I have a scenerio question. My level 4 group of five players are currently trapped in the manor of an ancient powerful wizard. He has lured the party into the manor in order to conduct a ritual to become a lich in his third floor ritual room, but the players are currently on the second floor and have been trying to elude the wizard while they gather objects to unlock the top floor. At the end of the last session, they entered into what appears on the map to be a 10'x10' closet which seems to be under the influence of a form of permenent Darkness spell; however, I have something different in mind. My son mentioned using a "Backrooms" concept in D&D, and one of my players has been DMing Strahd for quite a while...so, my idea is that the closet is like a "room of holding". The concept is that the players can see outside of the door when it is open, but when it is closed there is total darkness. The room is a space between spaces. Occasionally, in the distant darkness of what they thought was just a closet, the would see a hole open up and a large hand reach in to pick up or drop something while the light from the hole would illuminate treasure below it. Each time the a light enters the realm, a screech is heard...the Bagman. At the moment it is just an idea. Any comments to tighten this concept up a bit before Tuesday? Thanks in advance.
I’ve messed around with the Bagman before. I think that it is a fantastic creature that really should have gotten details in VRGtR. I homebrewed up some stats based on a combo of a PF creature and a creature from another rpg that I played a while back. I don’t know where the papers are with the stats anymore, but I ran the encounter as a very trippy one, almost like one of those boss battles where a creature teleports around you unless you actively stun it. What I really enjoyed was the fact that I could create a ton of totally different styles of rooms with all sorts of odd items in them because the Bagman hops between pocket dimensions (not just bags of holding) in this one-shot. So what I recommend is making this closet not so much of a closet of holding, but more of a pocket dimension. The PCs could discover little passageways (think of the Caroline movie and the little passageway she crawls through) and windows that look into all these strange and whimsical rooms. They can’t quite get into them, but sometimes the hand you mentioned will be seen in the rooms or will shoot through a passageway and grab at something. Perhaps the PCs will even see a hulking form at the edge of their vision, and by the time they turn, it’s gone. The key part of running anything with a creature like this is showing the players that this is NOT something they can take on. Merely a larger cosmic secret that will perplex them and perhaps, if they are intrigued enough, lead to future adventures. Leave plenty of of interesting hooks that don’t have too much substance so that you can grab the ones you want and use them again in the future. A final note: Just make it weird. You don’t know what’s going on here and you shouldn’t. Everything should be beyond comprehension, but with bits of normality to make it fit into the game world.
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I have a scenerio question. My level 4 group of five players are currently trapped in the manor of an ancient powerful wizard. He has lured the party into the manor in order to conduct a ritual to become a lich in his third floor ritual room, but the players are currently on the second floor and have been trying to elude the wizard while they gather objects to unlock the top floor. At the end of the last session, they entered into what appears on the map to be a 10'x10' closet which seems to be under the influence of a form of permenent Darkness spell; however, I have something different in mind. My son mentioned using a "Backrooms" concept in D&D, and one of my players has been DMing Strahd for quite a while...so, my idea is that the closet is like a "room of holding". The concept is that the players can see outside of the door when it is open, but when it is closed there is total darkness. The room is a space between spaces. Occasionally, in the distant darkness of what they thought was just a closet, the would see a hole open up and a large hand reach in to pick up or drop something while the light from the hole would illuminate treasure below it. Each time the a light enters the realm, a screech is heard...the Bagman. At the moment it is just an idea. Any comments to tighten this concept up a bit before Tuesday? Thanks in advance.
I’ve messed around with the Bagman before. I think that it is a fantastic creature that really should have gotten details in VRGtR. I homebrewed up some stats based on a combo of a PF creature and a creature from another rpg that I played a while back. I don’t know where the papers are with the stats anymore, but I ran the encounter as a very trippy one, almost like one of those boss battles where a creature teleports around you unless you actively stun it. What I really enjoyed was the fact that I could create a ton of totally different styles of rooms with all sorts of odd items in them because the Bagman hops between pocket dimensions (not just bags of holding) in this one-shot. So what I recommend is making this closet not so much of a closet of holding, but more of a pocket dimension. The PCs could discover little passageways (think of the Caroline movie and the little passageway she crawls through) and windows that look into all these strange and whimsical rooms. They can’t quite get into them, but sometimes the hand you mentioned will be seen in the rooms or will shoot through a passageway and grab at something. Perhaps the PCs will even see a hulking form at the edge of their vision, and by the time they turn, it’s gone. The key part of running anything with a creature like this is showing the players that this is NOT something they can take on. Merely a larger cosmic secret that will perplex them and perhaps, if they are intrigued enough, lead to future adventures. Leave plenty of of interesting hooks that don’t have too much substance so that you can grab the ones you want and use them again in the future. A final note: Just make it weird. You don’t know what’s going on here and you shouldn’t. Everything should be beyond comprehension, but with bits of normality to make it fit into the game world.