So, this is a post about a very generic, not-strictly-DW topic. However, I refound my love for this game (like I ever lost it) thanks to the realization that I love what, as lack of a better term, I will call from now metaphysical dungeons.
The thing went like this: two sessions ago, we went for the usual round of "What I liked/What I disliked about the game" we always do at the end of the session. A player said "I like your weird, strange monsters". And since I like making this kind of monsters, I persisted in this even last night, trying to reimagine (and totally failing at it, but that doesn't matter) the idea of a vampire in that of a hideous psychic monster from hell bound to elemental earth and dark depths.
So at some point they ventured in the forest, the ranger's companion following the scent of a vampire's slave escaped a few hours before to hunt the undeads down.
I was like: "... you are walking among trees of the most ancient seeds, while all of the sudden..."
The wizard interrupted me: "...A dungeon crawls up from the earth and envelop us?"
I distinctly heard a *click* in my head. I obviously replied with a loud "HELL YEAH" and then they descended in this crawled-from-the-ground dungeon where the very first thing they encountered was the classic giant mirror wall1 from whence mirror clones of the pcs came out and challenged them. It was an epic fight, the pcs being nothing less than 7, and a couple of them sort of high-powered, without mentioning the druid that missed her roll and falled in a primal rage, starting to tear apart her companions in polar bear form. And now I'm planning a whole underground "demiplane" composed just by an earthly, damp ground covered in total darkness where everyone will meet shadows of friends and foes from the past, and then at some point the Hall of the Vampire, which as for now I imagine being a seemingly endless stony maze resembling the interior of a gothic castle on which the vampire has full (mind) power and tempts everyone by placing illusions of what they most desire inside, behind of or actually weared by the other pcs.2
All that said, what do you think about "metaphysical" dungeons? Does anyone has anything similar online from which I can drew inspiration? Can anyone post a related actual play from one of his games?
1) yeah, I know, a player mentioned to me that also in the Van Helsing movie I never saw, the entrance of the vampire's lair has a giant mirror.
2) yeah, I know this too, but I love A Christmas Carol.