Just thinking.. Cursed Doors?
I keep thinking about locked doors. Too many of them. Players start kicking them open after the first hour. They stop treating it like a risk. I want them to hesitate again.
Thinking. Could I make the door itself cursed?
Not a mimic. Just a door. It remembers who forces it. Weeks later something comes for them. Marked. Silent at first. A shadow at the edge of the torchlight.
I like the idea of a door that whispers a name. Only one player hears it. They probably won’t tell the others. That’s the hook. Little paranoia. They start wondering if they should leave the next door alone.
Thinking… a Fighter pushes the door. Fails the Strength check. Door says “No.” Just that. Quiet. Then opens anyway. Party moves on. That night the fighter keeps watch. He hears the same voice behind him. But nothing is there.
“The dungeon keeps score. Doors are the ledger.”
The darker part is the choice it offers me. I can wait. I can let the tension rot in the player’s mind. Or I can cash it in immediately for a fight. Both work. But slower is crueler. I want slower.
What if the party figures it out.? They start getting scared of touching doors.
But what if the curse spreads through objects?
Rope. Crowbars. They start running out of safe options. They have to decide. Open the next door or camp in the hall forever.
I need to decide how to signal the first consequence. Maybe a missing gear piece. Or a monster they swore they killed. Or a door that’s already closed behind them. I want them to know the dungeon saw them.
Not sure if it works long term. Might turn into paranoia that stops the session. Maybe the dungeon needs a mechanic for release. Like an offering. Burn some treasure. Bleed a little. Close a door properly. I like that. A ritual to ask forgiveness from doors.
I’ll try it next game..
Disclaimer: Just thinking is me exploring ideas, sometimes they are just rambles and other times they are pure genius. You decide.
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"Damn this infernal temple!" you anguished.
Nearly a fortnight had passed since you followed the trail of the parishioner's wayward daughter. She had been acting strange, whispering to herself, hiding from the townsfolk. Paranoia struck her and then one night she simply vanished. A guardsman had seen her heading towards the Halcyon. A once holy temple, now cursed.The site was restricted. No one in or out. But she found her way in. And after the girl's father put a hefty pile of gold coins in your hand, so did you.
The coins now sat heavier in your satchel. It had been days since any of you had any real food and the last of the rations were almost gone. This place wasn't just cursed, it was a trap. A mirage. And a dangerous one at that. Doors lined the labyrinthine halls. But save for a few scorched thresholds, they were closed and seemed destined to stay that way.
Barrett had found out the hard way. The whispers that crawled into your mind each time you passed a door had weighed particularly heavy on him and finally taken their toll. In a fit of rage he swung his battle-axe at one of the crimson doors.
Singed flesh still punctuated the air. Days had passed and his wounds festered. Then came the sweats and then the fevered dreams. Now the only thing that marked him among the living was the unnerving whispers. Whatever the doors were speaking to him, he was now repeating it. And repeating it. And repeating it.
No matter. Without a way out soon, Barrett will die. You all will. The engraving on the mantle of the central terrace was mocking you. A clue? A riddle? Or maybe just a cruel taunt.
"Wicked are the restless souls. May peace and resolution guide you."
"Bloody riddles!"
Vera had suggested listening to the doors. She thought maybe they were asking for something, but the whispers were like echoes. Hollow. Misshapen. If only you could hear them.
Hear them like Barrett could.
Maybe he was the key to the doors. To the riddle. To salvation.
You suddenly recalled something Barrett screamed out during one of his fits. "They need peace. Put things right. Put things right."
Maybe Vera wasn't wrong after all. What if these weren't cursed doors? What if they were vessels? No. It couldn't be. Could it?
You'd heard the tales of soul harvesters. Dark wizards who consumed souls to absorb their power. But those were only tall tales. Weren't they?
No one had ever actually seen a soul harvester. Not for real. And even if they had, the stories spoke of amulets made from soul shards. But this, this was something more.
A cursed palace with a hundred doors, maybe more. If it were true. If it were all true. What would you find on the other side?
Maybe some fates are worse than death.
I really need to buy a new copy of the 1e DM's Guide. Posts like this keep reminding me. Anyway, somewhere in there is the section about doors in dungeons and how they open for monsters but stick for PCs. How the players will need to spike them open or have the door swing closed behind them. Gary said something about dungeons being a place that bends reality, just a little.
I have in my world two types of dungeon. The usual sort, and delves. Delves are not normal. First, they are filled with miasma, which on the plus side muffles sound. On the negative side it dampens light and blocks many forms of infra- and ultra- vision. Not the lifesight of undead though. Miasma manifests monsters, so delves will literally respawn. Miasma monsters all have magic crystals in them, which are valuable for spells and magic items. They also mutate you and in large quantities generate miasma.
Delves appear near cities. They are alive. They respond to the actions of the players, getting more and more aggressive the longer the players poke and prod within them. Yes doors are a key part of this. Especially locked ones. But each time they expensive energy, they have to start building it up again. This replaces random encounters in a delve.
You can feel it building. With enough experience you can know, it is about to strike us, find a defendable place and provoke it, then advance knowing you have some time before it can do that again. But it might also learn to fake you out and spawn something at a distance, then build up and spawn again when you're dealing with that first one after it travels to you. Possibly bringing things with it from deeper in. Also, the best way to provoke it is to break a locked door... But then you can't use the door as a defense tool.
My players tend to avoid delves and focus on normal dungeons. But the delves will overpopulate and start sending out monsters into the nearby areas. Their goal is to devour the nearby city. Then reproduce.