The Maze of Many

[Volvagnos]

This is an idea that I've been toying around with, and would like a little feedback on whether or not other people would enjoy the concept. My turn to run our game is coming up decently quick and I would personally like to run a "Maze of Many" style dungeon similar to that from the Goblins webcomic. Here is where that story arc begins. They obviously do a better job explaining it than I will.

For those who want a quick description click the spoiler tag below, there is story arc spoilers within.

Here be Dungeon Spoilers:

This story arc takes place in a special dungeon that exists in it's own frame of time and space, in a point that touches multiple realities. The entire point of the dungeon is that it is a race to reach the treasure room first, all the while fighting off alternate versions of your own party. When someone dies, they are merely brought back to life when the dungeon resets, as soon as one party reaches the treasure. All previous knowledge is lost, as though it's your first run through. The only exit is to complete the maze. The dungeon resets your party as many times as needed to complete it's trials, with the a counter in the spawn room telling you how many attempts you've taken. When you get the treasure, you exit out of the dungeon shortly after you entered, almost as if you never spent potential eons fighting for a McGuffin. Although, I might do something similar to the comic, and have one of the realities messing with the dungeon itself in an attempt to erase it from existence, making this the last possible attempt (the PC's will have to figure that out).

Some of the alternate realities are simple, like everyone is larger or are zombies or something, while others require knowledge of the backstory of your characters, like a what happens if a dead party member didn't die or something. Party Members might all have a level of paladin, because in that reality paladins are not restricted to LG. They might all be wearing odd colors, because in that reality certain colors give buffs. They might all be wearing armor made of cats, because cats are crazy plentiful in their reality and are the only real source of meat or leather.

I understand it's could be a crazy amount of work to deal with, but I'm willing to attempt it if others think it could be fun. What I'm looking for here is feedback on whether you would personally like to try such a dungeon, other forms of character alterations, and any potential traps you might throw in, as some of the ones in the comic might be a little difficult to pull off without killing the entire party.

I should mention, I'm thinking of putting such a dungeon semi-early in the campaign, around 5th or 6th level. Thanks in advance for any input.

[Ciaran Barnes]

How many 1000s of times do you expect your players to try the dungeon before they give up? :)

Is there any precedence In your campaign for alternate worlds?

[Goddity]

There would be two ways to do that.

The first is the one seen in the comic, where they start on their something millionth try. Could be fun, but you're in trouble if they fail.

The second is the one where they somehow remember they're previous runs. You would start them on run one and maybe have a really neat massive dungeon that they run groundhog day style. It would get better if you then calculated which group wins each time and what effects their disappearance has. The best explanation for remembering would be the tinkerings of a sort of psion Minmax. Which would be awesome, because then they could try to stop him/her. The downside is that it's lots of work. One super dungeon + about 50 alternate parties if you want to keep it interesting. That's an estimate.

I would totally play this.

[Scud422]

Here's what I would do:
Have this be the start of a campaign. When one of them dies to a trap, replace the character with a similar one that you either pre-built or have the player make a new one if he can do it somewhat quickly. If the whole party wipes, have the "new" party be nearby and they saw the demise of the previous party. When they finally complete the dungeon, that's the group/world/reality that you roll with from then on. This works best if this is towards the start of the campaign because they haven't had time to make much attachments to their characters yet and it gives them the flexibility to get a feel for different builds before settling on one.

Alternatively, if they destroy the counter in the beginning, if they lose you can start them over while keeping all the past knowledge.