ANYONE HAVE ANY IDEAS FOR A 'METAL TEMPLE' DUNGEON?

Cogwheels

Have Iron Maiden play as background music.

Just kidding. Actually, have puzzles involving magnetic force. Like a block puzzle where you push blocks to different switches while avoiding magnetic zones, or the block will get pushed/pulled away from where you're trying to send it. You would have to turn on and off certain magnets to be able to push a block through a hallway.

Or copy use FFIV as an example and have a magnetic cave where metal weapons are useless until a certain point in the dungeon.

I would make it "a temple built by a lost civilization" and have it clearly be a modern steel mill. Just do a google image search for "steel mill" and consider yourself inspired!

- Girders
- Chains
- Rivets
- Steel plated walls made of rectangular overlapping metal plates
- Vats of molten steel, and chutes where it's flowing through the temple

Conveyor belts would be a good gimmick, as would gear puzzles or chain-pulley puzzles.


Don't really use Iron Maiden as background music though. ...Because Metallica would be much more appropriate!

Just some random ideas:

*Weight based puzzles involving the relative heaviness of metals (Lead, Gold etc = heavy, aluminium, tin = light)
*Puzzles involving the relative tensile strengths of different metals.
*Puzzles involving the relative melting points of different metals
*Barbed/razor wire ._.
*Pit of 100000 nails
*Hallway of 100000 blades
*Magnetism, as mentioned by others.
*Abominable windchime/gong/bell related puzzles/switches.
* Have the entire dungeon be a huge mechanical puzzle whereby you go from mined ore to ingots of refined metals (then maybe to alloy, like steel) to a giant forgery where after amassing enough molten alloy you have to create some object that is required to advance, like a giant hammer head to strike a huge anvil or breaks apart some edifice in the middle of the temple that opens the boss doors/grants access to the last key or whatever (alternatively forging some special key to some lock using the right mixture of metals because magic lock, or forging some ancient blade that can be used to *do the thing* - either for combat or just as a glorified key)

Here is some relevant infortainment - the process is begging to be a puzzle dungeon already, you wouldn't have to even make much up:

@Lockez - although Metal isn't a classical element in the Greek system anyway, I think it is in the weird Chinese system (that includes wood as a fundamental element too) though.

Anyway yeah I mean, unless you're going to do the straight up earth, air, fire, water, (optional - quintessence/aether/spirit blah blah blah) classical elements thing for a game then it's kinda just bullshit videogame logic at work anyway (as is what we're used to) - As a kid I was irked by Final Fantasy's element systems especially the inclusion of ice as a major element and water being a simultaneous, different, yet usually more minor element. I get that it's harder to inflict physical damage with water, or at least to depict it without it being actually kinda horrifying but it still bothers me that they're separate things. Blah tangent blah.

Anyway yeah for dungeons it's just a matter of providing some unifying theme, rpgmaker people could do with a moratorium on the use of classical-ish elements as a device in game design. I get it, it works really well in many situations and provides a nice metaphorical logic for game-mechanic-ey things but it's pretty threadbare an idea by now just generally. It'd be interesting to see people try to come up with replacements for what is nowadays just ubiquitous, automatic fantasy/game-ey shorthand.

Tech stuff was the first thing that came to my mind, but I'm dubious on that one, because so many RPGs have a lost technological Golden Age that at this point it seems more original not to have one.

Possibly an underground shaft filled with metal crystals (you can do a google image search for ideas on these) which gives way to an entire metallic interior. Filled with magnetic-themed traps or puzzles if you want your game to include any, metal golems, maybe magnetic elementals...

I'll see waht resources i have...

author=Desertopa
Tech stuff was the first thing that came to my mind, but I'm dubious on that one, because so many RPGs have a lost technological Golden Age that at this point it seems more original not to have one.

Possibly an underground shaft filled with metal crystals (you can do a google image search for ideas on these) which gives way to an entire metallic interior. Filled with magnetic-themed traps or puzzles if you want your game to include any, metal golems, maybe magnetic elementals...

That's actually a wonderful idea: caves full of glowing crystals where golems or robots roam. But are they self-replicating or do we see them coming off conveyor belts? Combining it with my own suggestion, a "Temple of Industr"' full of razor pendulums, automatons, and conveyor beltsthat emphasizes machinelike precision- would make a refreshing blend. There are various places to gather visual elements- Lennus/Paladin's Quest, Alcahest, and others.