I am running my first campaign and feel pretty comfortable so far with story and battle, but I am trying to add more to the gameplay. I have 5 adventures, all level 6, about to enter a mausoleum where I was wanting to make a dungeon. My idea was that they were locked inside and that they would have to make their way through to get out. Maybe multiple floors, traps, puzzles, things like that. An enemy here and there would be fine with maybe a larger enemy at the end. After competing everything, I would have an NPC, introduced in a previous session, get them out and back on track. There also could be some cool item at the end as well.
Anyway, what I really need assistance and guidance on, is:
How do I set this up?
How do traps and puzzles work?
How much is too much?
Does anyone have any ideas?
Our session is in a week, and I've got a pretty good and bright group of people spanning from 19-42. Some experience among most of them, but only one with major experience.
Generally I find that players make it through 4 - 6 serious rooms per session. By serious rooms I mean rooms with something to do in them - beat an encounter, solve a puzzle, etc. Not a closet or a hallway. Extrapolate that into how big you want the dungeon to be. Figure out where they're starting and build out from there.
The easiest inspiration for building dungeons is real world examples and logic. You think about what the dungeon is and what it's used for, and use that to inform the types of rooms that need to exist. If it's a mausoleum then there needs to be a lot of rooms to hold bodies (including potentially along the walls of each hallway as well). Perhaps some kind of room with tables, potions and tools where embalming happens. A type of shrine or religious area. If there are things inhabiting the dungeon, how did they get in and where do they stay? Those sorts of things.
The DMG has a number of traps with rules for how they work. Just intersperse them throughout if you want them. I either like to put them in hallways or smaller rooms to add some interest there or make them a part of a larger encounter. I wouldn't go overboard though since that will make players be way too cautious and slow the game down. Just a couple will put some fear in them.
Coming up with your own puzzles is kind of a learned skill. I've made a few math puzzles or riddles, and a friend of mine made an interesting one that involved a statue's facing as well. The sky is the limit but there's no one formula since it is a creative endeavor. Tasha's has a lot of puzzles you can steal if you don't have any ideas or are in a time crunch.
Quite a high level response to a very broad question, but I hope that helps. Good luck!
Just got a bunch of scattered thoughts at the moment because it's late and I'm tired.
First, remember that a true mausoleum isn't just some random underground burial chamber. It's a "magnificent tomb". Literally. The word comes from the Tomb of Mausolos at Halicarnassus. It was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. So make it all fancy and marble with statues of heroes and fountains and braziers and altars and such. Granted, that stuff's all busted and decaying now, because of the passage of time. But be sure to expound not just on what the characters see now, but on how grand it must have once looked.
Nextly, why are they there? There needs to be some logical reason for them to need to go through this entire place. Maybe there's a legend of an artifact buried here. But then why hasn't someone else already gone through and found it? A mausoleum almost begs for undead shenanigans. So maybe a few of the hundred or so people buried here have gotten up, wandered out, and caused trouble. So someone hired you fools heroes to go in and anoint each of the remaining corpses with some magical holy ointment or whatever, to prevent further undead shenanigans. This will give them a reason to need to explore every single room, to be sure they get everybody, AND it may offer a chance for a puzzle too. Maybe some of the dead are in locked caskets, or are on raised pillars that are hard to access. So the players have to figure out how to get to all of them.
Thirdish, traps shouldn't really be the built-in "gotcha" types of traps, but rather the result of the natural decay of materials over time. A floor may look normal, but the support beams may have rotted, so the first person to step here or here or here falls through the floor. This hurts that character and creates a movement hazard for the others. And when you're in a dark room with lots of holes in the floor, that's when the swarm of giant bats attack! Because of course they do. So not only are you fighting giant bats, but you also have to keep making skill checks to avoid falling through a hole in the floor. Fun. Oh, and maybe that crystal chandelier looks beautiful, but the rope holding it up has been rotting for the last 300 years. "Make a Dexterity saving throw."
