I am currently pondering some sort of edge-of-tomorrow style twist to a dungeon, where the adventurers will be required to pass through several deadly rooms to get to the end. They will be imbued with the "Blessings of the Cat" by a friendly sorcerer which gives them 9 lives, or perhaps they will have to pay a toll to a god for each resurrection - haven't decided the exact mechanics of it yet, but there will be a consequence for death to replace the fact that they can't die!
I plan to make the encounters fiendishly deadly, with one wrong move resulting in large damage, possible death and then restarting. Any rooms completed already will be hand-waved away if they say they do exactly the same thing, or I might make it more of a memory game - but different moves might result in the butterfly effect for the future things.
Has anyone ever run something like this? I like the idea of "what? we're back here again! who died?" kinda mechanics it'll promote. I'd run it as a one-shot, which could stretch on indefinitely if they keep failing!
This gets me thinking in a slightly different direction, if you're willing to bounce some additional ideas around which do move away from your original (still awesome) ideas.
This dungeon isn't even about the Party who just happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. There's 2 (or more?) gods, dieties, eternal astral beings, bored wizards, whatever, whose only form of personal entertainment is gambling. The Party is merely a pawn mechanism for a type of gambling for them. Their magic /powers can resurrect a party member, but only up to 9 times overall throughout the party in keeping with the outline of their wagers. They are the spectators in each room (whether there physically or just disembodied voices or illusory projections). Their overall interest is wagering on the *exact* number of "deaths" the party may suffer (or, wagering the over/under, whatever). It can provide opportunities to roleplay as these gambling entities, providing almost sports commentary like phrases to annoy or guide the Party into better choices based on these entities personal gambling interests. Maybe if all 9 lives are spent without completing the dungeon the entities just throw up their hands in annoyance and kick the party out with no harm, no foul. Maybe they re-set their wagers, double down, etc. And push the party to finish their game.
I'd recommend "consequences" of death to be less mechanical (that is, not taking away precious magic items or nerfing a Strength stat; that's likely to eventually be considered "unfair" one way or the other by one or more players and it's a headache that can be easily avoided)
but instead more roleplayish (maybe their memories are stolen/removed about important events in a character's life; can't recall what parents looked like, no memory of first kiss, forget about the existence of a beloved sibling or spouse).
And, read the room of your Players of course. Many people like super challenging, super deadly encounters; others are extremely squishy. It should be made obvious pretty obvious after the first death that not is all as it seems but that this a bizarre situation....
I've never run anything like that, but The Adventure Zone podcast had a pretty solid story arc that was built on the premise... although in that case it was a small town to explore rather than a single dungeon. There was also a heavier focus on a timer, so learning the different solutions not only got them past certain obstacles, once they knew the solution it gave them more time on the clock, since they could rush through complete challenges faster than the time it took to solve them in the first place.
The characters also couldn't keep anything they found with them at the restart of each round, except for some very specific items that they only managed to keep due to major powers influencing things... I think it could give your game a nice Rogue-lite feel to have a very small number of very key items or blessings or something similar that they would get to keep on restart. Like maybe there's a false path that doesn't progress the proper story any further, but at the end of it they find a unique magic item that they're allowed to keep that also makes one of the primary challenges much easier.
The Adventure Zone arc, given a small town, sounds more like Groundhog Day than Edge of Tomorrow. Did the AZ character die or just wake up at the start constantly?
Honestly, I don't know if I'd want to put my group through this. A DM may get sadistic entertainment, as well as the players with masochistic tendencies. But think about the movie. Yes there were exhilarating moments the characters went through, but when they returned to start? Massive aggravation. This is what you'll be imposing on your players. Do you really want to put your PCs through a steeplechase of intricate encounters, and then require them to _repeat_ said encounters? And how would you handle precise replication of some encounters when unlike a movie with a script, your characters have to rely on dice rolls whenever there's risk involved?
