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It might contain a tough combat encounter, take down a key defense, exhaust an importantresource, or make the party susceptible to a certain type of attack.For example, if Room Four contains a mummy whose secret weakness is fire, then make RoomThree a troll lair (or another creature susceptible to fire) so the PCs might be tempted to burn offa lot of their fire magic, oil, and other flammable resources. This would turn a plain old troll battleinto a gotcha once the PCs hit Room Four and realize they are out of fire resources.Don’t forget to dress Room Three up with your theme elements.Room Four: Climax, Big Battle or ConflictThis room is The Big Show. It’s the final combat or conflict encounter of the dungeon. Use all thetactics you can summon to make this encounter memorable and entertaining.As always, generate interesting terrain that will impact the battle.Start or end with roleplay. Maybe the bad guy needs to stall for time to let PC buffs wear out, to waitfor help to arrive, or to stir himself into a rage. Perhaps the combat ends with the bad guy bleedingto death and a few short words can be exchanged, or there are helpless minions or prisoners toroleplay with once the threat is dealt with.Room Four ideas:Give the bad guy unexpected powers, abilities, or equipment.Previous rooms might contain warning signals or an alarm, so the bad guy has had time to prepare.The bay guys try to settle things in an unusual way, such as through a wager or a duel.The lair is trapped. The bad guy knows what or where to avoid, or can set off the traps at opportunemoments.The bad guy reveals The Big Reward and threatens to break it or put it out of the PCs’ so reach sothey’ll never collect it.The bad guy has a secret weakness that the PCs figure out how to exploit.A variety of PC skills and talents are required to successfully complete the encounter.Room Five: Reward, Revelation, Plot TwistHere’s your opportunity to change the players’ bragging to “we came, we saw, we slipped on abanana peel.”Room Five doesn’t always represent a complication or point of failure for the PCs, but it can. RoomFive doesn’t always need to be a physical location either - it can be a twist revealed in Room Four.12

Room Five is where your creativity can shine and is often what will make the dungeon differentand memorable from the other crawls in your campaigns.In addition, if you haven’t supplied the reward yet for conquering the dungeon, here is a goodplace to put the object of the quest, chests of loot, or the valuable information the PCs need tosave the kingdom.As accounting tasks take over from recent, thrilling, combat tasks, this would also be a good timeto make a campaign or world revelation, or a plot twist.Perhaps the location of the next 5 Room Dungeon is uncovered, along with sufficient motivationto accept the quest.Maybe the identity of the bad guy is revealed. New clues and information pertaining to a major plotarc might be embedded in the treasure, perhaps sewn into a valuable carpet, drawn in painting,or written on a slip of paper stuffed into a scroll tube or encoded on a data chip.Room Five ideas:Another guardian awaits in the treasure container.A trap that resurrects or renews the challenge from Room Four.Bonus treasure is discovered that leads to another adventure, such as a piece of a magic item ora map fragment.A rival enters and tries to steal the reward while the PCs are weakened after the big challenge ofRoom Four.The object of the quest/final reward isn’t what it seems or has a complication. i.e. The kidnappedking doesn’t want to return.The quest was a trick. By killing the dungeon’s bad guy, the PCs have helped the campaign villainor a rival. Perhaps the bad guy was a good guy under a curse, transformed, or placed into difficultcircumstances.The bad guy turns out to be a PC’s father.The true, gruesome meaning behind a national holiday is discovered.The source of an alien race’s hostility towards others is uncovered, transforming them from villainsto sympathetic characters in the story.The true meaning of the prophecy or poem that lead the PCs to the dungeon is finally understood,and it’s not what the PCs thought.13

Chapter 2:Five RoomMethods &Advice

How To Create Five Room HorrorDungeonsRoleplaying Tips Patron Jeffrey asks how to create five room horror adventures:Johnn, been reading for a long time, and always figured that I would one day have a questionworthy of asking. I guess that day is today. How would you use a five-room dungeon to run ahorror game?For readers new to this GMing tool, a Five Room Dungeon consists of: Room 1: Entrance And Guardian Room 2: Puzzle Or Roleplaying Challenge Room 3: Red Herring Room 4: Climax, Big Battle Or Conflict Room 5: Plot TwistYou can use this model to create any kind of adventure, not just dungeons: wilderness, city,roleplay, mystery, and so on. You can also connect 5RDs into larger adventures and vary roomcounts to avoid predictability.To answer Jeffrey’s question, I’m going to throw something new at you:The GM’s Mental DungeonUnlike other genres, horror must curdle our minds. We must prepare a mental game in additionto the physical for horror’s best effects to play out.To do this, you want to layer five themes on top of your plot, encounters, and game elements.These five themes have a rough sequence. Turn this sequence into a five room dungeon in yourmind to help you GM the horror adventure:Mystery: Entrance And GuardianForeshadowing: Puzzle Or Roleplaying ChallengeSuspense: Red HerringFear: Climax, Big Battle Or ConflictSurprise: Plot Twist15

