This Thread is a Dungeon

[Two orcs]

Exits: note if they lead to a specific room, several rooms can connect to a single exit through the magic of corridors
Give: hooks for others to follow up on
Respect: what has been established before
The map: is drawn when the Dungeon is complete
Stats: for monsters, items etc. are given in the post they appear
Multiple rooms in a single post must be connected to each other, you may post several times in a row

Green Pillars
Sickly green pillars in two rows hold a ceiling too tall and too long for torchlight to uncover. Craggy brown flagstones mask the sound of footfalls but every whisper and breath is echoed and amplified to that of a crowd. There are two arched exits in either end of the hall.

 

[Two orcs]

Stairs & sentries
A narrow chamber with the far arched exit to Green Pillars. Stone stairs creep along the wall and exit through the ceiling. The stairs arch over a dark doorway. The door handle is a carved wooden snake with spring loaded poison fangs (Save vs Poison or hand blackens and dies).
Two orcs (HD:1, AC: Leather & shield, Scimitar 1d6) are perched on the stairs, they will withdraw through the exit up the stairs if they spot light.

 

[Beoric]

Stats: for monsters, items etc. are given in the post they appear

Does this mean you are going to have to pick an edition?

Stairs & sentries
A narrow chamber with the far arched exit to Green Pillars. Stone stairs creep along the wall and exit through the ceiling. The stairs arch over a dark doorway. The door handle is a carved wooden snake with spring loaded poison fangs (Save vs Poison or hand blackens and dies).
Two orcs (HD:1, AC: Leather & shield, Scimitar 1d6) are perched on the stairs, they will withdraw through the exit up the stairs if they spot light.

Is this the entrance, or is the entrance fair game?

 

[Two orcs]

Webbed knight
A narrow path bends around yellow-green cyclopean stonework, the outer edge of the path is a steep fall to the level below. Beyond is another wall covered in dull ropey spider's web with half a dozen suspended skeletons, wearing purple and silver liveries and their own dried skins.
Sir Tabin (Fighter 2, AC: Full plate, +1 damage) hangs limp, paralyzed by venom from neck down, visor hides face. If prodded wakes and begs for help. Paralysis lasts 4 hours or till Cure light wounds/Neutralize poison.

 

[Two orcs]

Does this mean you are going to have to pick an edition?
Is this the entrance, or is the entrance fair game?

B/X adjacent
That is not the entrance

 

[Two orcs]

To inject some life into this thread, you are now bound to use the AD&D room contents table:

1-12 Empty
13-14 Monster Only
15-17 Monster and Treasure
18 Special
19 Trick/Trap
20 Treasure

 

[Beoric]

To inject some life into this thread, you are now bound to use the AD&D room contents table:

1-12 Empty
13-14 Monster Only
15-17 Monster and Treasure
18 Special
19 Trick/Trap
20 Treasure

Ok. I rolled a "3", so "EMPTY ROOM".

This is fun!

EDIT: maybe I should say something more productive. I propose using the following d8 table instead:

1-2 Monster Only
3-5 Monster and Treasure
6 Special
7 Trick/Trap
8 Treasure

 

[squeen]

I am convinced Two Orcs is a far better evocative content writer than me.

 

[Two orcs]

@Beoric
Empty rooms are critical to a good dungeon and it's good practice to design them! Proposal denied, if you don't like it you can always just cheat. Note that I'd count the opening post as a empty room and that empty rooms are rarely literally empty, they simply don't have any of the other things listed in them. I rolled 14, but I'll include your 3 in my post:

Empty Pool
Small square blue tiled room. Shaft of sunlight penetrates cracked ceiling dome. Dry square pool 10' deep. Mermaid mosaic hides handholds to climb out. Pipe large enough to crawl through exits the pool. The other exit is a locked gate with a grill of verdigris bronze vines and leaves allowing you to see two trolls in Defaced Mosaic defacing mosaic and sorting the tiles by color. They will ignore adventurers in Empty Pool unless they attempt to open the gate.

Defaced Mosaic
Two shade trolls (HD:6+3, AC: Leather, Claw/claw/bite 1d6/1d6/1d10, regenerates 3 hp/round except in sunlight, Morale: +2) consumed with prying tiles from the mosaics and sorting them in piles by color. They have no skin but deep shadows dance over their exposed organs and sinews. Partially defaced mosaic of red & blue revelers. Two arched exits in either end of the room and in the middle a locked verdigris bronze gate with a grill of vines and leaves. Beyond a shaft of sunlight strikes Empty Pool. Trolls attack if lock to gate is messed with.

