More Thoughts on Tumbling Your Dungeon

Keeping Track of Things
I talked a little with my most veteran player (and sometime DM) about his experience inside the Tumbling Dungeon and what he would need to run it.  His first idea was to have a separate map of each state of the dungeon.  I told him this is actually what I started with; four maps in my DM folder.  It turned out to not help.  One reason was that I wanted all my notations (monsters, treasure, corpses) on one map for ease of use while DMing.

But the more fundamental reason was that I had no problem keeping track of how the dungeon moved, but of the orientation of the fixed things within the dungeon.  One example is the pedestal in the center of the dungeon that contains the constantly mixing golden elixir.  It would be much easier to say it is levitating, suspended in the very center of the dungeon's central room.  But if you are saying the whole reason of the dungeon is to mix this elixir, then it needs to be attached to a wall.  And then you need to be able to tell the players the pedestal is now on the ceiling, now in front of you, etc. 

Party faces unexplored chambers

The primary non-tumbling feature in the dungeon is the party.  So, as a DM needing to tell the party what is front of them everything changes.  This became most boggling when some PCs entering the dungeon to join the party late came from in front of them, because the parts of the dungeon that were near the entrance had rotated around the original party.

Party needs to turn around to explore

I'm sure the ease at which any DM can manage this varies, I had a hard time of it.

I don't know any solution to this other than a digital map on a laptop or a physical model the DM can manipulate behind the screen.  I contemplated and almost made a little index card-origami model for myself.

The Sand Room
I would revise the sand room if I ran another party through it.  The cool thing about sand is that, unlike water, you can walk across the features it hides and you can't see them.  You might hide furniture, daises, thrones, etc.  The problem is, that the sand will always find the floor, so these features will only be apparent when they are on the wall or the ceiling, not a very useful place for thrones.  What I did was hid a world map, meh.  The party wasn't very excited by this and it didn't seem to utilize the full potential of the sand.

Now, I think I would make it hide work benches, anvils, sorting tables-- things that would be useful for thirty minutes at a time and could be attached to the wall.  You could have shelves too, as long as they were shuttered and the items inside well-secured.

Again, the whole point for me in tumbling the dungeon was not to try to confuse players, which seems like a much easier task, but to pack more exploration and wonder into the same amount of dungeon space.  Having a workshop appear where before there was only a sandy-floored room seems to get at this.  Especially if players begin suspecting something interesting might be hidden under the ten feet of sand.

Escape
Because the dungeon is consistent and only has four states it isn't too hard to figure out.  My players figured out how to get out in about 30 minutes to an hour of real time in which they were paying close attention to things and trying to map.  That being said, with about 15-30 minutes between rotations, it can take some time to ride out the tumbles until the exit becomes usable.  So this can play havoc with the idea that a party needs to end a session outside of a dungeon.  This didn't cause a lot of problems for me-- I just used dreamlike logic to warp different players in and out of the party when they were present to play.  But it might be a hitch if you are using Jeff Rients' table of Dungeon Doom.

Leaving the Tumbling Dungeon

Acch, I'm three play reports behind.  Here's two:
4/22
"G" F
    Le Bouche hireling
    Janis hireling
"Z" F
    Pita hireling
    Mika hireling
    Fabrino hireling
Darkyo F
Hugelina F

The party intended to re-enter the dungeon to look for Zhang Ziyang who holds the knowledge to cure the crew of plague.  Entering the first room they found a leather satchel with a root and a recipe signed by ZZ.  They followed the recipe, administered to three of the crew members, two of which died an agonizing death in front of them.  G feeling the accusations of the rest of the crew, drank from the concotion himself to show it wasn't intentional.  He lived. (he rolled the Big d30)

They pushed into the dungeon recovering ground previously explored.  There was a tense moment where G miscalculated turn time and was caught in the well room's cylindrycal passage as the dungeon turned.  With some scrambling, a rope was thrown to him, he walked along the bottom of the water and survived several attacks by creatures that look like giant tadpoles-- with lots of teeth.

Then a lever was surely and firmly pulled.  They found their way to the Alchemists Sleeping Chamber just as the dungeon was turning a way it had never turned before.  The frantic party jumped to the gimballed bed.  Pita, she-of-the-ever-bad-luck failed a roll and ended up in a squirming mass of grubs.  The party pulled her out.  And then realized someone was in the bed!

