The Living Room
We talked about mimics back here, but there are plenty of other monsters out there that use the fine art of disguise. When it comes to the “every part of the room is a monster” gag, you wind up going to the way-back machine for stun jellies, lurkers above, and trappers. You then fill these living rooms up with the aforementioned mimics, ropers, animated statues, animated objects, assassin vines, and a dozen other monsters-that-look-like-innocuous-window-dressing. What results is a dungeon of unexpected peril. What’s interesting is this impulse to make the mundane dangerous.
Now I’m only spitballing here, but I think that there’s a reason we have so many monsters-that-looks-like-other-things filling the pages of our bestiaries. When you put on your game master / game designer hat, it’s your job to invent a fantastical environment. Suppose you’ve got an adventure in a creepy abandoned asylum. There will be haunts and madmen; prison cells and enraged spirits. There will be creepy wheelchairs, collapsed floors, and moldering straitjackets hanging on hooks. And hey, wouldn’t it be neat if one of those straitjackets flew at the players and grappled them? Sure it would. That’s why it’s already a thing.
When you get into imaginary locations and begin puzzling out what they contain, it’s only natural to imagine the window dressing first. You then naturally ask yourself, How can we make this window dressing dangerous? How can we hide the monster in the environment? The solution is to make the monster the environment. It gets ’em every time.
Question of the day then: What is the best “holy crap that thing is alive!” moment you’ve had in a game? Were you actually surprised, or did you manage to see the ambush coming? Let’s hear it in the comments!
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Mine is actually the opposite of a “holy crap that’s alive.” We were around level 13 and approaching a mega dungeon. The entrance was flanked on both sides by “iron statues” which we naturally (and correctly) assumed were golems. After beating them we enter the place and find a long, ornate carpet strewn along the ground of this ancient stone area.
First thought was it would come alive and msother us, so we stabbed, froze, and burned it. We successfully ruined a part of the carpet. In no immediate danger, we thought it may be magic so cast “detect magic” in it. Nothing. Of course, now the answer was clear: it was hiding a pit trap underneath the path, so we grabbed the end and started rolling it up in front of us until we could roll no more. Still nothing. Finally, we cautiously moved forward, testing the ground in front of us. Turns out, the carpet was just window dressing. It’s only function was to show us the path, but gamer paranoia stayed with us the whole time. Though in hindsight, that carpet would be the perfect distraction to launch an ambush from the ceiling…
Never let your PCs near an art gallery:
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/statues
My favorite is the Cloaker. It hangs on the wall, looking like a cloak (or a bunch of cloaks potentially, it can make illusions). Then, if someone tries to touch it, it shrieks loudly to paralyze them with fear, then wraps around them and eats them.
Of course, being a player more than a DM, it’s my favorite because it’s CN and speaks a language. That means you could befriend it. Wake up in the morning, put on your Cloaker, listen to it shriek until you’re immune to the fear for the day, and you’ve got a nice little buddy who will literally guard your back.
Befriending creatures of all types is my goal, and mimics are no exception. I love all of the little buggers. Having an item as essentially your familiar is very appealing. One day I hope a DM will let me play as a mannequin mimic. =)
Did you ever read “The Sunken Land?” It’s a Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser short story, and I suspect it is the origin of cloakers. It is also genuinely frightening.
No, but that sounds like it’s worth checking out. =)
I had a party who was hard up for some weapons. As they were exploring the ruins of an ancient elven city, they came across an abandoned armory full of masterwork mithril swords. In delight they ran straight in.
Of course all the swords were animated and stated flinging themselves at the heroes. I did let them keep the weapons once they defeated them though!
I’ve toyed with the idea of building an “armory construct” in the past. I always imagined it would function like a living rod of lordly might. Hmmm… Maybe I’ll actually create one of those guys next time my players encounter an armory. Maybe the kind of magic weapon they get will vary depending on when they destroy the construct. Thanks for the inspiration!
Love it, that’s a GREAT idea.
Ever get so frustrated with a paranoid/idiotic player that you changed your mind on something and killed them with a gazebo? I’ve never looked into what ways one could utilize a mimic/animated object/some other living object, always have wanted to do so, though. But yeah, whenever there’s a statue or some other decorative object placed on the map, I’m always wary…
Now that I think about it, I guess my big “holy crap it’s alive” moment would be this time in 4e, my party was making it through this manor, when gradually, things became more and more distorted and grotesque… Now, as the player, I’ve always been disturbed by the thought of being inside of some fleshy atrocity… Anyways, as we were being guided into this fleshy nightmare, we were being assaulted by some Forsaken Shells, adding to the whole “nightmare of flesh made real.”
Safe to say, my character couldn’t stand to eat meat for a whole month…
Well then. “Forsaken shell” turns out to be a horrifying trip down Google lane. 🙁
I feel this needs linking for context…
http://www.netfunny.com/rhf/jokes/98/Jul/gazebo.html
Still one oh my favorite lil snippets.
Though it does bring up a good point about meta knowledge going both ways.
It’s hard to keep your character from knowing what you know. It’s even harder for your character to know what you don’t…
My party once assumed (correctly) that a suit of armor was animate, despite it not moving. They hit it a few times and knocked it down, and then they assumed all was well, because it didn’t fight back. As they turned around to run from a ghost in the next room, they found a somewhat damaged suit of armor in their way. Moral of the story: if you thinks it is hostile, make sure it is very dead before you turn your back.
