I am experiencing a massive case of GM-block and was wondering if I could appeal to the community here to reinvigorate the muses.
Ok first of all, I am running a homebrew 3.5 campaign in which my 3 evil PCs have just hit 12th level. This is usually about the time when I fizzle and grow bored with my game. Whether or not this is due to my inability to run a game at this level or higher, I don't know. What I do know is that if not now, at some point in the future I would like to continue/finish this game. My players however, would really like me to continue playing this campaign.
I will give a brief back story of the game before I ask for advice on my current dungeon dilemma.
•The current characters are in need of information from an NPC (inert PC).
•They have only hear of/seen this NPC in passing
•In exchange for the information, the NPC has offered a trade of favors.
•The NPC has asked them to eradicate a couatl from a jungle that is near his newly built stronghold.
•The couatl resides in a series of ruins within the jungle swarming with fey.
•The ruins are actually an underground temple long abandoned by "snake people" and the couatl is attempting to gain access to the locked chambers within the temple by encouraging a local tribe of lizardfolk to revere it as a diety (they have yet to gain access to inner temple, but make offerings to the couatl)
•The unlocked secrets will further the ultimate campaign goals
Features I would like to include in the "snake people" temple:
insidious traps
small tunnels leading from one chamber to the next
undead/mummified "snake people"
Aside from that, I am OUT of ideas!
Please help me out I have mentally deteriorated to the "spinning in circles" phase!
Start getting them involved with organizations.
Organization A comprises the cult/guild/academy that idolizes and reveres the incredibly effective (evil!) PCs, while Organization B is dedicated to stopping their tyranny before it expands to destroy the rest of the world.
As the PCs approach the critical L14, they begin having massive impact on the world around them. Perhaps it's time to start involving them in the Kingmaker rules? (Book 2 and 5 of the Kingmaker adventure path gives excellent, interesting rules for building and governing a kingdom!)
Here area some quick ideas off the top of my head (at 1:30AM):
- golems - in snake-ish forms. maybe even fleshcrafted with "snake" parts or extra snake-oriented appendages
- tiny undead/cloth swathed snakemen babies (think Mummy 2) as a swarm (or could be dead fey...)
- nagas - bone, guardian (good aligned, that one - i think), etc.
- two headed constrictors (grapple two foes at once AND still attack as normal - as snakes do naturally - looks cool)
- "hydra" snakes
- "hydra" snakemen - even better! even cooler if the hydra-snakes are the spellcasting (undead?) hydra-snakemen's familiars or pets. :-)
- spiders & scorpions, both large/huge and swarms
- skeletal "snakemen" guards
- skeletal spiders, scorpions, snakes, etc. - large kind, though
- and as always, "regular" snakes - venomous, of course, and many, many, many of them
- temporal stasis-ed snakemen - as a trap/guardians
General thoughts:
- remember to allow for food sources if you have anything living in there (underground rivers or even whole ecosystems, or at least vermin-size holes for such to get in/out of the temple)
- use the traps intelligently: were the traps there to hold people off (while people used/lived in the temple) or there to keep them out (after the temple was deserted)?
I hope this helps. If I remember, and I think of more, I come back and add some.