EDIT: oh my eyes didn't catch the handwavium thing. So all you're doing is really resetting the failed encounters. I guess you could do that, but mechanically all your doing then is giving do-overs to failures. "We do everything we did, and now we're at X again." Do the characters who get beat up along the way to the failpoint arrive at the fail point in the exact same state (admin burden who creates save point sheets)? Or is there going to be some means to show up in better shape than their arrival at the fail point?
There's a reason the video game industry went to save points instead of "start all over again", the human psychology the industry is addressing is one you'll have to confront in your players.
If I were a player in this recursive railroad, I'd probably beat Edge of Tomorrow by riffing off the SG-1 episode "Window of Opportunity" and take some reconstitutions as reasons to "just no" and learn juggling or other feats and maybe live a whole life before dying and returning to start amped up with everything I've learned over half a dozen lifetimes.
So, my advice, if you were going to do this. Keep it short, like 3-5 encounters/rooms tops. Anything more elaborate I feel you're liable to literally lose your party.
Yeah, they died at the end of each loop in the TAZ arc. The timer element was that the entire town got destroyed after a certain point, shunting all the players back to the moment they first entered the town, so there was never enough time for them to go to sleep like in Groundhog Day.
We did this once. Honestly we didn't mind going back to the start because we could just say, "we do what we did last time up until this point." So kind of the same effect as save points but without having to have a rationale behind it or set points where you could do it. We didn't worry so much about resource expenditure because it was a different kind of challenge. I don't think we had any consequences for dying and I would keep that if I were running this - it really freed us up to be creative and try anything. The goal was difficult enough to achieve that we didn't need extra anxiety around it, and we were motivated to finish it because our characters were stuck in that loop until we found a way out.
Our loop had a time limit, and when that limit was up a giant eldritch thing destroyed the world. Most of our resets were due to running out of time rather than dying in combat. Often we ran out the clock on purpose when we achieved (or failed) our goal for that run. We did a couple fights where we were way outmatched and slaughtered - honestly that was my least favorite part. We just felt helpless - what we did on our turn didn't really matter, we all were just waiting for the monsters to finish us off. Consider just narrating the gruesome deaths of the party if the combat is a predetermined loss - I think that would have been less disappointing for us.
The interesting part was exploring the different paths available and piecing together what we had to do from all that information. We were able to keep what we carried, so we also collected stuff we needed to prevent the ritual that destroyed everything. We certainly did some things we wouldn't have done if we had to face the consequences - it poses an interesting test of a good character's convictions when the party is presented with the possibility of getting away with almost anything.
I heard about this being done in a live-action roleplay once. The players had to remember every single thing they did successfully on the previous loops. Apparently they managed the final run through 6 encounters in about 15 minutes - all being extremely efficient by the end!
I've decided that the general premise I'm going to be focusing on for this is:
1: Quickly resolved, pass-or-fail encounters. Minimal reliance on tactics and dice rolls and more on logic and problem solving. I want it to be fairly decisive as to whether they pass or fail, so they might have to solve a riddle which tells them which bridge to cross - if they fail, they fall to their deaths. If someone casts featherfall, they fall to the bottom and land in lava, death. If they can fly, then they have a workaround, but everyone has to get across and it's unlikely that everyone can fly. I won't be outright denying the things a party might think of to get through, because it only ever sucks to have your carefully thought out plan go south "because the DM doesn't want that to happen". I will be avoiding that!
2: Trying to give the players options whilst still presenting them with a light railroad. to this end I'm doing lots of rooms, and they choose which 5 they want to go through - they are arranged in a circle of concentric rings; after each room, they emerge in a circular corridor. The rooms have symbols relating to their contents.
3: Give everyone a chance to shine. 1 of the rooms is related to performance checks. another is a riddle, another is a combat (20 doors, one isn't a mimic!), another will be stealth, another is investigation, one will be nature - make opportunities for people to do things other than attack or magic.
A puzzle where they have to remember the correct sequence. Then get the players to relate the correct sequence each time through :)
That's easily thwarted with notekeeping though!
