I'm currently working on dungeon style adventure for my 7th Sea group. Its something of an experiment as that rule system doesn't lend itself to traditional resource management-style dungeoncrawling. I started work from the 5-Room dungeon method, but quickly branched out to make the whole complex less linear and more interesting.
The is set in the mountains of Vestenmannavnjar (pseduo-Skandinavian countries) and carries the working title of "the tomb of Loki". That alone should give anyone a solid idea of the tone of the location.
Anyway, I was hoping for a bit of help with ideas for some cool Norse-themed encounters, tricks and puzzles. I have quite a few sketched out and ready for mapping, but the whole place is definitely still in the outline stages. I've poked around but while there are tons of viking-themed settings and classes, there is hardly anything in terms of dungeon adventures. So here I am.
So far, here are a couple of the design points I've been playing with:
- the dungeon is designed to keep things in, not out
- runes are a major feature--the game features 13 runes of power; the player objective is to uncover a potential 14th (FORBIDDEN) rune.
- "Loki" is not necessarily Loki of Norse myth--as much a tortured Promethian figure as a trickster and agent of chaos. (Like everything else in the setting, start with a pastiche and then spiral outward).
- being a prison, the place is more about puzzles and traps (keeping things imprisoned) than it is combat encounters.
- traps and puzzles are big--think pulp-style deathtraps vs resource drains (dart traps that do 1d4 damage).
Any suggestions and ideas are welcome. Don't worry about mechanics. I appreciate the help.
Tom
Riddles - The Vikings were mad keen on riddles, like the Angles and Saxons before them.
Dragons - Got to have a dragon, right? Maybe not Fafnir, but maybe someone turned into a dragon, like Fafnir.
Dwarves - Not the D&D ones, but the magical weapon creating ones, or the gem-mining ones
Elves - Again, not the D&D Elves, but the Alfar and Svartalfar, Light and Dark Elves, but not Drow
Trolls - Not the D&D ones, but you get my drift ...
Ships - Nothing says weird like a longship in the middle of a dungeon
Off the top of my head:
A troll based on myths about trolls, i.e. hundreds of arms, or hundreds of heads, rather than the Tolkien/Three Hearts-based rubber-mask trolls. You might want to counterpoint the monstrous horror of its body by making it a social/puzzle encounter rather than a fight.
Corridors filling with an icy mist as draugr shuffle toward the party (because The Fog is a great movie and this doesn't happen enough in RPGs). Perhaps the draugr are formed from the souls of dead labourers, trapped in the complex at its completion a la ancient egypt (iirc). Is there a way to send them on their way to Hel?
A doorway that's an enormous wolf maw filled with foot-long fangs, decorated with severed hands. How long will the party poke and prod before realising it's just a fancy door leading to...
A wolf pen with three talking wolves. Two are bad vargs, orrible bandit-lords imprisoned for their terrible crimes. The other is innocent and could prove helpful if freed. But with all three claiming to be the innocent party, what will the PCs do?
I'll stick in more stuff as it comes to me, if any of this is useful.
Ships?
Crap.
Now I'm ditching my funky "Mario across the lava moat" scene and just giving the heroes an enchanted longboat. That's x10 as cool!!!
Tom