Sparse Dungeon Keys, or the Virtues of Plain Rooms
Introduction
Recently, friend of the blog Sahh released the first floor of her Kilodungeon on Itch! I had the pleasure of playing in the dungeon for a few months earlier this year and, since we’ve pretty much mapped the entirety of the first floor already, Sahh put out the keys to the public. I’ve been thinking a lot about dungeons lately, so let’s take a look at a room and see what we can learn!
Dungeon Keys
Something I’ve struggled with in the past (especially for my own notes) is writing too much about a particular room, hex feature, or encounter. I end up either running out of steam and being unable to finish the dungeon in one sitting or writing too much and creating an unusable set of notes.
One concern that I’ve had until recently is that if a room was not described in detail its importance or usability at the table would diminish. Why spend time in a room with a short description? Surely, the interesting stuff is the stuff that takes a bit to explain?
I was wrong about this and I think Sahh’s dungeon is a great example of how I was wrong. Here’s the text that described arguably my favorite room in a dungeon crawl ever:
Long tables, stoves, broken cupboards, racks. Everything covered in scattered pots, pans & cooking utensils.
- Moving through here silently is going to be either very slow or very difficult.
Obvious “secret” tunnel behind an overturned cupboard leads to Common Cell (8), where the other end of it is covered with loose brickwork.
Table closest to the northern archway has some space cleared on it for a dirty bowl and a small stool at the end of the table.
Smell of oil & rot from east (12).
This room is only a couple dozen words, which to Mr.Mann pre-enlightenment would be a death sentence. Surely I can add something to interact with here! Enchanted meat hooks that swing out to snare the party, a living stove that threatens to set the tables ablaze, something to make this room interesting.
At the table, this room was one of the most engaging rooms we explored and presented a ton of problems to solve!
One session, our group went to this room with intentions of exploring the secret passage behind the cupboard. Iakitru (shortened to Iak for pronunciation reasons :P) was exploring the cell beyond the cupboard when the Torturer (one of the wandering bosses on the first floor of Marmoris) came walking by. Most of the party was in the kitchen, holding a rope tied around Iak they were planning on pulling if he was in danger, so as the torturer entered the room the party either hid in the room proper or dove through the hole and hid with Iak.
Afterwards, Iak’s group (which only had three people in it if memory serves) encountered some Ash Specters (one of the recurring enemies in the first floor of Marmoris) in the cell, attracted by the pleading prisoners of the Marble Cage. Suddenly, we were trapped by the crawlspace we had used to escape the Torturer in the first place! Turning our backs to the Ash specters to crawl through the hole was surely a death sentence, but so too would fighting a bunch of floating piles of ash.
Dramatic moments like these are created by procedures like random encounters, but good dungeon design can spur these moments and create them more often too. The kitchen exists in a crucial point between many elements of the first floor and is a hotspot for the Torturer. Something as simple as a crawlspace can separate the party and create cool moments! Other times, the pots and pans that litter the floor of the room gave us crucial audio clues to hide as the Torturer walked by. The short and sweet elements of the room gave us all sorts of room to maneuver the fictional space and treat it as a tool, something that wouldn’t be as easy to adjudicate at the table if the key were bigger or more complex.
Conclusion
Dungeon keys don’t necessarily need to be these big complex set pieces in order to be engaging. Things like random encounter procedures and interesting and varied design can highlight what would otherwise be plain and straightforward rooms without a lot going on. Even further, part of being a good player is recognizing the key elements of “plain” rooms and utilizing them to your advantage. Give Sahh’s dungeon a read! It’s quite good and I’m excited to return to playing in it again soon.