I have also decided that this dungeon, whilst it is reasonably dangerous, is going to be more of a plot device than a free-standing encounter.
The amulets (which every player will have) will pledge them to a goddess of rebirth, who is mischievous and will basically haunt them until they pay back their debt to her for keeping them alive. She's going to turn up at the most inopportune times - stealing dungeon treasures just ahead of them, imitating PC's in town to get them disliked by the populace. It might end up leading to the party going god-killing, who knows! The amulets offer 9 resets to the party as a whole for less bookkeeping. They will also offer protection from dying to the group thereafter, but this will further indebt them to the goddess. Basically, they will become stable if they fail a death save, instead of dying, but that's one more notch on the amulet. I don't intend for them to have these amulets forever.
Thus far I have rooms that contain:
a riddle to cross a chasm (tests players abilities for riddles - 3 options, so maximum loss of 2 lives unless they do a stupid!) a puzzle to not get burnt alive (tests investigation skill & player's abilities to pick up clues) a creepy room with a forbidding message and scary things that can happen - expecting one of them to lose a life here, and probably learn the lesson to get through the room. This room is a bit weird as it is designed to reveal elements of a characters backstory that they might not want the other players to know about. It'll take some preparation! a room guarded by an unassailable foe, who is sleeping. many doors to get out but only one is real. time for a sneaky person to shine! once the door is found, they should be able to sprint for the exit whilst the monster wakes up. a room with 20 doors, one of which is not a mimic. more out of curiosity of how they approach it! a music room where a series of performance checks need to be passed to progress. This will (visually) be a sadistic version of guitar hero, where each note played raises a shield to defend against a flying axe or arrow shot at the player. play the wrong notes, get got by axes. It'll mostly be descriptive, to be honest, but I hope it'll be cool.
I'm still thinking of other encounter rooms for them - I'd like to have enough to make variety should I run this a different time!
A puzzle where they have to remember the correct sequence. Then get the players to relate the correct sequence each time through :)
That's easily thwarted with notekeeping though!
Do their notes survive the time reset? If not, don't let the players keep notes ;-)
That's an option, but then we are stepping back from testing the characters, breaking the fourth wall, and testing the players memory. I'm already using a riddle or two (for which I will offer clues based on insight rolls) which ultimately test the players more than their characters. I certainly wouldn't (for example) have the players play actual guitar hero to determine the outcome for their bard in my music room, because the bard player might never have played it and the person playing a barbarian who thinks a harp is some sort of multi-shot bow might nail it because they've played it for years - it's separate from the game in hand.
I think I'll definitely offer handwaving through any rooms they have completed - unless they want to do anything differently. I'll take notes of spell slots expended, hp left etc. after each room so they can say "we go through the first 3 rooms exactly the same" and will end up in exactly the same position. If someone takes a bad hit en-route and wants to retry the room, it's an option - but they will have to accept the new result!
It sounds like you have a pretty solid idea for a dungeon and a story to justify it! I also like that the sheer number of rooms means you could run this multiple times with the same party and still get different outcomes.
I am currently pondering some sort of edge-of-tomorrow style twist to a dungeon, where the adventurers will be required to pass through several deadly rooms to get to the end. They will be imbued with the "Blessings of the Cat" by a friendly sorcerer which gives them 9 lives, or perhaps they will have to pay a toll to a god for each resurrection - haven't decided the exact mechanics of it yet, but there will be a consequence for death to replace the fact that they can't die!
I plan to make the encounters fiendishly deadly, with one wrong move resulting in large damage, possible death and then restarting. Any rooms completed already will be hand-waved away if they say they do exactly the same thing, or I might make it more of a memory game - but different moves might result in the butterfly effect for the future things.
Has anyone ever run something like this? I like the idea of "what? we're back here again! who died?" kinda mechanics it'll promote. I'd run it as a one-shot, which could stretch on indefinitely if they keep failing!
Make your Artificer work with any other class with 174 Multiclassing Feats for your Artificer Multiclass Character!
