So it's like this. I'm a pretty new GM and I'm setting up my first proper dungeon, and I'd like all the most insane and autistic advice you guys have to torment my players with. I don't really want to start picking them off but I would like to truly torment them.The setting is a very very custom one in space. Party works as an odd-jobs group for the space CIA - ONI, the Inquisition, whatever. What matters is that they were in charge of helping their military set up a surprise attack on a rebel shipyard in orbit of a hitherto-uncharted planet. They did this part, but they subtly boarded and took over a monitoring outpost that was going to look at the way the fleet was coming in, making it look like nothing was the matter. All of this was just a setup, though - once the attack began, the enemy teleported everyone in their outer stations back to preserve their lives, accidentally including the party. They find themselves aboard the primary objective of the offensive, an enormous dreadnought called Liberator.Basically, the party's state built a gigantic and powerful superdreadnought called Warspite, but there were spies in the program that let a particularly rich rebel faction built their own by copying the steps before stealing Warspite. Warspite has already been retaken and now the good guys (or at least the side the players are on) are also seeking to seize or failing that destroy Liberator, which is said copy ship that's almost finished.The Liberator is alive, though (magic in this setting plus it has a mind of its own from the ship design needing a person forever strapped into it mind and body and soul almost like a Dreadnought or a Wraithknight). And so I was planning on a thing where they have to escape but end up having to deal with the maze from hell on a very much undercrewed but very much alive ship, and while the crew isn't what it should be there are still plenty of rebels aboard.
I have some script and ideas and I know what I'm doing for the first section that's this coming weekend, and I'm happy to talk about them if someone replies with enough interest to make it worth my time to prevaricate on about, but I'm here to hopefully hear fun and deranged ways to torment my party, because I need them to be THRILLED to escape the Liberator so that what happens next really lands like I want it to.
>>94209589>>94209595Can you post the map?
>>94209589>>94209595>I want to deliberately make my game badAnd thus, the problem solves itself - your player will leave in 2d3 games and you will never find another group ever again.Many such cases. Literally so - it's like a story of 80% of all people who flag in questionaries as "played some TTRPG, but not anymore" - either they had utterly bad GM in their first and final group, or they were that GM
OP you don't really have to try that hard to make your players worry, especially when starting out. Every moment can be an "oh shit" moment when you don't know what you're dealing with. As long as you're not repeatedly throwing chaff that can't hurt them (and even then it can be a roadbump if they have limited time to do something, like escaping a room that's being sealed), or you really go out of your way to look like an asshole that wants to fuck them over, chances are they're going to worry about health, ammo, and whatever else.
>>94209589I'm going to assume you are already aware of Marathon, but that would be a point of inspiration if you aren't aware. Elsewise, one recommendation would be to have various normally maintenance-only components of the vessel accessible through seemingly-standard bulkhead doors. Open a door directly in the ships coolant system, open a door directly to its waste processing tubes. As this is still in production, these doors are unlabeled, and the spirit running the ship has a sadistic sense of taste. The ship almost certainly has internal communications, so perhaps the intercom system is playing various sorts of infrasound to fuck with invaders. Due to it not being complete, there might also be various safety hazards from exposed wiring to open grates in dark rooms. And of course that isn't talking about the arcane hazards that are a part and parcel of dealing with magic on vast scales.Its also likely that the piloting spirit might have some frustrations with the crew, and with a crew that massive, its not unlikely that some rebels have gotten lost and driven mad by the vengeful spirit of the ship. Consider not only normal hostile rebels, but madmen and cultists who've begun to see the ship in a different light, providing problems for both PCs and crew.
>>94209589As long as it leads to non Euclidean architecture and eldritch horrors then it is a good dungeon.
