Steal This: The Cloning Machine Room

Here's another dungeon room, ready for you to plunk down in your favorite dungeon:  I call it The Cloning Machine.

Basically, it's my personal, dungeon-room homage to the movie Prestige (2006). 

"Who could have ever anticipated that messing with a cloning machine in a dungeon would lead to tragedy?"

Like the Deathgate Puzzle Room, I posted earlier, the Cloning Machine was designed for use in my Skull Mountain megadungeon campaign I ran a few years back.  And like a lot of my favorite dungeon setups, it is absolutely safe - so long as the PCs don't mess with things that are obviously dangerous.  Of course, adventurers never seem to be able to resist such temptation... 

The basic setup is simple:  Two rooms separated a bit in the dungeon.  The first room houses the cloning machine itself, an ancient and dangerous device manufactured by some mad wizard centuries ago.  The second room, the cloning vats, are where anything cloned or created by the machine appear.

Room #1 - The Cloning Machine

A large domed chamber.  Iron pillars, 30' tall, arrayed around the wall, carved with a thousand strange symbols, and topped with metal balls.  At the center, an altar of some sort.  It is carved from a solid stone block, and stands about waist high... 

The altar looks something like this.

Above the altar, mounted high on the ceiling, is a strange crystal, pointing down, directly at the altar below...

The great crystal hanging from the ceiling...

On the front of the altar, is a bronze dial with six symbols carved in the stone around it. The dial can be turned about to six different "settings," one for each symbol.   

The symbols around the dial - yeah, what the heck do those mean, anyway?

When discovered, the dial is set to the stylized "O", which is the "off" setting.  After each use of the machine, the dial returns to this setting, until the PCs tamper with it again.

Room #2 - The Cloning Vats

The second room is simply a large chamber full of glass tanks, each 12 feet tall, all filled with some kind of strange, purplish liquid.  Each tank is connected to the ceiling by a series of strange, rubbery tubes, and each has a metal "door" that can be opened by turning a small wheel.  Opening a tank causes the liquid within to come pouring out, but each tank, unless damaged, refills whenever the cloning machine is activated.

 Kind of like this, but in a dungeon, not high tech...

Activate the Cloning Machine at Your Peril! 

Activating the machine is simple - you just turn the bronze dial away from the "O" setting to one of the five other symbols.  As soon as the dial stops on a symbol for a few seconds, the crystal above will begin to glow, hum ominously, and bathe the altar below in a ruddy light.  The walls and ceiling seem to fall away, revealing a strange, starry sky, whirling and bursting with planets, large eyes, silently floating shapes of hideous proportions, and other horrors.

What happens next depends on which of the six "settings" you set the machine to. Here's what they do, working around the dial clockwise...
 
(1) Stylized "O" – the "off" setting.

(2) Weird Thing that Looks Like an Hourglass – If any living thing is lying upon, or touching, the altar when the machine is turned on and the altar is bathed in red light, the machine summons one exact copy of that being from the future. The duplicate appears, with crackling energy and fanfare, in a random cloning tank. The future self of the character is only from a few hours in the future, and played by the GM as an NPC. The future self likely has some additional knowledge of the dungeon, but is cagey. An hour or so after the duplication, the "past" or "original" character simply vanishes...and the player takes over the "future" version.

(3) Symbol that Looks Like Three Guys Conferring – Summons 2d4+4 doppelgangers from alternate time-streams that look and act like the person on the altar – except for the fact that they are naked when they appear, act sly and strange, and - oh yeah - hunger for human flesh. They have only limited knowledge about the person they look like, and so pretend they have amnesia.

(4) Symbol that Looks Like Heads on Stakes – This is a fail-safe created by the maker of the machine, in case things got out of hand. This setting summons nothing to the cloning tanks. Instead, as the machine is activated, it summons 1d4+2 Bodaks, Dimensional Shamblers, Invisible Stalkers, or your preferred inter-dimensional monster, which appear around the altar, attempt to slay all life within sight, and then vanish – carrying away the remains back to their home plane. 

