Aside from the single door through which the players entered, this circular room is completely featureless. Its only occupant is a swarm of plum-sized, multicolored insects buzzing about in a massive swarm. These insects produce a lot of noise, but don’t do much of anything else. It’s rather strange, actually. The swarm doesn’t react to the entrance of players, nor to the open door. Even if a player were to leap into the midst of them and waves her arms around, the bugs would just flit around her as though she were not there.

There are blue, yellow, green, red, violet, orange, teal, and lime colored insects in the swarm. These colors have no meaning. They are an obfuscation. Also, dungeons are not colorful enough.

The colors of the insects will be noticed at first glance, but it requires a moment of examination to notice that many of the insects bear aberrant features. Some have unusually large eyes, others have massive teeth, a few have tails, lots of them have stingers–though they will not sting, even if pestered by aforementioned arm-waving adventurer.

Attacking the tiny, fast moving creatures with a conventional weapon is a nigh impossible task. They have an effective armor of 24*. Catching them is actually much easier. Attempting to grab one with your hand requires an attack roll against armor 18*. If either of these attempts misses by 5 or less, it is a simple miss. If they fail by 6 or more, then the player hit/caught one, it just wasn’t the one they intended. Roll on the chart below to determine which. If the players use a jar or bag and sweep it through the swarm, they will catch 1d2 of the creatures without fail, but what they catch will be random. If they use a proper net, they’ll capture 3d6 creatures, but again it shall be random.

The aberrant features of each creature correlate to an effect. The moment they are damaged or captured, they will pop into a cloud of dust, and that dust will reform into whatever the bug’s type calls for.

1-2. Normal: No effect.

3. Bulging Eyes: A door appears on the wall. If there is nowhere for the door to go, then either a corridor is created leading to another part of the dungeon, or the door becomes a permanent, two-way portal to a random dungeon location. (50/50 chance that it is a location already explored, or a new location the players haven’t found yet). The GM may choose whichever option fucks up their map the least. Note that this is not a secret door. It does not exist before the bulging eyed bug is caught, and thus cannot be discovered before then.

4-6. Large Mouth & Teeth: The dust reforms into a monster from the random encounter table for this area.

7-9. Stinger: A trap appears, and is immediately sprung on the players. It could be a pit trap, or an arrow trap, or a collapsing ceiling, or whatever the GM fancies.

10. Tail: A chest appears, with treasure inside of it!

Note that this is only a very basic sampling of what might be present in the room. If the GM so chooses, there could be drooling bugs which create fountains with a random magical effect; bat-winged bugs which reverse the room’s gravity; bird-winged bugs which cause all of the adventurer’s gear to become animated and attack them; bugs with legs which grant the players a blessing; or bugs with a contented smile on their faces which grant enlightenment. As with everything in the game, the possibilities are quite endless.

*This is based off LotFP rules, of course. Pathfinder players would want to bump those numbers up significantly, while players of games with descending AC would want to drop them quite a bit. The idea is that this is a puzzle which a fighter is best suited to solve. There are many rooms which are best suited to a magic user, or cleric, or specialist/thief. I thought it would be nice if there was a puzzle which required a character to have really good to-hit rolls.

A medium sized room with a flagstone floor. It could potentially contain any variety of set dressings. It could be an audience chamber, or a library, or whatever else is appropriate for the dungeon. However, the task may confuse players if the path between the two secret doors is blocked by anything large.

Two of the flagstones in this room are pressure plates. Each player walking through the room has a 1-in-20 chance of stepping on one of them. Any players who perform a task in the room which would require more movement than simply passing through, have a 1-in-6 chance to activate one of the flagstones. If a flagstone is stepped on, a secret door opens in the wall roughly 15ft away. This door remains open only so long as the flagstone is held down, and will close if the person standing on it steps off.

Inside of each secret room is a monster. The type of monster is not terribly important, though a construct or undead may be the most thematically appropriate. As I imagine it, the same type of monster exists in both rooms. However, if you wished to play to the room’s theme, you might put a brute of a monster in the “body” room, and a cunning or spellcasting monster in the “mind” room.

Regardless of what monster is used, a new one appears in the secret room each time the door is closed. So if a player steps on the pressure plate, releases the monster, and steps off the pressure plate to fight it; then when the player returns to the pressure plate to open the door again, another monster identical to the first will be released. The pressure plate can be held down by any small object weighing at least 50lb (it must have a base small enough that its weight isn’t distributed to other flagstones). An iron spike would also suffice.

Both secret rooms are small, only 10x10ft, and aside from their monsters, they have only one distinguishing feature. On the back wall of the rightmost room is a strawberry-sized, ceramic human brain, painted pink and grey. On the back wall of the leftmost room is a ceramic human man with a muscular frame, and a large cavity in the back of his head. Players who have already discovered and examined the “brain room” will notice that the cavity on the back of the figure’s head is just about the same size as the brain. (Though, of course, both rooms must be discovered interdependently of one another. So players who find this little man may not know a properly sized brain is nearby).

If either ceramic piece is pulled upon by anyone, it easily comes free of the wall, and the puller will discover that it is attached to a strong, steel cord. If the object is released, the ceramic cord will reel back into the wall, pulling the object back into its place.

