Organs – Room Four – The Stomach

Introduction: Last organ (though definitely the most important)… my stomach… I mean, the stomach.

Setting/System: This could be made to work in most settings. A system with miniature based combat might make it easier to run, though it doesn’t need to be tied to a grid necessarily.

Description: A real stomach is (presumably) spongy, dark and moist. Equally, this could easily be a radioactive dump site with minimal re-fluffing (bonus points if the exit leads to the sewer).

Mechanics: The sections marked as (1) are acid pools. These are shallow enough to wade through, but will cause acid damage on the way. The protrusions marked as (2) are ulcers that will occasionally spew acid at all creatures in the adjacent squares (number the ulcers 1 to 4 and roll a d4 each round, or they could equally be proximity triggered).

Encounter: This is a pretty straightforward combat scenario. The creatures who inhabit the stomach are unaffected by the acid pools, though they can still be hurt by the ulcers. They may also know how to set the ulcers off deliberately as a more targeted attack.

Organs – Room Three – The Lungs

Introduction: Part three of my organ series… this week, the lungs.

Setting/System: The setting is probably fantasy, though the basic mechanic could work for other settings. There are no requirements at all for the system; even the combat grid could be abandoned in favour of just tracking which room each combatant is in.

Description: Spongy and irregular if you’re going the organic route. If not, having some indication of the airflow would be a good option – wind chimes sounding, low mist that swirls about, that sort of thing.

Mechanics: The lungs have a strong airflow in and out through the top entrance that can force unwary combatants deeper into the smaller rooms or draw the out again afterwards. For each combatant, roll a d6 at the end of the round and consult the numbers on the map for the room they’re in. On a 1-4, move them into the next room, as indicated on the map; on a 5 or 6, the combatant does not move. After the first round (where the nature of the airflow is a surprise), any combatant can give up their entire movement for the round to forego the d6 roll… essentially they are concentrating on resisting the push of the air.
The lungs may also occasionally “cough” (either once every four rounds or randomly on a d4… adjust to preference), at which point all combatants must make a check or be knocked prone.

Encounter: The PCs enter from the top and then, unaware of the airflow, get split up into the smaller chambers. The occupants of these chambers are likely to wait in the smallest rooms, hoping to be delivered a single PC that they can ambush (they know exactly where to stand to avoid the airflow; however, once combat is joined, they are as affected by it as everyone else).
The PCs may attempt to re-group in the first chamber and then just sacrifice their movement to stay together, so it may be worth giving the enemies some area attacks (spells or explosives or something) to discourage an unexciting static formation.

Organs – Room One – The Heart

Introduction: Over the next four weeks, I will present a set of rooms that are modelled (loosely) on the workings of internal organs. They could literally be the organs of a gigantic creature or they could simply be intended to represent them in some unusual fantasy temple.

Setting/System: The setting leans toward fantasy, though it could be adapted to other settings with a little work. No system requirements, though I’ve written the rooms with the idea of miniature based combat.

Description: This will obviously depend on the specifics. If it is an actual heart, then it should be squishy and organic; if it is merely representative then they would be standard chambers, adorned with symbol decorations. In either case, the PCs should probably be able to hear a low heart beat at all times while in the rooms.

Mechanics: There are four chambers in the heart, connected in a circle (I am well aware that this is not quite how a real heart is set out). Each round, two of the doors open (alternating between the doors marked A and the doors marked B) and any nearby combatants are swept into the next room; if running it with the grid, anyone in the outlined area in the starting room is moved to the corresponding square on the other side of the door (if that square is occupied, the movement stops short). The doors cannot be opened normally (extreme force might work, if you want to allow it).

Encounter: The characters should not be aware of the mechanics of the room initially and should not be aware of the precise areas affected, until they can work it out through observation. The occupants of the rooms are well aware of what is going on and will take any opportunity to split the party and create more advantageous odds.

Shrinking Maze

Introduction: A gradually shrinking maze that herds the PCs towards a final room.

Setting/System: Setting could be anything pretty much, though the exact nature of the maze would need altering to suit. There are no particular system requirements for this one either.

