Arcane research facility

[wdmartin]

The following post contains a few spoilers for the adventure path Rise of the Runelords. If you care about that, stop reading now.

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<Long_winded_explanation>

In Book 5 of Rise of the Runelords as written, there are seven mini-dungeons each themed around a particular sin, associated with a particular school of magic. I didn't particularly like the lust dungeon. It didn't make a whole lot of sense to me, and was moderately squicky besides. And since I'm rewriting large parts of the book anyway, its backstory no longer made sense.

So I found myself in need of a new lust dungeon.

...

How often do you get to say that on a public forum? @_@

In the lore of Golarion, the ancient realm of Eurythnia was associated with lust and the enchantment school of magic. The ruler of the place, Sorshen, wanted some way to avoid death and live forever -- a classic villainous goal. She apparently settled on something that involved bathing in blood, a la Elizabeth Bathory, but wasn't keen on notion of becoming a vampire, which would be the most straightforward way to go about it.

So I decided the dungeon I would build for my players would be a research facility dedicated to studying vampirism in the hopes of separating the undead part from the everliving part, so that Sorshen could have the whole living-forever thing without having to invest in boatloads of SPF 10,000 sunscreen.

</Long_winded_explanation>



This is an initial draft. It's got exam rooms for things like watching people turning into vampires and then dissecting them, holding cells for experimental subjects, exsanguination chambers for extracting and studying the blood of both vampires, normal people, and so on. It's got labs, and chambers for the researchers to sleep in (safely vampire-proofed).

It's also got two big circular rooms labelled Mystery Rooms #1 and #2. I have no idea what went on in there. I stuck them in because I liked the look of them, which is a cardinal sin that I myself have publicly chastised people for. Dungeons should make sense. They should have rooms that support the intended function of the facility. Those rooms should be laid out in such a way that it's possible for the original owners to get from one place to another in the course of doing whatever nefarious deeds the place was built to handle. It bugs the heck out of me when I see dungeons that are so badly laid out that they make it impossible for the original owners to use them.

So I appeal to the guild: what are those two mystery rooms for? I need some kind of reason to have them there.

I could always take them out, along with the associated curvy corridors. But then we'd be left with an awfully linear dungeon. From a game design perspective, I want the players to have options for different paths they might take in exploring the place even if they wind up in the same room at the end.

[wdmartin]

And here's a first draft at a Photoshop version.



I like the pulsating green floors, but they're also awfully busy. I may have to tone them down, or restrict them to specific areas. They're a bit too dominant.

[EliodeGM]

Martin

Not got an answer to your request. But was wondering if you'd be ok with me using this map layout for my next self taught excercise?

[wdmartin]

Sure, go ahead. Here's an SVG version of the layout, which can be edited in Inkscape (or Illustrator if you have that).

masks.svg

I generally make masks for floor plans in Inkscape first, then export them as PNGs before I go to Photoshop. There is an extra step in that Inkscape's default DPI is 90, and I usually work at a hundred. So once the PNG is exported, you have to change its DPI settings to 100 without resizing it. I usually use Paint.net for that step by going to Canvas Size, changing the DPI to 100 and leaving the rest untouched. Then I can do stuff like add a white background. It ends up something like this:

[EliodeGM]

oops I already got much further along... but yes the mask would have been great as a starting point - lol

[EliodeGM]

Not sure you want this in this thread, so sorry if its an uninvited response but here's where I got.



I know it's not exactly the same I started without the Mask you shared but hope you like it.

[EliodeGM]

SO I've been thinking about those two side rooms.

Clearly you have cells to hold victims in. And those would be reached through the central passage.

The upper and lower rooms could be exposed to sunlight, or used as some kind of open area that experiments associated with vampire weaknesses are explored. Have them filled with storage solutions for wooden stakes, garlic powder, sun-stones, mirrors, religious symbols.

[wdmartin]

Oo, I like that! But I think I'm going to riff off it a bit:

The end goal of the researchers was to create a form of vampirism which doesn't suffer all the downsides of being dead and vulnerable to sun. Right? The blue rectangle in the original diagram is supposed to be some sort of table where experimental subjects could be infused with horrific arcane solutions pumped in from the two cisterns (blue circles). So the researchers were working at integrating sunlight into the turning process to immunize the subjects to it. The two side chambers therefore contain a pair of giant mirrors that send light bouncing down the corridors into the main chamber, where the beams focus on the cisterns while a subject is being infused.

And yeah, light generally travels in straight lines, and the tunnels are curvy. But you know what? MAGIC! ^_^

Thanks, that was very helpful.

[wdmartin]

And here's revision two.



I really like the glowy green floor, but it was just too overwhelming when used in large areas. I have therefore scaled it back to a few select areas, and gone with standard grey stone for the rest.

Sigh. I do get tired of grey on grey on grey.

Anyway, I added a bunch of cracks to the tiles, made the walls into proper bricks, and put stairs in so you can tell that the chambers at the east end are supposed to be higher up, with a small balcony-like thing that overlooks the main chamber. I'm not sure I'm adequately conveying the height of the balcony. Oh, and I darkened the earth around the dungeon.

[wdmartin]

Yet another attempt at making the green floors work.