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Old 05-03-2018, 03:48 AM   #1
ajardoor
 
Join Date: Jun 2010
Default The Art of Dungeons

Here is my idea for a Dungeon Fantasy campaign, reposted from the Ideas Are Easy thread. In town, the party visits a magical painting gallery - the magical paintings each warp the party to a dungeon/super-adventure/megadungeon (see: Mario 64, Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin, The Painted World from Dark Souls 1).

You just have to touch the painting to warp to its dungeon.

The painting dungeons have warp points back to the gallery inside, so going back to town is less of a hassle (if you can make it to a warp point...) and the party can use the Connoisseur (Fine Art) skill to intercept the symbolism of a painting and analyse the artist to gain info on the dungeon's monsters, treasure, puzzles, etc. (Just like with Research, Current Affairs, and other skills, with the usual dungeons.)

The gallery curator occasionally changes the paintings on display, putting some into storage and others on display. The party can use influence skills to convince him to keep paintings for dungeons they want to explore on display.

Donations to the gallery upgrades the dungeons (art restorations restock the he treasure, gives better treasure, new areas in the dungeon, less threatening enemies, etc.) or adds new ones (the curator bought new paintings). Donations may also buy fancier decorations (better treasure or combat bonuses in dungeons), commemorative plaques thanking the party (reactions bonuses in dungeons AND in town), social events for the gallery (new NPCs) and meetings with artists (bonuses to researching the dungeon).

So, what do you think?
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Old 05-03-2018, 07:19 AM   #2
Stormcrow
 
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Default Re: The Art of Dungeons

Don't limit yourself to dungeons. Gary Gygax had the "Hall of Many Panes," which warped characters to all sorts of pocket dimensions: land of giants, fairy realms, whatever he could think of. Each was a limited area to adventure in.

If your players buy into the paintings-as-dungeons idea, that's fine. But expect them to jump the rails and look for adventures outside of town.
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Old 05-03-2018, 09:30 AM   #3
martinl
 
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Default Re: The Art of Dungeons

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Originally Posted by ajardoor View Post
...The painting dungeons have warp points back to the gallery inside...

So, what do you think?
There needs to be at least one incident where whatever is keeping the monsters from using these warp points fails and a bunch of seriously bad critters show up in the middle of the hoity-toity part of town in the middle of the biannual Badgermilk festival.
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Old 05-03-2018, 09:41 AM   #4
Kromm
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Default Re: The Art of Dungeons

A fun variant would be to have the paintings be of rooms, not entire dungeons: The gallery is the dungeon – just a very safe one with no wandering monsters between rooms (but keep reading . . .).

The challenge then would be determining each painting's perspective, because anything directly to the sides, above, or below the artist, or behind the artist, wouldn't be visible. That wall with a chest in front of it might be at the very end of a huge room filled with monsters at the heroes' backs! Smart delvers would look for reflections and shadows (better pray the artist was talented enough to capture those!).

There would also be no way to know what's behind any door in the painting – though to stay on-theme, there shouldn't be many rooms, much less exits to the great outdoors. Mostly, exploration involves going in, dealing with the encounter, and returning to the gallery.

Of course, the way back to the gallery might involve climbing up to some really strange vantage point used by the artist, or traveling the entire length of a vast hall, or any number of other complications. The portal back needn't be a painting . . . it could be a door, a window, a swirling magical gate, a mirror, or even a blank wall (have fun finding it!).

As justification, one could say that the paintings were created by a sinister master of Gate magic who liked to use pocket dimensions to imprison enemies, keep a monster zoo, hide treasures, and just add space to their lair without paying architects and builders. Which means studying the technique of that one artist might be its own Connoisseur or Hidden Lore skill that helps with the above assessments.

Bonus points if the gallery director or curator is actually a descendent of the artist – or even the artist, well-disguised and with a totally new identity. The heroes might find themselves stepping back into the gallery somewhere totally different. If this person is devious enough and presses paintings face to face or alters the paintings, the delvers might end up trapped in some strange places.

And of course a couple of paintings by another artist could add spice. Perhaps any painting hung here starts to acquire strange properties, and if the artist isn't a master of Gate magic, the imaginary places in the paintings could become real . . . and be very strange.
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Old 05-03-2018, 11:35 AM   #5
ajardoor
 
Join Date: Jun 2010
Default Re: The Art of Dungeons

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Originally Posted by Stormcrow View Post
If your players buy into the paintings-as-dungeons idea, that's fine. But expect them to jump the rails and look for adventures outside of town.
I'd consider every adventure outside town and not in the gallery would be a minor side quest or mini-dungeon...and the main treasure at the end of it is a new painting that the gallery will pay a lot for, and then it becomes another full dungeon to explore.
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Old 05-03-2018, 11:39 AM   #6
ajardoor
 
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Originally Posted by Kromm View Post
As justification, one could say that the paintings were created by a sinister master of Gate magic who liked to use pocket dimensions to imprison enemies, keep a monster zoo, hide treasures, and just add space to their lair without paying architects and builders. Which means studying the technique of that one artist might be its own Connoisseur or Hidden Lore skill that helps with the above assessments.