Fourthly, monsters. Any enclosed space that's dark and full of decaying meat will attract the usual nasties - diseased giant rats, the aforementioned bats, giant centipedes, maybe a gray ooze or black pudding snacking on the candlesticks and bronze statues, a colony of poisonous mushrooms would be nice, and of course you just have to include a Carrion Crawler or two! It's a classic! But these are just the troublesome appetizers. The real entrée is the undead.
Fifthish, corpses generally don't just spontaneously become undead. So maybe one of the corpses was killed in a nasty way or is holding a grudge against his relatives so that undead is now raising up it's old pals to join it. So there's the occasional zombie or shadow, which can be nasty. But they're all just minions of the BBEG which is maybe a Wight or a Wraith or such. So if they kill the BBEG they'll solve the problem. But to get to the BBEG they have to get through all the lesser undead it has already created.
Sixth, and the clock's a-tickin'! Because the BBEG is gonna keep turning those nice decent dead folks into nasty undead monsters until the party kills it. And the people who sent them in here to anoint their ancestors obviously want them to save as many as possible. So sure, you could take a short rest, but that's one more person lost to the bad guy, and that's one more undead thing you'll end up having to fight.
But yeah, after all this hassle, you'll want to have something to offer them as a reward. Maybe the folks who sent them in are paying them. But maybe (probably) they'll pocket some gems and knickknacks along the way. After all, the dead don't really need their jewelry, do they?
Many mausoleums were made because a lot of people died in a short period of time and they are a convenient source of mass burial. Terrible things like plague or famine are often reasons why they are made. This gives all the skulls plenty of things to whisper about and maybe this could have an effect on the players. If famine killed these skeletons, they could inflict the characters with terrible hunger. If disease killed those dead dudes, maybe they will get poisoned or sickened in some way. You could even include hungry ghosts or spirits of disease depending on what killed them.
Maybe if they get to close to the walls the skeletons reach out and drag them into the walls of bones to add to the collection.
Berbalangs are fun monsters that love talking to bones. Maybe one of them lurks in the shadows here.
I am running my first campaign and feel pretty comfortable so far with story and battle, but I am trying to add more to the gameplay. I have 5 adventures, all level 6, about to enter a mausoleum where I was wanting to make a dungeon. My idea was that they were locked inside and that they would have to make their way through to get out. Maybe multiple floors, traps, puzzles, things like that. An enemy here and there would be fine with maybe a larger enemy at the end. After competing everything, I would have an NPC, introduced in a previous session, get them out and back on track. There also could be some cool item at the end as well.
Anyway, what I really need assistance and guidance on, is:
Our session is in a week, and I've got a pretty good and bright group of people spanning from 19-42. Some experience among most of them, but only one with major experience.
Generally I find that players make it through 4 - 6 serious rooms per session. By serious rooms I mean rooms with something to do in them - beat an encounter, solve a puzzle, etc. Not a closet or a hallway. Extrapolate that into how big you want the dungeon to be. Figure out where they're starting and build out from there.
The easiest inspiration for building dungeons is real world examples and logic. You think about what the dungeon is and what it's used for, and use that to inform the types of rooms that need to exist. If it's a mausoleum then there needs to be a lot of rooms to hold bodies (including potentially along the walls of each hallway as well). Perhaps some kind of room with tables, potions and tools where embalming happens. A type of shrine or religious area. If there are things inhabiting the dungeon, how did they get in and where do they stay? Those sorts of things.
The DMG has a number of traps with rules for how they work. Just intersperse them throughout if you want them. I either like to put them in hallways or smaller rooms to add some interest there or make them a part of a larger encounter. I wouldn't go overboard though since that will make players be way too cautious and slow the game down. Just a couple will put some fear in them.
Coming up with your own puzzles is kind of a learned skill. I've made a few math puzzles or riddles, and a friend of mine made an interesting one that involved a statue's facing as well. The sky is the limit but there's no one formula since it is a creative endeavor. Tasha's has a lot of puzzles you can steal if you don't have any ideas or are in a time crunch.
Quite a high level response to a very broad question, but I hope that helps. Good luck!
Just got a bunch of scattered thoughts at the moment because it's late and I'm tired.
