Dungeon Robbing: Pokemon

Sabrina's Gym, courtesy of StrategyWiki

"It hurt itself in its confusion!"

No don't leave! Just because it's Pokemon doesn't mean there's something we can't learn from it. I have lots of memories of overwriting my many hour-long saves in elementary school to start my journey through Kanto anew with different strategies and I imagine many other millennial-aged role-players do too. Ever realize that these games are littered with "dungeons"? Almost every non-town location in the original games meet the "Dungeon Checklist". Mind you, don't literally take the points from that article literally. In Pokemon, you're not killing your opponent's Pokemon, you're knocking them out!

• Something to Steal
• Something to be Killed
• Something to Kill You
• Different Paths
• Someone to Talk To
• Something to Experiment With
• Something the Players Probably Won't Find

Take a look at Sabrina's Gym. We've got a majority of the checklist covered:

• A new gym leader badge to acquire (Something to Steal)
• Plenty of Trainer battles (Something to Be Killed/Something to Kill You)
• Psychic is the strongest type by far in Gen 1, so expect to 'white out' and return to the Pokecenter a few times here
  
• Multiple paths to Sabrina (3 different teleporters lead to 'M', which takes you to the Gym Leader)
• Trainers offer some dialogue (this one is a stretch, these games don't have very meaningful dialogue systems)
• You gotta experiment with all the teleporters to find Sabrina!
• You likely won't fight all Trainers on your first pass here, incentivizing you to find them all to get enough experience to defeat Sabrina

Anti-Patterns to Avoid

Of course, not everything in Kanto translates well to an enjoyable TTRPG dungeon.

Vermillion Gym, courtesy of StrategyWiki

In the third gym, players have to find a hidden switch underneath the garbage cans spread across the floor. Two switches must be found in order to open the doors to reach the gym leader, and if you don't know how the puzzle works (or that there's a bug in the first games), it just involves trial and error. Also to add frustration, if you press the incorrect switch, the puzzle resets! Annoying and just wastes time, adding only tedium to your games. They act as filler to a video game's run-time and are only memorable for the amount of frustration they generated. Don't put in puzzles like this unless they are very simple and don't gate progress.

Ice Sliding and Rock Pushing Puzzles

Another memorable puzzle design from the first two generations of Pokemon are the Ice Sliding and Rock Pushing puzzles. These involve either slip-sliding across ice, unable to make movement changes after the initial input, or using a Pokemon to physically push heavy obstacles out of the player's path to the next zone. There's some considerations to be made before putting them into your dungeons. Forcing players to not be able to move on ice until they hit a wall or rock is unrealistic, annoying, and breaks their agency. 

 

Instead of railroading their movement options, instead try converting that into a platform or a ball that's locked onto a track that must be navigated around in order to solve the puzzle. Throw in some traps or monsters that add some danger to the puzzle to ramp up the tension. Imagine a few players having to fend off a wave of weak monsters (maybe even flavored to look similar to Pokemon) while the thief is moving a large ball through a track to fall into a hole, hitting a button that opens the exit door, all while everyone is dodging arrows shooting out of the walls. Maybe instead of a ball to move, there's instead a floating, square platform with four arrows along each edge pointing N/S/E/W. Standing atop an arrow or placing a heavy object on it causes the platform to move in that direction at a rate of 20' per Round. Now place some stone pillars, rotating blades, and some stirges within the room and you've got a memorable room! Remind you of anything?

Dungeon Time

Using these tenets and inspiration from this Gym, let's craft a quick dungeon!

Tomb of the Ooze Lich

Muculous was a wizard who fashioned himself as the world's foremost researcher of oozes. He became so fascinated with the creatures that he transformed himself into possibly the first Ooze Lich. He has a hideout hidden inside a hill and uses his mastery of teleportation magic to send clues/maps to nearby towns to draw in adventurers to use as test subjects. 

GM Note: Highlight the blacked-out text to see the spoiler! His phylactery is the northern most, hexagonal pillar in Room B. It must be destroyed in order to permanently kill Muculous. Note that doing so will make the lair unstable and cause it to collapse in 1 Turn. If Muculous is killed but his phylactery remains, he will respawn in this room in d4 days. If the pillar is struck, it makes a different noise than the others and it smells like rotten eggs.

