Ooh, ooh. Not a deployment, but before I awakened, I was in one of the "you can just literally walk out of here" ones. It had a lot of hallways and stairs and stuff, but it wasn't that big, so we could all hear each other calling out which places turned out to be dead ends or connected and converge on the portal in like, twenty minutes. The thing is it was full of signs. The words on them were super nonsense, you'd have a, like, bathroom sign pictogram captioned LNTLMA6N, those "caution wet floor" signs but they said "AC!:AD0", it had street signs, it had fake nonsense names on the doors, sometimes like six or seven plaques; the stairs were labeled as stairs but also as elevators (going by the pictograms, the letters were gibberish) even though the place didn't have elevators, there was a billboard in there pressed up against a "window" with a smiling lady with great teeth holding up a bottle of something labeled with word salad so I'm not sure if it was supposed to be shampoo or wine.

The portal was behind a no entry sign. Lots of arrows pointed emphatically back the other way down that hall. All we had to do was ignore the sign.

I've seen a few, but the best/worst (berst?) one was probably the cat café. It wasn't the dumbest one I've been to, but the french maid outfits made it extra memorable. It dressed all the victims up and made them look after small cat-monsters. The monsters did get mad at us when we took the victims out, but they weren't exactly difficult to manage.

I was sent to one one time that was legitimately pretty dangerous - the floor was like magically slippery, it looked like it was just puddles (and there were in fact a ton of puddles) but people whose shoes had plenty of traction for puddles were still going over left and right, and the monsters were these creepy janitor-uniformed porcelain dolls that would beat the shit out of you with a mop if you fell.

But the theme of the dungeon though. The theme of the dungeon was like. Those nightmares where you have to pee and you can't find a bathroom. The whole thing was a complex of bathroom stalls and they were locked, or occupied by janitor dolls sitting pants-down doing nothing on the toilet, or they were obviously out of order or backed up or fountaining slime into the air, or the bowls were smashed, or whatever.

In a dream of course you keep looking for a decent bathroom you can use. It turns out that if you're a dungeon and you kidnap twenty-two people who all really have to pee, and they are fully awake and can tell that they are in a dungeon, they will actually just go right the fuck ahead and pee on the floor.

Speaking of dreams, and also Math Class, I got one based on the whole 'dreaming you're in class without pants on' dream. Except, I don't think it understood the actual point of the dream, because a solid 60% of the people it kidnapped were just wearing, like. Dresses or skirts. 

The monsters were just fake students laughing creepily at you. About as tough as your average high schooler, too, even if they did go completely feral when we went to take the civvies out of the classroom. 

The funniest I think was 2034.06.17.2425, It was just. It was raining. The monsters had umbrellas and wouldn't share. That would have just been boring but it showed up in Vancouver (Canada). The city that gets the most rainfall in Canada. Also the monsters weren't  even tough.The hardest part was keeping the electronic equipment dry. And providing enough hot chocolate.

I think the core was hidden (badly) in a mud puddle.

I was in one with like some generic government office. All high desks and those flimsy plastic chairs and stuff and queues full of mannikins. The monsters had stamps for heads. They'd headbutt and stamp you if you got out of the queue. It barely even hurt, the ink stained my favorite shirt forever tho.

I can't arse to find the dungeon number but the dungeon had these mishapen crystal golem monsters with huge glowing gemstones that basically screamed "Video Game Weakspot". Except the gemstones are super reinforced. Which sounds really clever right?

But the dungeon *only* reinforced the false weakspots. Literally hitting from a slightly different angle was enough to shatter the damn things. They probably did more damage while going down than while fighting. I got three with a single shot! Kept a shard as a souvenir but fuck if I know where it is now.

Unpowered dungeon responder here, so mostly we're not sent to the really dangerous ones anyways, but two years back my team got sent to one that was loosely similar to this one closed-circle-murder-game video game -- you know, "a group of you have been kidnapped and have to kill someone to escape," that sort of premise, it was copying the whole aesthetic. Except. There weren't any monsters apart from the boss? And the victims were all normal fucking people? (You know, even if the dungeon had been interested in actually letting murderers out again, which I really doubt it would have.) So they all just... sat around... and didn't kill each other... until we showed up to break them out.

