiots and people who want power.

>donjon.bin.sh/d20/dungeon/

Not the requestor, but that's a cool utility.

Thanks pal. I forgot that existed, time to tinker.

oh yeah, it's great. gives a list of shit you can find in th erooms as well, should it please you.

Now the real question, will it line up with roll 20's tiles?

Add at least one dragon.or wyvern.kept for the magical forge of yadda yadda

>Add at least one dragon.or wyvern.kept for the magical forge of yadda yadda

Said dragon or wyvern appears to be time-locked in the center of a large courtyard or square, and in the midst of an intense battle with the city's wizard and golem defenders. The defenders seem to be losing to the beast. Over the course of the game, the PCs must cross this courtyard several times, forced to follow a different path through the carnage each time. Imply that if they touch ANYTHING around them, there is a HIGH likelihood that the tableau will un-freeze and they'll be caught in the draconic crossfire.

Hard mode: the battle is not completely frozen, but continues to move very slowly around the PCs as they try to cross it.

here's a couple of ideas

if you plan on adding any kind of 'time fuckery' the players should meet a young adventurer with an easy-to-remember name, and maybe because of the spirit of kindred spirits etc. he gives the party a nice trinket ( like a scratched gold coin or some such ) to remember him by as a fellow adventurer incase he dies in the dungeon. later on, they meet an elderly man that has the same name and says he lost his lucky coin and can't remember what happened to it.. etc.

another idea would be to enter a part of the dungeon where there's a shitton of ghosts, but the catch is that the ghosts shift themselves to look like the dead loved ones of the adventurers and then lead them to their death

my final idea is to walk in on a bunch of skeleton goons taking a break from being skeleton goons and playing a tabletop roleplaying game like pic related. since they aren't on the job they invite the players to join them, and then you'd have a pc rolling dice to see how much their ingame character rolls, essentially playing mini-dnd inside dnd

>if you plan on adding any kind of 'time fuckery' the players should meet a young adventurer with an easy-to-remember name, and maybe because of the spirit of kindred spirits etc. he gives the party a nice trinket ( like a scratched gold coin or some such ) to remember him by as a fellow adventurer incase he dies in the dungeon. later on, they meet an elderly man that has the same name and says he lost his lucky coin and can't remember what happened to it.. etc.

There's a lot that can be done with allies and adversaries met inside a temporal dungeon.

Just one kobold

...

>There's a lot that can be done with allies and adversaries met inside a temporal dungeon.

Like the OP mentioned earlier, the PCs can find a particular wizard or courier caught in multiple stable time-loops as he was running messages to the city's defenders on the day the time-bomb went off. Each time the PCs come across him he's in a different point in his timeline, and may or may not have already met the PCs. He may be turned into an ally by proving to him gat he is unstuck in time and by helping him fulfill his various missions.

Exploding Goat user here, nothing beats "Behind one of these three doors is a goat, when you open the door with the goat the Screaming Goat meme plays and its bloody explosion awakens spiders hiding in the ceiling."

>Also, the Hall Couch of Horrors