DISCUSSING
In the Shadow of the Spire – Session 29B: A Knight in Mourning
And then he knew what he had to do. This entire place reeked of evil and these creatures clearly had foul intentions. He and Rasnir had charged into battle. During the melee, the crone who had opened the door managed to duck through it. But moments later Kalerecent had fought his way to it and wrenched it shut.
“There was another flash of light and the door sealed shut behind me. But even in that moment, one of the creatures – a half-leonid fiend – slew Rasnir. I killed several of the goblins, but the other creatures escaped.”
A really common trope in D&D-style fantasy is the dungeon that’s been “sealed for a hundred years” (or a thousand or whatever). It’s a great trope because it makes the dungeon redolent with the enigma of age: Who knows what forgotten lore or antique treasures you’ll discover?
But then you go into the dungeon and there are three dozen different monsters who have all coincidentally moved in during the last week. It’s like Indiana Jones and the snakes in Raiders of the Lost Ark, except often without the clear explanation for where the goddamn snakes are coming from.
The reason this happens, of course, is because combat encounters are an expected part of the D&D dungeoncrawl, and “stuff to fight” is kind of the antithesis of “sealed for a hundred years.” You can use undead, of course, but that can get monotonous. And so the temptation to add a big ol’ hole in the ceiling and explain that a clan of yuan-ti moved in last Tuesday grows strong.
But so what? As long as you’ve got some sort of plausible explanation, there’s no problem… right?
Well, yes… but also no.
This sort of thing certainly can be done right. (The Mines of Moria, for example, have been “abandoned” for centuries in order to set up the twist that the balrog and goblins who sacked the place never actually left.)
But one of the really cool things about the “sealed for a hundred years” concept is that it means the PCs are the first ones to step foot here in a hundred years. It makes the PCs special. They’re doing something momentous. They’re experiencing something unique.
… unless, of course, a yuan-ti clan, a tribe of goblins, a couple of ogres, and a flock of kenku all casually beat them to the punch.
Then it’s not so special.
THE OTHER GUYS
But… combat! Gotta have combat!
Well, not really. But for the sake of argument, let’s roll with it.
A good way of squaring the difference here is to have another faction (or multiple factions) actively pursuing exploration/exploitation of the dungeon at the same time (and possibly for the same reasons) as the PCs.
That’s basically what you’re seeing with the Pactlords of the Quaan here. (Technically, the Pactlords were the ones who got here first and the PCs are the ones following in their wake, but that will shift back and forth as the campaign proceeds and different sections of this ancient dungeon are breached. The competition to be the first one to discover or enter a particular section of the dungeon can actually be a great motivator in its own right.)
I’ll be discussing how I actively played the various Banewarrens factions in more detail in future Running the Campaign posts. This first instance was fairly straightforward, and more or less taken directly from the Banewarrens campaign book: As described by Sir Kalerecent, the Pactlords had retreated, but (a) the lamia Demimach remained in Area 11 and (b) the rest of the team, with reinforcements, was planning to return. “Nevertheless, at some point while the PCs are in the [Broken Seal area], the rest of the Grailquest Team returns.”
Once the PCs were hooked into the Banewarrens, I simply added a section to my campaign status document:
BANEWARRENS STATUS
PACTLORDS: GQT1 has retreated from the Broken Seal area and will return shortly.
As I said: Short and sweet.
Now I had an open proactive event at my fingertips which I could choose to trigger at whatever time felt appropriate. As it played out during the actual session, this seemed most dramatically appropriate:
At that moment, Tee and Tor caught up. Seeing itself badly outnumbered and already seriously injured, the lamia turn and ran towards a staircase at the far end of the hall. It howled plaintively…
… and was answered by a second howl!
Howl for howl.
Campaign Journal: Session 29C – Running the Campaign: Looting Consumables
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index
I’m reminded of a popular criticism of JRPG writing. In those, often not only are you somehow beaten to the punch in order to introduce an antagonist, but the traps, puzzles, and the major encounters that do make sense to have been sitting there waiting all this time are magically still in place. (This is touched on best by The RPG Cliches Game, but the Grand List of Console RPG Cliches touches on it too.)
In addition to undead and constructs, there are types of oozes and molds that are also good for this kind of situation. The oozes have survives the editions, but unfortunately the molds got moved from the Monster Manual to the sample traps list, only to subsequently disappear as traps became unpopular. Really, for a situation like this, leaning on traps as heavily as the location concept can support seems like a fine idea.
To the above list, I’d personally add the Eberron concept of living spells as a good source of encounters. Perhaps there was a combination Glitterdust and Alarm trap once, but that has fallen into disrepair and yielded a glittering cloud that rings loudly when it hits an intruder, on top of the chance to blind the victim. Taking the idea beyond combat encounters, perhaps a magically-enhanced landscape painting has decayed, and now there’s a room that’s filled with an illusion that’s similar to the original painting’s subject matter, but things are slightly off in disorienting ways, and you have to figure out a way through despite the ways out being hidden.
Stuff other than Undead that can survive 1000 years in a sealed dungeon:
-Constructs
-Fungi & Chemosynthetic Plant-life
-Oozes
-Magically bound extraplanar creatures (e.g. Elementals, Fiends, Fey, et cetera)
-Anything that’s be petrified, polymorphed into a chair, trapped in amber, magically slumbering/sequestered/imprisoned for 1000 years.
Also, keep in mind, 1000 year old glyphs, elder runes, et cetera that could be triggered by the party to conjure or transmute monsters, or portals from which monsters might emerge, into existence.
It’s really a situation that calls for pulling out every chop you’ve got to amp up the creep factor. Anyone have any good tricks for that horror-movie feeling of ominous empty rooms that *might* have something in them?
One interesting thing with “dungeon that has been sealed for a gorillion years” is that you can use it to invert the “incursor vs defender” dynamic usual in dungeon adventures, making the PCs the “wandering monsters” against whoever comes after them. That also switch the focus of the adventure not in getting in, but in getting out of the place.
The PCs do indeed arrive first to the tomb, and while they are getting deep in the dungeon other faction arrives. Maybe they hear them arriving, maybe they get to see it from a window. They now know that someone is behind them and they have to either find a new exit or fight their way back to the outside. And because they are the first one to arrive they know the place better, maybe they can use the traps, maybe the know how to avoid encounters…
In a sense, an “abandoned place they are the first to enter in a long time” gives the PCs the chance to make their own impression of Tucker’s Kobolds.