cs111olg@ucla-cs.UUCP (02/12/86)
A lengthy (over 6 years old) campaign I am in centers around "Mazes of Chaos". It is... strange? A nearby city is no different from many other cities in the world... exept most administrative buildings are spherical. Citizens of note wear strange looking bracers with bizzare inscriptions.... THe Mazes of Chaos are just that. There is a zoo there stocked by somebody regularly with dinosaures, dragons, suspiciously plentiful umber hulks and other nasties we only have seen through clairvoyance spell... The rest of the Maze is more like a classical castle... exept most of it (how much?) is under ground. And part (1/4) of the Mazes is what appears to be a starship. With laser defenses and force fields. With sliding doors that never open when needed and Carp : a hobbit sized talking fish that gets out of a deep well in the middle of the "space ship" and walks around insulting players and spitting water at them ( no damage other than to ego). Nobody ever thought to slaughter the bastard ( altho we are all shades of evil). There are mysterious disappearences and re-appearences of player and NP characters, pixie thieves polymorphed into winged and glowing kobolds, 10HD giant rats, "golden" goblins ( an elite troupe of 10-15 HD nasties) and other "surprises"... There is a lot of personality to the dungeon : mysterious "Owner" and/or "Overseer" who keep restocking the dungeon, wights who are willing to trade information for slaves, neurotic righteous fanatics of the goblin elite, umber hulk conventions, troll family reunions, strange creatures that wonder down the corridors -- and don't pick a fight... THis is one of the few dungeons where it's safer to talk (or bluff) things over rather than get into a fight... In 6 years we have explored 2 levels of at least 10. Many PCs were lost. Even more NPCs... We never got any high tech goodies altho we got fried by lasers, entombed by the security system of the "space ship", harrassed by Carp and "the Four Musketeers" - the Dungeon Police ( who are something else again...), attacked by demons and paladins.... Sounds chaotic? You bet it is!!!! And the worst part of it is -- we almost never make any money in that dungeon! We spend almost as much as we gain... And that's one of the best parts of the game. Balance and a reason to go back to the dungeon. We need money. We can't do any "real" work. And we *KNOW* there is untold treasures in the Mazes of Chaos! If only we could get at them! DISCLAMER: The opinions expressed above do not necessarily reflect those of UCLA or it's emloyees and faculty. The might not even be mine for all I know... +---------------------------------------+--------------------------------------- | "VIOLATORS WILL BE TOAD !" |From the steam tunnels of UCLA | The Dungeon Police | Oleg Kiselev, student again +---------------------------------------+ ...{ WORLD }!ucla-cs!cs111olg