Monday, September 9, 2019

Dungeon Alphabet Dozen - H is for HALLWAYS

H is for HALLWAYS
Roll 1d12!

Random Pain-in-the-Ass Hallways of the Underworld

1 Hallway looks twice as long as it really is, walls narrow and ceiling dips to the point where you're squeezing through at the other end. Coming back it looks only half as long as it is. Understanding the geometry doesn't help un-see the unavoidable optical illusion.

2 Hallway looks normal, but is subtly slanted and preternaturally smooth. Roll under Dexterity to avoid falling prone and taking 1d6 damage while sliding down to the lower side. Getting back up to the higher side is going to require a climb walls skill check, or the use of a rope fastened to something at the top.

3 Hallway holds queue of 2d12 human peasants waiting in line. The peasants move through the door at the far end at a rate of one per exploration turn. They'll get angry if the player characters try to cut. If questioned, they're either thrilled with anticipation but assume the characters are in on the excitement, or impatient with no time to talk to someone who doesn't even know what they're doing here. When the player characters finally make it through the door, there'll be no sign of any of the peasants, and no indication of what they were waiting for.

4 Hallway is a stinking open sewer. Effluent runs down a wall near the door from a grate in the ceiling, flows in a wide river of filth to the far end, then disappears down a drain in the floor. Rotting garbage and solid waste line the walls. Anyone who's been recently injured should save vs poison or catch a DISEASE.

5 Hallway acts as a wind tunnel. Characters can only move at a crawl through the fierce gale, light sources are extinguished, missile fire is impossible.

6 Hallway must gently rotate on a central axis (although no one but a gnome could possibly feel it, and who can believe a word they say?) Each time the characters walk down the hall, flip a coin. Heads the door opens to the other side, tails it opens to the room they just came from. Walking back through the door they just came through never works to circumvent this problem though.

7 Hallway is seriously 10x as long as it appears on maps, feels like it takes forever to get to the other side, no one can see either doorway once they're deep enough in to the damn thing. Get ready to burn through torches, waste time dealing with equally perplexed wandering monsters.

8 Hallway is literally a maze of branching tunnels, ramps, dead-ends, and hairpin turns. Enter the hall only where it appears on the map, but exit to a completely random room. Roll under Intelligence to go back the way you came, or under half-Intelligence to return to any previous destination. Once you close the door on the hall though, the ONLY way back to the maze is through the original entrance.

9 Hallway is painted with dozens of arrows pointing back the way the characters came. Signs hang everywhere extolling the virtues of the room the characters just left: "This way to the greatest wonders of the dungeon!", "Suffer no more! Behold the mystical secret door to the fabled land!", "Leave poverty behind! Treasures abound in the region ahead!", "Say goodbye to boredom! Wonders and splendors galore!", "See the sights! Become the envy of your friends!"

10 Both the inward facing doors in the hall are identical pain-in-the-ass DOORWAYS.

11 Less of a hallway and more of a "fall-way," or rather, a pain-in-the-ass PIT. 2-in-6 chance the first character in the marching order just falls right down to the bottom the moment they walk through the door. Continued danger for each additional character until someone manages not to fall in. Exit door is at the bottom.

12 More like a "crawl-way" really, hall is only waist-high. Requires squeezing through on all fours at half normal speed. Any gnomes in the party feel obnoxiously smug about being able to remain upright.

4 comments:

  1. For me, posting classes and mechanics is my comfort zone. I’ve been pretty averse to writing game theory, and I’ll be really lucky if it comes out as beautifully as yours does.

    I hope to see more game material emerge from here in the future!

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    1. Thanks, Oblidisideryptch! Honestly, I think my blog might be more fun to read if I'd post some classes and mechanics from time to time. (Maybe a dungeon or two of my own?)

      I still feel like I'm finding my voice for writing anything like "game theory" and I think I'm probably much more chatty than most other people who write it. I've never been sure if that's an asset or not, but I'm glad you like it!

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  2. Oh, the peasant lineup would have been *great* for last night session, ah well.

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