(5) Dudes Gathering Around a Crystal – This summons 2d4+4 copies of the character touching or lying upon the altar, which appear in the cloning tanks. These are actually copies of the "cloned" character pulled from other, quite similar parallel dimensions. However, astute observers will notice small, subtle differences, such as the way the person styles her hair, key details of her background, etc. All of the "clones" are self aware, played by the GM, and want very badly to return to their home dimensions. They are quite willing to try and force the PCs to tinker further with the cloning machine, in the hopes they can find a way home.

(6) Two Guys Looking Down on a Dead Guy – This is true cloning, and summons 1d4+8 exact copies of the target's body into the cloning tanks. Unfortunately, these clones are simply empty vessels, without minds, and do nothing but lie there, drool, and soil themselves. Eventually, unless cared for, they will die of starvation, thirst, or exposure. But, if the "original" dies while any of these clones are still alive, there is a 75% chance that the original's soul will drift into one of the clones, and avoid death. (In my own game, this was one of the few ways a character might cheat death - no Raise Dead spells here).

Epilogue: The Cloning Machine In Play

In my Skull Mountain campaign, the PCs only encountered this room once - and thereafter avoided the entire area at all cost! 

Uncertain as to the machine's purpose, the PCs decided to begin with a little "animal testing."  So, they grabbed a sheep one of the characters had dragged into the dungeon (to help check for traps), strapped it to the altar, and flipped the dial to result #3 above. Soon, they had 9 identical sheep. Except that the 8 new "sheep" seemed awfully clever and, ultimately, turned out to be carnivorous doppelgangers....

 "Did we just make a bunch of man-eating, interdimensional doppelganger sheep?"

- Balthazar

Steal This: Deathgate Puzzle Room

One of the things I'm trying to do with this blog is to share fun "bits" and "tricks" from my own games.  Along those lines, here's a "puzzle room" from my Skull Mountaing mega-dungeon campaign that worked particularly well...much to the horror of my players.  Please, steal it, and see how your intrepid players fare.

The Deathgate Puzzle Room

Like many of my favorite dungeon "bits," the Deathgate Puzzle Room is completely harmless - as long as the PCs leave it alone.  And, really, they should.  I mean, come on, it's so obviously a trap.  It basically screams "don't mess with me, I'm f**king dangerous!"  And yet, it is irresistible to players.  And once it is messed with, the clock starts ticking, and soon it will be too late...

You Will Need:

To run this encounter right, you will need (1) a copy of the handouts, below, to give your players; and (2) an egg-timer, preferably one that ticks loudly and ominously.

Entering the Room

The setup is simple.  The PCs enter a large, stone room.  Inside, arrayed along the far wall, are seven heavy stone doors, with no handles.  And in the center of the room on a dais, is a large metal cube. 

"A giant metal Hellraiser box?  Gee, who would ever mess with that?"

It's freaky looking, about as tall as a man standing, sitting atop a gruesomely stained 3-step dais.  Bones, bits of debris, and several fresh bodies surround it.  Something is obviously wrong with the bodies - they all seem to be missing at least one arm.  Missing as in, "gruesomely sliced off at the shoulder."  No sign of any of the missing arms.

The Letters on the Cube
 

Looking closer at the cube, you can see that the sides are actually covered with metal plates, 16 on each side.  Each plate has a single letter carved into it.  And each plate is affixed to the cube with a hinge.  Obviously, you can swing each metal plate open, to reveal something underneath.

At first glance, the letters on the box appear to be gibberish. Here is how they are arrayed on each side.

South Side
(facing entrance): 

West Side:

North Side
(facing 7 doors):

East Side:

 

However, if one starts reading on the left (west) side of the cube, and continuing all the way around the cube, a classic riddle is revealed:

"It is too much for one,

two it is meant for, but no longer exists

if two become more."

"What's in the Box?  Oh, God, What's in the Box?"