Zhang Ziyang.  He said he couldn't remember anything.  Under the bed were 6 drawers which revealed 2 silver rings, a bolt of folded cloth with an inscription in Arabic, a wolf's pelt and some gold.  We stopped there, with the party having a slumber party.

4/29
Mollie DP
Toral DP
Athydas MU
"G" F
    Le Bouche hireling
    Janis hireling
"Z" F
    Pita hireling
    Mika hireling
    Fabrino hireling
Zhang Ziyang NPC

We started out with Toral and Mollie heading into the dungeon alone (the rest of the players were late anyway) to search for the rest of the folks, the sick crew was getting worse-- a few more days and they'd all be stranded here.  Toral, who had grown a familiar with the Tumbling Dungeon's ways noticed at the first tumble that something was off.  They soon found themselves faced with something new, the Component Library was open for browsing.  Athydas (who joined the two above when his player showed up) decided to explore the shaft heading directly down with floating stone spheres in it.  He was very aware that if the dungeon tumbled he would be in bad shape.

Eventually the party below saw the lantern light and yelled up.  Ropes were rigged and the party all came up into the Component library.  ZZ was consulted and the appropriate root was found.  While this was happening Toral and Darkyo scouted out the central, spherical chamber to find a huge sphere of water slowly rotating in mid air.  Within it were darting black shapes and a pale, teenaged body.  Toral's hireling.

The party got the root and got out of Dodge.  The concoction brewed and administered, the crew began to show signs of relief.  Z administered some to the Knight of the Order of St Letholdus, who he seems to be trying to become friendly with.  Just as the party sailed Zhang Ziyang said he was staying behind.
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Some Thoughts

I need to do these sooner so the things I learned are more fresh in my mind.  I improved my descriptions of the dungeon as they became more clear in my head.  Poor Toral and Gail might have found the treasure trove if I had described the bed in its gimbal better.  The brass library with all the spells embossed was never described well by me, I still need to clarify that one in my own head.  I did figure out a simple way to fix my stair problem: floating, buoyant steps that stay where they are as the room rotates.

The session with all fighters was sort of boring, you need some magic to give players a wider range of options.

You can see how my constantly shifting player attendance can wreak havoc with any sensible narrative.  But I make it dreamlike and let people join the party and leave it without making a big deal about it.  When I go up a level as DM I think I'll try to implement Jeff Rients' table of Dungeon Doom to make sure partys aren't left in a dungeon at the end of a session.  This dungeon would have made that a little harder of course, because finding the exit would have been a tricky.

This sucks for players too, though, Because Gail and Toral basically mapped the whole dungeon out and then, when they couldn't play, G and Z had to figure it all out again for themselves.

Giving the spell transcription costs has made a huge difference for the magic-users.  They've been trying to kill seagulls to gather blood and quills, they are moving spells from scrolls to books and seem empowered in general.

Oh, I almost forgot, in that first session it was everybodies' birthday (or near it) and since it has been my tradition to give Boons to folks as gifts, three people wanted one.

"Okay, okay," I said.  "Two of you can pick a hard core perk the other has to pick from the animal perks."  Dice were rolled and Darkyo had to pick an animal.  She chose a trained ferret.  G chose the Obsidian Blade and Z chose the Iron Hammer, though I don't think he understands how, even as simple as it is, it works.  Interestingly, G was speculating later whether his blade might have killed the grubs. Yes, it would have worked if he tried.

Some things my players never found out: Pita has been infested with a parasite and will start vomiting monsters soon.  There were two witches.  Zhang Ziyang was charmed.  At the center of the dungeon, the reason for the tumbling, is a golden elixir.  Zhang Ziyang knows this.  He intends to drink it.

Your Biggest DMing Screw Up?

Okay, I spent a lot of time envisioning how this dungeon of mine changes as it rotates through space.  There's sand shifting, there's water slopping about, and hinged brass plaques.  I feel like I got this down.  I remembered a list of things Zak said he included in designing his own adventures.  One was, something that could throw everything off the rails if the players mess with it, forcing him to improvise.

Okay, I thought, I'll put a lever in the center of this dungeon that will change the axis of the dungeon's rotation.

 And lo, he said,

"Let the dungeon tumble!"    

