Idea for a rotating dungeon

[Ghostpuncher5]

I'm planning on making a rotating dungeon, not in the sense that it or parts of it spin, the whole thing will rotate. Hallways are now pit falls and vice versa. The only hint that this is going to happen before hand is a set of spikes on a wall near the entrance. A rogue might notice a trip wire in a strange place like 4 inches off the wall going vertically from ceiling to floor, but that could be chalked up to bad trap design.

My question is if this has been done, so I can use it as a good frame work for my dungeon. I can't find anything close to what I want, just layouts that have spinning sections of dungeon. I'm also open to ideas to spice the dungeon up a bit in clever ways that factor in the rotating nature of it

[Kitty Catoblepas]

The old Grimtooth's Traps book had some traps with a similar premise. The one that comes to mind is a hallway on a hinge that supports a certain amount of weight before it falls/tilts (90 degrees) down.

edit: Google search reminded me of the ball-bearing rotating hallway into a pit. Heh heh, good ol' Grimtooth's.

[ericthecleric]

This has been done.

Spoiler:

In book 3 of Curse of the Crimson Throne AP, there is a level of a dungeon where four different parts of a level spin round.

[Ghostpuncher5]

Kitty Catoblepas wrote:

The old Grimtooth's Traps book had some traps with a similar premise. The one that comes to mind is a hallway on a hinge that supports a certain amount of weight before it falls/tilts (90 degrees) down.

edit: Google search reminded me of the ball-bearing rotating hallway into a pit. Heh heh, good ol' Grimtooth's.

That's a pretty good idea, if I add two or three of those hallways, and eventually give the PC's control of the dungeon rotation, I could turn the entire dungeon into a combination lock to reach the goal. At first glance it will be a trap, but after some testing they find out that moving the dungeon in a certain pattern opens up new areas by putting the hallways in a certain arrangement

[Sissyl]

Not done as you describe it, to my knowledge. If you want to do this, you need to think much farther in 3D than most dungeon maps go. As a suggestion, make the map rather small and compact.

[blahpers]

ericthecleric wrote:

This has been done. ** spoiler omitted **

Not the same thing, if I understand the OP correctly. This is more like a recurring Zelda trope where the entire dungeon rotates, often along a nonvertical axis, so that you're walking on what was previously either ceiling or wall and possibly falling through what were previously doorways.

I'm sure someone's done it, but I haven't encountered a module that does so thus far. I suggest using a graphics, modeling, or CAD program (or even Minecraft or some physical building blocks) to roughly model your dungeon and translate the valid orientations into a playmat-friendly format beforehand. If a playmat isn't sufficient to model the useful geometry, things will get very interesting indeed, similar to modeling any other environment where all three dimensions are nontrivial; in that case, I'd definitely go with some kind of building blocks.

[GM Mowque]

I've done rotating rooms, but not an entire rotating dungeon. I was never sure how you'd model it.

[Ghostpuncher5]

My initial thoughts were to start mapping a single side of a cube as a dungeon layout, adding in a good amount of pitfalls, some with trap doors and shom without. The trap doors, if noticed, will appear to be just doors do though knobs, but can easily be opened. This will be the "top". Then map out the right side, using the grid locations of the pit falls to properly place hallways. Repeat this for all 4 "sides" of the dungeon keeping in mode proper placement for hallways/pits. Then the bottom will be more or less fill in the blanks. From there I can decide if I want to add more smaller floors going down/center of the cube. But I feel more floors will make the hallways shifting into pitfalls significantly less dangerous, and the entire dungeon highly confusing.

I'll track each side as a map designator, like a1 or something. To keep track of everything I'll have a copy of the map for my self to look at at all time. This will also help keep track of when traps that were on the wall switch to being on the floor or ceiling.

The idea of hallways on a hinge will defiantly be added. Forcing the Pc's to find and use a few rooms that offer a rotation of the dungeon in a predetermined direction. To make things simple I'll only add 3 or 4, so the combination will be 3214 or the like.

I've had a few ideas how To spice it up. Adding a room half filled with liquid, the room is longer than it is wide. So the dungeon being in the wrong orientation will have the room be impassable if it's acid when coming from above or below. This will deter pc's from just flying or climbing there way to complete victory.

[Heather 540]

That sounds like it would be pretty fun. But also really hard to keep track of.

[Wheldrake]

Sounds like the kind of stuff that gamers were doing in the 70s. Very old-school.

At first I thought you meant rotating a part of the dungeon like a lazy susan.
Like this.

But I think you really want to rotate the whole dungeon like a rotisserie spit, with pits becoming corridors becoming verticle shafts, etc.

Like this

As far as mapping (graphic representation) is concerned, you might try representing things like an isometric projection. But inevitably, you're going to need floorplans of the same areas in different orientations

[the David]

You'd need to map this in an isometric format. If you keep things small it'll be easier to oversee.

And yeah, I'd love to get my hands on a dungeon like this.

[Goth Guru]

There's a ship that rotates so they can see deeper underwater.
There's a sink on one wall, and another on the floor. When it bottoms ups like a duck, the sinks interchange. I believe, when it rotates, one toilet seals in it's water while the other unseals.

[Heather 540]

Boy I hope that the one that ends up on the ceiling is the one that seals itself. Otherwise.... ew.