The room is completely safe...until the moment that one of the PCs tries to flip open any of the cube's metal plates. Then, a loud metallic "click" reverberates through the cube, the floor, and the walls. 

Anyone who declares - within 5 seconds real time - that they are fleeing back out the door may make a Dexterity check or saving throw (DC left to the vagaries of the DM's cruelty) to escape the room.  After that, a sheet of solid iron falls and blocks the entrance, sealing everyone in the room.  And the box begins a loud, steady ticking.

Psst - Hey DMs:  This is where you pull the egg timer out from behind your screen, set it to 5 minutes, and plunk it down in front of the players.  Sure, their PCs might not know exactly how long they have, but go ahead and let the players see how much time is left anyway.  It's way more fun to watch them panic as the counter ticks down to zero.

So, what's under that metal plate our heroes flipped open, anyway?  Just a dark, nasty smelling hole.  Big enough, just barely, to put your arm into it.  And down below, at the end, is a metal handle you can (with effort) turn.   

Oh, and there's clearly some sort of sharp blade in that hole - perfectly set up to chop off anything (like an arm) you might be stupid enough to put in. 

 

"A Farewell to Arms"

Solving the puzzle, and deactivating the trap, is relatively simple.  The answer to the riddle is the word "S-E-C-R-E-T."  The PCs must spell out that word by opening any of the panels with the correct letters, reaching into the hole, and turning (with some effort) the handles until they click.  Once they spell out the password, they're safe!  Easy enough, right?

Okay, maybe not.

Make a mistake?  Pull a wrong lever, or the right lever in the wrong order?  Well, then the blade snaps your arm off at the shoulder.  Generous DMs can mete out this damage in terms of hit points, allow a saving throw, or allow the player some other kind of check to avoid losing an arm.  Me, I just snapper-snacked that sucker off.  Depending on your preferred edition of D&D, feel free to require a system shock roll, Fortitude save, etc. to survive losing an arm, or at least remain conscious.

There is no easy way to tell which handles are trapped and which are not.  After all, the puzzle is solved by pulling the right levers IN THE RIGHT ORDER - so even levers marked with correct letters can (and will) snap off an arm if pulled in the wrong order.  The severed arms?  They drop down a chute into the center of the cube, lost forever.

If the players solve the puzzle, the metal cube stops ticking, and the doorway behind them opens.  If you're feeling generous, maybe a secret door leading to some treasure room also opens.

 

Tick...Tick...Tick...

Five minutes after the PCs are sealed in, unless they solve the puzzle, your egg timer goes off.  And the cube, floor, and walls rumble again.  At this point, the first of the seven doors on the far side of the wall slowly grinds open...

My own map of the Deathgate Puzzle, from Skull Mountain.

 

And a monster (probably) comes out.  I say "probably" here because you probably don't want to put a monster behind each door.  Here's the lineup I used in my game...

Door #1 - 13 hungry zombies or ghouls.

Door #2 - The rotten, severed head of a giant, the size of a large boulder.  All shriveled, grey flesh, empty rotting sockets.  It rolls about, crushing and biting foes.  Of course, it cannot attack anyone who climbs on top of the cube.

Door #3 - Used to be skeletons, but smashed apart by other adventurers long ago.

Door #4 - A desiccated, long-dead giant spider, hanging in dusty cobwebs, which starved long ago.

Door #5 - A hungry pudding or jelly of your choice.

Door #6 - 12 clay warriors, life-sized, in styled eastern mail and fluted helms.  When they walk, the sound is like cracking pottery.

Door #7 - A mechanical monstrosity, the Wizard-Head Golem.  Iron clockwork legs, a great glass drum filled with bubbling red liquid and a dozen, silently howling bearded heads.  Its right arm is a set of iron pincers, and its left is a buzzing circular saw.

Reset the Clock - Because the Cube Starts Ticking Again...

 

As soon as a door opens, the cube begins loudly ticking again!  Now, the PCs must continue trying to solve the puzzle while contending with whatever monster (or monsters) they have released. 