Description: This is a series of large tunnels, wide enough for two people to easily walk abreast (working in D&D measurements, each square on the map is 10 feet). The tunnels are featureless and made from stone/metal/plastic (as appropriate to the setting); if the tunnels are not featureless, they should at least be homogenous… if there are blinking LEDs or something, they should be everywhere.

Mechanics: There are no special mechanics for the tunnels themselves, though they could certainly have traps and other things present. However, the overall maze has one special mechanic…
Every time the party crosses from one coloured area to the next, doors close across the corridors and completely cut off the old colour from the rest of the maze. In this way, the maze gradually shrinks, as the PCs approach the centre. The maze is smart enough to know when the entire party has entered the next “ring” (either through magic or external monitoring), so they will never be split up in this way. The doors that close appear exactly the same as the walls; once closed, the tunnel simply appears as a dead end.

Encounter: There are two ways to play this maze. Firstly, the doors could close the second the last PC steps over the line. This will likely lead to them attempting to re-open the door; personally, I would squash the idea fairly quickly so they don’t waste time on it (the door is too big and heavy to move and there are no obvious controls). The second option is to have a slight delay, so that the players don’t know the tunnel has closed off until they try and backtrack.
Within the maze itself, there should be small encounters periodically; either insert some traps or small guard patrols. These should not be too tough, as the PCs have no real option for retreat… they need to make it to the centre intact.
The centre room is the focal point of the maze and could be pretty much anything; a treasure room, the site of a ritual that the players need to stop, a portal to another location entirely. Whatever might be found there, there needs to either be a way to reset the maze or an alternative way out, so that the PCs can leave when they’re finished.

Wizard Pinball

Introduction: A silly encounter, though potentially a rough one if the characters are unlucky.

Setting/System: This one is pure fantasy… you could fake it in a sci fi setting, but really it makes no physical sense. System-wise, it needs to be run with a map and miniatures; it doesn’t need the tactical complexity of D&D or anything, but you do need to know where all the combatants are standing.

Description: The area is well lit, gaudily painted, with some sort of annoying music playing. Here and there are doors that appear to be un-openable, but occasionally will spit out gigantic metal balls at high speeds. The entry point is a long corridor that terminates in a one way door that can’t be re-opened from the other side; the only exit is a large archway on the south side of the room.

Mechanics: At the end of every round, roll randomly to determine which door a ball appears from. The ball rolls along the indicated path; any combatants in squares that the path goes through must make a saving throw (or other system relevant check) to dodge aside or they take a hefty amount of damage from the ball hitting them as it passes.

Encounter: You can run pretty much any standard encounter in here, with the balls as a general hazard. Enemies who know the area are smart enough not to stand in front of doorways and such like. However, those in melee combat probably can’t judge things with precision, so should be just as likely to be standing in the wrong place as the players. (My suggestion is not to memorise the paths too closely and only refer to them at the end of each round. In this way, you won’t be sure yourself whether the enemies are bad positions.)
For variety, you could have one or two balls each round (randomly determined), which increases the odds of people getting hit.
Another variant in a system with longer combats (it wouldn’t work if combats were only a couple of rounds) would be to determine the number of balls at the start of the round and have a chime or something that sounds out the number of balls expected at the end of the round. Once the players cotton on (which should be very quickly), have one round where the chime sounds several times and all combatants must scramble for safe looking locations before every doorway triggers at once.

Up close and personal

Introduction: A room designed to chop up a combat into smaller groups. This could just be for variety, but it might also be an interesting challenge to groups with a heavy synergy between characters.

Setting/System: Probably sci-fi or fantasy – nothing inherently prevents it existing in other settings, but it’s hard to imagine its purpose in the real world. System-wise, tactical miniature-based combat is probably a must. If you use my final suggestion at the bottom, a system with relatively quick turn resolution mechanics would be a bonus. Also, this will certainly work best with larger parties… if there are only 2 or 3 PCs, they are likely to stick together and miss out on half the fun of the setup.

