One of the biggest issues I'm struggling with as an DM is to come up with things to fill my maps/dungeons with. For every mansion the group investigates there are about 2-3 rooms that hold any significance and the rest of them are empty rooms with nothing in them. Same for caves or some ancient ruins. Now, of course, the obvious solution is to shrink down the place, but that's not necessarily possible most of the time. Let's give you an example. I have a family of five: father, mother and three children. That means the house has probably at least a kitchen, a living room, two-four bed rooms and a storage area. And that's assuming a family on the poorer end of the spectrum. In a more wealthy family you could probably also have in addition up to several servant quarters, a recreational room, a lounge, a library/study and maybe even a small chapel or crypt. Now the father who's working with a group of smugglers has a secret document hidden inside a safe in his room. So now I have a story for one room, maybe two if I place a key in another room. That still leaves me with several rooms that don't really have anything of interest in them. It's even worse in places like caves. In a building you can at least fill it with the owners belonging, but what do you add in a cave? I guess some monster trying to attack you, but just going "alright, in this room you are attacked by this creatures" each time the party moves 20 ft gets really boring real fast. It's really frustrating and I'm wondering if any of you have any idea what to do in these kind of situations or how to get some inspiration to make things more interesting. Thx in advance and a most pleasant day to all of you^^
It really depends on your players. I have players that want to investigate everything. So even in a mostly empty cave they will still want to check out the little pool of water in it. This allows me to add in glowing fungus or blind shrimp. Things that seem realistic and aren't dangerous.
Like you mentioned, buildings should have purpose for their interior. Just think about a house like you did and the rooms and purpose will be clear.
Remember, not every encounter has to be a fight. It can be a puzzle, or friendly/neutral animal or NPC. It can be a clue as to what lies ahead - a skeleton with parts missing, a very detailed statue, a pile of ashes scattered in a pattern away from a door.
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"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
You're right about having a combat encounter in every room being boring. Maybe lean into the exploration pillar a bit more here.
I wouldn't think that natural locations would *always* have to be populated to contain a combat encounter. Throw in some glowing fungus, or beetles. You could make one area of the cave a good spot for the party to rest *if you're running a multi-session crawl*. Use empty space as an opportunity to throw in some puzzles or altars. You could use the unoccupied rooms as an opportunity to showcase the "theme" of the cave/dungeon since the only thing to describe is the room. Try to take inspiration from actual manor homes and castles, some of them had music rooms, sitting rooms, sewing rooms, dressing rooms.... them rich folk got a room for everything. If they were rich enough, it didn't need to make too much sense, they just needed to want it. I've seen a trophy room inside a German castle, and I'm talking taxidermy, Audubon style trophy, not world's best cup stacker. There are actual examples of secret and hidden passages in history. Take a stroll through your favorite search engine for for castle floor plans, some are rather detailed. Some are even famous.
On the tension and pacing side of the DM screen, you might want some variation in your layouts. Combat in some, peaceful and tranquil in others. Done right, this can make the onset of combat seem even more brash and disruptive of the "natural order".
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“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” - Mark Twain - Innocents Abroad
In a building, every room I have has furniture that indicates what the room is used for; living room, bedroom, kitchen, dining room ...
In a dungeon, every room was built for a reason, but the builder may have moved out and the room emptied. So some dungeon rooms will be empty shells. However, for interest, furniture and other features should be in dungeon rooms to indicate their original purpose. Armory, library, kitchen, dining hall, sleeping ward, jail/prison, treasure vault, ...
And some rooms will have been built for a purpose, but are now used for something very different ... the Chapel is now a store room.
Just food for thought. Good luck.
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Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt
First of, sry for only getting back to all of you now, I was kinda busy over the last couple of days, so I only managed to catch up today. While I do appreciate the general ideas proposed here, I don't think they really adress what my real issue is. It is not that I'm struggling filling in rooms, like with kitchens, bedrooms, livingrooms, ect, it's filling in every single room of a map with something interesting in it. For example, let's go back to my mansion example from before. As in my previous example, let's say the group has to infiltrate the mansion of a rich noble to steal something from his private room on the second floor. So they sneak in through the backdoor, and arrive in the kitchen. So the following sequence of events goes as follows:
DM: You arrive in the kitchen. Player: Cool. I take a look around. Is there anything for me to find? DM: No, the kitchen is mostly empty. Player: Cool. I open that door over there. DM: It's a pantry, where they store stuff. Player: Cool. I take a look around anything interesting? DM: No, it's an empty room. Player: ... cool. I take a look through that door. DM: It's a hallway with several more doors on the other side. Player: I'll open the first door. DM: It's a storage room for the housestaff. Player: Anything interesting in there? DM: No the room is mostly empty. Player: ... alright. I'll open the next door. DM: That's the staff quarters. Player: Cool. I take a look around. Anything interesting? DM: No the room is mostly empty. Player: .... cool.
Now continue like that for the next 20 rooms until the they find the one room that has something of interest in it. It's incredible hard to fill a multi room mansion/dungeon/whatever with things to make every single room interesting. A storage is just a storage after all. But I can't just drop the rooms, since it wouldn't make sense for a house not to have them. Not to mention, another common issue I have is that whenever I create a multi-level map of a building, it's not really hard to fill in the first floor, with rooms, but then you move up to the next level and logic ditates that the size of the building has to be roughly the same as on the first level, so now you suddenly find you have a bunch of emty space with nothing really to fill it, but it has to be there since the building was the same size on the first floor and you can't just shrink everything down for the second floor.... It's a constant issue I'm sturggling with and I'm not really sure how to solve that or if there even is a solution.
