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I am looking for some inspiration for a clockwork tower I am developing, and was hoping to steal some ideas from published adventures if anyone can name a few for me. The main thing I am looking for is ambience, room descriptions and decor, cruelly ingenious traps and puzzles, NOT so much monsters which the monster books I have are full of.
The two modules I am currently lifting ideas from are Wicked Fantasy's Against the Iron Giant, and DCC Vault of the Overlord (both awesome in their own right.)
I really want to give the whole thing a steam-punk, grinding gears sort of barton fink feel. And a cool trap or two would be nice.
Thanks in advance, and in full disclosure I have to add I originally posted this question over at the RPGnet forums, but got dismal results.
Just mining my Cradle Of Brigh map that I haven't finished:
Elevators
Elevating platforms.
Lines of pistons as platforms.
Clock-tower-esque gear chambers filled with rotating chambers that can be represented by paper/cardstock gears on the map that would rotate a certain amount each round. Possible crushing damage risks here and there.
Tranforming chambers that have to be changed by operating certain controls, dynamically changing the map(possibly in the midst of battle!)
Autonomous defense and repair systems that maintain the tower that may actually ignore the PCs until they bother them or do damage to the tower's structure.
An altar to Brigh(if this is in Golarion) or some other idealized personification of artifice.
Mook makers that produce enemies/guard units/whatever as set intervals.
Venturing into "Water Clock" territory: consider having some of the "Moving Parts" rooms depend on liquids used as weights. Said liquid could simply be water. Could be acid(could be a convenient method of getting rid of something dangerous, like a mold infestation in another area if they operate the machinery correctly).
Increasingly complex clockwork defense systems as the PCs go along, possiblky culminating in having to face off against clockwork copies of themselves!
TESLA COILS!
You might want to ask over at Strolen's Citadel. Several steampunk enthusiasts wander their forums, so I launched a thread there with your question.
A Gasp of Glass might give you some ideas: It describes a surrealistic demiplane spawned from the tortured mind of a deranged AI. While the adventure isn't really what you were looking for, I suspect it would inspire several warped "clockwork" ideas.
DitheringFool
(Pathfinder Adventure Path Charter Subscriber; Roleplaying Game, Campaign Setting, Companion, Modules, GameMastery Cards Subscriber)
Thanks for all the awesome replies! I don't know why I ever go anywhere else when the group over here at Paizo is so great. You know, I never really connected clockwork to steampunk until this post. I am going to go back to my China Meville novels and yoink some ideas from there :)
In the meantime, if interested, here is my tower (long)
The tower's main level rotates so that the entrance only opens once every 4 hours. The crystal is a great shard protected by a hemispherical wall of force on the top. The bard considered using blink to bypass the WoF (by going under) but the fear of the hemisphere being a complet globe and her materializing within the stone scared her away. (The tower is actually constructed of two rows of thick stone blocks with lead anti-magic sheeting betwixt) In the end they went in the main doors for the 10 minutes it was available and were confronted by a 100 ft long corridor, lighted by dimly glowing golden crystals every 20 ft. The archer dashed in and was surprised by an "arbalester" that lowered from a hidden panel in the ceiling and fired 4 steel darts every round. Immediately the rest of the party dashed forward to get under it and outside the line of fire.
Heh heh. Right before the last on the initiative, the half orc barbarian, he was attacked alone at the open end of the corridor by 4 of these daywalkers. Two of them both hit and grappled, one was cut down by the powerful half orc, but his CON was down to 5, and his level to 5!! The party was in a quandery, but they didnt have long to wait, because a next round began and the arbalester dropped from the ceiiling to land on 3 metal legs, its top was a steel shield that allowed it to blend with the ceiling, it fired into the bard (she is so rarely hurt! very exciting stuff) while every one else turned to help Thokk. They beat the daywalkers off, and destroyed the clockwork arbalester, and decided to go in, straight to the crypts rather than destroying the crystal.