First session, they pulled it and put it back in its first position.  Later, the same.  Last night they pulled it and left it.  And I realized I hadn't thought this through. . . my hallway of four spheres has no way of keeping the stone boulders from falling and crushing the alchemist's bed below them once that hallway becomes a vertical shaft.  The water will also fall out of the well room via its hallway now become a shaft under it.  Ditto the sand.  Arrgh, I'm just wavin' my hands like crazy now until they get out of this place: "The stone spheres are floating above you . . "  Damn my hubris.

So, I'm curious what was your biggest DMing screw up was.  Please.  Be honest, this is a safe place . . .

Update: Thanks for the comments so far.  I thought I'd add this pic to demonstrate what should have happened if I hadn't pretended it hadn't.  The water is pouring out the opening, down the hallway there, and off into the rest of the dungeon:

Into the Tumbling Dungeon II

I ended up running a session with only 2 players yesterday.  It evoked a weird feeling for someone who used not have anyone to play with.  I enjoy the social aspect of our sessions, and spend so much time developing the material, just two players seemed kind of like having a party with just two people-- what's the point.  But we played, it was fun, I think I creeped them a little (that really isn't my only goal, but it seems easier than others).

Toral DP
Gail MU
Zhang Ziyang NPC

Alone in the Tumbling Dungeon they dithered and went back and forth a lot.  They found a passage with four spheres sunk in the floor, made their way past it and found a new room.  Black walls with crystals embedded in them, it looked like a night sky.  A bed on gyroscope-like gimbals in the middle, the floor covered with a writhing mass of giant grubs.  They turned back.  They'd been getting pretty blasé about the dungeon's tumbles and a little later found themselves caught midway down a passage that was quickly becoming a vertical shaft.

Sliding the last bit, they fell ~20' into soft sand.  The lantern went out.  The three of them sat their catching their breath.  In the darkness, only the sounds of four people breathing.  Four!  Toral tried pray unsuccessfully for light.  The witch touched his neck, whispered "You are unwanted."  She mentioned they must be weaker than she had thought.  Gail agreed, "Oh yes, we aren't powerful at all," assuming she saw the powerful as a threat.  "Weak enough for me to slit open your bellies?" she asked.  Gail frantically relit the lantern.  It's light filled the room to reveal something crawling quickly up the the shaft out of view.  Zhang Ziyang was gone.

They dithered a little more but eventually figure the way out. Back on the beach the sailors of the junk Haiyan are slowly dying of plague.  After resting the night, Toral prayed for healing in his broken arm and was answered, then prayed to have his plague removed and was answered!  But they both know the sailors will die in a few days, miracles are uncertain, and the healing root and the one who knows how to prepare it are both back in the dungeon.

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Some Thoughts

More training for me on roleplaying npcs.  I know if the witches confront these folks, the witches will most likely end up dead.  So, when I rolled one an encounter I figured she was shadowing, shadowing.  "What will she do?" I was wracking my brains, then the dingleberries got so careless with the dungeon they ended up in a hallway they should have know was about to become a shaft.  An viola, perfect.  She's there in the darkness with them.

What now?  Especially because there's another session tonight which will involve a much larger party.  I'm thinking the witches will leave a root and instructions to prepare it in the first room of the dungeon.  They just want these fools out of here.  Of course it will be poison and written in ZZ's hand who is charmed by them now.

Also, the grubs are a dud.  I made them slow moving, and basically harmless, as long as you don't try to hurt them or let them crawl up your leg.  I think they need to start turning into beetles of some horrible sort.

Session Tonight

As always, I don't feel prepared enough at all.  Some random thoughts.

At least one of the players caught the plague.  I went to the lbbs looking for a simple mechanic for plague.  Finally found the diseases in Blackmoor, but the rules weren't very helpful for me. 

"There is a 10% chance that if the victim doesn't succumb, he will be permanently incapacitated. Any person that contracts this disease will infect 90% of the people he comes in contact with. There is a 5% chance that the victim that contracts it will do so only as a carrier, not

having it himself. Once survived, the player will have immunity."

Okay, it gives rules for how to catch it, but what then?  You just die?  How soon?  And for "permanently incapacitated," what does that mean?  In a coma?  Weakened so they can't adventure?

One of the original suggestions of why a tumbling dungeon might exist at all was to turn an alchemical potion.  The more I flesh out the dungeon the more I've gone in that direction.  I have a storage area for alchemical powders, a library of material components.  I've planned a library made of hinged brass plaques and a room of diagrams and shifting sand.