@squeen
This thread is for practice!

 

[DangerousPuhson]

Ok. I rolled a "3", so "EMPTY ROOM".

This is fun!

Giving it a try... 12! EMPTY ROOM! Nice.

Empty Room
This immaculately clean, cubic room has nothing in it. Literally nothing. Roll to avoid suffocation.

 

[squeen]

Liking the shade trolls too...

 

[Beoric]

@Beoric
Empty rooms are critical to a good dungeon and it's good practice to design them! Proposal denied, if you don't like it you can always just cheat. Note that I'd count the opening post as a empty room and that empty rooms are rarely literally empty, they simply don't have any of the other things listed in them. I rolled 14, but I'll include your 3 in my post:

Empty Pool
Small square blue tiled room. Shaft of sunlight penetrates cracked ceiling dome. Dry square pool 10' deep. Mermaid mosaic hides handholds to climb out. Pipe large enough to crawl through exits the pool. The other exit is a locked gate with a grill of verdigris bronze vines and leaves allowing you to see two trolls in Defaced Mosaic defacing mosaic and sorting the tiles by color. They will ignore adventurers in Empty Pool unless they attempt to open the gate.

Defaced Mosaic
Two shade trolls (HD:6+3, AC: Leather, Claw/claw/bite 1d6/1d6/1d10, regenerates 3 hp/round except in sunlight, Morale: +2) consumed with prying tiles from the mosaics and sorting them in piles by color. They have no skin but deep shadows dance over their exposed organs and sinews. Partially defaced mosaic of red & blue revelers. Two arched exits in either end of the room and in the middle a locked verdigris bronze gate with a grill of vines and leaves. Beyond a shaft of sunlight strikes Empty Pool. Trolls attack if lock to gate is messed with.

@squeen
This thread is for practice!

The pool room arguably isn't empty, it is "special" in Moldvay parlance. I prefer Moldvay stocking.

I actually do think there is a place for truly empty rooms in a dungeon, as a break in the tension for the players and potentially a place to hole up in necessary. I also think that some rooms which are empty in the sense of having no monster, treasure, trap or trick should contain a red herring of some sort, so that the existence of stuff in a room doesn't guarantee the presence of a hidden monster, trap or treasure.

The truly empty rooms are pointless to describe here. The red herring rooms should be described, but I certainly don't think they should constitute 60% of the dungeon.

It may be semantics, but I count the pool room as a special room rather than a red herring room because of the presence of the gate, which telegraphs another location in the dungeon. Or arguably is it part of the troll room (an antechamber), unless there are other entrances to the troll room.

 

[Two orcs]

@Beoric I disagree. Empty rooms can still be evocative, immersive and interesting. You are exploring a fictional 3D-space and basic architecture can in itself give a sense of wonder and trepidation. Also, they are battlegrounds for wandering or pursuing monsters.

But since both you and DP have shown disgust for the exercise the rules of the thread change again: for every non-empty room someone else makes I'll make an empty room.

 

[squeen]

5. The Oinker [Index]
Beyond the Green Pillars, through the (left) arched exit, the passage terminates at a raised platform of iron grid-work leading to a circular tunnel in the mouth of a titanic pig-head craving that protrudes from an otherwise smooth sandstone wall. The iron walk-way continues into an unlit horizontal shaft circumscribed with spiraling machine-elements and a recessed outer cage of iron. Echoes of dripping water reverberate down its length.

_________________________________________________________​

platform: sags under more than 75-lbs of weight and triggers the sounds of distant pumps, and the click-clack of deep engines.

• During the next round, a torrent of water gushes down both walls of the shaft, followed by the hum and whirl of a water-screw that twists the liquid into a corkscrew-spiral along the shaft's length. Rings of submerged light begin pulsing from end-to-end. The swirling, roaring, water tube is revealed to be a least 100' long, with a 6" wide iron-rail running along its core.
• After the platform is vacated, the entire mechanism shuts down in 2-5 turns.

pig-head craving: eyes of smoked-glass hemispheres with hollow bronze rods inside (spent boom tubes). Hidden high, behind the left-ear, is a key-hole/locking-mechanism that secures the iron-rail in the water tube (fits Custodians' Keys). Failure to lock-pick triggers an alarm that alerts the Evolutionary Custodians in area TBD.

water tube: large enough for man-size creatures to shuffle (crouched) along the length of its iron-rail bridge. At the far end is an annular catch basin.

