I want to make rooms more memorable in SGCP as at the moment I’m describing “YoU Are iN a pREttY/UGly roOM” and I want to do better. One thing is to add more stuff than just hostiles. There’s already rules in the game for generating those.

I thought about the hazards I’ve encountered in Quake, both in a few hours of playing it here in good old 1985 2020, and also my memories of playing it in the 90s. Turns out it didn’t take very long at all.

These are what come to me in a few minutes:

  1. Nail Trap. What I can’t remember is where they hurt enemies as well. Happily the wiki tells me. I think for an RPG the answer should be “yes, great idea”.
  2. Unholy altar. SHOOT IT REPEATEDLY. YOU HAVE DEFILED THE ALTAR.
  3. Surprise enemies dropped on you / released. Fiends and Scrags being the memorable ones.
  4. Lava
  5. Water / Biohazard liquid. Different stuff, but roughly the same logic. With a secret underneath if there’s a Biosuit around. Obviously there’s further to go in water.
  6. Falls. Probably too obvious (although thematic) for an RPG, but you could still bullrush a hostile and push them off?
  7. Compacting corridor. 5 rounds to get out or the Crushenator will getcha.
  8. Door without key. Is this a hazard? Too late, you read it now.
  9. Explosive barrels. Other splash damage avilable. See also: Borderlands. Apologies to anyone who’s played a Borderlands game in “co-op” with me. Y’all know who you are. And who I am.
  10. Ogre with a grenade launcher on a platform you can’t reach. There are other enemies, like the Enforcer that count here, but the Ogre does more damage if you’re not paying attention, and those grenades bounce everywhere.
  11. Mechanisms that push you into another hazard. Typically on a timer, although also on a pressure-plate sometimes. Still Dexterity check?
  12. Darkness. There’s a level in E1 that has a corridor in darkness with a fall you can’t see without a light.

I was going to offer this as a direct d12 table but I’m going to think more on whether to split into features and traps. Also this needs weighting. I don’t want lava and darkness to be as often as each other.

Additional

Firstly, hat tip to RevenantDak on Discord for pointing out a neat list I missed of hazards off the bloody website I’ve been using for most of my reference stuff. It’s great. Happily I think I got most of what I wanted, but I do want to add one more thing:

Lava can have a chance of spewing Lavaballs if you’re close to it? Awesome. Let’s make it worse than other liquids.

  • Brawn saving throw each turn a player is Close/above lava to stand the heat
  • For big pools, there’s lavaballs popping off each turn. The lava generates lava balls as Dexterity attacks up to Short range (or Medium if you’re mean)

Lava does d6 heat damage which is resistable with Armour.