The Dream Queen

Inspired by the Fievel Goes West song "Dreams to Dream", particularly the lines, "When the world goes wrong, I can still make it right. I can see so far in my dreams. I'll follow my dreams Until they come true. Come with me. You will see what I mean. There's a world inside no one else ever sees. You will go so far in my dreams. Somewhere in my dreams your dreams will come true. There is a star waiting to guide us, Shining inside us, when we close our eyes." The initial idea came from the "you will go so far in my dreams" part because, taken by itself, it can seem like a threat more than an opportunity. The Dream Queen is a powerful witch/sorceress/fey creature who takes an interest in one or more of the PCs. I like the idea of a fey queen falling in "love" with one of the PCs (fey love is not like our love nor is fey love for a mortal like love between two fey). She starts to invade his dreams, giving him fitful nights of poor sleep. Later, however, she begins to pull him into her dreams. Because she is fey, her idea of a good time with a mortal involves weird things like turning him into a horse to ride across a dreamscape plane or transforming into a giant Lolth-like spider to wrap him in a web cocoon (whereupon he wakes up). Just weird, twisted, non-overtly sexual fey activities (while there can be an undercurrent of sexual imagery, as with the horse, I am not purposefully putting it there). As the song says, there is an opportunity to go far in her dreams and make his dreams come true (some bit of useful information or a dream artifact he can bring into the real world or unlocking strange new abilities having traversed the dreamscape). Part of that will be following a star that may or may not belong in the Queen's dreamscape but shines ever before the PC as he seeks surcease from sorrow in his morphean prison.

Elemental Temples

I am watching Retsupurae's Mortal Kombat Mythologies video where Sub-Zero is going through the four elemental temples. None of the ideas are particularly inspired but why not steal the easy stuff too.

1. Water temple could be completely underwater (lake or ocean bed) or it could just be a sewer level.

2. Fire temple has metal rooms that grow increasingly hot. Early rooms could have metal ceilings, then walls, and finally floors. The ceilings and walls cause fatigue (and damage if you got too close to the walls) while the floors would damage and sear characters due to the direct contact and heat convection.

Trokair Sandbox - Challenge Areas

This idea stems from part of a D&D cartoon episode (not really explored there but watching it reminded me) and one of my brother's favorite dungeon locale ideas.

My brother was really interested in created a dungeon called Magnet Mountain. As the name suggests, the mountain would contain a large iron core that was magnetized, and the deeper you went into the dungeon, the stronger the magnetic attraction. This would make fighting with metal weapons difficult and just walking in metal armor very difficult. He mostly meant it as a surprise/difficulty rather than as I intend it below.

I anticipate making certain areas of Trokair difficult, if not impossible, to explore with certain equipment or as a certain class as well as areas that require specific measures in order to survive the environment. Examples include the abovementioned Magnet Mountain, areas inhabited by copious rust monsters (again, no metal equipment), an aerie or pass blustered by constant wind (no ranged attacks, difficult to stay standing), an enchanted glade that will not suffer one to tread the grass (cannot touch the ground), a tomb wherein nothing may breathe (poisonous gas or a magical curse), and a wizard's tower containing an idol that devours magic (no spells or magic items).

This would feed into player-driven research of these mythical areas as well as diversifying parties (as the original Western Marches campaign had a flexible player base with different people showing up to each session).

D&D Cartoon Ideas

There are probably lots of these that I have forgotten as I watched the episodes over the course of days, even weeks.

Season 1, Episode 11 - The Box

A magic chest that, when opened, reveals a portal to another world or pocket dimension. The portal changes with the chest's location, so to access a particular world/dimension, the chest must be placed in the correct spot. Particular worlds have their own portal locations throughout the world. If the chest is not palced in a portal spot, then whatever is placed inside at that location remains in a pocket dimension until the chest is once more opened in that spot. What this means is that if you put something in the chest, then moved the chest a few feet to the side, then it would be empty when you opened it.