Another time we got sent out to one that was doing the whole "you're trapped in a room that's slowly filling with water" thing, except the rooms were so big and the spigots were so small that even after several hours the water didn't even come up all the way to anyone's ankles.

I got sent to this Teddy Bear Picnic dungeon. There were teddy bears, and a picnic, and it was pretty spacious for a baby dungeon, so we thought, like, maybe the food is poisoned? (It took a while to get reported, so the victims were going for the snacks.) But no, it was fine. Maybe the teddy bears are vicious predators? No, they poured tea and if a vic kicked one it'd go flying and pout and avoid that victim afterwards. Maybe the trees are going to come alive and attack? No, they're trees. It's like the whole thing got rushed out on time and under budget at the expense of having any problems. (The victims couldn't walk out, though, because the portal was up in the sky over their heads, so they just had a teddy bear picnic till we got them a ladder.)

I felt kind of bad about killing that one actually. Like maybe it could have been the vanguard of a new breed of dungeon that just gives you a picnic.

It wasn't the dumbest one I've been to, but the french maid outfits made it extra memorable.

My partner is afk at the moment but I showed him this post and he asked me to inform you that he wishes he could have been there because he'd look "so god damn" hot in a french maid outfit.

Ooh, ooh. Not a deployment, but before I awakened, I was in one of the "you can just literally walk out of here" ones. It had a lot of hallways and stairs and stuff,

[...]

All we had to do was ignore the sign.

All you had to do was ignore the sign.  Incredible.

Honestly though that one is kind of fascinating to me because... I can see so clearly the kind of eerie backrooms-y uncanny valley thing it was going for but it just biffs it so spectacularly.  I actually met one of my current romantic-friends in a dungeon that kind of tried and failed at the same kinda thing.  It was almost literally like the original backrooms image complete with the yellow fluorescent light and the tacky wallpaper and the vaguely gross carpet... there were these big gray-black four-armed monsters, seven or eight feet tall, that could've been genuinely scary if we didn't catch them doing the goofiest fucking things to try to mess with us.  One of the swat team lost their spray paint can that we'd been using to draw navigational arrows out of the place, and I caught one of the monsters scribbling out one of the arrows we'd drawn with it and drawing another one above it.  One presumes the dungeon wasn't powerful enough in its first appearance to directly alter the directions we'd left for ourselves.  I don't totally want to laugh, because the place did put up a bit of a fight, if we weren't careful it could have gone bad.  But no one was permanently hurt and it's not coming back.

Not one of mine's, but my mentor's: "The Cuck Chair Dungeon". It was smart enough to capture insecure people in relationships. It was smart enough to create vaguely humanoid monsters that create illusions so they looked like the victim's partners. The victims were strapped down into chairs unable to look away, from what it looked like their partner having sex with someone else.

The Dungeon overlooked just a few of things:

- Sometimes, the second monster was not covered by the illusion, so it just looked like a normal person having sex with a gray-humanoid-thingie without the relevant anatomy.

- There were multiple victims per room. They couldn't move or look away. But they could talk. It was very easy to figure out that the entire thing was a trick, and no one was watching their actual partners.

- The restraints were good, they were not "I have literally nothing better to do for several hours" good.

- The monsters were inside these glass cages, and couldn't do anything when the victims started to free themselves and each other.

I only have this one secondhand so it might not have ever really happened but I had this friend who swore that he got taken by a dungeon inspired by the comfy chair sketch from monty python, complete with monsters dressed like Cardinals poking the victims with cushions. There were a lot of jumpscares, the monsters loved bursting through doors unexpectedly, but the part where you sat in a comfy chair was reportedly exactly that.

Okay, one more to go, even if it is pushing the "dumb" definition. The dungeon was annoying, but it was just annoying. Imagine if someone dumped a city worth of dirty laundry in a large room. The dungeon's monsters were sock-puppet-birds that would harass the victims by emerging from the piles and knocking people down. The first time it happened, the victims were properly scared, but the monsters had no mobility and didn't cover themselves after the first jump scare. After a few minutes, they were pretty easy to avoid. There was a concentration of monsters near the portal, which was the only reason the victims didn't walk out on their own. We cut down the portal guarding monster, led the victims out and killed the dungeon with fire.