Wandering Creatures

Roll every Turn, 2-6 chance of an encounter occurring. Roll a D4 for encounter:

1. D4 Ooze Humans. As zombie, without the ability to bite/turn victims to a zombie. Can fall upon prone creatures to envelop them in ooze, causing them d6 damage per Round until escaped. Half from piercing/slashing and double from fire.They are pretending to be puddles of harmless water, will attack when approached.
   
2. Gelatinous Cube, halfway done dissolving a lost adventurer
   
3. 1D8 Orcs/Caratorks/Hobgoblins/Cultists/Brigands, exploring the tombs, weapons in hands, looking to find Muculous's spell research
4. Ooze drips from the ceiling, extinguishing any torches the party is carrying.
   

• A
• 2 clear oozes rest motionlessly above the East and West doors, respectively. Whoever goes to either of the doors first will need to make a save to avoid the ooze landing on their head.
• Clear ooze, 1 HD, AC 11, 1 slam (d6), mv 30', morale 8, if it lands on a creature's head, they immediately take d4 damage from the ooze's acid and another d4 at the beginning of their round until removed. Any damage from fire immediately kills the ooze, piercing and slashing damage deals half.
  
• Clear Oozes shimmer like a soap bubble in light and they give off a "rotten eggs" smell
• Something to Kill You
• Different Paths 
  
• B
• Door immediately opens a room with a 50' drop to a floor covered in bones and a floating platform roughly 10' square a few feet beyond the door. Each of the 4 edges of the platform have a pressure plate with an arrow pointing in that direction (N, S, E, W). If an object weighing more than 10 pounds is placed on the plate, it will depress and the platform will move in that direction at a rate of 20' per Round.
• There are solid rock platforms (gray hexagons) that go from floor to ceiling.
• There is a 20' long, 5' wide blade that rotates on one of the pillars a few feet above the platform. Every Round it moves clockwise 180 degrees above the pillar. If the blades hit something, it will deal 1d10 damage unless a Save is made. It is enchanted to phase through any of the pillars.
  
• 2d6 Stirges have a nest built-upon one of the western pillars
  
• Bottom of the room has two Gelatinous Cubes roaming around
• Something to Experiment With
  
• C
• Teleporter maze
• Muculous created this maze to confuse intruders and to account for the slow speed of his oozes
• If two creatures/objects stand on paired teleporters at the same time, they will end up in one of the rooms combined with one another, generally to horrifying, deadly effects
• Something to Experiment With
• Ensure to hide the teleporter key from the players!
• Center Western Room has an adventurer with a broken leg, currently asleep
• Starving, feverish, and will ask for assistance
• His party left him 2 days to get medical supplies from their wagon and never returned 
• They were killed by the rotating blade in B
• Someone to Talk To
  
• Center room has 5,000 gold coins and 1d6 Potions of Ooze Form
• Drinker's body becomes soft and gelatinous, like an ooze's for 2d6 Turns. They take half damage from piercing/slashing, no damage from falling, and double damage from fire for the duration. Their speed is reduced by 10' per Round to a minimum of 20' per Round.
• Something to Experiment With and Something to Steal
  
• SW room has a Gelatinous Cube in it, with 3 Orcs/Caratorks/Hobgoblins/Cultists/Brigands dissolving inside of it. If the cube is killed within 3 Rounds, 1 of the creatures will have survived and assist the party until they can leave the dungeon. (May try to backstab the party, or run! Make morale checks)
  
• NW room has a hole in the ceiling that leads to a well shaft that runs parallel to the dungeon. The well shaft can be climbed up to exit out into the town square of Dropstone, a small village.
  
