i find my self in a difficult problem, I have bitten off more then I can chew. I have created a fun world with a cool story, an interesting bbeg, however his castle/dungeon is causing me some problems. My bbeg stick is that it is a master illusionist that is constantly changing his home, the idea is every time the players take a long rest the entirety of the dungeon will change to one of 13 designs. My issue is I have run out of mazes, puzzles, riddles and trap ideas. So I have decided to out source 7 of his dungeons. I am ideally looking for a few different people so my players don’t catch on to any patterns
my spec
my players will be level 16 and are well minmaxed. my players absolutely love puzzles, riddles and tactical thinking
my players are quite clever and do not like easy things
dungeon theam is illusions
Each one should be extremely large
the dungeon needs to incorporate 3 dimensional elements
you are free to add any environment pal factors you wish
It might be easier (and cheaper) to just buy Dungeon of the Mad Mage (which has a lot of different floors, each fairly large) and reskin some of the monsters and challenges to fit an illusions theme better. Add in your own lore and some homages to other parts of your campaign, and you’ve got all the different configurations you need, while still maintaining control over the entire implementation process.
How large is "Extremely large"? Are we talking 50 rooms or 500 rooms?
It could be worth making a rough layout for any prospective designers to use as a template, EG 100 rooms laid out in a 10x10 grid with one route from the start to the finish, taking 70 rooms, and 30 rooms as side-quests and exploration.
Do you want these dungeons to constitute one level, or any specific amount of experience?
Does your party have any notable powers or lack of powers with which to tackle such things, EG flying, teleportation, turning to a mist, and so on?
I will have a think and see if I can offer anything for this!
That sounds like a lot of work to put into something that, odds are, your players are not going to see most of. Unless you feel it likely that your players will go back and re-explore each room, and the players are going to take 5+ long rests in a single dungeon (either one is a big ask), I would sooner spare you the effort and money.
What I would do is tweak the premise slightly, and instead of doing 13 versions of the same dungeon, I'd write out one version of the dungeon with a sidebar of bonus rooms (like, 5 to 8), and each time the players rest, I'd change one room they'd already been to (maybe chosen at random) to one of the sidebar rooms, so that way the dungeon is more being slowly re-written around them. If you run out of sidebar rooms, you can swap rooms already in the dungeon, so paths the players think they know don't go to the same place anymore, hijinks ensuing.
I recommend using “Book of Challenges: Dungeon Rooms, Puzzles and Traps” from DMsguild. It’s a 3rd edition official book that’s got 50 different scenarios you can drop into your game.
You may have to do some work converting it into 5e but I think its still useful. It’s currently on sale for 5.99 which is way cheaper than the 20 quid you were going to drop on a couple once off ideas.
Well if they like puzzles then I'm happy to introduce the concept of Dungeons & Dragons & Group Theory. The idea is to map the Cayley Graph of a group onto the rooms in a dungeon. If you don't know what a Cayley graph or a group is, no worries, check out this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBtHKZ4KNLg . There are numerous abstract algebra videos that go into varying amounts of depth so knock yourself out. As the video shows, even an "easy" group like C2 x C3 generates an attractive map with different colored transitions between the rooms. In an illusion dungeon maybe the players need two different colored magic eye glasses to "see" the doors corresponding to the different colored transitions. Maybe your mad illusionist changes the dungeon topology by changing the group each day, say its C2 x C3 one day and C3 x C5 the next, and the PCs need to keep finding more pairs of glasses to find their way around the dungeon. If you like little math exercises (I do!) then you can work out the dungeon for yourself, and populate each room with traps and monsters as you see fit. The examples I've mentioned aren't too "large" in terms of elements or number of rooms but you can just use whatever groups are big enough for your needs. Incorporating 3D can be accommodated by taking the exterior product with a third group, though many groups have Cayley graphs commonly visualized in 3 or more dimensions. Feel free to reply to this thread or send me a pm if you have questions.