they then came to a room that contained a model of the city in miniature under glass. Looking closer they realized it was a current model, even down to figures moving through the strets that they recognized. The neext chamber, going clockwise around the tower, contained a maintenance drone who I tried to roleplay with some humour, it being rather daft and trying to be logica. Next room was described as a great octopus-like machinee filling the room, with metal arms rotating and on the endd of each of its 12 arms wa a large different colored globe. This represented the solar system and its 12 planets. The players didnt care of course. Next room was a miniature of the tower which could be openened in half, and stood about 8 feet tall. They could see themselves in the tower! They also caught a glimpse of the how the structures was put together...
My idea for the tower is that it is a power-house, convertiing energy from steam into magic energy, which is then put into gems and crystals that power the various inventions. The steam is generated deep under the tower, where a sea-cave has formed. In it, 4 elementals have been chained. The fire elemental and the water elemental are forced into an eternal struggle which created this billowing steam that is forced up a giant central shaft of the tower by a huge fan. (not fully flushed out but Im thinking the air elemental has something to do with the fan. As for rearth... not sure.)
Anyhow, the central shaft is about 20 ft in diameter and it goes all the way to the top of the tower, too hot to touch and steam is pumping through it. The entire middle area of the tower is open, around 50 ft in diameter, and other then the main level, there are 13 more. The shaft decends through the layer of bedrock to get to the sea-cave. In this central area are all manner of cogs, wheels, chains, and other stuff and the only way to get around is by climbing through the stuff, per some rules in the Iron Giant. In fact they had a nifty battlematt that you turn sideways, in other words, that is vertical, and I made 9 copies of it and taped them together to symbolize the circular nature of this tower they were in. Needless to say, as soon as they went into this shaft, they were attacked by a pair of Barsoomian white apes, or the Girallon "pets" as they are called. Fun battle.
So there are 13 levels going up this central open shaft, and each one has pipes, wires, cables and other junk, and they are all rotating hap-hazardly. They will find out thrrough talking to a "maintenance drone" who incentally looks sort of like a gnome tin-man, and even has a little metal beard(!) they will find out that that they cant get through the steam shaft without protecttion from heat and flame, so they must instead "turn off the steam" by going into each of the 12 levels and shutting them down. Each level is acutally nothing more than a small room with a large mural on the wall. By staring at the mural they will be teleported to various places (some poignant foreshadowing will happen here) and will use a crystal key to 'turn off' the clockwork item ffound within each area. It should be all sorts of fun, and each of the 12 is based on one of the signs of the zodiac. It is the connection to these 12 zoidacal planes, planets, dimensions, locales, whatever, that creates the magical energy.
The 13th, i think will probably be the Over-seers HQ. Im toying with the idea of the gnome engineer who designed the tower being turned into a 'brain in a jar', and it was Strahd's corruption of him that allowed the whole tower to be turned towards his evil plans.
Anyway, I have no ideas what to do for the 6 levels of the tower that comprise the air and water signs, and was hoping to steal ideas from oher published modules. I know that was a long ramble, but mebbe someone else is as bored as I
Here is a link to a 14 part article written by Wolfgang Baur, entitled "Clockwork Wonders", which feature a clock tower (but this tower does not seem to be the article's focus however)...
It was written for the Eberron setting, but I wouldn't hold that against Mr. Baur... ;-)
In the 2e Ravenloft book "Children of the Night: The Created" there is an adventure set in a clockwork automaton-controlled mansion. Written by Dave Gross, it is called "The Automatic Man" and the PCs must investigate a house built by an skilled gear worker who built an extraordinary automaton butler that goes a little berserk. After the townspeople destroy him, his consciousness spreads to the clockwork house and the whole thing becomes a big sentient trap. Really good stuff. I don't recall that there were even any monsters lurking around -just cogs-type traps and bursting steam valves and such. You can probably pick it up cheap...
Brandon