[df] the library crawl

[Dalin]

Labyrinth: A library is already a labyrinth of sorts. What if the shelves could move around, reconfiguring themselves when you're not looking? This could be to keep you away from something or to lead you somewhere, to trap you or to toy with you. Clues, of course, might be in the books. (Or maybe the books are a red herring and the clues are in the elements of the space that don't change like the tiled floor and the ceiling.)

True Stories: What if the line between fiction and reality is blurring and elements from the books are coming out. That could justify literally anything that might exist in a book. Perhaps a rogue librarian (or patron) developed the magic as a plaything but now it is out of hand.

[Colonel Kane]

Hello, I am very new to the forums. I remember there was an adventure in an old Dungeon Magazine, that was set in a library. There were minor demons bound inside of books. You opened the book and out they popped. The old Iron Viper just popped into my head. A large snake made of metal plates that actes like a guardian of some book or even a whole bookcase. That is my two cents worth.

[mlangsdorf]

In my game, the Fae Courts' legal library was layered with multiple time control spells intended to preserve the records for millennia. As more and more records were added, the spells gathered a critical mass and (interacting with the library's inherent L-space nature) turned the central library into a transdimensional Elder thing death-trap. The wizards and priests of the Fae Courts then sealed off and warded the oldest section, fixed the spells (or so they thought), and continued to the process. The spells went critical a second time, warping the wards, and the Fae put up a second set of barriers.

By the time the PCs were tasked with going into the oldest part of the library, 2/3rds of the library was a mess of Elder Things, traps and static defenses to kill the Elder Things, and general weirdness. It allowed me to put anything I wanted in the library as a hazard, because trans-dimensional non-Euclidian death trap filled with Elder Things and other stuff gives you a lot of leeway.

[Kromm]

In the campaign I ran which was the main inspiration for the GURPS Dungeon Fantasy series, I had an occult library where certain books took illustrations to a whole other level:

There on the page was a gate that would suck you in and demonstrate such things as "Hell" and "Outside Time And Space." The tricky bit being that these portals didn't, in fact, take you to those realms; they took you to finite pocket dimensions where all the dangers of those realms were present to a degree sufficient for training and experimentation. Of course, some previous readers had fled to these pockets to hide out, and didn't appreciate visitors. And in a few cases, people were pushed or tricked in, and then the book was closed, trapping them; some were grateful, others probably deserved to be imprisoned and were dangerous, and a few were just plain crazy after being shut up for so long.

In some cases, it was possible to step back out of different copy of the same book somewhere else in the library . . . or in a completely different library. In one case (a book on the nature of time), it was possible to step out of the same book at a different time, meeting past or future readers.

This is related to the sinister art gallery.

If all you want is physical monsters, though, don't forget

Spoiler:  

area 12 of Dungeon Fantasy: I Smell a Rat (pp. 13-14).

[Rasputin]

Random notes on all this:

• Librarians have the Hidden Lore skill in fantasy games, as well as ludicrously high levels of Research. They also have a Silence-based attack. Female librarians will have a bun; I've never met a male librarian with a man-bun.
• Real-life libraries tend to be dry (though not as dry as archives, which are very climate-controlled). A fantasy library will have magical protections against fire spells as well as being dry (protection against water spells, perhaps).
• While it's tempting to have Silence zones (and I'm sure there will be some), libraries can have musical instruments in them (I volunteer in one that has a grand piano in a side room and a big sheet music collection).
• Speaking of special collections, obscure cures for afflictions in books screams at me.
• Special collections can be almost anything. I know of a tool library where you can check out tools (duh). As well as spell libraries, how about disease libraries? Weapon libraries? Cool power libraries?
• A big topic in library science nowadays is makerspaces, including 3D printers in some. For fantasy libraries, this means weird laboratories, and not just for wizards.
• A fact of life for public libraries nowadays is that they're effectively daycare centers for homeless adults. (Libraries can get funding; homeless shelters cannot.) A fantasy library open 24/7 could plausibly have folks sleeping in the stacks.
• Real libraries have rows of folks on computers, and they're mostly on non-library websites, especially YouTube. Zombies can take their place, sitting there until an event triggers.
• Many libraries have games. (Especially role-playing games. The ALA Gamer Round Table is all about D&D.) A Jumanji-like scenario is possible, as well as game pieces getting up and walking around in the library.

[Bruno]

Apocrypha is the domain of the Daedric Prince [1] Hermaeus Mora[2], and in Skyrim is a dimension of shifting bookshelves, books and papers and scrolls in stacks forming walls, floors, ceilings, ramps, and stairs, all of which shift and move and shuffle around with the constant sound of fluttering paper and flipping pages.

Apocrypha is populated with Elder Things, like the Seekers - a floating legless hunchbacked thing with four humanoid arms and a mess of tentacles/horns, in a stack of ragged layered robes. And something gigantic with tentacles that lives in the oily black-green water that the stacks of books rise out of.

[1] Something like a Demon Lord/Prince/King and something like a God, but best filled under Elder Thing IMO.

[2] Portfolio: knowledge, memory, fate. Particularly likes hidden secrets, as long as he knows them and nobody else does.

[Phil Masters]

Originally Posted by Mr_Sandman

According to Terry Pratchett, in addition to at least one orangutan, L-Space (which includes all libraries in every time and place throughout the multiverse) is home to "harmless kickstool crabs, large and heavy wandering thesauri, the .303 Bookworm and the dreaded cliches, which must be avoided at all costs"

Beat me to it. The Discworld RPG even has stats for the .303 bookworm.*

The real point about L-Space, though, is that it links all libraries, everywhere. So you can end anywhere (and anywhen) if you get lost. Plus, there are the wandering tribes of eternally lost readers, some of whom may have resorted to cannibalism or whatever.



*2d pi for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, basically.

[Phil Masters]

I also recall a story that the senior librarians at Cambridge University Library have to be discretely assessed for a willingness to take tough decisions, because the place necessarily has a fire suppression system which, if triggered, could actually suffocate anyone still inside. A big enough library could have anti-fire measures - or, I guess, anti-magical-catastrophe measures or whatever - that could put you into that classic disaster movie "the countermeasures will kill us!" situation.