MysteryHorror must involve the unknown. Let fog of war seep over plot elements to create uncertaintyand doubt in your players.For example, monster design. Put your standard orcs into a cult. Have them worship a special orcthat has grotesque characteristics. Make the orc leader a potent foe in some way. Give the culthorrific rituals.Now drop evidence of the cult into your adventure. Mutilated animals. Strange symbols. Whispersof a massive horned creature prowling the woods at night. Guards sent to investigate discoveredbutchered with seeming ease.No clue above reveals facts to give players clarity or confidence. The fog of war drives players’imaginations into dark corners.ForeshadowingWhat creeps into play during the first half of your adventure should come back to claw the PCsin the second.Perhaps a pig roasting over the party’s campfire comes to life and attacks. Its spitted andburning body slams into the PCs until the beast’s last hit point gets carved away. Then later inthe adventure the PCs encounter orc cultists who set their pierced bodies on fire before they attack.Maybe a PC has a fear of drowning. The party might stumble upon rotting animals the druid saysdied by drowning even though the lake is miles away. Then, as the characters penetrate deep intothe forest they encounter water spirits fleeing fire orc cultists and the spirits try to “inhabit” thecharacters for safety.SuspenseDraw the drama out with white-knuckle uncertainty in a gloomy background of threat.Here’s where your mystery and foreshadowing pay off.Sure the PCs might have plate armour, fireballs, and elite survival skills, but the cultists lurk deepin the forest’s heart, numbers and powers unknown.And the mysterious cult leader is some kind of demon or dragon or spirit whose cunning worrieseven the brilliant wizard.Each encounter draws the party closer to their horrible enemy yet provides no assurances aboutwho or what they face.Alone. In the forest. Weaknesses and worries being preyed upon as you pull on player and charactertriggers while they crawl your mental GM dungeon of horror.16

FearNow we come to the goal of horror. The best response we can ask for from our design andstorytelling is fear. This forms the climax you’ve been building toward with mystery (what’shappening and will it hurt me?), foreshadowing (it’s gonna get ya in the worst way possible),and suspense (it could strike at any time!).Fear needs empathy. If one player becomes scared, others will follow. If you can make one gameelement scary, it becomes easier to conjure future fearful NPCs, locations, and situations.Look at the Monster Manual. Orcs aren’t scary. We might worry they could kill us. But that’sstandard gaming fare.However, if we cloak our orcs in obscene cult activities, that threaten PCs not just physically(“The cleric can heal my hit points but am I going to drown today?”), with identities and powersunknown on home turf, we may see the seeds of fear reflected in stressed faces around the table.And then it grows.SurpriseCatch players off-guard and we crack open the gates in invitation to fear. Crumble the wall ofconfidence so doubt and anxiety ooze through the cracks as harbingers that players no longerhave control.Lunge from the shadows you’ve formed to surprise the players. Give false security and take it away.Make what players think they know horribly wrong. And change the ordinary without warning.Layer Your Mental Dungeon Onto The PhysicalNow that we’ve explored the five key psychological aspects of horror, we look for every opportunityto add them to our adventure design.Use the Mental Five Room Dungeon as a rough playbook while you GM:Mystery Foreshadowing Suspense Fear SurpriseDraw these out over the course of a single encounter or several.Repeat several times if possible to create cycles of horror in your adventure.Set the table so your players experience uncertainty, trepidation, worry, fear, and surprise overand over.17