Description: This large open room has numerous pistons coming down from the ceiling (the shaded areas on the map), which divide it into a smaller series of rooms for a short time, before retracting back into the ceiling and then descending again. The pistons are massive and essentially indestructible through normal means (though not completely so, if the players happen to come up with an awesome idea), while the room itself appears to be the inside of a much larger machine of some description.

Mechanics: The area has a three turn cycle; one turn completely open, two turns blocked. This timing could be adjusted to alternating turns, but there needs to be sufficient downtime to encourage ranged characters to close in, rather than just accepting that they only shoot every other round.
On the open turn, the pistons are retracted and characters can move around the area freely, while on the blocked turns, they cannot escape the 3×3 area they’re in (unless they can walk through walls or something). Characters must be in a non-shaded area at the end of the “open” round or else they are simply crushed to death; the pistons move slowly enough that ending a turn in the shaded area is basically voluntary suicide. If a combatant is forced into the shaded area before their turn, they must move out of it on their turn. If they are forced into a shaded area after their turn, they get a free movement at the end of the round, to the nearest vacant square. If a combatant is somehow immobilised or pushed under without enough time to escape (though bear in mind, they would likely have to be pushed under while prone for this to be the case) then they are killed outright.

Encounter: This room should be stocked with mostly melee enemies. The intention is that this room will divide the combat into small mini-combats, which then switch up each time the pistons move (the cleric moves over to help the guys who’s hurting; the fighter who cleared his space, moves to engage another group). There are a couple of variations however…
1) Have an infinite supply of enemies joining from the corridors around the edge, which won’t stop until the players perform some series of actions. This will keep the players moving around and stop things becoming static.
2) You could massively increase the speed of the pistons, such that enemies pushed under them have no time to escape at the end of the round. This very much changes the focus of the combat though, from close little mini-combats with no escape, to “how can I push as many enemies as possible under these pistons?”
3) If you’ve got a system that allows for relatively quick combat rounds and some players who don’t mind a bit of faffing, you can send everyone out of the room each time the pistons come down, bring them back in groups to resolve each 3×3 combat (but remove all the figures from the other squares temporarily) and then call them all back in when the pistons go up, to see what happened to everyone else.

2D Dungeon

Introduction: An amusing diversion, rather than a serious combat… it should give old school videogamers a chuckle.

Setting/System: No setting requirements at all. No major system requirements, but there should be some rules for jumping and climbing, at least.

Description: Unlike most maps, this one is oriented vertically. The precise nature of the room could be a variety of things (ledges on an open cliffside, platforms inside a large wall cavity), but the upshot is the same… there is no room for combatants to pass each other, so they must negotiate the room like an old 2D platform game.

Mechanics: There are no special mechanics for this room beyond the peculiar constraints of the room itself; ladders can be climbed and jumping between ledges may or may not be possible, depending on the system/characters. It’s worth refreshing yourself on the rules for jumping, so you have a idea of the PCs’ capabilities in that area. Movement can be dealt with in feet or squares… whatever is normal for the system.

Encounter: There are a few variants that could be run with this…
1) You could run a straight up encounter with a decent mix of melee and ranged enemies.
2) Add the Donkey Kong feel with enemies rolling things down from above as the PCs try to reach the top.
3) If none of the PCs have any great jumping capabilities, you could run an interesting encounter with enemies who can jump between ledges, but not use ladders, while the PCs use ladders, but can’t jump between ledges.
4) As an alternative to a standard “kill all enemies” scenario, the PCs could be trying to capture an extremely mobile enemy. If this is the case, you should not reveal the entire map initially… they should be required to explore it, in order to figure out where it might be possible to corner such an enemy.
5) Combine with my post from a couple of weeks ago and have a water level that rises each round as the PCs fight their way upwards.

Extra Credit Assignment: If you really want to push the boat out, you could actually construct the map properly, with ledges attached to a vertical surface, though this would require some robust ledges or very light miniatures. If anyone goes down this route, send me some pictures.

You’re not afraid of the dark, are you?

Introduction: A room designed to put PCs at a significant disadvantage against an enemy that they can’t simply “engage” as normal.

