Blade Traps
Any trap good enough to scare Indiana Jones is good enough for Castle Meatgrinder. Obviously, these little gems won’t make an appearance until they are triggered or disabled. I debated with myself over whether markers for traps were even necessary for Castle Meatgrinder. They are, after all, single events...
The Stone Tree
Not exactly sure what the deal is with this stone tree. It could be a statue of a tree. It might have fruit of pure gems and jewels that can be plucked. That hole in the trunk might be the lair of some seriously creepy crawlies. I’ll figure it...
A Little Altaration of the Dungeon
Another quick hit for Castle Meatgrinder. It only looks like an obsidian sacrificial slab. It’s actually a mysterious altar of doom, a manifestation of pure chaos leaching through into our universe as a trap for the souls of the foolhardy and unwary. Heh. Altar-ation. I keel me!...
Overlooking Features
The only thing worse than adversaries attacking you from elevation is when you can’t immediately access that elevation yourself. The half-a-level rooms of my dungeon were designed to allow for one room to overlook the room below. Open doorways dropping ten feet to the room below are against fantasy-OSHA...
In the Pits
One of the nice aspects of the half-a-level pieces shown in the last post is that it gives you a chance to incorporate even more three-dimensional challenges. Flat painted with deep pits shown in perspective are nice – need to do some of those some day – but nothing...
Half A Level Onwards
In the grand old D&D tradition, going down a level in Castle Meatgrinder means going up a quantum step in difficulty. You won’t find black dragons or pit demons on level II. One of the few sops to metagaming tolerated at my table is that understanding that you...
Flooring, Inserts, and a Little Juxtoposition
One cheap and easy, and light on the storage requirements, method to add more flavor to the 2.5d dungeon is to use inserts. So far my dungeon has five of these clever little devices. Rather than an unending series of black floors, these pieces of cardstock can be dropped...
Puzzle Statue
There are few things more certain to distract a party of dungeon plunderers than a strategically placed statue. A statue pointing to something with a sword, on a half-circle dais, and holding a glowing blue lantern? That’s like crack for adventurers. There’s got to be some treasure or a...
Paging the Lizard King
Doors are both boring and time consuming. I really didn’t want to do them, but they are probably the single most important feature in the dungeon, so it had to be done. After fiddling around with a bunch of designs for self opening doors that didn’t really work, I...
Castle Meatgrinder – The Mad Wizard’s Garden
Here’s a quick and dirty little project to spruce up a dungeon – an enchanted garden full of mysterious and arcane fauna that should give the players some interesting things with which to interact. Some may want to kill the characters, some to talk to them, and they may...