I decided the Grand Alchemist was "Arabic", but is long gone now.  I'm thinking there might be some crones taking advantage of the facilities, some pearly grubs, and a sentient black, oily liquid as per richard's suggestion.

The players may not even remember they were interested in this point on the map, but there may be something that I can use to steer them toward it, one of the passengers is a Chinese alchemist and he may recognize the significance of this site.  He may also know it as a possible place to find a cure for the plague victims.

I feel kind of crappy about nudging them toward this, but other than that it is an 8 days voyage to the city they are heading to and I have nothing prepared for that city, no map no npcs, nothing.

The advantage of having a blog and a smart phone, is I can show players pics at the drop of the hat for magic items like the fingerbone necklace, or whatever.  Okay back to work.

The Component Library

Enter a large room (30x30x30).  The facing wall is covered with 900 evenly spaced spikes.  If the wall you are entering from is examined, it's seen to be covered in 900 evenly spaced divots.

When this room Tumbles, the spikes act as plum-bobs pulling chains from (what is now) the ceiling.  Each chain has items attached at foot-length intervals.  There are 900 alchemical components-- vials of liquid, pressed plants, dried organs.

When the room eventually tumbles again, weights at the wall-end retract the chains back out of the room.

The components are organized very precisely by a system based on the humours:

I'm thinking the third dimension could be rarity, with those nearest the floor the most common.  But, the Grand Alchemist had to have been able to reach the rarest components too, maybe a turban of climbing?

Now, any recommendations for material component charts, or should I make one?

The Well Room

My players are on a ship, headed north, but seem very interested in stopping at a mark on the map for which I have nothing prepared.  So I'm thinking I'll use stuff I've worked up partially, which means finishing up the Tumbling Dungeon.  So here is another room I just figured out.  It was like doing geometry homework, damn you OSR!!!! Haha.  If I have errors let me know*.

Here we see the room as first encountered.  Water is all in the Well.  At the bottom of the shaft there is a secret room storing alchemical powders.

Now the room has tumbled once (rotated through it's vertical axis).  Forgive me, this is very hard for me to represent graphically, but basically the water pours out filling the room with ten feet of water.
So, to lay out all the states the room will tumble through:

1. Water in the well. When players first see it.
2. Circular tunnel in the wall, room full of water.
3. Circular hole in ceiling, room full of water.
4. Circular tunnel in other wall, room full of water.

 I'm pondering putting critters in the water.

* the cylindrical tunnel actually widens from about 10' in the wall to 15' for the rest of the run in order to hold that volume of water, but I drew it simpler.  I figure if players start asking about water volume then, yes, biting critters appear.

Hall of Four Spheres

Designing a Tumbling Dungeon is proving more difficult than I'd hoped. At least, in balancing how interesting the turned chambers are with the complexity of explaining them. I thought I might put up some chambers piecemeal as they come to me.

The Hall of Four Spheres is first encountered as a hallway with domes in the flour. These domes are made of stone/iron/brass and have inscriptions of astrological signs on them representing four skies:

The domes are actually full spheres resting in hemispherical depressions in the floor.  When the hallway is rotated (or the gravity is switched to either of the two walls or the ceiling), the spheres will roll, blocking the passage.  Children, hobbits, and talking dogs may be able to slip between the spheres and the walls of the passage when blocked, but then they'll have to fight the grue alone.  There could be interesting inscriptions in those depressions revealed when the spheres roll free, you might need a child, hobbit, or talking dog to squeeze in there and see.

The Tumbling Dungeon II

Here's a draft of a pretty simple dungeon that rotates around one axis.  To keep it manageable it will have four states.  The first is the way it looks when the party first enters and pokes around the place:

To visualize state two, print this out then pull the title toward you until the page is vertical.  What was hallway BCF now become a vertical shaft.  To get to state three continue rotating the title toward you and down and you get this:

What used to be the floors of all these chambers are now their ceilings.  What goes in those rooms and halls is for another post, but I wanted to try and convey what I had in mind.

Some additional thoughts.  I struggled with doors; at one point I even had a draft map with stairs leading up to the door from each of the four directions.  I think it is simplest to just say the "doors" are square openings in the exact center of the walls.