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This gets me thinking in a slightly different direction, if you're willing to bounce some additional ideas around which do move away from your original (still awesome) ideas.
This dungeon isn't even about the Party who just happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. There's 2 (or more?) gods, dieties, eternal astral beings, bored wizards, whatever, whose only form of personal entertainment is gambling. The Party is merely a pawn mechanism for a type of gambling for them. Their magic /powers can resurrect a party member, but only up to 9 times overall throughout the party in keeping with the outline of their wagers. They are the spectators in each room (whether there physically or just disembodied voices or illusory projections). Their overall interest is wagering on the *exact* number of "deaths" the party may suffer (or, wagering the over/under, whatever). It can provide opportunities to roleplay as these gambling entities, providing almost sports commentary like phrases to annoy or guide the Party into better choices based on these entities personal gambling interests. Maybe if all 9 lives are spent without completing the dungeon the entities just throw up their hands in annoyance and kick the party out with no harm, no foul. Maybe they re-set their wagers, double down, etc. And push the party to finish their game.
I'd recommend "consequences" of death to be less mechanical (that is, not taking away precious magic items or nerfing a Strength stat; that's likely to eventually be considered "unfair" one way or the other by one or more players and it's a headache that can be easily avoided)
but instead more roleplayish (maybe their memories are stolen/removed about important events in a character's life; can't recall what parents looked like, no memory of first kiss, forget about the existence of a beloved sibling or spouse).
And, read the room of your Players of course. Many people like super challenging, super deadly encounters; others are extremely squishy. It should be made obvious pretty obvious after the first death that not is all as it seems but that this a bizarre situation....
Boldly go
I've never run anything like that, but The Adventure Zone podcast had a pretty solid story arc that was built on the premise... although in that case it was a small town to explore rather than a single dungeon. There was also a heavier focus on a timer, so learning the different solutions not only got them past certain obstacles, once they knew the solution it gave them more time on the clock, since they could rush through complete challenges faster than the time it took to solve them in the first place.
The characters also couldn't keep anything they found with them at the restart of each round, except for some very specific items that they only managed to keep due to major powers influencing things... I think it could give your game a nice Rogue-lite feel to have a very small number of very key items or blessings or something similar that they would get to keep on restart. Like maybe there's a false path that doesn't progress the proper story any further, but at the end of it they find a unique magic item that they're allowed to keep that also makes one of the primary challenges much easier.
Watch Crits for Breakfast, an adults-only RP-Heavy Roll20 Livestream at twitch.tv/afterdisbooty
And now you too can play with the amazing art and assets we use in Roll20 for our campaign at Hazel's Emporium
The Adventure Zone arc, given a small town, sounds more like Groundhog Day than Edge of Tomorrow. Did the AZ character die or just wake up at the start constantly?
Honestly, I don't know if I'd want to put my group through this. A DM may get sadistic entertainment, as well as the players with masochistic tendencies. But think about the movie. Yes there were exhilarating moments the characters went through, but when they returned to start? Massive aggravation. This is what you'll be imposing on your players. Do you really want to put your PCs through a steeplechase of intricate encounters, and then require them to _repeat_ said encounters? And how would you handle precise replication of some encounters when unlike a movie with a script, your characters have to rely on dice rolls whenever there's risk involved?
EDIT: oh my eyes didn't catch the handwavium thing. So all you're doing is really resetting the failed encounters. I guess you could do that, but mechanically all your doing then is giving do-overs to failures. "We do everything we did, and now we're at X again." Do the characters who get beat up along the way to the failpoint arrive at the fail point in the exact same state (admin burden who creates save point sheets)? Or is there going to be some means to show up in better shape than their arrival at the fail point?
There's a reason the video game industry went to save points instead of "start all over again", the human psychology the industry is addressing is one you'll have to confront in your players.
If I were a player in this recursive railroad, I'd probably beat Edge of Tomorrow by riffing off the SG-1 episode "Window of Opportunity" and take some reconstitutions as reasons to "just no" and learn juggling or other feats and maybe live a whole life before dying and returning to start amped up with everything I've learned over half a dozen lifetimes.
