Simple Dungeon Tropes for a Campaign of Virgins

[Zombra]

I'm thinking about running something for some friends of mine who want to try tabletop for the first time. (Not literal virgins. (As far as I know.))

My concept is a really really simple dungeon crawl with like 8 rooms that cover basic tropes.

Stuff like:
* Fight a monster
* Detect and disarm a deathtrap
* Survive an environmental hazard e.g. swing over a chasm
* Answer a riddle
* Decipher runes

You know, standard dungeon shit. Are there any "basics" I'm missing in the list above?

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Loot, you baboon.

 

[Luckmann]

The part where they die horribly because they picked a fight with the guards, and then call you a shitter for not balancing the encounter properly like the entire fucking world revolves around them.

 

[laclongquan]

Camping in the middle of this deep dungeon then get ambushed in your sleep because you noobs didnt remember to set sentry schedule.

 

[Eadee]

Loot

Nuff said

 

[Havoc]

Loot.

Better, make them roll for loot.

 

[Morkar Left]

Virgins in dungeons are always chained and get eaten by dragons. You're welcome.

 

[yeye]

Have enemies drop loot boxes and charge irl money to 'find' keys for them.

 

[Melan]

You know, standard dungeon shit. Are there any "basics" I'm missing in the list above?

You are missing complexity. You can't fit a good dungeon crawling experience into 8 rooms. Take your time and develop a dungeon with at least 25-30 keyed locations, zones of varying difficulty, mysteries and obscure places to find and explore. A 8-room dungeon is a poor substitute for the real thing. You can't explore it and find stuff, because everything is within arm's reach. You can't get "too deep" in it. It doesn't offer emergent gameplay where the players take the broken wooden beams from one corner of the dungeon and batter down the stone doors in another. Generally, this is the minimal size your dungeon should be. You don't need to write a novel for every location; a few lines should do.

While we are at it, you should also have:

• Enigmas: mysteries which don't make perfect sense, and can't be solved in a satisfying way. A pair of unopenable metal doors which lead... somewhere. A great stone head that speaks obscure riddles. A looted crypt swarming with odd lights and shadows. Things which go your players go "what?" and makes their imagination run.
• The third dimension: chasms you can fall into. Chutes you can climb up into. Stairs up and down. Multiple levels. Sub-levels. Pits you can climb down into and find a secret room to the side.
• Choices, choices, choices (meaningful ones). Do we go down the passage with the sound of rushing water, or the on littered with bones? (This is a pretty cool blog post about the subject.)
• Connections and non-linearity: approaching places from multiple possible directions. Do we walk into the bandit lair, observe them through peepholes drilled in the side of a hidden passage, or get the drop on them from a ledge above their lair?
• Themed sub-areas: a buried tower. Catacombs. A lair of brigands and their leader, haunted by a ghost pirate.
• Evocative puzzles. Dodge the eyebeams of the stone statues to reach a piece of treasure. Turn the hawk's head to drain a flooded room and reveal a passage to a different area.
• Environmental hazards. Unstable ceiling, green slime, water, poison gas, yellow mould.
• Dangers which are off the level scale. Yes, there is a beholder in the corner of that low-level dungeon. You should probably look at all those corpses near the entrance and avoid its lair. Or try to strike a bargain with it? Bribe it with treasure or information?
• Logistics. Those silver statues are heavy, how do we cart them out to civilisation? We must find a good resting spot and set a watch to prevent a night ambush. We must have ropes for climbing and crowbars to open up chests and jam trap mechanisms.
• The fantastic. Make a dungeon surprising and mysterious. An orc or a magic missile isn't fantastic, they are familiar. But a great stone bridge spanning a raging waterfall disappearing into the netherworld can be, because it raises questions in the players' minds. Good dungeons are about the strange and unexpected, about discovering hidden things and braving hidden dangers. Fantasy >>>>> realism.

 

[Zombra]

Thank you Melan, some good ideas I will use there, but to be clear, for this particular game it'll be "Baby's First Dungeon". Not intended to be a "campaign" or extended adventure that will take a dozen+ sessions to complete - the idea is to meet like twice and then it's over. After their beaks are wet we can start thinking about the "real thing".

The greatest danger to any tabletop party isn't monsters, deathtraps, or the schemes of evil NPCs - it's an overambitious GM who can't pull it off. That or real world scheduling logistics.

 

[Delterius]

Virgins in dungeons are always chained and get eaten by dragons. You're welcome.

But if you do that to your players they might call you a weirdo.

 

[Wayward Son]

Virgins in dungeons are always chained and get eaten by dragons. You're welcome.

But if you do that to your players they might call you a weirdo.

Huh, really? My players are usually the ones initiating such degenerate behaviour.

 

[laclongquan]

8 rooms probabbly can be a complex dungeon if you do it as a cube2x2x2. and there is gate with keys.

 

[Zombra]

8 rooms probabbly can be a complex dungeon if you do it as a cube2x2x2. and there is gate with keys.

That ... is a very good idea.

