Crazen Tower
Like many strange and abandoned fortresses built out of living stone in the mountains of Tellenor, Crazen Tower is the result of a mad mage many centuries ago. Some of the rooms are as follows:
A skeletal bronze statue sitting on a throne which, when approached, proffers a small box with contains what looks like a deck of many things. Players can't take the deck from the box, but they can draw from it. The catch is that it's actually a deck of awful things, which is just the deck of many things without any of the beneficial or nuetral cards, just the awful ones. The Entry hall is rigged with a specialized fire trap. Upon making their way to the middle of the room, the group will be surrounded by a large magical bubble shield. Detect magic should reveal that evocation, particularly fire, magic is welling up within the room. At this point, most players freak out and try to break the bubble. Make that easy, either with dispel magic or just by throwing enough force at it. When the magic goes off, fire bursts forth from all the walls, burning anyone not inside the bubble. The players have just dealt with a paranoid wizard's system of dealing with anyone who might have followed him into his tower.
An exact copy of the room described above, much later in the dungeon. Why? Because the mind game factor freaks people out. They have no idea whether to treat it the same or not. This one is reliant on your group. If their susceptible to this sort of ploy, it's great. If not, it flops really hard.
A secret door, with a damaging trap on it, which leads to a hallway with a secret door in it, also trapped, which leads to another hallway with another secret door and another trap which leads to etc... for as long as your players decide to continue down the rabbit hole.
A room where, upon entry, the door behind the players shuts and locks and a boulder falls on the other side. The room should be fairly long and the actual floor should be raised like a bridge over a bed of spikes. The floor should not touch either of the side walls, rather leaving a gap where one can fall into the spikes below. The middle of the bridge has three pressure plates. There are ledges on the sidewalls overhanging the spikes that players can jump to and try to hold on. There is also a platform over the spikes, away from the path of the boulder, to the right near the entrance. The pressure pads do nothing, the ridges are illusions, causing anyone who jumps to them to fall to the spikes, similar story with the out of the way platform. The boulder is also an illusion. The only way to survive is to stand still.
At the end of a trap filled and evil dungeon, my friend put a long hallway absolutely filled with easily noticeable pressure plates, holes in the walls, statues, which in my version had a nasty habit of coming to life, and levers. Everything in there is a decoy. None of it does anything, but god does it fill the players with paranoia. Usually though, they get so fed up that by the end they just walk up and grab the doorknob to open the door to the final room. That's then the special poisonous spider hiding under the doorknob bites their hand, delivering a powerful and debilitating venom. Just a nice little final fuck you from the wizard.
A skeletal bronze statue sitting on a throne which, when approached, proffers a small box with contains what looks like a deck of many things. Players can't take the deck from the box, but they can draw from it. The catch is that it's actually a deck of awful things, which is just the deck of many things without any of the beneficial or nuetral cards, just the awful ones. The Entry hall is rigged with a specialized fire trap. Upon making their way to the middle of the room, the group will be surrounded by a large magical bubble shield. Detect magic should reveal that evocation, particularly fire, magic is welling up within the room. At this point, most players freak out and try to break the bubble. Make that easy, either with dispel magic or just by throwing enough force at it. When the magic goes off, fire bursts forth from all the walls, burning anyone not inside the bubble. The players have just dealt with a paranoid wizard's system of dealing with anyone who might have followed him into his tower.
An exact copy of the room described above, much later in the dungeon. Why? Because the mind game factor freaks people out. They have no idea whether to treat it the same or not. This one is reliant on your group. If their susceptible to this sort of ploy, it's great. If not, it flops really hard.
A secret door, with a damaging trap on it, which leads to a hallway with a secret door in it, also trapped, which leads to another hallway with another secret door and another trap which leads to etc... for as long as your players decide to continue down the rabbit hole.
A room where, upon entry, the door behind the players shuts and locks and a boulder falls on the other side. The room should be fairly long and the actual floor should be raised like a bridge over a bed of spikes. The floor should not touch either of the side walls, rather leaving a gap where one can fall into the spikes below. The middle of the bridge has three pressure plates. There are ledges on the sidewalls overhanging the spikes that players can jump to and try to hold on. There is also a platform over the spikes, away from the path of the boulder, to the right near the entrance. The pressure pads do nothing, the ridges are illusions, causing anyone who jumps to them to fall to the spikes, similar story with the out of the way platform. The boulder is also an illusion. The only way to survive is to stand still.
At the end of a trap filled and evil dungeon, my friend put a long hallway absolutely filled with easily noticeable pressure plates, holes in the walls, statues, which in my version had a nasty habit of coming to life, and levers. Everything in there is a decoy. None of it does anything, but god does it fill the players with paranoia. Usually though, they get so fed up that by the end they just walk up and grab the doorknob to open the door to the final room. That's then the special poisonous spider hiding under the doorknob bites their hand, delivering a powerful and debilitating venom. Just a nice little final fuck you from the wizard.
Type
Tower
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