So, my advice, if you were going to do this. Keep it short, like 3-5 encounters/rooms tops. Anything more elaborate I feel you're liable to literally lose your party.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
Yeah, they died at the end of each loop in the TAZ arc. The timer element was that the entire town got destroyed after a certain point, shunting all the players back to the moment they first entered the town, so there was never enough time for them to go to sleep like in Groundhog Day.
Watch Crits for Breakfast, an adults-only RP-Heavy Roll20 Livestream at twitch.tv/afterdisbooty
And now you too can play with the amazing art and assets we use in Roll20 for our campaign at Hazel's Emporium
We did this once. Honestly we didn't mind going back to the start because we could just say, "we do what we did last time up until this point." So kind of the same effect as save points but without having to have a rationale behind it or set points where you could do it. We didn't worry so much about resource expenditure because it was a different kind of challenge. I don't think we had any consequences for dying and I would keep that if I were running this - it really freed us up to be creative and try anything. The goal was difficult enough to achieve that we didn't need extra anxiety around it, and we were motivated to finish it because our characters were stuck in that loop until we found a way out.
Our loop had a time limit, and when that limit was up a giant eldritch thing destroyed the world. Most of our resets were due to running out of time rather than dying in combat. Often we ran out the clock on purpose when we achieved (or failed) our goal for that run. We did a couple fights where we were way outmatched and slaughtered - honestly that was my least favorite part. We just felt helpless - what we did on our turn didn't really matter, we all were just waiting for the monsters to finish us off. Consider just narrating the gruesome deaths of the party if the combat is a predetermined loss - I think that would have been less disappointing for us.
The interesting part was exploring the different paths available and piecing together what we had to do from all that information. We were able to keep what we carried, so we also collected stuff we needed to prevent the ritual that destroyed everything. We certainly did some things we wouldn't have done if we had to face the consequences - it poses an interesting test of a good character's convictions when the party is presented with the possibility of getting away with almost anything.
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm
I heard about this being done in a live-action roleplay once. The players had to remember every single thing they did successfully on the previous loops. Apparently they managed the final run through 6 encounters in about 15 minutes - all being extremely efficient by the end!
Thanks for the feedback everyone!
I've decided that the general premise I'm going to be focusing on for this is:
1: Quickly resolved, pass-or-fail encounters. Minimal reliance on tactics and dice rolls and more on logic and problem solving. I want it to be fairly decisive as to whether they pass or fail, so they might have to solve a riddle which tells them which bridge to cross - if they fail, they fall to their deaths. If someone casts featherfall, they fall to the bottom and land in lava, death. If they can fly, then they have a workaround, but everyone has to get across and it's unlikely that everyone can fly. I won't be outright denying the things a party might think of to get through, because it only ever sucks to have your carefully thought out plan go south "because the DM doesn't want that to happen". I will be avoiding that!
2: Trying to give the players options whilst still presenting them with a light railroad. to this end I'm doing lots of rooms, and they choose which 5 they want to go through - they are arranged in a circle of concentric rings; after each room, they emerge in a circular corridor. The rooms have symbols relating to their contents.
3: Give everyone a chance to shine. 1 of the rooms is related to performance checks. another is a riddle, another is a combat (20 doors, one isn't a mimic!), another will be stealth, another is investigation, one will be nature - make opportunities for people to do things other than attack or magic.
Make your Artificer work with any other class with 174 Multiclassing Feats for your Artificer Multiclass Character!
DM's Guild Releases on This Thread Or check them all out on DMs Guild!
DrivethruRPG Releases on This Thread - latest release: My Character is a Werewolf: balanced rules for Lycanthropy!
I have started discussing/reviewing 3rd party D&D content on Substack - stay tuned for semi-regular posts!
A puzzle where they have to remember the correct sequence. Then get the players to relate the correct sequence each time through :)
That's easily thwarted with notekeeping though!
