Lost in an Infinite House

Let's imagine that your PCs are a group of urban explorers that have stumbled upon a very peculiar old mansion sitting alone and abandoned somewhere out in the boondocks.

The more the party explores the place, the more they come to discover that the interior layout of the big old house does not seem to completely correspond to its exterior design.

Deeper and deeper they go, marveling at the impossible floorplan, before they call it a night and decide to head home, only then realizing that the house has been shifting around them.

The game becomes one of exploration and survival where the PCs must make their way through the theoretically infinite reaches of the mansion, searching for away out again.

>What rooms or locations might the PCs find?
>What surreal impossibilities might exist there?
>What ghosts or entities might they encounter?
>What NPCs might also be lost inside the house?

Other urls found in this thread:

artstation.com/artwork/xR4P1
twitter.com/SFWRedditVideos

>There is a relatively static location, maybe a back staircase or servants' quarters, that has been claimed as a makeshift "base-camp" by several groups of lost explorers over the years.

>Windows and exterior doors the PCs come across all open out onto fully-enclosed garden courtyards and dead-spaces that often exhibit their own independent seasons and weathers.

>While not exactly plentiful, there is usually enough food, most of which comes from kitchens and pantries, but sometimes, whole meals can be found abandoned in dining rooms.

Did you just read House Of Leaves?

No, I just saw these renders of an abandoned mansion while browsing setting scenery and props and thought it might make for an unsettling short game and some interesting brainstorming.

>one room has a valuable-looking object in it (an obviously magical weapon, a glowing crystal or tome, a chest of exotic gems, etc)
>if the party takes it, when they leave the room the atmosphere of the house begins to change
>it gets noticeably gloomier, the decor starts to get more and more sinister
>this increases over time as long as the party keep the object they took
>shadow beings will start to appear at the ends of corridors behind the players before flitting off, or be glimpsed just at the edge of vision, or be seen at windows before disappearing
>this happens more and more frequently as the light in the house gets dimmer still
>eventually they'll start to attack in ones or twos (use any suitable ghost stats)
>if the players put the item back (or just drop it) this effect will end, otherwise they can try to fight off the shadows while finding the exit

That's an interesting, potentially greed-based trap that only persists so long as the PCs refuse to abandon their treasure. Perhaps it's a small idol to some forgotten deity.

>In their search for a way out, the party will occasionally stumbles across evidence of other people lost in the house: other urban explorers, solicitors, party guests and so on.

>The different rooms of the house do not all appear to be from the same points in the place's history. Some are rundown and abandoned while others are bright, new and furnished.

>The main "inhabitants" of the mansion are ghostly shadows that flit in and out of the PC's peripheral vision, almost as if they are catching glimpses of other instances of the house.

I'll just offer up one bump.

Do you envision this as a map, pseudomap, or total theatre of mind?

I would say, a mixture of options 3 and 2. If the layout were to shift, accurate map-making wouldn't work well, but that wouldn't stop me from letting the PCs discover partial floorplans drawn by previous urban explorers or from letting the PCs draw maps themselves.

Does this pic have a map? I'm a sucker for old mansions.

Second. I love the concept, but have no idea how I would organize it, especially with multiple levels and looping rooms.

I don't, but it's possible that the artist might have a floorplan:

artstation.com/artwork/xR4P1

The pcs might find broom closets and janitors. The Janitors are other people who have wandered in and clean in return for the house giving them a steady supply of food and water.

Perhaps like the first, very fucking old Alone in the Dark

Forgot one of the renders.

When the PCs enter certain rooms of the house they are suddenly presented with a ghostly playout of a scene from long dead people who lived in this mansion. Things they say should contain important information that the PCs can use to piece together what's going on and show them that if they can solve the riddle of the house they might be able to discover a way out.


These scenes should be short and are the only method that weaker ghosts can communicate with the PCs, yes that means they do not interact or acknowledge the PCs presence.


If you allow them to map small areas which they can return to at later dates you can set up time periods where important events play out by the ghosts that helps tell the story the PCs need to piece together. If they catch on they will know where they need to go to witness each event and solve the puzzle of what killed the people and whats happening to the house.

The closer they get to solving this puzzle the more dangerous the BBEDG [big bad evil dead guy] becomes who will try to stop them from rescuing the souls of the murdered people and destroying its hold over the house.

...

House gets bigger the longer they stay inside, a simple floor that took minutes to walk across suddenly takes hours on the next day. Ceilings are higher and higher until even the strongest lightsources can't reach it. Eventually the rooms stretch in odd angles, the house making errors in creating the space. Rooms that are on fire or filled with impossible material. Furniture made out of flesh and bones. Airvents filled to the brim with dead or alive spiders. Carpets out of teeth and so on.

I like the idea of this "infinite house" being unstuck in time and space for some reason, forcing the players to figure out what's happening and how to escape by piecing together the house's story from the jumbled, out of order clues they come across.

Maybe the house's owner was an explorer or archeologist and found some ancient eldritch relic that broke reality inside.

While dicking around in donjon, you can create a stupidly huge 1,000 room dungeon maps.