Example GM Move With Threats UsingLord of the RingsLast week I discussed the idea of combining cool boardgame mechanics with adventure design to create1-3 special GM Moves for your 5 Room Dungeons.Roleplaying Tips GM Aidan Hernandez wrote back with a great example using Lord of the Rings:***Hello there,This will be my first time ever responding to a newsletter. However, I felt it important to do sobecause I wanted to show how Creating a Special GM Move can be applied and how you can useit to recreate the mechanics from the narrative.When I read your idea of Effect Feedback Mechanism Counteraction I immediately wasreminded of the Dungeon World/Apocalypse World system known as “Threats.”[Johnn: Here’s a small PDF from the AW site that tells more about Threats.]The Clock adds specific ways I could show an Effect growing stronger or weaker.So I combined the systems to create a dungeon level Threat with specific mechanics. I took fromliterature and reverse-engineered the narrative to become mechanics.So I present my dungeon “The Mines of Moria” inspired by Peter Jackson’s Film The Lord of theRings: The Fellowship of the Ring.Goal (why is this dungeon here): Shortcut, Passage. (It serves as a way through the mountainsfor the Fellowship and a way to avoid going all the way South or near Isengard.)Hazards: Delay, Death. (The mechanics to be used in this dungeon either delay the party and seekto advance The Clock or to Kill the Party and end the Campaign.)Danger: Durin’s Bane aka The Balrog. (The Danger is much like your 4th room Giant. Only itdoesn’t just passively reside in a room physically but acts as the room itself.)Clock: Echoes in the Deep. Each time the Players make a “Loud Noise” the clock advances. (Nowhere I feel the Loud Noise would be the trigger for the roll. Does the Cave Troll falling in battlecounts as a Loud Noise? What about the Kraken at the Entrance? I feel we determine whether ornot the Loud Noise effect occurs from the dice and the clock advancing adds more of these checks.)Clock 0-3: The Silent Halls. Players have not activated any Hazards or the Danger and have littleresistance making their way through the dungeon.18

Clock 3-6: An Echo, Ripples. Players have activated Hazards but not yet the Danger. Hazards nowactively seek to Delay the party or cause Death to the party.Clock 6-9: Shadows of the Deep. Players have activated Hazards and the Danger stirs. (This is myleast defined one since in this scenario the party quickly passes this section.)Clock 9-10: The Echoes Ring. Players have activated the Danger and it now actively seeks them.Hazards now seek to Delay the party to give the Danger time to appear.Clock 10-11: The Drums Beat. The effects of the Hazards grow worse as the Danger draws near.Clock 11-12: They are Coming. The Danger Presents itself.The Counteraction: For every day the players spend making their presence unknown, the Clockremoves a segment. This cannot be done in conjunction with a long rest, although the players donot gain levels of exhaustion while spending their time this way.In this dungeon, the party is delayed by the puzzle, which gives time for an encounter to cause thefirst “Loud Noise” Check. They enter the dungeon proper at 3-6 after fighting the beast outside.Then, they travel freely until they come upon the second challenge: the three doorways. Thisdelays them again but they suffer no encounters and eventually succeed on the challenge.They continue their journeys until they come upon Balin’s Tomb. While Gandalf reads the Journal,Pippin makes a failed Dexterity save and knocks the Helmet down the well. This advances theclock to 6-9.It also triggers an encounter with a band of Orcs and a Cave Troll. Now, it’s not clearly definedwhen the party goes from 6-9 to 9-10 but I would put it around the Cave Troll’s death.From then on, the effects of the dungeon get worse.First, the Moria Orcs and Goblins seek to Delay the party as the Danger actively seeks them out.Second, when the Danger appears they scatter allowing the Danger their Spotlight.From then on, the party is in the fourth Room with the goal being to escape the Danger.It ends when Gandalf faces off against the Balrog at the Bridge of Khazad-dûm.With that example in mind, I am now looking to create more of these situations. If we can reverseengineer narrative elements like this, then it allows us to take inspiration from an ever-expandingmedia library we hold. We can convert inspiring scenes into mechanics for import into ourcampaigns and adjust as we need them.I would caution that not every dungeon needs this level of depth. It should be reserved to makememorable dungeons in the midst of a couple dungeons that build up the mechanics for thismemorable dungeon.19

If you’ve gotten to this point in the email, I thank you for your patience and hope to add moreinput from my perspective in the future. Thank you for all you’ve taught me and I hope the futureis br

2 Credits Thank you for downloading 5 Room Dungeons.It contains 87 short adventure seeds you can drop into your campaigns or flesh out into larger adventures. All dungeons in this PDF are