 

The process continues with a new monster being released every 5 minutes.  If you are feeling generous, once a monster is released (and you're involved in combat rounds) you can set the clock for 10 minutes instead, to account for all the various rolling and combat that must be handled.  But, most importantly, KEEP THE EGG TIMER ON THE TABLE, AND TICKING DOWN TO THE NEXT DOOR OPENING.

Other Ways to Overcome the Deathgate

Even if the players cannot solve the riddle, they can still get past the Deathgate Puzzle.  A few ways include...

• Behind each stone door that opens, in addition to the monster (or monster remains), is a small tunnel ending in a heavy wooden door that (with a few minutes of effort and some luck) can be picked or broken down.
• I also put a few secret doors leading off from the room - mainly to allow monsters to pass through the room without triggering the trap.
• Once all seven doors open, after about 10 minutes, the trap resets and the entrance opens.

Why Is This Fun?

The Deathgate combines some of my favorite elements to include in dungeon design.  A riddle that tests the player's (not the characters') skill and ingenuity.  An evolving tactical situation that rewards creative thinking.  A problem that is difficult, if not impossible, to resolve through straightforward combat - but still has multiple solutions.  And, of course, a clock ticking down to certain doom.

Epilogue:  The Deathgate Puzzle Room in Play

The Deathgate Puzzle Room was a big hit in my Skull Mountain "cloud" megadungeon campaign.  At least three separate groups of PCs stumbled across it in search for a hidden treasure room ("The Chamber of Antiquities") referenced in various maps and other clues they had found.  None of the groups actually managed to "solve" the puzzle by spelling out the answer ("S-E-C-R-E-T"), but they each managed to overcome it in different ways, either by finding a secret door, or hacking down a door at the end of one of the "monster chutes" while being assailed from behind.  A lot of limbs were lost to the blades in the cube.  And a lot of PCs died screaming, as they were dragged from atop the cube by the horde of monsters they had released.

Skull Mountain Level One - The Deathgate is near the NW corner.

 

I hope you enjoy this nasty little room.  If you have any questions about how it works, put your question in the comments below and I'll do my best to answer.  And stay tuned, because I'll be posting about a dozen more little "trick rooms" you can drop into your own favorite dungeon over the next few weeks.

- Balthazar

Why You Should Be Running a Cloud Game (Part 3)

So, let's get back to our discussion of running "cloud" campaigns.  Confused because you missed the earlier installments?  You should probably click here.

Hits and Misses:  Some "Cloud" Campaigns I Have Run 

Before I start dispensing arguably questionable advice, let me give you a quick idea where I'm coming from.  My bona fides, if you will.  Over the past few years, I've run three separate "cloud" campaigns, for groups of ranging from a modest 13 players all the way to sprawling campaigns of 25 or more players.  Each time, I discovered some things that worked, some things that didn't, and a few things that just plain exploded in my face.  Here are my "takeaways" from each. 

My first "cloud" campaign was...

Skull Mountain - My "Cloud" Mega-Dungeon

 "Skull Mountain," was inspired by this awesome art from Callithlin.

Boy, this game was a beast. 

Goodman Games' delightful Dungeon Crawl Classics had recently come out.  And a lot of my favorite blogs, like Dungeon Fantastic, Dreams in the Lich House, The Mule Abides, and the Alexandrian were spilling lots of (electronic) ink on the subject of of the "mega-dungeon," a campaign set completely in a single, sprawling, multi-level monstrosity of a dungeon, which serves as the "tent-pole" or focus of the entire campaign.  So, I set out to design and run a "cloud" game in a mega-dungeon - following in the footsteps of the late, great Gary Gygax and his original Castle Greyhawk.



One of the handouts from the campaign:  A carving found early in the dungeon showing a cross-section of all the different levels.  Bonus points if you took Latin, and can read it!