I would look SO god damn hot in a french maid outfit.

Honestly? There were some pretty damn hot civvies in the French Maid outfits! I dunno if it was selecting for that somehow but no one looked bad. 

MODHAT: This is skirting the edges of appropriate discussion of dungeons and dungeon victims.

Oh, ack, you're right. Should I delete?

No need, I think, but Chuuni and Hedgehog were approaching the line and you're pushing on it.  We'll drop the subject here.

Understood, and I apologize.

Sorry, Cope.

Appreciate it.

Sooooo...

I got my asshole coworker to tell me his stupidest dungeon, ya'll wanna hear? 

obviously, lay it on us

So this was back during the 2030 Confluence, when Victoria (the one on Vancouver Island) was getting menaced by that Swamp of Eternal Stench A-class, you know the one with the acid bogs and slime monsters and the bajillion decoy dungeon cores? My cousin got kidnapped by that one and we're pretty sure it ruined his sense of smell because he kept pouring the cologne on til no one would get within fifteen feet of him for like a year after.

Anyway, so my asshole coworker (hereafter known as AC, or heck, how about CA) gets a call down to a new portal that's just opened up near Nanaimo and everyone's panicking about it cause the SWAT teams stuck the cam in and got fields of lava, so obviously everyone (AKA the overworked dispatch staff who are dealing with everything not S or A ranked in the region) panicks because every lava dungeon must be Volcanic Range, right. 

So they bring CA in cause he might be able to damage the monsters "when" they start showing up (he's a Beam 5), and then they sit there outside the dungeon on high alert for a good ten minutes before CA loses his patience and demands to see the footage from the cam. 

And of course it turns out the dungeon isn't Volcanic Range (thank god), and then CA goes in with a team and discovers not only is it not Volcanic Range, it's not even a lava dungeon, it's a super sophisticated illusion dungeon that had an illusion set up making it look like one so no one would try to get in or out of the portal. 

That's not the dumb dungeons part, though, that's just dumb humans. The dumb part was that it had spent all its mojo on illusions and none on like anything else, so they called in this psychic on the network who was on medical downtime and he noped the entire premise and they had the civilians out in like twenty minutes and the core destroyed in time for CA to get back to his silo before the movie we were watching was even over.

So.  My first dungeon ever, I was doing search and rescue.  You know how sometimes you tell kids to watch out for sharks in the pool?  Well, there were sharks in this pool, and people were kidnapped to "islands" of pool concrete, you know the stuff I mean.  The portal was in sight, and everyone could reach it!  They just had to cross the sections of pool between the various "islands".

The catch?  The dungeon was scaled down.  It must've been a new one, because the "sharks" were about six inches long and the sections between "islands" were about three feet wide.  By the time I'd gotten there, everyone but an elderly couple had jumped across the water, island to island while the sharks watched and glared.  One guy got bit in the ankle and he stomped the shark to death with his other foot and finished the crossing anyway.  It probably would have needed stitches if there hadn't been a convenient esper around.  I carried a plywood plank island to island and walked the couple out.  He felt like he had to pay me back somehow, so now I have the best macaroni and cheese recipe on the planet.

The core was an afterthought.  It was sitting in the far corner of the pool, we smashed it hopscotched back home.

So back like five years ago there was this dungeon that was clearly trying to do the infinite staircase thing?  Except it apparently put all its effort into looping space and only had room for like three floors.  And it hadn't put fog in to blur the distances, so you could just... lean out over the railing and see the back of your own head.  It was actually pretty neat in a trippy kind of way.

Also there were balloons?  Just, dozens and dozens of regular colorful party balloons, not balloon-themed monsters or anything, either the air kind falling very slowly down the stairs or the helium kind bumping very slowly up the underside of the flight above you.  We never did figure out what it was going for with them.