• iron-rail: unless locked, suddenly pivots at the midpoint, dumping it's contents sideways into the vortex of water. Bodies are swept into the catch basin while being raked across the outer cage that lies below the surface (d4 damage per round).
• traversing drenches travelers. Torches extinguished and water-logged. Unsealed papers (e.g. maps, scrolls, etc.) ruined.

catch basin: fallen characters will continuously tumble here---helplessly gasping for air, breakables smashed, and equipment flung everywhere. Simultaneously, grasping hands reach into the torrent and attempt to snare hapless victims.

grasping hands: deformed zombies with sewn mouths are imprisoned in the outer cage. Insatiably hungry for flesh, they lunge at prey swept into the water-vortex---attempting a grapple-attack against a disoriented opponent. If successful, pin their targets against the bars, and squeeze them through too-small openings; clawing for an additional 1d6 damage and chance of drowning each round (save or lose consciousness).

​

silent mutant zombies (25): HD 2; HP 8; AC 6[13]; Atk 1 claw (1d6); Move 9; Save 17; AL N; XP 60; Special: disease, victims animate as zombies. Immune to sleep and charm. 1/4 damage from piercing weapons. Attack last.​

outer cage: iron-bar grid enveloping the water tube with bars are spaced to pass a human head. Twenty-five silent mutant zombies and treasure/equipment from past victims are inside this shallow shell.

• treasure: to be determined...

TO DO (y'all can help!):

• needs a diagrammed inset-map!
• what's a boom tube?
• who are the Evolutionary Custodians?
• which room contains the alarm?
• who built this contraption? Why? Is the liquid just water?
• what's the deal with the lights? Decontamination?
• Is there a High Evolutionist? Is he a germ-o-phobe?
• needs interesting treasure
• perspective is totally wrong for scaffold in thumbnail-sketch!
• incorporate Malrex's feedback (break in to multiple rooms, PC gets chance to escape under own power,...)

 

[DangerousPuhson]

DP have shown disgust for the exercise the rules of the thread change again

OK, fine I admit originally I was just taking the piss out of a table where 60% of the entries were "Empty Room". However, I'll have you know my entry is perfectly valid. A room with quite literally nothing in it - no air, no gravity, no light. What happens when the door is opened? What happens when the party steps inside? Can literally nothing even exist? It's got all the good elements of design - terse, evocative, a bit gonzo, "something for the party to fuck with"...

 

[squeen]

@Two orcs : How about some back-story/DM-help on the webbed knight. What's his deal?

EDIT:
Poop-on-a-stick! The Pig's Head Gateway and Water Tunnel could/should conceivably be keyed as two separate room. (Oh, and I am cheating---I didn't roll on the table...even though I totally agree about the utility of empty rooms adding ambiance.)

See...this is why I am better off staying away from collaborative projects. I'm that a-hole in every rock band that can't stick-to-the-script and obsesses over minute details---causing the rest of the musicians to quit.

 

[Two orcs]

OK, fine I admit originally I was just taking the piss out of a table where 60% of the entries were "Empty Room". However, I'll have you know my entry is perfectly valid. A room with quite literally nothing in it - no air, no gravity, no light. What happens when the door is opened? What happens when the party steps inside? Can literally nothing even exist? It's got all the good elements of design - terse, evocative, a bit gonzo, "something for the party to fuck with"...

Your entry has no door. Could the door to a vacuum even be opened against the negative pressure?

 

[squeen]

This is actually the polar opposite of how I usually work.

Typically:

1. map, visualizing the rooms functionally
2. key the contents...details emerges including unanticipated actors/factions
3. fix the (now broken) map
4. try to edit the key and remove wordiness
5. expand the map...

 

[DangerousPuhson]

Could the door to a vacuum even be opened against the negative pressure?

A vacuum is something - in this room there is nothing.

Ok, scientifically I know a vacuum is the absence of anything and so therefore it's technically nothing, but I mean "nothing" in the literary sense of the word. The implications are many-fold.

@squeen - I do the same, I design a map first then populate it based on where it would be sensible for populations to exist based on things like entry/egress points, other populations and hazards, choke-points, traffic routes, etc.

 

[squeen]

I keep hear Bryce in my head shouting "Rube Goldberg!" with regards to my contribution (...and all the while DP and Two Orcs ignore it and instead prefer to argue about a "null" entry.)

I give up...