Over at Robertson Games they ran a little contest where they asked people to design a room for a dungeon that fit on a single page. They’ve announced the winners and you should really check it out. I tossed in an entry of my own. It didn’t win, but it was fun to write. Plus all the entries have been made available under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Canada License. Below is my entry:

Room Name : As Through Fetal Hell

Description : This room is round, 50′ in diameter with a single door leading into the room. Spaced evenly along the interior walls of the room are thousands of small holes, too small for a human finger but large enough for a dart, flechette or crossbow bolt. The roof disappears into the darkness some 100′ up, but if illuminated the ceiling hangs with large, sharp stalactites, some of which look quite precarious.

The room is floored in cobblestone, some of which are subtly different colors than the rest. The cobblestones are laid out in an uneven mosaic that with lines that, on closer inspection, occasionally converge into pentacles. The gaps between the cobblestones are inconsistent. Some of them have no mortar between them, while others appear to be more recently mortared into place. Along the outer edge of the room, right up against the wall, is a six inch gutter that appears to have been carved out of the native stone. It is in one solid piece, and drains into five small drains spaced equidistantly around the outer edge of the room.

In the center of the room is raised, star-shaped dais. In the middle of the dais is a large stone statue depicting a creature of indescribable horror. It does not correspond to any monster they have encountered, or any monster in any book the players might have read. The statue is rendered in perfect detail, as if someone summoned a monster into this room and turned it into stone. It appears to consist entirely of eyes, teeth, claws and muscle, and in several of its many mouths and claws one can see the unmistakable bits of several adventurers (also rendered in stone) who were in the process of being torn apart and devoured. The statue itself exudes evil magic at am extremely high level. If at any point no one in the party are observing the statue, the room fills with the sound of stone grating against stone. This sound stops when anyone is observing the statue.

Underneath the center of the statue is the unmistakable glimmer of treasure, though it’s hard to tell what it is. The treasure itself is giving off good magic at a reasonable level The bottom of the statue is covered in sharp teeth, and two of the many arms of the statue appear to be in the process of reaching under the statue. On close inspection (someone will have to get under the statue to see for themselves), the item appears to be an amulet of some kind. In order to dislodge it, the adventurer must reach well into the toothy mouth from which it hangs and dislodge it. The amulet will give the wearer a +2 rating in whatever stat would used to determine their Courage.

Notes : There is only one trap in the room, it is magical in nature and is tied to the statue. If the adventurers attack the statue, the stalactites will fall from the ceiling on everything but the statue. The statue is a work of art. It is also the focal point of a scrying spell cast by the owner, who thinks it’s both beautiful and funny to watch people tiptoe around the room in fear. The grating of stone on stone is another spell from the owner, an intentional trick to make people think it’s moving. The amulet is a genuine reward to anyone who has the balls to just go for it. This room is probably only going to work on new players. It would probably work best if it was in a dungeon where every other room was filled with death-dealing traps and hazards. I’ve written the description to be generic, so that it could be used in any system. The name is an anagram for “The Halls Of Laughter.”

This work is licensed to the public under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Canada License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/ca/