March 2013 Challenge Entry - The Temple of Saint Patrick of Swayze

**Cunning Cartographer** · 03-06-2013, 08:07 AM

[EDIT: Final map on page 3: Monastery of Tyrs and the rather extensive write up to the various puzzles can be found on page 4 (warning.. it's quite a read!).

Okay, so that's just a working title, but the running theme through my dungeon will be Ghosts. The first room of the adventure in my mind has a puzzle in the middle and no doors on the walls. When the adventurers successfully complete the puzzle they are killed (WTF?!) and become ghosts. In the room there will now be ghostly doorways that they can see now that they are part of the shadow world and they can pass through them when in their incorporeal form.

Dungeon Features

The main puzzle of the dungeon will be a maze like layout where some areas they can only pass through if they are in their ghost form, otherwise they must find various shrines in the labyrinth to resurrect at.
In their corporeal form they will appear with all their gear, and are obviously now targets to the ghosts and other undead type creatures in the dungeon.
Whilst in ghost form they can pass through doors and ghostly mobs will not attack them (so they could scout a room as a ghost so they know what awaits them beyond), however, there will be a "Reaper" type mobs that hunts ghosts down that don't belong. Dying to this mob as a ghost is an actual death as expected, they cannot be killed and you are only safe from them whilst in your corporeal form.
Some rooms require you to be in your corporeal form to operate manual puzzles (our ghosts are not poltergeist) to move deeper into the complex.
Friendly ghost NPC/s who can give advice and help guide you through the dungeon
Multiple ways to complete (not sure what the objective or story background is yet) and multiple routes to take

So that's what I got so far. Roughing out a general map and thinking of ideas and routes as I go. Right now I'm not sure whether to do this as a smaller GM map or a usable battlemap.