You ever hear of Prop Hunt? I’ve seen that mess happen in Prop Hunt. Put a few bullets in the vending machine, it doesn’t move, and you move on with life. Then the vending machine runs away.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifJi4tYxG3E&list=PL3tRBEVW0hiAcksNiILvUOWUbVQXwGbuH&index=2
Ok, now I’m going to put a “this room is 100% monsters” room somewhere in my game. That’s just too funny of an idea to pass up. If it turns out too “will absolutely kill the party” I’ll put some sort of sleep enchantment on the place so they can just… look at it in horror. And be paranoid of every mundane object they see forever more. =P
Then they try to run away, but the door swings shut! And in voice of Macho Man Randy Savage the door declares, “You ain’t going nowhere!”
Went to a shop to pick up a “special” medical construct for a mob boss.
Nobody answers, so we enter anyways to see if they are home but in distress or dead, etc… (It’s night time and they are supposed to be home and expecting us)
Upon entering we find nothing out of sorts.
In the kitchen there is a cauldron on the floor.
I find out it has swallow whole, the hard way.
I grab my dagger while bouncing around inside this thing as it shakes around attacking my teammate. I drop said dagger on a nat 1. Now I am bouncing around inside a metal cauldron with a loose dagger.
Before my teammate kills it or it kills me, the dwarf we are there to see comes out from his safe room, laughing his head off and stops it.
He was testing his new home intrusion protection and having a good laugh…
“Oh yeah. Hilarious. Hold still while I test my new stabbin’ knife.”
That was about right for his response.
Did get to test out the medical construct though and it did a good job patching him back up.
I find that for turning the mundane into horrifying encounters, cursed objects tend to work better than living monsters.
The doorknob that turns easily -too easily- in fact, it comes off in your hands -and then you can’t put it down except by passing it on to someone else. It doesn’t do *damage*, just keeps you from using both hands. And then the door that only activates its curse if someone tries to kick it in, because all it does is get shoes/boots/footwear stuck to it (including a horseshoe, when they tried that; one of the party came back later and carefully took it off its hinges and carted it back to the inn the PCs were building at that point, and installed it as the boot equivalent of a coat-rack. This was a few levels after, when they could make a custom magic item that temporarily suppressed the curse for one pair of shoes if someone channeled magic into it).
Or the tavern bar stool that had a ‘zone of truth’ effect on anyone who sat in it.
Or the faded sign near a door, when they brush off the cobwebs and try to read it, instead of the usual ‘explosive runes’ trap variety it curses the reader with illiteracy.
Etc, etc.
“Symbol of Illiteracy” is deliciously contradictory. 😀
Very first session, very first room in the dungeon, the DM put a lurker for a bunch of level 3 PCs. Ended up with almost a TPK till everyone realized we just had to take out the arms. After we destroyed all the arms, the wizard(me) and the bardlock took turning shooting it to death. The DM was not amused and had it fall on us. nearly killing me while the damn bard dodged.
“Bardlock” makes me think you’re playing 5e, but I can’t seem to find lurker stats for 5e. You’ve got me curious now. Was this home brew? Do you have a link to stats?
This is great. The session I had planned for this week is inside a long flooded train tunnel with creatures coming out off the flood water, crawling along the tall ceilings, and crushing out through the walls with burrow. Then I read this. Perfect.
It would be awesome if you had a derelict freight car that looked like a dining car. All the tables and silverware and such are creatures. :3
Good luck with the session, and happy gaming.
I’ve always liked that bit in The Mummy where the figures painted on walls had mummified priests entombed in the walls in matching poses.
Though my mental dungeon has always had the plaster-coated zombies disguised as bas-relief sculptures instead.
Scarecrows man. I’m never going to get over the scarecrows from [redacted] jumping down from their poles. I’m now convinced Oz is full of singing and dancing ghouls.
Quick tip: a Rug of Smothering turned 90 degrees makes a Tapestry of Smothering. Trust nothing.
Get enough Gordian knots together and they’ll turn 90 degrees and try to smother you.
5e dungeon crawl. 3rd level. The party was a Dex-based halfling barbarian, a cleric, and a wizard. First fight of the campaign was a CR 2 mimic disguised as a door. The barbarian touched it and got an arm stuck. The wizard cast grease, but mimics are immune to prone. Next round, the wizard cast shatter, waking the CR 3 giant-fiendish-weasel-thing in the next room, that could move as part of its Multiattack, which promptly started taking the Ready action.
Some more fun–for me, the DM, at least–later, they managed to kill the mimic, with the barbarian at around 1/5 max HP. The weasel used its reaction to come through the doorway (succeeding on the save vs. grease) and drop the barbarian to 0 HP, there was a brief skirmish during which the cleric healed the barbarian and the weasel knocked him back down, and they ran away. Fun times.
Low level bop bag fights are the best. My paladin buddy went down SO MANY TIMES at 1st… I hope that forced healing doesn’t have any long term health effects.
I was reading the latest comic and was scrolling through the comments, one of which had a link back to this one. And now I’m reminded of an old game I used to play called Chex Quest. It was basically Doom but reskinned to be slime monsters invading a cereal space station. There was one level I could never beat. It had slime covering the floor so you were damaged on every step. There was supposed to be a hazmat suit on an earlier level but I never found it.
Old, impossible-to-beat Doom clones are the hallmark of every millenial childhood.
Can’t remember the name of mine, but it was some shooter where you could kill the aliens with fire or freeze them with ice. Ice was easier, but you then had to remember which of the thousand identical ice blocks was a frozen enemy and which was an unexplored potential treasure spawn. I got lost in the labyrinth at some point and had to give it up.