I recommend using “Book of Challenges: Dungeon Rooms, Puzzles and Traps” from DMsguild. It’s a 3rd edition official book that’s got 50 different scenarios you can drop into your game.
You may have to do some work converting it into 5e but I think its still useful. It’s currently on sale for 5.99 which is way cheaper than the 20 quid you were going to drop on a couple once off ideas.
Well if they like puzzles then I'm happy to introduce the concept of Dungeons & Dragons & Group Theory. The idea is to map the Cayley Graph of a group onto the rooms in a dungeon. If you don't know what a Cayley graph or a group is, no worries, check out this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBtHKZ4KNLg . There are numerous abstract algebra videos that go into varying amounts of depth so knock yourself out. As the video shows, even an "easy" group like C2 x C3 generates an attractive map with different colored transitions between the rooms. In an illusion dungeon maybe the players need two different colored magic eye glasses to "see" the doors corresponding to the different colored transitions. Maybe your mad illusionist changes the dungeon topology by changing the group each day, say its C2 x C3 one day and C3 x C5 the next, and the PCs need to keep finding more pairs of glasses to find their way around the dungeon. If you like little math exercises (I do!) then you can work out the dungeon for yourself, and populate each room with traps and monsters as you see fit. The examples I've mentioned aren't too "large" in terms of elements or number of rooms but you can just use whatever groups are big enough for your needs. Incorporating 3D can be accommodated by taking the exterior product with a third group, though many groups have Cayley graphs commonly visualized in 3 or more dimensions. Feel free to reply to this thread or send me a pm if you have questions.
That sounds like a lot of work to put into something that, odds are, your players are not going to see most of. Unless you feel it likely that your players will go back and re-explore each room, and the players are going to take 5+ long rests in a single dungeon (either one is a big ask), I would sooner spare you the effort and money.
What I would do is tweak the premise slightly, and instead of doing 13 versions of the same dungeon, I'd write out one version of the dungeon with a sidebar of bonus rooms (like, 5 to 8), and each time the players rest, I'd change one room they'd already been to (maybe chosen at random) to one of the sidebar rooms, so that way the dungeon is more being slowly re-written around them. If you run out of sidebar rooms, you can swap rooms already in the dungeon, so paths the players think they know don't go to the same place anymore, hijinks ensuing.
Their is motivation to do them all as each one they finish will remove ally’s and buffs from the boss. The arch illusionist uberillithed
How large is "Extremely large"? Are we talking 50 rooms or 500 rooms?
It could be worth making a rough layout for any prospective designers to use as a template, EG 100 rooms laid out in a 10x10 grid with one route from the start to the finish, taking 70 rooms, and 30 rooms as side-quests and exploration.
Do you want these dungeons to constitute one level, or any specific amount of experience?
Does your party have any notable powers or lack of powers with which to tackle such things, EG flying, teleportation, turning to a mist, and so on?
I will have a think and see if I can offer anything for this!
I would like about 65 room range, my players are high level so they will have access to everything, they really enjoy banishing npcs to different planes.. I am not too concerned about xp amounts my players are all high level and I fully expect they will hit 20th with a boon or three by the end of it all.
It might be easier (and cheaper) to just buy Dungeon of the Mad Mage (which has a lot of different floors, each fairly large) and reskin some of the monsters and challenges to fit an illusions theme better. Add in your own lore and some homages to other parts of your campaign, and you’ve got all the different configurations you need, while still maintaining control over the entire implementation process.
Saddly we have already finished that campaign it was fun.
this has been very helpful.
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Hello, fellow dungeon masters
i find my self in a difficult problem, I have bitten off more then I can chew. I have created a fun world with a cool story, an interesting bbeg, however his castle/dungeon is causing me some problems. My bbeg stick is that it is a master illusionist that is constantly changing his home, the idea is every time the players take a long rest the entirety of the dungeon will change to one of 13 designs. My issue is I have run out of mazes, puzzles, riddles and trap ideas. So I have decided to out source 7 of his dungeons. I am ideally looking for a few different people so my players don’t catch on to any patterns
my spec
my players will be level 16 and are well minmaxed.
my players absolutely love puzzles, riddles and tactical thinking
my players are quite clever and do not like easy things
dungeon theam is illusions
Each one should be extremely large
the dungeon needs to incorporate 3 dimensional elements
you are free to add any environment pal factors you wish
comission rate is $20 each
if you think you can help me please give me a pm.
