Classic Dungeon Crawl Monsters and Traps

[K]

Rust monsters that destroy magic items, green slimes that destroy magic items, traps that destroy magic items.

Magic fountains with weird effects everywhere.

Permanent transformations. Demon hands, sex or alignment switches, age or race changes, curses, etc.

Random magic effects.

[JonSetanta]

What is this, Ranma?

[rampaging-poet]

K's right, it's not an old-school dungeon without at least one magic fountain. The effects are usually completely random, but if anything I'd tend to make drinking from the fountain beneficial. The huge number of "magic fountain screws you" traps I've read would never have come into existence if there wasn't some incentive to drink from them in the first place.

You know what goes well with permanent transformations? Items only usable by [insert description here], or items that apply a transformation but are otherwise useful. Keeping transformations in order to use items is exactly the kind of thing that pisses off "roleplay not rollplay" DMs enough that they create all the arbitrary crap designed to screw over their particular party's standard trap-finding procedures in the first place.

Having huge amounts of magic weapons and such throughout the dungeon also works well with item-destroying monsters in other parts of the dungeon. Standard procedure is not to try anything until it's identified (and even then have remove curse ready just in case), but if green slime just ate all your clothes it might be tempting to wear that untested suit of magic chainmail now instead of later.


More than anything, it's the philosophy behind all the crazy classic stuff that's important to the feel. Permanent transformations stem from the idea that every adventure should leave a mark the adventurers. Many cursed items are a response to metagaming players that think they know what items look like, and others insert an additional element of gambling in using found objects. Instant death traps are a combination of "Rube Goldberg Machines are awesome" and "Nobody could survive that." Arbitrary antimagic is a result of DMs that are upset about high-level spells changing the game. Most of the rest boils down to assuming high-level characters are fundamentally human with all the limits that entails.

- Edited for typos -

[shadzar]

I'm trying to write out a joking parody of "old school" dungeon crawls, complete with instadeath traps, encounter tables, and designated mapmakers.

What dungeon encounters should I include? Iconic or wacky, it'll all go in.

are you the person doing the old modules as comics?

first you would have to understand "old school" dungeon crawls before you can even begin to parody them. not that there is anything to parody unless you are trying to parody the incorrect stereotype for them to continue to perpetuate ignorance of "old school" dungeon crawls.

assuming you are trying to make a parody of the sterotype given by idiots at WotC and those who it brought into gaming and tought wrongly what "old school" was....


1 room.
2 doors.

both one way doors and the entrance door only allows a single person to pass through it. think revolving door.

once inside the cast room the smell of death is everywhere. darkness and silence is cast via artifact (on the ceiling) on the entire room and cannot be dispelled.

on the left side of the room from the door is a gelatinous cube sitting perfectly in the corner so if you try to follow along the wall to reach another door, you will run into it.

on the right side of the room the wall is covered in green slime.

the door on the opposite end of the room is actually a mimic.

a pit in the middle of the room is full of rot grubs that sometimes crawl into the G-cube as it reaches form the corner to the pits edge.

a small brazier burns forever between the pit and the right wall keeping the green slime at bay from filling the pit.

a single arrow slit is along the left wall past the G-cube, which is actually a lever concealment that when pulled will raise the ceiling taking the darkness and silence area with it revealing everything in the room and allowing exit from the room. though the ceiling does not raise far enough to see outside of the room, only to let enough light in to reveal its deadly wares.

outside the room are walls of gold and a single brazier like the one in the room, that sit atop the ceiling to reflect the light into the room for anyone that made it to raise the ceiling to see what they escaped from.

it is also how things were placed into the room.

X treasure is inside the G-cube and rot grub pit depending on how many victims had gone inside the room.

1 in 3 people inside the room will come into contact with at least 1 of its dangers, but any less can carefully avoid them all with extreme caution.

[hyzmarca]

Spaceships. You want at least one crashed alien spaceship. With an evil bunny that isn't a bunny.