Setting/System: This one is pure fantasy. I’ve written it with slightly divine elements, but in a setting with no divine magic, the effects could easily be purely arcane. This is heavily inspired by the scene where Harry gets attacked by hobs in the Dresden Files book, Small Favours – if you’re running an actual Dresden Files game, you could run this with hobs and myrk, exactly as the book (for bonus points, the three pillars are linked in some way to the Swords).

Description: The room is pitch black… ‘can’t see your hand in front of your face’ type darkness. The only things visible are three pillars of differing dimness, depending on their distance (the furthest pillar is barely perceptible). The pillars, once characters are close enough to see them properly, are covered in religious texts and blaze with incredibly bright light that quickly gets swallowed by the darkness.

Mechanics: The entire room is under a magical effect that causes any illumination to drop off much quicker than it should (a similar effect to thick smoke, but with nothing obvious in the air). Regular light sources (torches, lanterns, etc…) are effectively invisible and cast no light; the light might be visible when held right next to someone’s eye, but that’s about it. Magical light sources have varying effect; a simple light cantrip will likely function no better than a non-magical light source, while the light from a powerful magical weapon might illuminate a radius of a couple of feet.
The three pillars in the room cast such bright light that they illuminate out to around ten feet. In this radius, characters can see fairly normally, though it gets gloomier as they get further from the pillar.
PCs in the dark are unable to see anything except the three pillars. Darkvision, infravision and such like have no effect (the light attentuates so quickly that they have nothing to work off), but vision based on other senses (echolocation, tremorsense) works fine.

Encounter: The room is home to several undead creatures, who are blind and unaffected by the darkness. They will attack any living creatures in the room, but they will not come within 10 feet of the pillars, as the holy light hurts them; if their prey is by a pillar, they simply wait invisibly, just outside the radius of the light.
The creatures are not tough and are likely to go down to a solid hit; hitting them is the tricky part. Reward any vaguely logical plan to attack them in the dark; otherwise they will harry the PCs with quick hit and run attacks.
The easiest way to defeat the creatures, if you wish to allow it, is to dispel the darkness; this will allow the three pillars to blaze holy light through the room and vapourise the undead instantly. This solution shouldn’t trivialise the encounter… if one of the players comes up with it after they’ve already tried fighting the creatures though other methods and had no luck, let them do it with minimal effort; if it’s the first thing the players suggest then make them work for it, by requiring a ritual to be performed at each pillar or something.

Alternate encounter: An alternative worth noting would be to have no encounter as such. Just describe the terrifying journey from pillar to pillar and let the players react accordingly. “Something cracks under your foot… you kick it away into what sounds like a pile of bones.” “As you step into the light of the first pillar, you feel a slight tug on your ankle that instantly disappears” “You hear some footfalls on the other side of the room… probably just an echo.”

The Cube

Introduction: A room with peculiar gravity that allows the PCs to walk on the walls and ceiling… a challenge for groups that don’t mind complicated combats.

Setting/System: Setting is soft sci-fi or fantasy, due to the weird gravity effects. The system probably needs to be one with miniature based combat… it could be run in a more abstract system, but it would lose some of the nuances.

Description: The room is a perfect cube. The floor, walls and ceiling of this cube are made of a strange looking metal; they have four foot high protrusions in certain places, made from a transparent, synthetic material. Most notably, gravity seems to pull downwards through all six faces of the cube, allowing the PCs to stand normally anywhere on the map.

Mechanics: This will take some imagination and spatial awareness on the parts of the players and the GM. The floor plan above shows the “unfolded” cube; the numbers indicate which sides join to which. As the PCs (and their enemies) can walk on any surface, they can step between corresponding sides using normal movement (i.e. a PC can move from the top-most square to the bottom-most square, just by stepping across side 1).
The synthetic protrusions provide cover from ranged attacks made from the same face (and maybe the near side of adjacent faces); however, they provide no cover from ranged attacks made by enemies with sufficient elevation to shoot over the cover. Ranges will require a little bit of guesswork based on geometry, but they are certainly a lot shorter than the map suggests in many cases.
Under normal circumstances, it is impossible to jump from one cube face to the opposite face. However, if a character has extraordinary jumping ability and can clear 20′ height, they can cross the halfway point, gravity will switch and they will land on the other side (taking damage from a 20′ fall).

