In one easy sentence: every room should advance the story or reinforce the themes of the dungeon in a meaningful way. Useless, or “empty”, rooms penalize your Players’ curiosity by wasting their time and efforts. “Full” rooms, ones which provide greater context to the adventure underway, invite your Players to become active participants beyond swinging their swords or hurling bolts of fire. Now, this doesn’t mean you should load every room with gold, magic items, or Gelatinous Cubes to artificially create buy-in. Your adventurers need time to rest, soak in the ambience of the location, and check on each other before encountering the next major event. However, these breaks in the action shouldn’t just simply exist. Whoever built the dungeon must have had a purpose for this room, or else why would this room be here in the first place? Let the room provide insight into the McGuffin being chased, the villain being hunted, or even a facet of a PC’s personal story. Don’t let the dungeon simply be a place to house the adventure; let it become a landmark, a place of tangible significance, in your game setting.
What an “Empty” Dungeon Looks Like
My original reason for writing this post comes from running the Death House dungeon in Curse of Strahd for D&D 5e. This mansion adventure is comprised of three main floors, an attic, and a two-floor underground complex. On first glance, it’s got all the makings of an unforgettable haunted mansion adventure.
And then the PCs walk inside.
…
And nothing happens. The doors don’t slam shut behind them, no ghosts or spectral visages of the past wander the halls with vacant expressions, no notes left behind by jilted lovers vowing revenge are discovered. The adventurers tour the house, room by room, while the DM spews prose about the innocent-looking wall panels actually hiding little skulls and snakes in the design work. Oh, and sometimes you’ll find treasure. Yay.
You’ve got SO much room in this house, so many opportunities for ghostly tricks or horrifying displays of violence, that never get touched. While there are some challenging fights to be found here, 90% of which occur in the latter half of the adventure, they’re all against creatures who can’t be reasoned with and cannot speak, providing no context to the Players about whom they’re defending against.
Let’s take Marker 13, the third-floor wash room, for example. The module spends five lines of text describing this room in excruciating detail, even noting an abandoned cistern on the roof where the water for the tub comes from, for no payoff. Not even a cheesy Filled Tub spook. This room, while filled with all sorts of appliances or furnishings, is empty to the adventurer. Sadly, a large majority of Death House, including underground complex, exacerbates this empty feeling by giving the PCs little with which to engage.
Death House, by the guidelines established above, is a decidedly empty house.
Ensuring Every Room Counts
If you discover, upon reading this and reflecting on your past work, that many of your dungeons have been designed with the same level of vacant tourism as Death House, it doesn’t mean you’re a bad dungeoneer or your Players have hated every dungeon you’ve built. What it says, however, is you have far more opportunities to invest your Players than you’re currently utilizing. So, how does one get better at filling their dungeon rooms?
The simple answer, the answer no one likes to hear, is practice. When creating dungeons, scope each room and ask yourself, “How does this room enhance our story?” If the room doesn’t reward Players (either up-front or through careful investigation) with a greater understanding of the location, villain, or McGuffin, challenge yourself to insert something meaningful. This could be a long-lost journal detailing the mechanics of a future trap, a trapped NPC (driven insane through isolation) who can act as an unreliable guide or provide insight into the villain’s motives, or an enchanted mural which, at the PC’s touch, animates and details a scene of the ancient past or prophesied future. No matter the event, object, or person added to the room, always ensure it reinforces the themes or story being told.
As a great practice run, try creating some Five-Room Dungeons. Forcing yourself to work with a limited space means you can’t afford having any extraneous fluff. As you get more comfortable with the concept of building meaning into each room, you can expand the size of your dungeons bit by bit, always leaving breadcrumbs of insight or evocative scenes in each one. Before you know it, that boring mansion will transform into a house of horror your Players will recall for years to come.
–Matthew Wulf
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