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Wednesday, March 28, 2018

Living dungeon features|

During last session, the players heard a rumor about Living Pits (DFM3) being just one of many living "things."

Living walls.

Living doors.

"Living stairs!" said Hamilcar's player.

What else makes good living, threatening dungeon features?

Living ceilings are just lurker aboves, and floors are trappers.

Living rooms?

Living elevator rooms?

Living 5 degree slopes? Perhaps the slope just moves around, slanting the dungeon.

Living wells?

Living dungeon decor is all-too-common - statues, hostile furniture, gargoyles - but living features, I don't know. Did I miss any?

12 comments:

  1. 'Living' anything in a dungeon just sounds like a monster pretending to be something it isn't to lull spelunkers into a false sense of security.

    Except Living Pits... those are just weird. I mean if Living Doors or Windows could move around (and thus take the hole or room they open to with them), then they'd be in that category too. Otherwise it's just a Mimic pretending to be a door on a blank stretch of wall... or a doorway where a door is missing.

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    1. Well, a mimic is a mimic, though, not an actual living version of something in the dungeon. Doors that are actual, true doors, not something pretending to be a door for ambush or as disguise, yet living, are not the same thing. Otherwise the title of this post would just be "Mimics are cool!" and that would be that.

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  2. Then a Living Ceiling would be a ceiling that is alive, not a Lurker, likewise Living Floors wouldn't just be Trappers.

    They wouldn't be some creature that just mimics the surface, they'd have to be and remain the surface then, yeah? So what would be the ramifications of that?

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    1. I guess to me the difference is a mimic could be anything. A lurker above is either hidden on the ceiling, or not. The floor is either a trapper, or not. I do agree that you could still have living ceilings and floors that are neither. But mimics are just too varied to really fit into what I'm thinking here.

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  3. All that living empty space between the stones. You walk deliberately into its bowels, it doesn't even have to hunt you.

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  4. Living Treasure. Somehow, the idol you stole comes alive, kills you, and takes your stuff,

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    1. I need more of this. The Fiend Folio has goldbugs, doesn't it?

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  5. Anything that reminds me of the Fritz Leiber story "The Jewels in the Forest" aka "Two Sought Adventure," with the living castle that bites with doorways and tries to clobber them with its tower is fine with me.

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    1. Good one. I wasn't consciously thinking of that one, but I should have remembered it.

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  6. Living Rooms are a thing already.

    They were in a Pyramid article.

    100% are in my megadungeon.

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  7. Pyramid 76
    http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?t=132953

    You have an article in that issue too so I know that you have a copy :)

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