This is not intended to be a full campaign, but rather a mini campaign- 6-10 sessions (depending on the interest level of the players)
Premise: There is a legend of an entity of unknown power called the “Dungeon Master.” According to the legend, inexperienced would be heroes, knaves and adventurers are sometimes stolen away by mysterious forces to his lair where they must use every bit of their strength, skill and cunning to survive his diabolical labyrinth- all for his twisted pleasure and entertainment. Those who reach the mythical Fountain of Fate can drink from it, become true heroes and be released from the dungeon.
Objective: Escape the dungeon with as much loot as possible.
Disclaimer: This is not intended to be an opportunity for an egotistical GM to wantonly slaughter PCs and frustrate players. It is intended to provide players with a challenging, but entertaining location to explore that will allow them to have some laughs, roll some dice, make bold decisions, engage in creative problem solving, kill some monsters, gather some loot, rp with the inhabitants etc… However, characters will die (probably fairly often).
Character Creation: Characters begin at level 1. Players roll 3d6 in order to create their characters. When a character dies (or is otherwise removed from the game) the player immediately rolls up his next character, and the “Dungeon Master” teleports that new character to the join up with the party. The only time a player is sitting out is when he is making a new character. The “Dungeon Master” also uses teleportation magic to remove dead characters immediately along with their gear.
In addition there is a special deck of cards that a player draws a card from just before their character starts play. About half the cards are blank. Several cards confer a fortune benefit. In this case the character rolls on a random table and might gain things like a bonus feat, an attribute boost, a spell like ability etc… Finally, in the deck are a few sleeper agent cards. In this case the character is actually a loyal/dominated minion of the Dungeon Master, who at some inopportune time will turn on his fellow party members.
Obviously this not a game for min/maxers since the dice will, for the most part, determine character and party composition. The fun is seeing how long your gimpy character can survive. That being said, there are plenty of chances along the way to gain power in addition to merely earning xp (magic items, random effects that might increase on attribute, give a bonus feat or special power etc…), but players have to work for them a little. Finally at the end of the dungeon is the Fortune of Fate, which provides an opportunity to transform your Gimpy character into a more customized and viable hero (you gain build points when you drink from it that you can spend to improve your character’s attributes).
Character Advancement: This is intended to be a fairly low level Dungeon crawl. Characters start at level #1. They use the slow advancement track. They can level up as usual, except that they can never get to a level higher than the Dungeon Level they are on +1. For example, if they are on the first level of the Dungeon they can get to level #2, but they can’t go to level #3 until they discover the 2nd level of the Dungeon. Furthermore, if they do discover a new Dungeon level and can access it, they automatically advance a level.
Characters who survive the dungeon can drink from the Fountain of Fate and gain benefits that will bring them up to par with today’s standard of character prior to being deposited back to their homeland.
The Dungeon: It has 3-4 large levels, along with some sublevels. Exploration of the entire complex is not required to for PCs to complete the objective of escaping the place. The crazy premise behind this dungeon allows for virtually any kind of weird encounter area the GM can devise. It features plenty of secrets- useful treasure, secret doors, secret sublevels, secret means of accessing lower levels etc... It is a true sandbox dungeon. The PCs can do what they want and go where they want within the confines of this location. There is intended to be a balance between exploration, rp and combat- plenty of traps, puzzles and general weirdness to investigate; plenty of monsters (not always out to get the PCs or looking for a fight); and opportunities to role play with inhabitants of the dungeon.
Fun Features:
- Lots of Randomness to keep players on their toes (wandering monster checks, wild magic area(s), strange items)
- Open Sandbox to explore
- Many opportunities for hilarity, bold decision making, creative problem solving, combat and rping.
I currently have 4 core players. I think 3 of them would get a real kick out of this, and the other one would probably have fun during the game play, but feel stymied by the character creation.
