Akin to Groundhog Day or the Dr Who episode Heaven Sent...
The premise is the characters are locked in an incredibly lethal dungeon but there are tricks or items that may not appear important at first but in hindsight will bypass/overcome/prevent something that is a hard block on their success. Each time the party TPKs, they all wake up where they started, and the whole thing is reset. Ideally each room in the dungeon is potentially lethal right from the get go so they have a chance to dive into the theme right away. I’m talking, you have 3 doors to open. One fills the room with fire and kills everybody. The other releases a too-powerful monster who kills everybody. The third door is trapped, but once they learn where the trigger is it’s easy to disarm and they can move on.
Clearly the party and GM need to REALLY trust each other for this, clearly there is a big danger of frustration.
But, I am here looking for deadly situations, and how to cleverly overcome them. Bonus points if they interact (such as, a room later down the dungeon has a monster weak to fire, if you can lure the creature into the 1st room and then use mage hand to open the fire door...
The key here is very deadly, but with a non-obvious but discoverable weakness that the party can learn to take advantage of over iterations.
Heh, I just watched Groundhog day last night.
One idea is to have the rooms be done in a certain order, where the thing you find in room 1 is the key to defeating room 2. The players will need to determine this through trial and error.
Also, you could give preparation options. It's obvious for prepared casters, but ideally you'd be able to give the whole party ways to prepare themselves properly. Perhaps a store they can use to outfit themselves, but the key is the players need to pool their resources for one important item?
Heh, was just talking about Groundhog day last night with my sister who'd just seen it for the first time. :)
Coincidence?!?* :O
Anyway, what's the greater, overarching challenge here?
It seems akin to one of those mazes that looks cool until the party says "we follow the right-hand wall and keep going until we exit" and you realize they can overcome the obstacle without thinking much.
I mean in that the party can just plod on, knowing they'll eventually get things right, as long as they keep remembering what they'd done wrong.
If they have unlimited lives and can use trial & error, that'll kill any sense of risk, make it all about players (more than PCs) puzzle solving.
This isn't necessarily a bad thing! Lots of early modules had puzzles meant more for players than PCs. Just realize it becomes kind of meta.
Yet those puzzles tended to be deadly (or rewarding) for real.
So why are they in the loop? (personally, not just who inflicted it)
What are they repercussions on them for failure? Does their psyche eventually wither under the onslaught of so much dying?
How would one balance the long-term effects of failure (if there is such attrition) with such difficult short-term obstacles?
Maybe there are better or worse ways to get through each bit? As in if you get through a room the first time, there's a reward? Or if you thrive or make a tough moral choice or whatnot, there's a boon. "We should really save that Halfling prisoner next time through, even though we've succeeded in a way that bypasses him."
Remember, Phil survived much psychological turmoil!
And while you may want the PCs to suffer, remember the players are experiencing the frustration too.
Apologies for not having any advice for individual rooms other than you may wish to Google "Grimtooth's Traps", famed for being lethal, original, sometimes even whimsical. Those traits may keep your players engaged and on their toes.
*Yes
Great replies already, thanks!
The idea is very much in its infancy in my mind. I have an outline in my head for future content, and I'm contemplating what may be beyond what's already planned. The campaign is in Varisia which is fertile ground for "oh oops, we found something very ancient and very powerful, and it does very strange things."
I particularly like the advice of using time pressure to make the repetitions meaningful. One idea I had, then rejected, but now like a bit more, was to have this "thing/place" be the old lighthouse in Sandpoint (the home base of these heroes). Perhaps the old lighthouse is defined in some AP or book somewhere, but my players have no knowledge of that (nor do I for that matter), so it's basically a plot hook waiting for a story.
So, maybe it "wakes up" and starts doing something strange to the city. Maybe people start getting zapped and are disappearing? Maybe the lighthouse was a defensive structure and would use a teleportation beam to zap people to a safe place... of course the players and citizens have no way of knowing that's what's going on, all they know is that each day somebody/a few people are getting zapped and theyr'e gone, the town is going crazy and the Mayor turns to heroes to break into the lighthouse and find out what's going on. That way the players are aware that each day "something bad" is going to happen to people in the town.
I was thinking that right after they gain entry, a huge stone slab drops down behind them, sealing them in. The only way out is through. A small, high window can be used to track time so that they know that days are passing with each attempt, akin to a sundial.
All of the deadly traps are an ancient defensive matrix designed to prevent enemy forces from getting to the "citizen repository." There would also be a control room of some sort that can be used to turn the device off, open up the citizen repository, etc. Fortunately the lever for "cast Create Food and Water Each Day" is flipped to "On." :)
I'm thinking that the montage motif would be really good here. After a few iterations, I'd allow them to simply narrate what they are doing in rooms that they have "solved."
Probably the first room should have some text on it that would be meaningful to the ancient Thassilonians... something about "Good soldier of the empire, to reclaim those who have been taken, remember your training" blah blah. Because these traps would initially have been things that a member of the army of the ancient empire would have been adept at overcoming.
For most of the players I've encountered over the years, this would be a great opportunity for the party to engage in PvP. The winner then finds a reason to die so that they all reset. I was trying to think of a way to work that in, but I can't think of anything.
