I need diabolical ideas

I'm looking to run a one-shot for some friends, and it's going to involve a dungeon crawl in a derelict steampunk/magitech spaceship with some sort of monster or monsters trying to kill them.

Problem is, with my paper, I'm having a hard time coming up with time to plan devious dungeons for them. This is where you guys come in. If you have any devious puzzles you've seen or have ideas for, please share them with me.

Try a Saw-based them. Like, cut your arm or any other body part wide open and give a gallon of blood or else the whole party dies.

But humans can't even live with losing 3 pints or so..

Head of Vecna.

Problem is, they all know the head of vecna trick. Maybe I can use that against them...

I don't know how well it could be used in a game, but for some reason messenger by Lois Lowry is coming to mind. The evil, sentient forest. People would start by having things that were seemingly accident, like tripping over branaches or mosquito bites, but then it would start to get weird, like vines and branches starting to fall on them, until finally they were torn apart by briars curling out and latching onto people.

She did it in a much darker and more interesting way than I can articulate with just a paragraph, but I think I got the basic concept.

Ooh, that would be scary. Walk into a room, roll a die; fail, take damage from a piece of machinery.

I don't know if you've ever played Fallout 3, either, but there's a building called the Dunwich building (I know the name's a reference to Lovecraft, and I NEVER want to read Lovecraft now), and it's pretty damn creepy. Only time I've really been scared by a video game. Doors randomly close and open and it's too dark to see without a flashlight.

You couldn't replicate that entirely, but it might give you some ideas. You pick up journals of a boy deeper and deeper into the building, where it gets progressively darker, lighting wise, and darker, mind-fuck wise. There's one room where you walk in and it looks normal for a moment-the game is set post-nuclear war, and the room looks pre-war, with lights and painted walls and everything, and there's a man standing in front of you, waving, and then it flickers back, and the "man" is the hardest ghoul you can fight.

You might be able to find videos of it on Youtube, if you want to go with the house going against the players, I'd reccomend it as a good start.

I am definitely trying to go for some creepiness; I may have to finally watch Alien, actually.

I was thinking of something like the "journals" idea to fill in the players, actually, maybe even finding some friends to record audio for me.

Make a flooding chamber where you have to boost each other but one man must stay.

SnowyPenguin wrote:

I am definitely trying to go for some creepiness; I may have to finally watch Alien, actually.

I was thinking of something like the "journals" idea to fill in the players, actually, maybe even finding some friends to record audio for me.

Just make sure the last one ends with "Seven Days".

Just pick up your stuff and walk out right after that.

Hmm... Steampunk spaceship, huh? Interesting, let's see...

Place a few obvious, easy traps here and there (like, totally visible), allowing for lots of Nothing is Scarierbut all of this comes with a twist: to survive getting through the trip, they need to take a statue in the form of a small, cute rabbit (because Easter is nearing). This MacGuffin keeps them alive, safe from the ship.

Two problems:

A ) If they leave the group, where the bunny is located, they vanish. Perhaps screaming, while leaving a trail that goes straight up into the... ceiling, yeah, ceiling, because no one looks up.

B ) The bunny, automated as it is, will occasionally give some chirps on telling the person holding it to do some task. Sometimes this task will be really easy, like stepping over to some spot a few feet away. Sometimes impossible. Failing to complete the task results in the holder dying. No screaming, no puncturing, just falling to the ground. The sadness in this comes in that everyone will want to hold the bunny, as the bunny grants full immunity to the traps, and guarntees living.

Cliche? Probably; I haven't gotten too into the genre. However, that's my suggestion. Feel free to tweak it to your liking.

Hmm. That would be hard to pull off, because I want most of the party to be alive at the end, and harmlessly sucking them away instead of killing them seems like a cheap shot.

What I am thinking, at least that hasn't been mentioned yet:

You know that one room in bioshock, where the lights keep turning off as you walk through? >:)

A couple rooms where everything starts running away from the party... then they get to a big empty room and the hull suddenly ruptures.

There's a dark room. Nothing's happening. (Wits+Awareness check) It's behind you. Hi.

Then maybe a couple puzzle fights, and we'll see what we have time for after that.

Shade wrote:

I don't know if you've ever played Fallout 3, either, but there's a building called the Dunwich building (I know the name's a reference to Lovecraft, and I NEVER want to read Lovecraft now), and it's pretty damn creepy. Only time I've really been scared by a video game. Doors randomly close and open and it's too dark to see without a flashlight.

You couldn't replicate that entirely, but it might give you some ideas. You pick up journals of a boy deeper and deeper into the building, where it gets progressively darker, lighting wise, and darker, mind-fuck wise. There's one room where you walk in and it looks normal for a moment-the game is set post-nuclear war, and the room looks pre-war, with lights and painted walls and everything, and there's a man standing in front of you, waving, and then it flickers back, and the "man" is the hardest ghoul you can fight.

You might be able to find videos of it on Youtube, if you want to go with the house going against the players, I'd reccomend it as a good start.

> Implying Glowing Ones are hard.

Now reavers... fuck reavers.

They're hard in the Dunwich building, because this gamer was pissing himself too much to focus on things like aiming and shooting.

Deathclaws in New Vegas or Mirelurk Kings in FO:3 are my favorite.

I kill death-claws with my fist...

Because I destroy their legs with my sniper rifle.

I just fought a Reaver for the first time in a while. I now see what you mean.