The central spherical chamber is the reason for the dungeon.  It could be made larger.  I'm toying with the idea of corrugating the walls of those 45 degree halls that become chutes, so that they actually become stairways.  I mean, I'm not trying to make a death trap here.  On the other hand, it might be interesting and nervous-making for players to start sliding down a slick chute.

Update:  Doors are still a problem.  I forgot the rooms as drawn here are 30x30x30, which means a 10x10 opening in the center of the wall is 10 feet off the ground!  I guess we could put rungs leading to the opening from all sides, but that would sort of give away the rotational nature in the first room.  I'll think more about this.

The Tumbling Dungeon

I don't mean tumbling in the sense of rolling down an infinite hill (I'll leave that for someone else to explore), but turning through the vertical plane; "rotating" and "revolving" make me think more of movement in the horizontal plane.

A horizontally rotating dungeon seems to be more about trickery-- the puzzlement of identical rooms being switched out as a means to confound players.  I'm more interested in the dungeon already explored becoming an alien place by being turned-- in essence extending the exploration of the same place by making it new with each rotation.  Well, that and just the wonderment of a huge turning place.

The Rotation
Going along with the idea of extending exploration, I think a tumbling dungeon should turn 1) slow enough so that it isn't trap-like and dangerous to explorers, 2) at predictable intervals, 3) at intervals far enough apart that explorers have enough time to explore each turned state.  The last point will depend on the size of the dungeon, but I'm thinking 1-2 hours between rotations at least.  And this is really important because it places a practical limit on the size of our dungeon.

Dungeon Size
My first sketch of a possible tumbling dungeon was a cube of 5 rooms by 5 rooms.  I quickly found out it would be extremely difficult to not only represent this visually, but for players to form a mental mindscape of it while exploring.

So, I reduced it to a cube of 2 rooms by 2 rooms.  Still too complex.  I think tumbling dungeons of this size might work in a video game, but I want something simpler.  I think it should be just complex enough for a player to hold in their mind while providing interesting things to investigate on each rotation.  The perfect size would also allow for at least one rotation to happen during a session of play-- otherwise memory and player churn will become a problem. Remember, a cube rotating will have 4 states, so you'll multiply the number of dungeon chambers by four (and then need to design those rooms).  I'm thinking a dungeon with four rooms and four passages might be just about right for me.

Building Blocks
As far as I can tell there are four classes of elements that will come into play in a tumbling dungeon:

• Rolling Elements-- balls and cylinders
• Fluids-- water and sand
• Hinged Elements- these are connected at two points, doors and shutters
• Swinging Elements-- these are connected at one point.  Unless you're rotating in more than one direction they'll function very much like hinged elements.  Although there may be some differences, the ability to push them aside and such.  Think chains and pendulums.

All of these can function to, not just change the look of a room but hide and reveal features and channel travel by making areas traversable or not.

Gravity
If this place is a feature that has existed for a while, then it will most likely be sparsely decorated and with the building blocks above.  Anything loose would have been tumbled to bits.  So any treasure items will have to be ingeniously secured.

I like the idea of magic producing anti-gravity effects which the tumbling dungeon can't, and thus I would reserve magic for that effect and keep my tumbling dungeon a physical apparatus turning with huge gears or pivots somewhere in a cavernous void.  But using magic to shift gravitational direction would yield essentially identical results as having the dungeon actually physically turning.  So, it's really up to your preference as a DM.

Misc. Thoughts
The first rotation after entering should probably block the entrance the party came in by, forcing some exploration of this strange place.

I think it would be a bonus if it isn't obvious at first that this dungeon rotates, i.e. no chairs on the ceiling.  hat way you get a little extra surprise from players on that first rotation.

For those of you that have a simulationist streak that's wondering why the hell someone would build a place like this, two ideas: an alchemical formula that needs blending for a 1000 years, eldritch eggs that need a source of heat evenly applied to keep them viable.

I can't do a post about rotating dungeons without directing you to Grim's idea of using a Rubik's Cube to generate dungeons with geomorphs, and Norman Harman's further exploration of the idea along with a proof of concept.  Awesome, but it seemed more about generating the dungeon on the surface of the cube than experiencing the effects of those rooms moving through three dimensional space.  Of course, all the ideas above could be applied to a Rubik's Cube dungeon, although I think Norman, like me, found it to be quite difficult to map and represent to players.