No Pathfinder session yesterday due to my efforts to get the house inspection ready so instead of an Actual Play here is a brainstorm of some more options! Yes, I know, most of these are more encounters than actual 'dungeons' but they can be stacked together to form a more living, realistic dungeon rather than having dozens of similar rooms packed to the rafters with bad guys and traps. Each of these can inspire a few similar battles (or other events) based around the same thing. If you'd like to see the first 50, you can find it over here! I hope you found it interesting. As always, feel free to add your own ideas in the Comments section.
51. Forest (Lost and alone, you have to bring food down the old-fashioned battle way)
52. Guard House (Getting in or out of a city or district the stealthy or violent way)
53. The Theatre (Mock duels and other fights played out on the stage)
54. Executioner's Square (Use violence or stealth to interrupt the killing, take out the executioner in an epic battle, then flee with the victim through the city streets past the guards)
55. Speaker's Plaza (Get to the target without him fleeing, assassinate him publicly, take out his posse and escape through a hornet's nest of angry guards)
56. City Rooftops (Chases, hiding, or simply getting from place to place, there's more options here even than in the sewers)
57. Sewers (The usual dungeon crawl has the sewers as the destination but there's plenty of leeway in making it the passageway between places for a different vibe)
58. Sewers (As the only place safe from monsters, it's a general respite, except you have to fight your way through fiercely territorial guards)
59. Village (When the fog rolls in, it brings with it terrible monsters, and you must dart across the fog-shrouded village, accomplishing goals and protecting houses despite the monsters)
60. Torture Chamber (The Evil PCs must torture the various NPCs in certain ways to unlock the information they need)
61. The Murder Mystery (There's a group of enemies that need to be socially defeated to loot their secrets)
62. The Political Party (There's a group of enemies that need to be socially defeated to loot their status and achieve some goal)
63. Village (Demonic, or fey, Possessions in the village require the low level PCs to find or develop certain ways to banish the possessing creatures using weird folklore and ingenuity)
64. Resistance Movement (The dungeon is the power structure they're struggling to dismantle)
65. Occupying Force (Remove them squad by squad until there's nothing less, different from the former because this is more of a guerilla movement, keep tabs on how many enemies are left)
66. Babysitting Session (pity the child you're looking after just got possessed by a Shadow Demon, can't hack and slack your way out now)
67. Mansion (sneaking around, going through people's stuff, finding clues to a conspiracy)
68. Mansion / Museum (sneaking around to steal something)
69. Mansion (sneaking around to kill someone in their sleep)
70. Mansion (ruin someone else's party in a way that doesn't make you look bad)
71. Reef (collecting scraps of other boats to make your own)
72. Tavern Crawl (how much trouble can you get into traveling through 5 taverns)
73. Prison (survive while getting into a crime lord's confidence)
74. Heaven (assaulted by demons)
75. Anywhere (carrying a message or fragile object from A to B as quick as you can, avoiding combats and other issues through speed and the right skill checks)
Ooh, nice! The babysitting one might be a nice choice for a fairytale plot: there's a curse or a prophecy that something terrible will befall the (royal?) child on a certain date, so the party are hired to guard them in a secret location known only to a handful of people. Even most of the family are excluded, and there can't be too many guards because screening loads of people that intensively gets expensive. PCs tend to have a wide range of esoteric abilities between them, so they're an ideal choice for unknown dangers. Ideally, you might make the child not only influential but politically vital, so the party can't decide to kill the blighter and scarper: a war will break out, or some such.
ReplyDeleteI like it. I think that'd lead to a pretty good series of unfortunate events.
DeleteShannon, this is some really good stuff. How long have you been working on these lists? I can almost see throwing together a couple of these elements and having a good mission!
ReplyDeleteDavid S.
Minnesota, USA
Some of them can even work for a modern adventure, though they're obviously decided for a fantasy game.
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