Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Exploring the Shuttered Consciousness of a Mad King

I put together a high level adventure (levels 10-15, I'd guess) a couple years ago based (loosely) on the Kansas album Point of Know Return ('cause I really like Kansas). Anyway, I got it just about done - a couple of maps from finished - but I'm not happy with it.

It's basically just an extended meat-grinder. A few puzzles, some traps, some thinking (a little railroading, too, to be honest) - but really, just a high level dungeon crawl. Here's the thing. I'm now really dissatisfied with the whole thing. First off, I really want the "dungeon" setting to be completely alien - and unpredictable (I have a chart for completely random things happening, for example - like the landscape changing or it raining fish or whatever) not just to be unpredictable - but because the adventure takes place within a person's mind - or within their imagination, I guess... Anyway, the vast majority of the adventure would be trying to find the Mage (former king of the region) who has locked himself up in his own mind and to stop him from doing what he's doing. There are a bunch of set pieces - some of which I really like, and work pretty well - but I'd like to make the setting completely...unpredictable - without completely hosing the characters all the time (you know, "Oh, sorry, the ground you're standing on just became lava - save vs. dragon breath or take 4,000hp damage - of course if you make your save you only take half damage" or whatever). I re-read Tomb of Horrors, but that's certainly not what I'm looking for (it's as classic "dungeon crawl" as you can get). I really only know the TSR era stuff well (it's for another post, but basically we bought anything TSR put out and assumed it was compatible with everything else - so we were playing the '81 Basic/Expert with the Greyhawk supplement and the Fiend folio for a while...). I think I have just about everything from the LBB to the end of 2nd Edition (not quite everything 2nd ed - but a fair amount), though the later stuff I simply haven't read (I've got Dark Sun and Planescape and Birthright and...geez, I don't know what all, so I HAVE it, but I don't really know it). I also have access to a bunch of Judges Guild and Role Aids stuff (not mine, but I can read it if I want) if there's something there that might be worth checking out...

The long and the short of it is this: Is there a high level adventure (heck, okay, ANY adventure) that really takes on, say, randomness - something that might be inspiring for this "exploring the shuttered consciousness of a mad king" monster that I have sitting on the back-burner? Can anybody recommend anything? Is there an adventure somewhere that takes place inside the body of a gigantic creature? Or that takes place in a dreamworld (that might be the best analogy to what I'm looking for)? Any Edition - I'll find it if it's worthwhile. Just looking for suggestions...

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