 

[Melan]

Thank you Melan, some good ideas I will use there, but to be clear, for this particular game it'll be "Baby's First Dungeon". Not intended to be a "campaign" or extended adventure that will take a dozen+ sessions to complete - the idea is to meet like twice and then it's over. After their beaks are wet we can start thinking about the "real thing".

The greatest danger to any tabletop party isn't monsters, deathtraps, or the schemes of evil NPCs - it's an overambitious GM who can't pull it off. That or real world scheduling logistics.

There is no reason why "baby's first dungeon" shouldn't be just a bit ambitious. I'm not talking about beginning a megadungeon (although they can be fun, and you can develop those one level at a time) but something you could reasonably sketch out and build in an afternoon. That'd be more like in the 20-30 rooms range, and it'll give the players an ongoing sense of mystery ("But we didn't solve the stone door behind the waterfall"), and give you loose ends you can continue from next time if they want to continue. Assuming two sessions at 4 hours each, you can cram a reasonable amount of exploration and action into that package.

Also, it's best to start with a bang. The first time I played an RPG (back when I thought they were some kind of clever crossword puzzle), we were exploring an abandoned pyramid. We solved a few traps and puzzles, but didn't get too far. However, the promises of there being "more", and the unexplored mysteries made me hella interested. The second time (different time, different group, different dungeon), we went down into an abandoned mine and my nameless fighter was killed by orcs in something like the second battle. We didn't get to the end of the dungeon either, and that was part of what made it great - that there was something larger beyond what we have seen, and that you could lose if you made wrong decisions or you were unlucky. Heady stuff!

 

[Don Peste]

A mimic.

An NPC that tries to swing over a chasm and fails, so the players understand that swinging over it can be dangerous.

 

[Wayward Son]

Melan Still remember one of my first Dungeons being a mine where we were searching for this missing guy. We wandered aimlessly and came upon this crack in the wall. After we all squeezed through it, we found a motherfucking hydra (we were level 2!). Needless to say it killed us and we never figured out why there was a hydra in that mineshaft.

 

[Doktor Best]

Dont forget to include gay romances.

 

[Snorkack]

Seems like a pretty good list already. One thing I'd add are red herrings: A key that doesn't seem to fit any door. A child's withered corpse draped in a weird way. A sheet of paper torn out of a diary that mentions a scientific experiment gone horribly wrong. Just so your players know that there are always way more mysteries in the world than they could possibly solve. Also to avoid the 'The GM provides details, so it has to be be plot-relevant' metagame.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Seems like a pretty good list already. One thing I'd add are red herrings: A key that doesn't seem to fit any door. A child's withered corpse draped in a weird way. A sheet of paper torn out of a diary that mentions a scientific experiment gone horribly wrong. Just so your players know that there are always way more mysteries in the world than they could possibly solve. Also to avoid the 'The GM provides details, so it has to be be plot-relevant' metagame.

With this I'll add: an exit that just leads into a pit that drops them into the entrance.
That'll teach 'em to think this adventure is over.

 

[Snorkack]

Seems like a pretty good list already. One thing I'd add are red herrings: A key that doesn't seem to fit any door. A child's withered corpse draped in a weird way. A sheet of paper torn out of a diary that mentions a scientific experiment gone horribly wrong. Just so your players know that there are always way more mysteries in the world than they could possibly solve. Also to avoid the 'The GM provides details, so it has to be be plot-relevant' metagame.

With this I'll add: an exit that just leads into a pit that drops them into the entrance.
That'll teach 'em to think this adventure is over.

Sounds like Skyrim tbh.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Seems like a pretty good list already. One thing I'd add are red herrings: A key that doesn't seem to fit any door. A child's withered corpse draped in a weird way. A sheet of paper torn out of a diary that mentions a scientific experiment gone horribly wrong. Just so your players know that there are always way more mysteries in the world than they could possibly solve. Also to avoid the 'The GM provides details, so it has to be be plot-relevant' metagame.

With this I'll add: an exit that just leads into a pit that drops them into the entrance.
That'll teach 'em to think this adventure is over.

Sounds like Skyrim tbh.

The exits in Skyrim lead out.
This exit leads in.

 

[Zombra]

This exit leads in.

Rated

not for "mystery" but for "jesus dude, that is some ominous shit"

 

[Zombra]

Combining ERYFKRAD and laclongquan's ideas, how about a 2x2x2 magic tower that wraps around? Climb the stairs in Room 1 and enter Room 2, climb up again and you're back in Room 1, maybe have the junctions not make sense, and nothing leads back out unless you collect enough artifacts to unlock the whatever. Too video gamey? Not "grounded" enough?

 

[Melan]

Maybe too video gamey today, but you have just described the Mobius Tower from Tracy Hickman's The Lost Tomb of Martek (except it also had a temporal stasis thing where you could manipulate frozen time to solve puzzles). That's from the era when videogames mostly meant "dots shooting dots at other dots".
Wayward Son , that hydra encounter is great. I bet everyone involved remembered it. I have to put something like that in my next dungeon. (Hear that, Arrowgrab ?)