These are amazing thank you all!!! oh shit gotta go I just woke up my partner laughing ooops

This is maybe gonna sound like bragging, but I assure you it did happen and it was in fact dumb from start to finish. I’m not an esper, just got kidnapped. What do I see when I get kidnapped? A locker room. No, this is not about dumb locker room fears. It’s a super sci-fi military locker room with lots of angular metal and red glowing lines. There’s like me and 5 other guys and gals in the room, and it's super hot. Like, outdoors in the desert hot, and we're indoors and there is no breeze. So if we don’t do something, we’re gonna die of heatstroke. Sitting tight is not an option. So we go exploring.

Outside of the locker room there’s this enormous hangar with MECHS. Yep. Big ol' two-legged war machines bristling with guns, with a spot for a person in the middle. One for each of us.

And we check all the doors and walls there is no exit, except for the big doors open to the sky above the mechs, which aren’t helping with the heat. But in the lockers we find these fancy flight suits (and instead of glowing red lines all over, they have glowing blue and red lines twisting like DNA), and one of us tries putting one on and, surprisingly for something that looks like it ought to be even sweatier, they actually cool us off a bit. But our brains are still getting cooked.

So we do the obvious thing and get in the mechs. And yeah, they have air conditioning, and a lot more. The moment your weight is on the access ladder it doesn’t wait for you to climb, just zhoops you up in, and it’s completely dark in that armored torso, but that doesn’t matter because of course they have a brain interface. Or high-powered holograms like those commscreens some espers can afford, I don't know, I just know that just after the instant sensory deprivation, I could see all around me — see all around the mech, that is. Its sensors were my eyes, its legs were my legs, and all that jazz. Don't worry, this is dumb too. You'll see.

So, we're not dying any more, but there's still no exit but the roof hatch (I will neither confirm nor deny that an amount of mech gunfire was involved in verifying this). So, obvious thing to do, use our mechs to rocket-jump out of there. Wait, not rocket-jump. Jump jets. The thing where flames come out of your boots. You know what I mean. So we do that.

We all fly out in a perfect formation (possibly the dungeon was providing some autopilot) and land on one side of this even bigger desert arena. The whole thing’s ringed with enormous seats carved into stone, like it was an ancient football stadium for mechs to watch mechs play sports. But we don’t have a ball or a goal, we have guns and missiles, mines and EMPs. If there’s a sport to play, it’s bloodsport. While we're looking around, another six mechs, painted in a different shade of camo, pop out of the other side of the arena. There were some guns bristling, but we holler over the radio and of course it’s just more kidnappees. So here’s the first really dumb thing: the dungeon clearly wants to make us all fight to the death (or ejection or reactor core shutdown or something), but the only way that’s going to happen is if some idiot shot first. Lucky for us, the only idiot in here (or so we think) is the dungeon.

You might think the next line is “and so we explored the arena”, but we didn’t need to. The portal was right there. You just had to hop a gate and walk right over to the mini-ziggurat the portal was on. Sure, the gate is mech-sized and the ziggurat is human-building-sized, but jump jets, remember? So we all walk over there, hop up, and just march right on out. Except for those of us who decided to jump through the portal from ground level.

Now this is where we realize that we were dumb, too. You see, the coolest dungeon stuff is magic and, 99.9% of the time, stops working without its dungeon. And in this case, “without its dungeon” includes “outside the portal”. What’s magic about these mechs? Almost everything. So as soon as we exit the portal, everything goes completely dark. No vision, no sound, no steering. No air conditioning.

So the guys who wanted to do a cool flip and a three-point landing outside the portal? Crashed and piled up in a heap against the side of a warehouse, and lucky they didn't kill anybody. If we walked carefully out the portal? Floated down, then collapsed as soon as the legs touched ground. And there we are, blind, helpless, and starting to roast again — until someone figured out, in the dark by feel, that the hatches weren't locked without power, and could be pried open. He got out and told the DRT and the DRT got the rest of us out.

And because the mechs were 99% magic, we’re still not fighting dungeons with power armor, as cool as that would be. I hear they got a bit of tech for better electric motors, but that’s it. Oh, and all the explosives were real, so they had to send out the bomb squad to unload everything.