The set-up was relatively simple.  A corrupt city modeled on Fritz Leiber's Lankhmar, built in the shadow of a terrifying, skull-faced mountain mega-dungeon that was once home to an evil sorcerer.  Each game night, the first eight players to sign up (via email) would team up, explore as much dungeon as they dared, and flee back to town before the game concluded. 

The dungeon was vast, with many different levels that were easy to access from the surface, lots of additional secret entrances and short-cuts that could quickly dump you into the deeper levels, and a few "sub-levels" and "mini-dungeons" (like the ruined castle sitting atop the Black Mountain) that presented their own special challenges. 

 Skull Mountain:  Level One Map (made from 4 pages of large graph paper taped together, scanned back before I went in and keyed all the rooms).

I ran Skull Mountain for about a year (real time) and about 15 or 16 games.  Now, let's talk about what worked, what didn't work, and what really, really didn't work.

Skull Mountain:  Things that Worked

Room for Just-About Everything - Skull Mountain, like all my "cloud" games, was essentially a pick-up game, not my main campaign.  So, while it was a very focused game (all about dungeon crawls in a single mega-dungeon), it also needed to be broad enough to hold my interest, with room to cram in interesting ideas from all the blogs and adventures I was reading.  The concept of a mega-dungeon built by a mad wizard works perfectly.  Find an interesting idea for a wandering encounter on The Dungeon Dozen?  Easy - just drop it right in.  For example, on just the first level of Skull Mountain, the players found:

• "The Hungry Garden" - a cavern city of Myconids and other plant-monsters;
• "The Extractor" - a high-tech machine from another world that extracted and stored the brains of those who tampered with it;
• "The Midnight Maze" - a narrow, low-ceilinged, trap-filled maze wrapped in magical darkness, that the PCs had to explore by crawling and blindly feeling their way around;
• "The Hall of Antiquities" - a "museum" of dangerous trophies from a dozen different worlds;
• "The Cloning Chamber" - a dangerous device that could make (mostly) identical duplicates of whatever creature was placed in it;
• "The Deathgate Puzzle" - a giant, ticking metal cube, covered in holes, that severs arms or releases monsters when you get the puzzle wrong....

...and lots and lots of other stuff.  No idea is "too weird" or "out of place" in a dangerous, plane-hopping wizard's dungeon.  So, after just a few games, gleeful players were running around with (barely controlled) pet golems, sci-fi disintegrator guns, mutations (like a second, talking face growing out of one PC's back), and all sorts of craziness.  Anything I cooked up, or read online, or dug up from some old adventure, could go right into the dungeon.

The "Escape the Dungeon" Rule - In any "cloud" game, one of the more difficult challenges is making sure that, before each session is over, the game reaches a suitable stopping point.  If Mike, Michaelle, and John are in the Skull Mountain game on Tuesday, but only John will make it to the next game, you obviously can't just stop cold in the middle of the dungeon.  So, I borrowed a simple rule I have seen used in a couple other games:  If the PCs didn't "escape the dungeon" and reach the surface by the allotted end-time, everyone had to roll on a ridiculous and deadly table I wrote up to determine their fate.  This worked surprisingly well.  All night long, the players would be nervously checking the time, and trying to gauge how far into the dungeon they could go and still make it out.  Only one group ever had to roll on the table, because they made sure they were  back in town before the session ended.

"The Wall of Shame" - I can't take any credit for this, because it just happened spontaneously.  During the very first game, as the PC body-count started to climb, players gleefully began tacking up the character sheets of their dead PCs up on the wall, often scrawling a witty pun about how the character met his or her end.  Great fun for both the players and myself, and it nicely reinforced the mood that this was an "old school" game where the occasional (or even frequent) character death was something to be expected and, indeed, reveled in.






Gold as XPs, and the Carousing Tables - I have always struggled with giving PCs something to do with all that gold they haul out of dungeons.  If you found a million dollars, why keep adventuring?  You're already wealthy enough to retire in kingly fashion?  Thus, the idea of using "carousing tables" to encourage PCs to fritter their treasure away has always struck me as an incredibly useful idea (see Rules & Roles here for an excellent overview on the history of "carousing" in D&D and the OSR).  

