... now with 35% more arrogance!

Monday, January 23, 2012

MegaModule: Rotating Circular Chamber

I know I've done this before as an unkeyed geomorph, but this version of the old rotating room cliché is arranged a little different. The interpretation here is that the room is designed to control access to a living/working area, located to the east of the map. The center is a circular chamber with a couple stools and a gong; when the gong is rung, slaves or some other team of laborers in a room below begin pushing a large horizontal wheel with spokes, causing the stone wall resting on top to rotate. A single 10-foot gap in the wall lines up with different exits as it rotates. Another ringing of the gong lets the laborers know when to stop; they may also have instructions to stop after one full rotation.

Edit: I had deleted the treasure content of the chest because I was going to change it, then forgot to actually do so. Sorry! The chest contains 300 gp in addition to the listed books. Module text now reflects that change.

The dungeon I am currently running is not a megadungeon and has a much smaller conceptual area, so the rotating room the players dealt with yesterday worked quite differently; it was more of a puzzle room than a control point, and there were no guards or living areas. Instead, the room rotates continuously, and in the center of the room is a capstan. Turning the capstan in different directions changes the rate of rotation:

  • Reference Point: room rotates counterclockwise once per day
  • 1 Complete Turn Clockwise: room stops rotating
  • 1 Complete Turn Counterclockwise: room rotates once per hour

There's another capstan in one of the connecting rooms which has the same effect. The players figured this all out, so they can now enter and exit the area without problem.

No comments:

Post a Comment