But what I can envision is a tiled room where the only way that the PCs can traverse without dying is stepping on the right sequence of tiles. But after they solved it, I would handwave it and say that the PCs automatically solve it each subsequent "day" so it doesn't become boring.
Maybe there's a trap that has to be manually activated by a kobold across the room, and if the party can determine what it secretly desires (and can produce it), they can trade it for safe passage.
I think another challenge here is that for these traps to become relevant to this situation, the tendency would be for them to be solved with a lot of trial and error. If there's a way to avoid the trial and error aspect occasionally, I think it would enhance the experience.
Another thing to think about: Are the PCs in the dungeon long enough to level once or twice? And will that play a factor in navigating the dungeon?
I was thinking of a Groundhog Day scenario not too long ago, but was thinking it would be more of a small town setting.
If things go particularly poorly, you could try messing up the premise- have things change with each iteration. This can be done in a method that adds to the narrative effect.
You can have things "disappear", because Time-y Wime-y balls of stuff are not very stable.This could be used to help the players at first, such as removing a gate that separates an evil animal tamer from his abused feral monsters (I am sure we can all imagine how the monster's priorities might turn out, and how this could result in an auto win for a room).
When applied to the parts the players continue to use, this might be initially used to remove wrong answers (items to use, switches to pull, etc)- simplify the multiple choice as players repeat early rooms over and over again.
But eventually, the 'right' answers start to disappear too. Maybe they lose the tongs that allow them to "safely" pull an item out of a fire... and they either have to improvise or do things the painful way. Once they see that, the players will develop a greater sense of urgency.
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I actually made something like this a few years ago, and it was pretty fun.
The dungeon opened with 2 doors in front of the party. Way behind them was sealed.
Each door had an inscription above it. The inscription on Door A was worn away and couldn't be read, the inscription on Door B gave a command word to open the door and a warning of danger.
Going through door B lead through a series of optional rooms which all had two things in common
1) Each contained a party wiping TPK event that you needed certain information to solve
2) This information could only be obtained through experiencing the murderous events in the other room.
Stuff like a room what would fill with water, but only when the room was fully submerged would the light refract in such a way to solve a different rooms puzzle.
I didn't make these too complicated, the funny deaths was more of the gag.
In the final chamber the party was returned very first room with doors, both being etched out by an elderly wizard who got himself caught in a time loop.
He is attempted to remove the inscription on Door A so that people have to come through Door B and maybe one day save him. Sadly there is no way to help him and a fight ensues.
The party either die or escapes though that chambers version of door B.
In any case the party now arrive back at the first room.
If they were smart and read the inscription for Door A before the wizard destroyed it, they know the command phrase to open the door and escape the dungeon.
If they didn't read the phrase, they had to the loop over again.
Maybe rather than a fluke, the time loop is intentional.
I'm reminded of the timeloop episode of Lost Girl where people start disappearing. In that instance they were being attacked and kidnapped, then sacrificed.
I doubt there are enough NPCs for that to work in a TPK dungeon, but maybe there could be other monsters, time-themed creatures which duplicate with every iteration. In the first run-through, there wouldn't necessarily be any. Soon after, maybe the party encounters one, and it's TOUGH, not TPK tough, but as in let's not mess with them if we can avoid it tough.
Yet their numbers keep increasing!
If the PCs don't stop the time loop, these extra-temporal creatures will invade.
Note that these creatures may be oblivious to the fact the PCs are cognizant of the time loops. It also may be best if they're not explicitly hostile, biding their time (so to speak) until they have enough soldiers for an easy victory. Why suffer pain and risk death fighting this random party of capable folk, when I/we can swarm them easily after X amount of time loops.
This option also gives you some control of the pacing based on successes of the party, as well as some options for Deception or Diplomacy with the invading monsters. Maybe even have distinct markers so the party knows when they're dealing with the same individual who may or may not have learned something about the PCs too.
Then as the PCs approach the final obstacle, maybe these monsters realize how it'll thwart their plans and swarm the PCs! There's no way the PCs can win directly, they have to overcome the obstacle instead.
Who knows if some escape to attempt again later or seek revenge.
This is all really cool stuff, thanks folks :)
*takes notes*
If the adventure is long enough, then the PCs should also retain any XP they earn through overcoming traps/monster... possibly leveling up and being able to defeat an encounter that they were too weak to defeat before.
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I would strongly encourage you to consider building your dungeon rooms with flowcharts so that decisions made in earlier rooms impact the later ones, perhaps not even in ways that are immediately obvious. The changes can still be learned, but it keeps the later rooms from being two static.
For instance, the PCs find a pair of switches: one opens a door that leads further into the dungeon, the other just seems to change something cosmetic, like turning on a static illusion. However, there is a future room that changes based on whether the second switch got flipped. If the PCs decide not to mess with the seemingly-irrelevant switch on a future trip through, then the later room is different - but why? Having to figure it out extends the value of the puzzle a bit further.
You can do the same thing with monsters. For instance, the PCs may come across a dead monster, then a room or two later find the monster that killed it. However, if they take a different route, they might reach the room with the first monster before it got killed and have to fight it - and then the second monster comes in and finds the PCs. Alternatively, they might be able to save a helpful NPC if they reach them in time.