For Skull Mountain, I devised a series of carousing tables modeled upon various activities that dark fantasy adventurers often engaged in.  If your PC wanted to spend his or her time drinking and gambling, you rolled on "Carousing: Table A."  If you wanted to try your down-time luck cutting purses and burglarizing the local nobles, you rolled on "Thieving About Town: Table B."  If you wanted to pursue magical research, you rolled on "The Dark Arts: Table C."  And so on and so forth.  Every time a player showed up for a game, he or she picked one table and rolled.  Each table was loaded with various ways to lose all the gold and treasure they had found so far.  But for every 100 gp of gold lost or gambled away, they received a set number of experience points - so "losing" gold was really "winning" XPs.  With a really lucky roll, you might also increase one of your stats, or gain a henchman, or learn a new spell.  Of course, an unlucky roll could leave your character penniless, still wounded when the next adventure began, or badly needing treatment for a venereal disease. 

These tables worked fabulously, and the players never even considered "retirement," because treasure was just a stepping stone to a more powerful character. 

(As an aside, I'll be posting some of these carousing tables over the next few weeks.  Get your 1d30 handy and see how well you would fare.)

A Million Clues: Giving PCs a Reason to Talk - Here's another bit that worked far better than I expected.  Before the first PCs ever set foot in the dungeon, I took a few hours and put together a horde of partial maps, passages from adventurer's journals, and other little clues as to the major hazards of the dungeon, and then sprinkled these liberally around the opening areas.  But, to keep things interesting, only the player who actually "found" the map or handout could look at it during the game.  So, if Joe's Halfling discovered a partial map of the second level, Joe was free to consult and share that map while he was playing.  But if Joe's Halfling wasn't present at the next game, both he and his map were out of reach. 

A partial map one PC found of the first level.

Wondering who the god Vorn is?  You clearly need to buy this, the best city supplement ever produced for any RPG. 

Another partial map, this time of Level 2 (yes, I made a lot of maps).

Soon, there was a blizzard of handouts, clues, and maps flying around.  And each time a new group of PCs got together, they were eager to compare notes, hastily copy partial maps, and share news about what the others had found (and often run from) in the dungeon.  Thus, we had some great roleplaying in a game where that easily could have fallen to the wayside.

A Very Easy System - As I mentioned earlier, we used the Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG, which is relatively rules-light (except for the magic system), and similar enough to the core of D&D 3.5 that my players easily picked it up.  Even better, you can whip up an entire batch of 0-level starting characters in just a few minutes - perfect for a game where new players might show up unexpectedly, and established characters tended to die with some regularity.

Skull Mountain:  A Couple Big Mistakes

Skull Mountain was a blast, but as a "cloud" game, it suffered from two pretty big flaws... 

Out-of-Control Prep Time - First, as anyone who has tried to run a mega-dungeon campaign knows, they are incredible time sinks.  Just getting the dungeon "ready for play" took weeks of work.  Even more problematic, I often found myself spending hours on particularly clever puzzles, traps, and encounters, only to stare on in horror as group after group walked into the Room of the Perilous Whatzit, decided that damned thing looked waaaaaaaay to dangerous to mess with, and decided to take the long way around.  This was great for player freedom and choice, but rough on the poor, overworked DM.

A Too-Narrow Focus - The other big problem with Skull Mountain was the limited focus on dungeon-crawls.  Sure, lots of us love a good crawl.  But certainly not everyone.  The players who tend to enjoy roleplaying and politics more quickly began pushing to expand the game into something it was never meant to be (e.g., adventuring in the city, or just plain hanging out in the tavern).

Were these "fatal" flaws?  Not really.  Skull Mountain had decent run, and every game inevitably comes to an end.  But when I wrapped it up, I knew that my next "cloud" campaign would need a little broader focus, and that I would have to find some way to reign in the out-of-control prep time.  But I'll write more about that in Part Four, coming soon.

Continue to Part Four.