Encounter of the Week: Fire Alarms

So part of this blog's purpose is to serve as a creative outlet, either with short stories, or gaming scenarios, or what have you.  Ideally, I'd like to do something creative in that manner once a week.

The scenario that's been bubbling around in my head this week is based around fire alarms.

Back when I was having trouble with my phone beeping, which I thought was my fire alarm beeping, my attention was called to the fact that fire alarms are very commanding.  When a fire alarm goes off, people pay attention, and I don't think it's just because of the volume, I think it's almost a classical conditioning response.  People pay attention to fire alarms because they've been trained to from a very young age.

So how to take advantage of that in an encounter?


In Dungeons and Dragons, I'm not the sort of DM who regularly incorporates sounds or music into the gaming session.  I think I've done it very infrequently, but I've read some good ideas on it.  Here's one encounter idea:

The Background: Strange noises, like howling gusts of wind, crackling lightning, and sonic bursts, have been coming from one of the dilapidated old buildings at the center of town.  Since the low-level noobish PCs have been bothering the local constabulary for work, the sheriff directs them thither.

The Lead In: The party is exploring through an abandoned building.  Because the building is in the midst of a populated city, the building is set up with working fire alarms; ritual sigils inscribed on walls or ceilings that detect the presence of flame within some number of squares.

The Encounter: The party kicks in the door on a few acolytes experimenting with some very expensive elemental crystals.  To protect themselves, the acolytes cast a quick summoning, drawing a few fire elementals into the room.

The Kicker: The DM has set up his computer with a loud and annoying looping fire alarm mp3.  When the Fire Elementals are summoned, and whenever they're within 5 squares of a Fire Alarm Sigil, the DM plays the mp3 at max volume.  Think of it as a hazard that affects the players instead of the characters, motivating the players to draw the fire elementals away from the Fire Alarm Sigils, thus motivating specific prioritization of enemies and movement around the battlefield.

The Caveat: Don't use this trick more than a few times.  Loud noises are annoying and you might have to find another group of players to torture.  Also, 4e fights tend to take a while, and long-lasting loud noises are even worse than short ones.  Even if it's not standard practice in your campaign, do everyone a favor and consider cutting hit points by 25% and letting enemies deal an extra 1[W] damage to the players when they're bloodied.  The fight will go faster, enemies will be more of a threat when bloodied, and the alarms will stop sooner.