When this is done far enough so that the two cubes touch, the cube being touched turns a brilliant color. Also, all within 30' must save or lose their sense of direction.
Touching a colored cube with a white cube will drain its color leaving them both white. Touching two colored cubes together will make each turn new brilliant colors.
Returning all the cubes to their colorless state will restore a sense of direction to anyone within 30'.
The loss of direction may not be noticeable at first, because it will not affect the creatures ability to move just to conceive. It will manifest itself in an inability to tell which way left, right, up or down is. In a room with two doors an affected creature would choose randomly or by features other than direction, "The red one. The small hallway."
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I'm thinking for the colors you could go to a hardware store and get some paint color cards. The idea is not to confuse or trick the players, so you'll need to keep track of which cubes are colored in a way easy for players to see.
It would probably be good to have this in a chamber that isn't close to any right/left hallway or door choices so their predicament takes a while to set in.
I haven't tried this yet, but may this Friday.
On that tumbling dungeon: I've come up with a variant, thattakes sections that are carved out of the wall, and pushes them in, when a lever etc. is triggered. So if there are two 5' squares carved out of the sides of a hallway, they become something blocking the entire square, with a barely visible line in between them.
ReplyDeleteSorry about derailing this post. Is there also an angel of sound?
I love the sense of direction loss as a concept. But I think it might be a more insidious danger if you give no indication of what has happened. You just don't go in the right direction as the player's instruct you.
ReplyDeleteSo like they have the experience, assume nothing has happened to them, and then say they want to leave via the door on the left. Instead, have them take the door on the right. For a long time, just ignore their directions and send them off randomly into the dungeon. Eventually, let them find their way back to the room and try to "fix" themselves.
I just think that would be more memorable.
Ouch. Yeah, that would be memorable all right. Possibly memorable in the sense of "Oh yeah... I remember that. That was the time my players tried to burn my house down right?", but memorable.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the comments.
ReplyDelete@Greg: I was thinking of just rolling randomly when they choose doors and passages, but the "Eventually, let them find their way back" is the kicker. I don't want to bore and frustrate them. I think it would be nearly impossible to navigate your way back to the angel room through random die rolls. I mostly want to get them to get a feeling of dread before figuring it out and getting cured.
I just thought, what if they get attacked by wall crawling creatures and are completely disoriented fighting them. I might be able to narrate that in a frightening way.
@C'nor: If I understand, you have a lever-activated gate? That's fine, but the rotating dungeon I was going more for features that appear only a little odd until turned and then they become something completely different.
As for an Angel of sound, yes I was thinking of one called the Angel of Tone, but haven't worked out what it will do yet. I might look for an app for my phone that will make simple sounds that to help me do that one.
Maybe just have it wear off after a certain amount of time?
ReplyDelete@Telecanter:
ReplyDeleteKind of... If I have a 10' corridor going east, and one square of of the north and south walls have a 5' section cut out of them, when the lever or whatever is activated, they shove inward to form a 10' wall across it.