First, remember that a true mausoleum isn't just some random underground burial chamber. It's a "magnificent tomb". Literally. The word comes from the Tomb of Mausolos at Halicarnassus. It was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. So make it all fancy and marble with statues of heroes and fountains and braziers and altars and such. Granted, that stuff's all busted and decaying now, because of the passage of time. But be sure to expound not just on what the characters see now, but on how grand it must have once looked.
Nextly, why are they there? There needs to be some logical reason for them to need to go through this entire place. Maybe there's a legend of an artifact buried here. But then why hasn't someone else already gone through and found it? A mausoleum almost begs for undead shenanigans. So maybe a few of the hundred or so people buried here have gotten up, wandered out, and caused trouble. So someone hired you
foolsheroes to go in and anoint each of the remaining corpses with some magical holy ointment or whatever, to prevent further undead shenanigans. This will give them a reason to need to explore every single room, to be sure they get everybody, AND it may offer a chance for a puzzle too. Maybe some of the dead are in locked caskets, or are on raised pillars that are hard to access. So the players have to figure out how to get to all of them.Thirdish, traps shouldn't really be the built-in "gotcha" types of traps, but rather the result of the natural decay of materials over time. A floor may look normal, but the support beams may have rotted, so the first person to step here or here or here falls through the floor. This hurts that character and creates a movement hazard for the others. And when you're in a dark room with lots of holes in the floor, that's when the swarm of giant bats attack! Because of course they do. So not only are you fighting giant bats, but you also have to keep making skill checks to avoid falling through a hole in the floor. Fun. Oh, and maybe that crystal chandelier looks beautiful, but the rope holding it up has been rotting for the last 300 years. "Make a Dexterity saving throw."
Fourthly, monsters. Any enclosed space that's dark and full of decaying meat will attract the usual nasties - diseased giant rats, the aforementioned bats, giant centipedes, maybe a gray ooze or black pudding snacking on the candlesticks and bronze statues, a colony of poisonous mushrooms would be nice, and of course you just have to include a Carrion Crawler or two! It's a classic! But these are just the troublesome appetizers. The real entrée is the undead.
Fifthish, corpses generally don't just spontaneously become undead. So maybe one of the corpses was killed in a nasty way or is holding a grudge against his relatives so that undead is now raising up it's old pals to join it. So there's the occasional zombie or shadow, which can be nasty. But they're all just minions of the BBEG which is maybe a Wight or a Wraith or such. So if they kill the BBEG they'll solve the problem. But to get to the BBEG they have to get through all the lesser undead it has already created.
Sixth, and the clock's a-tickin'! Because the BBEG is gonna keep turning those nice decent dead folks into nasty undead monsters until the party kills it. And the people who sent them in here to anoint their ancestors obviously want them to save as many as possible. So sure, you could take a short rest, but that's one more person lost to the bad guy, and that's one more undead thing you'll end up having to fight.
But yeah, after all this hassle, you'll want to have something to offer them as a reward. Maybe the folks who sent them in are paying them. But maybe (probably) they'll pocket some gems and knickknacks along the way. After all, the dead don't really need their jewelry, do they?
Hope this helps.
Anzio Faro. Protector Aasimar light cleric. Lvl 18.
Viktor Gavriil. White dragonborn grave cleric. Lvl 20.
Ikram Sahir ibn-Malik al-Sayyid Ra'ad. Brass dragonborn draconic sorcerer Lvl 9. Fire elemental devil.
Wrangler of cats.
Many mausoleums were made because a lot of people died in a short period of time and they are a convenient source of mass burial. Terrible things like plague or famine are often reasons why they are made. This gives all the skulls plenty of things to whisper about and maybe this could have an effect on the players. If famine killed these skeletons, they could inflict the characters with terrible hunger. If disease killed those dead dudes, maybe they will get poisoned or sickened in some way. You could even include hungry ghosts or spirits of disease depending on what killed them.
Maybe if they get to close to the walls the skeletons reach out and drag them into the walls of bones to add to the collection.
Berbalangs are fun monsters that love talking to bones. Maybe one of them lurks in the shadows here.