Encounters: Pure melees will become static and won’t make use of the unique features of the room. Therefore enemies should probably fall into one of the following categories:
1) Ranged enemies who benefit particularly well from using the cover provided.
2) Melee enemies with a jumping ability that allows them to switch sides of the cube easily (maybe as an actual attack from above).
Essentially, you want enemies who have a good reason to keep moving, as this will force the PCs to do the same.

Rats!

Introduction: An encounter intended to ratchet up the tension and deliver an “oh crap” moment at the end. I ran this in a game of Deadlands Reloaded, but I am presenting it as a general concept for use in other games.

Setting/system: This could be adapted to almost any setting, just by changing the specific enemy, though it will probably sit best in a game with some horror elements. System-wise, again it could be adapted to a lot of different systems, but the mechanics would need tweaking depending on the damage system (see below).

Description: These four rooms could be absolutely anything. I ran them as servants’ quarters in a haunted house, but any small set of rooms would work. They should be laid out in such a way that final reveal is in the last room visited – in the layout I’ve presented, if the players head north first, just move the internal door to the east room. Also, there should be some in game reason for them to push through to the final room and not retreat early – most likely, they’re looking for something and need to search every room.

Encounter: As the players enter the first room, they see a couple of small creatures scurrying about (I used rats, but any small creature that is not particularly dangerous on its own would work). As the players progress through the rooms, the creatures appear in larger numbers and become more aggressive. There also appear to be an unlimited number of them; the PCs should be encouraged to keep moving, rather than making a stand. As the players enter the final room, they see a closet door (or setting appropriate portal) bulging and straining. As soon as they get close to it, it bursts open with a flood of creatures – this (combined with the mechanics below) should be an “oh crap” moment for the players. The PCs’ goal may or may not actually be in the closet, but in any case, the mass of enemies should ideally be dealt with through clever thinking, rather than simply fighting it as a normal enemy.

Mechanics: These are the mechanics I homebrewed for this encounter; they are specific to the Savage Worlds system. Further down, I will make some suggestions of how the mechanics might be adapted to other systems.
Each swarm of creatures is represented by a single die – the bigger the die, the larger the swarm. When the swarm attacks a PC, there is no attack roll, it simply does damage by rolling the die (this represents each individual creature having a chance to hit for one damage… the number rolled is the number that hit). The first swarms are only d4 or d6 – in Savage Worlds, this is unlikely to damage the PCs at all (for those unfamiliar with Savage Worlds, damage has to clear a toughness threshold before it has any effect). The swarms progress through the die types as the players progress through the rooms; d8/d10 could potentially hurt the players, d12 is likely to hurt the players, d20 swarms were definitely dangerous. If the players attack a swarm, they do make an attack roll, but don’t bother with damage; melee and ranged attacks reduce the die type of a swarm by one, while area effects reduce the die type by two.
This system worked reasonably well on its own merits, but the primary reason for it was the moment that the closet door burst open, a tidal wave of rats spilled into the room and I chucked a d100 onto the table. Having spent ten minutes engaged with the mechanics above, the simple sight of the d100 was enough to deliver the message “this swarm will kill you”.

Other systems: Adapting this mechanic to other systems is mostly a case of playing around with the dice. For example, in a system with D&D style hit points, you could just use d6s, but increase the number of dice; start with small swarms of 1d6, through medium swarms of 3d6, up to big swarms of 5d6. When the players open the closet, you slap down one of those little box sets of 36d6. In a system with static damage, you could use increasing stacks of poker chips to represent the damage. The goal is to present a very logical progression with a huge jump for the final swarm, so that it is instantly and visually beyond the PCs abilities to fight normally.

Final note: The setup of this encounter means that the final swarm will likely kill a PC if it attacks one of them – it needs to be that deadly to elicit the intended reaction from the players. You may want to consider ahead of time whether that is an acceptable result for your campaign and players. If you want to deliver the scare, but don’t really want any actual deaths, you can always have the d100 swarm spit out a couple of d20 swarms while it organises itself to attack; this will give the players a moment’s breathing room to react or run.