• NE room has a Slimosaur in it, laying in wait inside a 6' tall, polished, silver urn. If the urn is touched, the creature will emerge from it as a puddle of ooze and morph into its sauropod form. It will chase them through the teleport rooms
  
• Large, bipedal sauropod ooze (dinosaur) that has sharp claws and strong telekinetic powers. When struck by piercing or slashing weapons, it splits into two. Likes to pick up prey with their telekinesis and throw them up, likely killing them when they fall.
• HD 8 (2 Actions per Round), AC 15, claw (d10), telekinesis (40’ range, like the spell, 18 Brawn save or be picked up and thrown), mv 40’, morale 9, initiative 10
• When split, create two creatures from the one split where they have half the HD of the original creature
• HD 4 = AC 14, 2 x claw (1d8), HD 2 = AC 16, 2 x claw (1d6), HD 1 = AC 17, 2 x claw (1d4)
• Telekinesis scales down in distance as the creature gets smaller
• HD 8: d8x5’. HD 4: d6x5’, HD 2: d4x5’, HD 1: d2x5’ 
•  Muculous's prized creation, result of his last few years of work.
  
•  Something to Kill
  

• D
• False tomb of Muculous. If the coffin is opened, poison gas will escape. All in the room must save or suffer 2d8 damage. Any creatures killed by the gas dissolve into a fleshy puddle and animate as an Ooze Human within d4 Rounds.
• HD equal to what they had when they died, as zombie, without the ability to bite/turn victims to a zombie. Can fall upon prone creatures to envelop them in ooze, causing them d6 damage per Round until escaped.
• All their carried/worn items dissolve if they died, unless magical
• Half from piercing/slashing and double from fire.
  
• Coffin has the remains of glass vials which held the gas and 4d8*100 gold coins.
  
• Something to Kill You, Something to Steal
  
• E
• Long room with 3, 20' deep, spiked pit traps and a large fan on the north wall that blows continuous, strong winds
• Clever usage of tools, high strength characters, magic, or anything else is needed to traverse the room safely.
  
• Falling into the spikes causes 2d6 damage
• Something to Kill You, Something to Experiment With
  
• F
• Muculous's actual lair. He creates oozes and slimes from the corpses of adventurers that die in here.
• He will be within the pipes below the room that connect the four grates together. He can move between grates within 1 Round.
• Each grate can be removed with some sort of Save, check, etc.
• NE grate hides a 4' wide crawl space that leads to a cave with his treasure hoard and research laboratory
•  Muculous, the Ooze Lich. HD 8 (D4s), AC 15, acid touch (2d6), mv 40', morale 10, initiative 10
• Magus, Spell Thief, Steel Trap Mind, Signature Spell (choose one of his spells)
  
• Carries 6 spell books
• Ooze Type
  
• Something to Kill You, Something to Kill
  
• G
• Treasure hoard and laboratory of Muculous
• Roll for the appropriate treasure hoard in your system. Should be fit for an 8 HD spell caster
• Also among the hoard is a spell book of Ooze Form, and a Wand with a random spell in it.
• Something the Players Probably Won't Find
  

Hooks/Rumors 

• The ground by the hill outside of town is really squishy and it smells like an old, uncleaned chicken coop.
• True, the oozes have changed the landscape and many of them smell like rotten eggs.
• One of the players found a note in their bag mentioning that there is a mage's hideout nearby holding riches and arcane knowledge.
• Partially true. The players will certainly be suspicious of this but could be a neat way to steer them towards it.
• The village of Dropstone sits atop Muculous's lair, completely unknown to them. Their grave-keeper started to prepare a new plot when he unearthed a squishy patch of land. Digging further, he found slimy, pitted stone stairs leading underground to a stone door.
• True, but if the players visit the grave-keeper they will find that he has been turned into an Ooze Human! He ventured into the dungeon (door is ajar) and was turned by Muculous.
• The water from the well started to smell like rotten eggs and took on an acidic taste a week ago. Yesterday, a Gelatinous Cube emerged from Dropstone's well and destroyed the town's market stands before it was burned away.
• The well leads to a hole in the ceiling of the NW teleporter room in C.

Wrap Up

Inspiration can strike us from anywhere, even 20+ year-old Gameboy RPGs. Next time, I will be Dungeon Robbing on a memorable locale from the fantastic game, Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, but I may also revisit the Gameboy catalog for more treasure. I'm looking at you, Dragon Warrior series!