It might be easier (and cheaper) to just buy Dungeon of the Mad Mage (which has a lot of different floors, each fairly large) and reskin some of the monsters and challenges to fit an illusions theme better. Add in your own lore and some homages to other parts of your campaign, and you’ve got all the different configurations you need, while still maintaining control over the entire implementation process.
How large is "Extremely large"? Are we talking 50 rooms or 500 rooms?
It could be worth making a rough layout for any prospective designers to use as a template, EG 100 rooms laid out in a 10x10 grid with one route from the start to the finish, taking 70 rooms, and 30 rooms as side-quests and exploration.
Do you want these dungeons to constitute one level, or any specific amount of experience?
Does your party have any notable powers or lack of powers with which to tackle such things, EG flying, teleportation, turning to a mist, and so on?
I will have a think and see if I can offer anything for this!
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That sounds like a lot of work to put into something that, odds are, your players are not going to see most of. Unless you feel it likely that your players will go back and re-explore each room, and the players are going to take 5+ long rests in a single dungeon (either one is a big ask), I would sooner spare you the effort and money.
What I would do is tweak the premise slightly, and instead of doing 13 versions of the same dungeon, I'd write out one version of the dungeon with a sidebar of bonus rooms (like, 5 to 8), and each time the players rest, I'd change one room they'd already been to (maybe chosen at random) to one of the sidebar rooms, so that way the dungeon is more being slowly re-written around them. If you run out of sidebar rooms, you can swap rooms already in the dungeon, so paths the players think they know don't go to the same place anymore, hijinks ensuing.
I recommend using “Book of Challenges: Dungeon Rooms, Puzzles and Traps” from DMsguild. It’s a 3rd edition official book that’s got 50 different scenarios you can drop into your game.
You may have to do some work converting it into 5e but I think its still useful. It’s currently on sale for 5.99 which is way cheaper than the 20 quid you were going to drop on a couple once off ideas.
Heres the link: https://www.dmsguild.com/m/product/3736
Well if they like puzzles then I'm happy to introduce the concept of Dungeons & Dragons & Group Theory. The idea is to map the Cayley Graph of a group onto the rooms in a dungeon. If you don't know what a Cayley graph or a group is, no worries, check out this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBtHKZ4KNLg . There are numerous abstract algebra videos that go into varying amounts of depth so knock yourself out. As the video shows, even an "easy" group like C2 x C3 generates an attractive map with different colored transitions between the rooms. In an illusion dungeon maybe the players need two different colored magic eye glasses to "see" the doors corresponding to the different colored transitions. Maybe your mad illusionist changes the dungeon topology by changing the group each day, say its C2 x C3 one day and C3 x C5 the next, and the PCs need to keep finding more pairs of glasses to find their way around the dungeon. If you like little math exercises (I do!) then you can work out the dungeon for yourself, and populate each room with traps and monsters as you see fit. The examples I've mentioned aren't too "large" in terms of elements or number of rooms but you can just use whatever groups are big enough for your needs. Incorporating 3D can be accommodated by taking the exterior product with a third group, though many groups have Cayley graphs commonly visualized in 3 or more dimensions. Feel free to reply to this thread or send me a pm if you have questions.
Happy Gaming!
Definitely looking to this thank you
Also looks like an awesome tool thank you.
Their is motivation to do them all as each one they finish will remove ally’s and buffs from the boss. The arch illusionist uberillithed
I would like about 65 room range, my players are high level so they will have access to everything, they really enjoy banishing npcs to different planes.. I am not too concerned about xp amounts my players are all high level and I fully expect they will hit 20th with a boon or three by the end of it all.
Saddly we have already finished that campaign it was fun.
this has been very helpful.