The cord unreels easily enough, until the object reaches the doorway of the secret room. Once here, players will find themselves completely unable to pull the cord another inch unless they meet the appropriate ability score prerequisite. Only players with a Constitution of 12 or greater can pull the figure of the man’s body beyond the doorway. Likewise, the brain can only be removed from its room by players with an Intelligence score of 12 or greater. If need be, a player who does not meet these ability score prerequisites can hold one of the objects to prevent it from reeling back into its room, but it will require all of their strength to do so.

If the party manages to pull the two pieces together, and place the brain inside of the body, then the cords will disappear, and the tiny man will drop to the floor and come alive. From seemingly nowhere, he will pull out a grappling hook, and throw it up through a hole in the ceiling (which before that moment was solid stone). He will then scramble up the rope, and out of sight, leaving the party alone with the rope leading up into a secret passage.

OPTIONAL: The tiny man steals something of value from whoever was nearest to it at the moment it came alive, and flees with that object through the passage. When the party encounters him again, they will discover that despite his tiny size he is incredibly strong, and brilliantly intelligent.

Not every party will be able to solve this room. Regard that as a feature, or as a bug, as you will.

Note that one of this room’s benefits is that it (eventually) produces an positive result from the normally deadly blunder of stepping on a pressure plate. In future, players will be forced to wonder whether the pressure plates they encounter ought to be avoided entirely, or experimented with.

So your players have fallen down a pit. Maybe they spun the stone disk in The Flippy Turny Fally Room. Maybe they came upon their fate some other way. What matters is that you don’t want the pit to be terribly deadly, but you would like the pit to present the players with new challenges.

The fall from the room above has the players skidding out of control down a twisting, greased chute. Suddenly, it branches into three paths, and the players become separated from one another. Have each player roll 1d6 for their characters, with hirelings and animal companions rolled separately. The results of their rolls determine which of the three chutes they careen into, and consequently, which pool of colored paint they land in a moment later.

1-2, Blue
3-4, Pink
5-6, Yellow

The paint is thick, goopy, and very difficult to get off. Otherwise, the players appear to be unharmed. As they regroup and make to examine their surrounding, note that the only exit from the room is a “brightly colored door.” This phrasing is important, because each player will see a door which matches the color of the paint they fell into. If the players are clever, they will ask specifically what color the door is, and the GM should reveal this tidbit of information. If the players don’t think to ask for details, though, they’ll be taken by surprise by what happens next.

The door opens normally, and regardless of what color paint the players fell into, the room beyond looks the same to all of them. It is empty and nonthreatening, with a single exit. However, once a player walks through the door, they are sorted into one of three parallel pocket dimensions, associated with their color. Each pocket dimension consists of only a handful of rooms (perhaps 3-5, not including the first room which is identical across all three dimensions). A Wall of Force prevents anyone who has walked through the door from walking back into the paint pool room.

The party has been forced to split, and whatever oddball groups of players have ended up together must face the next few challenges alone. As GM, be sure to note any hirelings or animal companions who are separated from their employers / masters, as the fighter’s squire will probably be much less willing to help the creepy old wizard.

Note that if the players discover the trick before entering the room, they will likely try to keep the party together either by having everyone dunk themselves in the same color, or by having everyone clean themselves. The latter should be difficult and take quite a long time, but both should work. If the players do succeed in cleaning themselves, roll randomly to determine which of the three paths they’ll go through.

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The room is circular, with at least one exit aside from the one the players entered through. The ceiling must be slightly higher than the room’s radius. The walls, floor, and ceiling are all of flagstone.

In the center of the room is a chest-high obelisk, perhaps 8 inches on each side. Atop the obelisk is a Y shaped piece of brass. There is an axle between the prongs of the Y, which supports a rotating stone disk with a flagstone pattern carved into it. When the players enter the room, the flat sides of the disk are oriented up and down.

The flagstones of the walls also have an odd pattern to them. Every 3ft or so, there is a perfectly circular stone, creating a sort of “polka dot” effect. This element of the room is purely decorative, but serves as an important red herring to obfuscate the room’s trick.

Rotating the disk atop the obelisk has no effect, until it has been rotated a full 180 degrees. So that the side which once faced up, is now facing down. A loud “clicking” sound will reverberate through the room, and the entire floor of the room will flip over, revealing an identical floor and identical obelisk on the other side.

Any occupants of the room will, of course, be dropped into a pit.

If the walls around the edge of the room are examined, players may notice vertical scratches on the walls near to where they meet the floor. If the players follow the scratches around the room, or specify that they are examining the wall 90 degrees from the room’s entrance (where the axle would be mounted) then they will find that the scratches have made a sort of half-circle.

There is no visible gap between the walls and floor which is any more pronounced than the gaps between any of old, cracked and worn flagstones. However, water or sand could be used to discover that the small space between the wall and floor doesn’t “fill up” as it ought to.

This room COULD be used to drop players into a deadly pit, but I would recommend against it. Because, while I don’t think this room robs the players of agency, it IS a little bit cheap. (I considered having the players sense a slight wobble as they stepped into the room, but that just felt painfully obvious for a trap which must already rely on a red herring).

Instead, this room ought to drop the players into a new section of the dungeon. With their pre-explored escape route forever lost to them, exploring the dungeon will take on a new sense of urgency. How long will their food rations last? Can they find a safe enough place to rest each night? Will they ever see sunlight again?

On Monday I’ll post my recommendation for a good room to drop the players into.

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