Specials!
Specials might be my favorite keyed areas on a dungeon map, because they let me stretch my imagination, or at least let me test how deep my inspirational reading and ability to lift ideas from other game supplements goes. Specials are the stairwells, statues, pools, trapdoors, puzzles, labs, enigmas, and weird things that don't fit anywhere else.
Basically, Specials are the (mostly) noncombat set pieces that make a dungeon yours. Several are discussed here.
If nothing else, the Special category is an excuse pull Goodman Games' excellent Dungeon Alphabet off the shelf and do some browsing/rolling to see what is what.
The first level of my megadungeon has 17 specials to play with (not counting the known entrance). If 1 is a hidden way to the surface, and 5 more are ways down to the second (or lower) levels, that still leaves 11 specials to fill.
Standing Tall
Statues and pools are solid choices for a Special, but can (and will) overlap with traps and trap triggers. Still, 3 of each sort leaves me with 5 more specials. A puzzle (hiding an 'unguarded' treasure), a limited dungeon oracle, a minor weird or gonzo thing, an enigma, and something that can only be accessed at a higher level (similar in play to enigmas, puzzles, and weirds) brings us to 17 specials.
Uncounted are secret doors - solving them nets a shortcut or some hidden loot, so are their own prize (these real life secret doors make me want to remodel or build a new house). Also uncounted are the statues that are just that - statues. Some broken, some whole, statues that do nothing but loom tall and make PCs/players wonder are filed under Empty.
Or traps, if necessary.
Weirds and Enigmas probably need further description.
Weird is my term for whatever strangeness I come up with, conjured from a fever-dream or an OSR blog post or publication. To be honest, the latter is where many of my ideas originate.
Enigmas are those things that the PCs, the players, and maybe the DM cannot explain. Enigmas are a known landmark in the dungeon, but nobody knows exactly what it is, what it does, or how to interact with it. Over repeated visits, aspects might be discovered. On this first level, the Enigma might be folded into the dungeon oracle encounter (I plan to lift the one from the Holmes sample adventure).
I have a grand plan for statues AND a pool on the second level, but for this level, I'll be referring to the Dungeon Alphabet and the tables in the Ready Ref Sheets. As this is BX, there will eventually be living statues, as well as gargoyles and petrification victims, scattered across the levels. This first level, though, will feature simpler statues.
One that functions as a lock, one that functions as a trap, one that opens a secret door, one that hides a treasure (unguarded?), one that is part of a puzzle, one that is an enigma. Astute readers will see this is more than 3 statues. With this as my base plan, I'll fold these ideas into the random tables and other level features.
Wet Blanket
Pools and other water features need to be touched, bathed in, or drunk from to 'activate' them. All three of these actions can prove fatal in a megadungeon, but this is the only way to get the rewards from pools, so whatever is a PC to do? A dungeon oracle or a local may be able to share a pool's secret, but mostly, it is on players/PCs to determine on their own.
I know that some pools in my megadungeon will function as wet gates - you duck your head under in one pool and come up in a different pool (likely always the same destination pool, although a cyclical teleporting pool could prove interesting - it changes location of exit once every 24 hours, so players aren't sure where it may end up, but the party gets lost together). That said, none of the first level pools are sending pools, but one may yet become a receiving pool.
A healing pool, a fountain providing the equivalent of liquid courage, and a pool that shrinks bathers to three inches in height, whereupon they tend to drown. This last pool features a large mosaic on the bottom - a red fish (technically, a herring).
Going Down
In proper megadungeon fashion, the deeper PCs go, the greater the risk, and the greater the reward. Ensuring that the players know and understand this from session 0 is crucial, if only to keep them out of the 'clear each level' mindset. As XP comes from GP recovered, base desires to level up should also motivate them to seek out the deeper levels.
That said, I want most level shifts to be obvious and descending to be a deliberate player choice. On occasion, PCs will find themselves lower, by trick or trap, but overall, descent should be of the players' choosing. To facilitate good play, the way down must be obvious.
On this first level, I am planning on at least five ways to move to lower levels, but this doesn't just mean stairwells. Deep pits (sudden or not), shafts, multi-storied/tiered chambers, chutes, ladders, elevators, teleporters, long gentle sloped passages, and deep pools can all serve as a passage to the lower halls.
If you've read my Monsters post, you'll know there is a pair of Ogre brothers (named Smash and Grab) that operate a winch-operated lift that passes through the second level and ends on the third level. Their spokesgoblin arranges payment with whomever wants to use it - paying to return to the surface this way is closer to extortion than a fee. Those that refuse to pay are left below - often as a result of being knocked back in by one of the brothers. Where the lift is located, it is about a 100' drop to the floor of the third level. The ghouls down there enjoy the fresh food.
An easily discovered stairwell leads to a large landing on the second level featuring statues, a pool, and multiple paths into darkness. The bandit/berserker faction will point out its location, for a fee.
A hidden stairwell is guarded by a small bugbear colony. It ends on the second level among the rest of that lair.
A yawning darkness-filled (due to multiple darkness spells at the 10' down mark) pit in one of the corridors opens into a chamber on the second level; its floor has several burned out torches on it, as well as a long-dead (and looted) corpse with a broken neck. The pit itself runs almost wall-to-wall (about a 6 inch ledge along both sides) and is about 20' long. Observant PCs may notice pitons driven in one of the walls above one of the ledges.
The last means of transit is a multi-storied/tiered chamber that has its floor on the fourth level, as well as landings and corridors running off into the second and third levels.
The Registry
One planned weird Special is one I have used in other dungeons, and that is a well-lit room featuring no obvious light source, a podium, and an oversized, thick, open book upon it. The book contains the names of all beings to set foot into the dungeon. Ever.
As those beings die, their name is lined through in red. A mortal adding, editing, or lining through a name is bound to have ... interesting effects. I wouldn't try it.
This same book might provide a canny adventurer-cum-researcher the names and fates of all sorts of historical and legendary beings. Realizing that a few names from early in the book are still unlined through might even cause concern, especially when at least one of those names is used by someone the PCs know.
Brazen Head
A second weird is lifted directly from the Holmes sample dungeon. Since I have no intent to publish this megadungeon, I can cut-n-paste from others' work, and in this case, I have. The booming voice of the Brazen Head echoes down halls, attracting curious monsters, as well as competing magic-users, angry that the daily question has been lost to meddling adventurers.
Rainbow Connection
This enigma might end up on the second level, but bears mentioning.
A shimmering, rainbow spherical hemisphere fills a large chamber. Through the shifting colors, a table and several chests can be made out. Some adventurers claim to have seen a skeletal being moving inside the sphere, but that is just the wine talking. Probably.
As DM, I know it is a treasure-vault of a lich. The sphere is a custom Prismatic Sphere, custom as in different spells disable the various colors. After a few turns, the sphere regenerates missing bits, and the remains of would-be looters are disposed of in an equally magical fashion.
It is rumored that a magic-user that dwells in Skara Brae knows the first spell and third spells in the sequence and can cast them.
The lich intends to forcibly recruit whomever manages to penetrate the Sphere. So far, none have pierced it, despite the Brazen Head being capable of telling askers which spells are needed. It is the learning of those spells that poses the issue.
I believe that covers Specials.
Now back to the Character Creation Challenge!
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