I'm not sure if there would be all that much balance in such a case. This premise isn't really about careful inter party balance, and players would have to be cool with that going in. It is designed so that once they finish there is an opportunity for the survivors to balance out with eachother, so that if they wish, the players can continue a more long term and traditional campaign with their surviving PCs.
I think that a new character would probably start with basically nothing, but the Dungeon Master would generously place some relatively easily accessible gear (primarily mundane) that would be well suited to the new character in the vicinity of the party. That would go well with the survivalist mentality of the game. You scavenge what you can. You don't get to start all pimped up with toys.
I've started a design journal for this adventure/setting. I plan to post on it regularly as I come up with ideas for interesting encounter areas.
P.H.Dungeon, that sounds like an excellent game!
I think it sounds like a good laugh and a great way to shake things up and play "something different", but I probably wouldn't want to play a long-term campaign like this... How long do you envision the dungeon will take to explore?
Exploring the entire dungeon would probably take many sessions, but the objective is for them to escape the place, not explore it in its entirety. I think about 6 sessions would be good. I wouldn't want it to go more than 10. It would depend a bit on how much the players are into it. I would adjust it a bit as I ran it to make it possible to finish it sooner rather than later if I sensed that they had reached their fill of it.
In that case I'd definitely play in that campaign, it sounds like lots of fun :)
It sounds like it'd be a fun diversion for an afternoon or in between campaigns or something, like having a board game night instead of an RPG night. I don't know that I'd be the kind of player that would want to go all 6-10 sessions back to back though. Still it sounds fun.
I would do it for a short(3 sessions or less) term campaign.
It sounds like it'd be an interesting idea, but me personally...no, I don't think I'd play in it. Lots of randomness isn't my idea of fun, particularly the attribute distribution.
Sounds like something that would do well at a convention honestly. Was half expecting to see at the bottom of the post something about how this was an interest check for a paizo/gencon event.
I'm sure there would be a lot of gamers that would share that opinion.
It sounds like it'd be an interesting idea, but me personally...no, I don't think I'd play in it. Lots of randomness isn't my idea of fun, particularly the attribute distribution.
Sounds like something that would do well at a convention honestly. Was half expecting to see at the bottom of the post something about how this was an interest check for a paizo/gencon event.
Not sure if you're looking for ideas or not, but one thing that came to mind reading your description is creating a slew of PCs of various types...one big pool for the party to chose from, for their initial character as well as replacements as they die. The object becomes escape before the pool of characters runs out.
That sounds like a cool idea. I might borrow that. I'd probably have the players create them at the start of the game. One big session of character creation. Then have them draw randomly as they progressed. Alternatively, they could still create them as they go through the campaign, but we'd track how many they've gone through. I'm not sure what the limit would be- maybe 20.
Have each player show up with four level 1 characters, put them all in a stack. Roll a dice to see who gets first pick or just pull them out of the pile randomly. No one can play their own character?
I've done something like this before as a roleplaying exercise, since we were getting a little too "comfortable" in playing the same roles over and over again. It was quite fun :)
That would work, except that the players enjoy watching each other make the stat rolls, so I might have them do it at the table- low level characters like that can be made pretty quickly. Of course if you aren't allowed to play one of your own characters there might be less of temptation to cheat if they roll the stats outside of game time.
In a word. . .no. Maybe as a one shot, but creating a character you want to invest in and then getting to see him advance is the joy of this game. . . this kind of meat grinder sounds good at first, but if I wanted a game where I have no investment in the character and no expectation for him to advance-- why not just play a board game?
If we were talking about all characters at 5th, 8th, or 10th level I might be persuaded since it would give a chance to test out a lot of different builds-- but 1st level characters are just too similar and too limited for me to feel like it was worth my time.
yes i would enjoy this as long as it did not drag out toooo long (4 to 6 sessions would be fun for me). and it would be even better if there was an opportunity to play your character (if you have one escape) in a future campaign set after your adventure in the DM dungeon. sounds like fun!!