I have also decided that this dungeon, whilst it is reasonably dangerous, is going to be more of a plot device than a free-standing encounter.
The amulets (which every player will have) will pledge them to a goddess of rebirth, who is mischievous and will basically haunt them until they pay back their debt to her for keeping them alive. She's going to turn up at the most inopportune times - stealing dungeon treasures just ahead of them, imitating PC's in town to get them disliked by the populace. It might end up leading to the party going god-killing, who knows! The amulets offer 9 resets to the party as a whole for less bookkeeping. They will also offer protection from dying to the group thereafter, but this will further indebt them to the goddess. Basically, they will become stable if they fail a death save, instead of dying, but that's one more notch on the amulet. I don't intend for them to have these amulets forever.
Thus far I have rooms that contain:
a riddle to cross a chasm (tests players abilities for riddles - 3 options, so maximum loss of 2 lives unless they do a stupid!)
a puzzle to not get burnt alive (tests investigation skill & player's abilities to pick up clues)
a creepy room with a forbidding message and scary things that can happen - expecting one of them to lose a life here, and probably learn the lesson to get through the room. This room is a bit weird as it is designed to reveal elements of a characters backstory that they might not want the other players to know about. It'll take some preparation!
a room guarded by an unassailable foe, who is sleeping. many doors to get out but only one is real. time for a sneaky person to shine! once the door is found, they should be able to sprint for the exit whilst the monster wakes up.
a room with 20 doors, one of which is not a mimic. more out of curiosity of how they approach it!
a music room where a series of performance checks need to be passed to progress. This will (visually) be a sadistic version of guitar hero, where each note played raises a shield to defend against a flying axe or arrow shot at the player. play the wrong notes, get got by axes. It'll mostly be descriptive, to be honest, but I hope it'll be cool.
I'm still thinking of other encounter rooms for them - I'd like to have enough to make variety should I run this a different time!
Make your Artificer work with any other class with 174 Multiclassing Feats for your Artificer Multiclass Character!
DM's Guild Releases on This Thread Or check them all out on DMs Guild!
DrivethruRPG Releases on This Thread - latest release: My Character is a Werewolf: balanced rules for Lycanthropy!
I have started discussing/reviewing 3rd party D&D content on Substack - stay tuned for semi-regular posts!
Do their notes survive the time reset? If not, don't let the players keep notes ;-)
That's an option, but then we are stepping back from testing the characters, breaking the fourth wall, and testing the players memory. I'm already using a riddle or two (for which I will offer clues based on insight rolls) which ultimately test the players more than their characters. I certainly wouldn't (for example) have the players play actual guitar hero to determine the outcome for their bard in my music room, because the bard player might never have played it and the person playing a barbarian who thinks a harp is some sort of multi-shot bow might nail it because they've played it for years - it's separate from the game in hand.
I think I'll definitely offer handwaving through any rooms they have completed - unless they want to do anything differently. I'll take notes of spell slots expended, hp left etc. after each room so they can say "we go through the first 3 rooms exactly the same" and will end up in exactly the same position. If someone takes a bad hit en-route and wants to retry the room, it's an option - but they will have to accept the new result!
Make your Artificer work with any other class with 174 Multiclassing Feats for your Artificer Multiclass Character!
DM's Guild Releases on This Thread Or check them all out on DMs Guild!
DrivethruRPG Releases on This Thread - latest release: My Character is a Werewolf: balanced rules for Lycanthropy!
I have started discussing/reviewing 3rd party D&D content on Substack - stay tuned for semi-regular posts!
It sounds like you have a pretty solid idea for a dungeon and a story to justify it! I also like that the sheer number of rooms means you could run this multiple times with the same party and still get different outcomes.
Watch Crits for Breakfast, an adults-only RP-Heavy Roll20 Livestream at twitch.tv/afterdisbooty
And now you too can play with the amazing art and assets we use in Roll20 for our campaign at Hazel's Emporium