Bonus points if the gallery director or curator is actually a descendent of the artist – or even the artist, well-disguised and with a totally new identity. The heroes might find themselves stepping back into the gallery somewhere totally different. If this person is devious enough and presses paintings face to face or alters the paintings, the delvers might end up trapped in some strange places.
And the artist has a Dorian Gray thing going on where secret paintings are his soul jars.
So the final battle against the big boss requires destroying certain paintings before confronting him, ala Harry Potter finding Voldemort's horcuxes.
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Old 05-03-2018, 01:26 PM   #7
Kromm
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Originally Posted by ajardoor View Post

And the artist has a Dorian Gray thing going on where secret paintings are his soul jars.
So the final battle against the big boss requires destroying certain paintings before confronting him, ala Harry Potter finding Voldemort's horcuxes.
Sounds fun! So many possibilities for the artist, such as:
  • The artist is actually the curator, who is using delvers to do dirty work like explore dangerous realms in the paintings, kill enemies imprisoned there, or fetch items lost or stored there. ("Get me that book right there in the painting. Yes, it will be dangerous, but I'll pay you $5,000 each for it.")

  • The artist is the ancestor of the curator, or a previous curator in a long line of curators. Much as the above, but now the artist's location is in doubt . . . and the curator's requests are liable to be less well informed and thus more prone to complications.

  • The artist was imprisoned by the curator! The artist has the power to paint their way between pocket dimensions but can't return to the real world without aid. The curator no longer knows which painting the artist is in, and so is using the heroes as detectives and, ultimately, assassins.

  • The artist is in the real world and immortal, as you suggested. The paintings are of rooms in the artist's "memory palace." Keeping those memories quite literally alive ensures immortality. The heroes are unwittingly messing with that, and making a powerful enemy. They can only defeat that enemy by entering and altering, or looting, or destroying the right paintings. All the rest are horrible traps.
Plus there's the possibility that the paintings are a huge multidimensional puzzle. By taking the right paintings with them into other paintings, and hanging them on the correct walls, the delvers can reconstruct a palace. Once they're done, it might become real. This may be what the artist wants (the heroes are doing dirty work) . . . or what the artist wants to prevent (the heroes are making an enemy). Of course, some paintings are decoys, and putting the wrong paintings in the wrong places is bound to have consequences.
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Old 05-03-2018, 07:20 PM   #8
Dalin
 
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Default Re: The Art of Dungeons

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Originally Posted by Kromm View Post
  • The artist is in the real world and immortal, as you suggested. The paintings are of rooms in the artist's "memory palace." Keeping those memories quite literally alive ensures immortality. The heroes are unwittingly messing with that, and making a powerful enemy. They can only defeat that enemy by entering and altering, or looting, or destroying the right paintings. All the rest are horrible traps.
Ok, super spooky. I was just walking home thinking about this thread and was planning to post about a memory palace connection.

I came at it from a different angle. The delvers are in the long lost tomb of an ancient archmage (or lich or some other high-IQ being). But it is only mostly dead (or maybe it's a cosmic prison, not a tomb). One way or another, the delvers get sucked into the being's memory palace. The details would depend on the type of being and its backstory, but the goal might be to destroy it or to learn a secret or to cure it or set it free. Characters with relevant lore abilities (e.g., Hidden Lore or Psychology, perhaps Thaumatology or Theology) might be rewarded with clues from the paintings. Even a good research roll before the adventure could be rewarded at this point, "You recall from your research a chapter that didn't seem relevant at the time..."

Part of the fun here is that it provides a plausible rationale for lots of wildly different settings and the memories need not be perfectly true to standard laws of physics.

And, at least it would be a memorable experience...
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Old 05-04-2018, 01:11 AM   #9
ajardoor
 
Join Date: Jun 2010
Default Re: The Art of Dungeons

Mini-bosses in a "memory palace" dungeon could be crafted from big moments in the artist's life.

For example;

"My wedding day" - the mini-boss is the bride. (Still in her wedding dress.)

"The birth of my son" - the mini-boss is the child. (Not literally, of course, but a twisted monsterous beast vaguely in the shape of an infant.)

"The day my best friend was killed in an industrial accident that cleaved him in two" - the mini-boss is the animated severed halves of the best friend. (One half flies through the air and casts spells while the other half wields some mighty metal weapon cobbled together from the malfunctioning machine that killed him.)

"The day I found my father had hung himself in despair" - the mini-boss is the animated corpse still hanging from the rafters.
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