Mining for ideas today. My players have split the party to undergo individual trials beneath the temples of the six deities. I have very detailed threats, challenges and puzzles for five of the domains, but for “What Lies Beneath”, I have a very plain chamber littered with crumpled paper.
Devotees above cast their secrets into the Well of Oblivion and the challenge takes place at the base of this well.
My first instinct is to run most of it as a psychological challenge, where the secrets whisper and tempt, but if the adventurer reads them, their own secrets in the outside world become known.
Does anyone have any ideas beyond this to make it interesting? I am sleepy.
Having occasional interactions between the PCs could be interesting. “Ranger, you manage to slow your fall down the shaft. There are breaks in the wall, you can see glimpses of the thief in the middle of a cage with spikes slowly descending. Then you’re gone from sight.”
“Cleric, you open a secret door and the fighter slams into the wall next to you. You know you have different paths, but if you risk turning from yours a while maybe you can help the fighter out.”
I’ll also point out the game Nightmare has players write down their worst fear. The first person who finishes the board takes a fear at random and reads it out loud. If it’s their own, they’re out of the game.
I wish I had thought of that before!
I’m running each one asynchronously via Hangout chat. The druid has completed his, and the barbarian is half-way through his.
What if succumbing to the temptation to read a secret means that secret now /becomes/ the players secret. i.e. the pc is now on the hook for the ramifications of that secret, even though it wasn’t their secret originally…
(I hope that’s not to awkwardly written to understand :/)
Matt Huber Oh, I love that.
Have them run each other’s problems. When we did a similar thing in a campaign I was in, we all revisited our pasts…but overcame our trauma when our friends showed up slinging fireballs.