Megudungeon Monday: Computer Down

No, it isn't some science-fantasy megadungeon goodness.  Unfortunately, only three weeks into my Megadungeon Monday weekly feature, I am sorry to say that I will not have an installment for you this week. My desk top computer, i.e. the home of all of my graphical ditherings, crashed over the weekend. Since I am unable to show you the map of the dungeon element that I was going to post today, I’m not going to post the description.

The lesson learned in all of this is that I should upload the illustrations to the blog site as soon as they are complete rather than waiting. I hope to have the computer back up and running in the near term, so the next Megadungeon Monday will probably occur on some other day of the week. If that doesn’t happen, I’ll try to post two next Monday.

I may as well take this opportunity to at least mention some of the things that you’ll see in the coming weeks. In no particular order, they are titled:

The Bridge of Stairs
The Bronze Pillar
The Chamber of the Crystal
The Construct in the Maze
The Cube of Kharsadon
The Spinning Madness

Other nebulous ideas are floating around. Hopefully, some of them will solidify before I run through all of those listed above.

Megadungeon Monday: The Chamber of Echoes

The Chamber of Echoes is a cross-shaped room.  The floor of the central square sloeps down to a level five feet lower than the rest of the chamber.  The ceiling above this central square forms a shallow dome, its height reaching almost thirty-five feet above the lowest area in the chamber.  The ceiling of each of the 'arms' of the cross slope upward from a height of ten feet at the outermost edge to twenty feet high around the central square.  The walls, floor, and ceiling of the chamber are all curved from solid stone.  They are smooth but not polished.

The construction and geometry of the room is such that it has the following properties:

- All sounds in the room are amplified into the central square.  This effect is so pronounced that a quietly whispered word spoken at one of the doors can be clearly heard by someone standing in the room's center, although that same word would not be audible to someone standing at another door.

- Characters walking anywhere in the central square will hear footsteps and may pause to peer about in confusion trying to determine who it is they are hearing.  They may even fear that there are invisible assailants about.  In fact, the footsteps that they hear are their own.  Any sounds generated in the central square will be amplified and focused back into the chamber's center.

- A loud noise, such as a shout or metal striking metal, made in the central square is almost deafening to any creatures located there.  Very loud noises, such as a large creature's roar or a magically created sound, can be dangerous and will do actual physical harm.

If the DM desires it, perhaps the amplifying properties of the room apply not only to acoustic energy but also to arcane energy.  The possibilities are interesting...

I would recommend that this chamber be placed somewhere in your megadungeon that is fairly commonly travelled.  Perhaps it is on a well known route from one major area to another.  It would serve as an interesting traffic sorting device.  Once the characters have become familiar with it and its effects, you can then change conditions such that its effect on arcane energies becomes apparent.  Now the entire nature of the chamber and its role within the megadungeon changes.

Megadungeon Monday: The Pool of Mirrors

The Pool of Mirrors is not named for its appearance or even for any of the dungeon dressing in the area around it.  Rather, the Pool of Mirrors is named because of the nature of the magical trick in the area that can only be overcome through the use of the waters held within these identical pools.  DM's notes are as follows:

The player characters would enter this area through the double doors at the bottom of the map.  They will work their way through these chambers, what I call the Foyer, the Small Shrine, the Square Hall, the Arched Passageway, the Hall of Statues, to finally pass by the Pool's Sentinels before coming to the main room at the center of the complex where they will find the two pools.  There is nothing to indicate that these pools are special or magical in any way.  Near the ceiling on the wall behind each pool are openings through which flows a constant stream of clear, cool water.  The water in the pools is clean and drinkable and drains through several small holes in each.

When the players continue heading to the "north" and turn the corner to the right, they are magically teleported to the identical spot in the complex to the "south" walking to the "south".  They will not be aware of this and will continue on their way until they work their way through all of the rooms through which they just passed.  Obviously, if they had left any sign of their passing, they will quickly realize what has happened to them.

There is nothing that the players can do to prevent this teleportation.  No form of magic or mechanical device will prevent it as they walk "north".  The only way to block the teleportation effect is to step into the waters of either of the pools.  Any character who stands in the pools (which are about 18 inches deep) and soaks their feet and footware will be able to walk to the "north" without the teleportation from occurring.  [Note that flying through the passageway will not prevent the teleportation either.]

The characters may even then become confused, because as they venture "north" they will find the complex of rooms ahead identical in makeup and contents as that through which they have already passed.  It is quite possible that they will believe that they have been subjected to the teleportation yet again.  It is only after they make their way through the complex and then through the double doors at the end will they realize that they have made it to someplace new.

How you as the DM want to use the Pool of Mirrors is up to you.  Obviously, it would trick the lesser intelligent beings in a dungeon and so might serve to protect a specific area from wandering monsters.  It might just guard the chambers of a powerful wizard.  Or perhaps it is just one way of limiting traffic into a specific area of your dungeon.

Megadungeon Monday: Introduction

I introduced the idea here for my Tuesday Talkies (and have failed to follow-up since then).  As fantasy language creation is one of my many interests, I decided that each Tuesday I will post about how my efforts at that are going.

I'm here to introduce another weekly feature that, I hope, will become a standard here at Carto Cacography: Megadungeon Mondays.  Here is my thinking:

If you followed any one of the many megadungeon discussions that took place last year, whether in the blogosphere, at EN World, at Knights & Knaves (more specifically here), or elsewhere, a common idea is that one easy method of building a megadungeon is to create a few specific locations (areas, set pieces, or whatever term you prefer) per level and let everything that happens between them be generated randomly or on the fly by the DM.  I actually really like this method as I believe that it lends to the organic or living nature of true megadungeons.  I also think that it relieves the DM of a lot of possible work: He can concentrate his efforts on the really cool encounters or locales within the megadungeon and spend less time on the stuff in between.

In support of that, I'm going to present what I will call a "Location of Interest" each Monday for inclusion into your megadungeon or campaign.  Usually it will be in the form of a map with a few paragraphs explaining what I see when I look at the map.  It will not be fully keyed and will never contain stats of any kind--I don't think that it will need those things to be useful.  Theoretically, you could take my location and drop it straight into your dungeon as is, or you could take the idea and leave the map, or you could use the map with your own idea.  I have ideas for several and, hopefully, more will pop into my head in the coming weeks.  Heck, I'll even take ideas from the readers and map them (if people are willing to contribute ideas).

I don't have one ready for this week but there will be one here next Monday.  I'll hope that you'll be here to take a look.

(You might think that this idea is similar to what Tony is trying to do over at year of the dungeon, and I would have to agree.  I love what he is doing there and think that his pieces are extremely inspirational.  Megadungeon Mondays are going to be a similar contribution from me.  [If they are even a fraction of how inspirational I believe Tony's work to be, it will be successful in my book.]  The major difference that I see when envisioning this is that his are more abstract--philosophical even--whereas mine will be little dungeon maps, grids and all, that would fit right onto your graph paper scribblings.)