I need to make up some Five Room Dungeons, so I wrote some
tables for inspiration. Five room dungeons are an idea from John Four that makes a
dungeon from five small challenges. The rooms can be large or small and
arranged in many formations.
The rooms are:
1.
Entrance or Guardian
2.
Puzzle or Roleplaying Challenge
3.
Trick or Setback
4.
Climax, Big Battle, or Conflict
5.
Reward, Revelation, or Plot Twist.
The first thing I wanted was a theme table to tie the rooms
together. I decided on eight different themes or places the dungeon could be.
Next I started to work on the rooms. I made some separate table
and started brainstorming ideas fitting them into each list. After a few items,
I started to come up with things that could fit in multiple lists, sometimes
all of them! I decided to take another approach, to break each room up into
what generic things could be in them. I came up with something to negotiate
with (person), something to find (place), and something to overcome (thing). I
was looking for nouns! Now I made lists of people, places, and things. As I
looked over these I saw that some of them fit more naturally into the room
designs. People fit more naturally into rooms one and four, places in one or
three. I decided to weight each room with a negative, zero, or positive; from
there picking a randomizer that fit my odds (thanks anydice).
I started tweaking my lists of nouns and realized I needed
to weight one of the tables to make some places (planar) more rare. Instead of
testing this out with dice, I wanted to run some really quick rolls and see
instant results. I wrote an excel sheet to help me quickly randomize, copy, and
paste. I forgot about the weighting I had done for the places, and you’ll see
that in my original results. Without further ado, here are my six Five Room
Dungeons.
1) Treasure Vault
Entrance or Guardian: Upon opening this hidden away area,
you notice that it is or was recently inhabited. A tattered rug covers the
floor, a table and 2 chairs sit off to the side, a small collection of books on
a shelf of a bookcase, a comfy chair for reading and a long hallway stretches
off in the distance. The rug hides a pressure plate that starts a slow rumbling
in the hallway. If the players move it they can beat the crumbling hall. If the
players wait, they realize that they will be cut off from the rest of the
dungeon if they don’t move. Dexterity saving throw will get them past the falling
rocks with no damage, half for failure. After the hall crumbles, it will take
250 man hours to unearth the whole 250 feet.
Puzzle or Roleplaying Challenge: There is a woman, Sarin,
caught in a circle of magical energy. She tells the party if the salt circle is
broken, she can go free. She is a high level thief looking to loot the vault.
She will betray the party if necessary.
Trick or Setback: This is a large room, it has small mouse
sized holes that lead into hidden areas in the walls and ceiling. There is a hag,
Hilda, hiding here who entered a pact to guard the vault for 101 years. If the
vault is breached she will be trapped here forever. The hag uses the holes to
enter the walls and cast from cover.
Climax, Big Battle, or Conflict: The vault is locked by a
large circle divided in to four quadrants. They are colored yellow, blue, brown,
and white. To open the lock a spell from each element (fire, water, earth, and
air) must be cast in secession. The order does not matter, as long as they are
cast one after another.
Reward, Revelation, Plot Twist: Aside from gold in the
vault, there is also a Ring of Three Whooshes. It can cast longstrider three
times per day.
2) Giant Burial
Chambers
Entrance or Guardian: An unnatural pond, on a mountain top
far from much of anything. If you submerge yourself in the pond you will emerge
in a dark, carved stone entry room with a similar pool.
Puzzle or Roleplaying Challenge: Three stone giant ghosts
guard this area. They will warn the characters (in giant) not to disturb the
contents of the tombs.
Trick or Setback: A stone Giant lairs here, melded into the
stone and watching over the tombs. He has been shunned by his people for
something he did long ago.
Climax, Big Battle, or Conflict: A fey lurks here in the
shadows, seeking revenge on the giants that lay here. The fey will encourage
the characters to seek the sword.
Reward, Revelation, Plot Twist: A sword that contains their
souls is here, if used and reduce a creature to 0 HP it will release a soul as
a giant shadow under the welders control for 1 hour before vanishing. It has 10
'charges' and turns to a non-magical sword after they are all used, damning the
giants souls to the abyss.
3) Shadow Monastery
Entrance or Guardian: A haunted monastery lies in near
ruins, the veil between worlds is thin here and shadowy apparitions of the
former students can be seen eternally practicing, trapped between life and
death. An entrance can be found deep in the bowels of the old monastery,
linking to a shadowfell version of the building.
Puzzle or Roleplaying Challenge: A monk on the other side
says that they are all trapped here by a bell that can be heard ringing in the
distance.
Trick or Setback: If the party goes toward the sound they
will have an encounter with aggressive monks.
Climax, Big Battle, or Conflict: The Bell is a construct
with sonic attacks.
Reward, Revelation, Plot Twist: Before the monk leaves the
shadowfell behind, he will open a portal back and give the party a ghost rune. Ghost
rune can be transferred to a non-magical suit of armor or weapon. If attached
to a weapon, weapon can instead do cold or necrotic damage. If a creature is
immune to cold damage, it is reduced to resistant for this attack; if it is
resistant it is reduced to normal damage. If the creature does not have a
resistance or immunity to cold damage and cold is chosen, critical hits to
three times the normal effect.
4) Tower on the
Border
Entrance or Guardian: A haunted tower is guarded by the
ghost of a wizard, he warns that the darkness shall destroy you.
Puzzle or Roleplaying Challenge: There is a black pudding
here trapped in a large glass container with a door facing out. On the other
side of this large room is an area that has one inch holes in the floor that go
down twenty feet to a pressure plate that opens a secret blue portal. The
pressure plate must have the weight a large creature on it (the black pudding).
The black pudding can then squeeze its way through a passage under the floor
and back into the glass container through a hole in the bottom, resetting the
puzzle.
Trick or Setback: There is a portal on each wall of this
rectangular room, the one the characters step through changes to a different
color (green). The other portals are (right to left) black, yellow, and red. If
the players choose any but the black, they are teleported d4 hexes (24 miles
each) away.
Climax, Big Battle, or Conflict: The wizard from the
entrance is here and shadow touched. He is invisible and holds the key of a
great cage that surrounds the party. There are signs of someone have been here
recently and a tracking check will lead them to bump into the wizard. Defeating
the crazy wizard or otherwise finding the key will let the PCs out of the cage.
The wizard will explain how the players can get back using the closest shadow
portal (d4x6 miles away).
Reward, Revelation, Plot Twist: The wizard wears a robe of
illusion, it has seventeen charges that can be used to can cast an illusion spell
from zero to fourth level (DM chooses one spell per level). Each spell can be
cast for the spells level +1 charge; e.g. a cantrip is 1 charge, a first level
spell is 2 charges. It disintegrates after the last charge is used.
5) Prison of the
Ravager
Entrance or Guardian: A shadowfell prison holds a bound
carrion, or ghoul demon. To enter the foul jail requires a pound of flesh
placed into a bedrock mortar in a large boulder in an out of the way place in
the forest.
Puzzle or Roleplaying Challenge: The Ravager has been imprisoned
here for countless years, he asks the party to free him and offers to make them
generals in his army as well as lead them out of the prison.
Trick or Setback: This room contains five cauldrons full of
burbling liquids. When the red, green, blue, yellow, and orange liquids are drank
by themselves they do nothing, when mixed together they do a random result.
2d6
|
Effect
|
2
|
+1 strength
|
3
|
+1 intelligence
|
4
|
Paralyzed for an hour.
|
5
|
+1 wisdom
|
6-8
|
Aged by twenty five percent of current age.
|
9
|
+1 charisma
|
10
|
Polymorphed into a sheep for an hour.
|
11
|
+1 constitution
|
12
|
+1 dexterity
|
Climax, Big Battle, or Conflict: An undead fey guards the
exit and will die before he lets the demon leave. He knows the Ravager’s true
name.
Reward, Revelation, Plot Twist: There is a secret room that
has a magic mouth that speaks the demons true name, Catullus.
6) Astral Erratic
Entrance or Guardian: An Astral dragon, Ansmon, makes his
lair in this huge chunk of rock and stages attacks on astral raiders from here.
Puzzle or Roleplaying Challenge: A very young, seventy-five,
elven ranger, Laira resides here and serves as guardian to the dragon’s lair.
She was captured infiltrating the dragon’s lair and has since joined the cause.
Trick or Setback: A monk, Ranek, lives here, forced into a
contract when the dragon destroyed his monastery on a separate errant in the
astral plane. He has been here for only a few years, arriving after the Laira.
Climax, Big Battle, or Conflict: The dragon will attack any
who enter here without Laira.
Reward, Revelation, Plot Twist: The dragon keep a journal of
his conquests, including mind wiping Laira after destroying her trespassing
family.
Next is tweaking of the tables to a specific area and using
specific monster instead of generic placeholders.