What you describe here is not your failure to stock a room with interesting things. Even in the older versions of the game, dungeon rooms weren't gilded descriptions of wonder and delight. That was saved for the important locations, like maybe the boss. What you seem to be describing is the Skyrim version of exploration where the player goes from building to building in town trying to find every little Easter egg that the developers left behind for them to find.
If the purpose of the mansion, in your example, is to house the BBE and their evil flesh golem creation, there wouldn't be interesting contents in *all* of the rooms. Trap and lock hallways that don't have purpose in the story. Introduce the Rug of Smothering to empty rooms. Throw oozes, centipedes and jellies in old larders that are out of use. Sets of Animated Armor here, Flying Swords in the hallway. Rat swarms in the basement. Give your players something to find that they aren't interested in with the hope that they will tire of being harassed by the environment and attempt to accelerate their tour de Chateau. I'm not suggesting that you not allow your players to explore your world. Give them the easy path to BBE room #23 and the "other" path that has Stone Cursed guarding the doorways. Let their decision to wander off the path to their objective pay them back in ways they didn't imagine were possible. And, one might assume that the sounds of their screaming might echo a bit off of old empty halls. This might draw the attention of the "staff"?
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” - Mark Twain - Innocents Abroad
Use the rooms to tell the story, rather than to contain things which they can pick up and interact with.
For example: The party have been asked to investigate the manor house, as the old lady who lives there hasn't been seen, and the guard who was sent to check on her hasn't come back.
The actual plot (DM use only): The old lady was feeding the stray animals in her back garden, and it has attracted a displacer beast, who has killed her and dragged her to the attic where it has built a lair. The guard has also been kileld by the displacer beast. The smaller animals which the old lady was feeding have entered the open house, and have rooted around downstairs, making it messy.
So the players arrive, and the front door is locked, so they elect to break it down (I'm assuming typical players!).
"You enter a hallway, it is dark inside. The air smells like damp fur. As you enter, several small animals run away from you through the door which you can see leads through to a kitchen. There are animal droppings scattered around, and the carpet is scratched up." "You enter the kitchen, and the cupboards have been pulled open. Through the open back door you see the small animals sprinting into the trees of a large forest beyond the garden. The floor is even messier here, and there are some bones on the floor." "I investigate the bones" "They seem to be from joints of meat, carefully cut, as though from a butcher.
And so on. The lounge is closed and remains pristine, if very dusty. The stairs have some concerningly large claw marks. The bedroom has a wolf in it, who seems at first to be terrified of you, before it sees you're people and starts growling. The door to the attic is broken and hanging from a hinge. The study contains shredded paper and a squirrel which leaps from the window. The spare room has blood splatters on the walls and a trail leading to the attic door. The attic is dark, and contains a displacer beast, while the corpses of several animals and the guard hang in the rafters. There are bloody bones in the corner, presumably the old lady. Cue an encounter with a displacer beast.
In short, put little clues in them, which the players can piece together. A spare room has a crib and toys in it, covered in cobwebs, and the door protests at being opened. The study has pictures of a young woman all over it, and increasingly mad notes like "soon, my love", and "I am sorry my love, I will try harder". Then the attic contains a man and a flesh golem of his wife, which the players can deduce he is bringing back to life as she died in childbirth and he was driven mad with grief.
So your best bet might be to ignore which rooms they are, and come up with a number of little clues which you can put in that number of rooms. Don't be too concerned with every room having something, but I can see your issue that you have one key room in a house and the rest seems mundane!
Empty rooms with no threat can be a great thing to have, I have had the most fun as a dm watching my players be convinced the clock stood on the mantle piece is something dangerous, or that stone statue is going to come alive. Then, as they get a little more complacent as room after room nothing happens then they come across something that is dangerous.
You don’t need to present a threat every 20 feet, my players can sometimes go 3-4 chambers of an underground cave with nothing happening other then me describing what they are seeing and letting them move through it as they wish.
DM: You arrive in the kitchen. Player: Cool. I take a look around. Is there anything for me to find? DM: No, the kitchen is mostly empty. Player: Cool. I open that door over there. DM: It's a pantry, where they store stuff. Player: Cool. I take a look around anything interesting? DM: No, it's an empty room. Player: ... cool. I take a look through that door. DM: It's a hallway with several more doors on the other side. Player: I'll open the first door. DM: It's a storage room for the housestaff. Player: Anything interesting in there? DM: No the room is mostly empty. Player: ... alright. I'll open the next door. DM: That's the staff quarters. Player: Cool. I take a look around. Anything interesting? DM: No the room is mostly empty. Player: .... cool.
The problem there is not the presence of empty rooms. The problem is taking an excessive amount of time to resolve empty rooms.
DM: You arrive in the kitchen. Player: Cool. I take a look around. Is there anything for me to find? DM: No, the kitchen is mostly empty. Player: Cool. I open that door over there. DM: It's a pantry, where they store stuff. Player: Cool. I take a look around anything interesting? DM: No, it's an empty room. Player: ... cool. I take a look through that door. DM: It's a hallway with several more doors on the other side. Player: I'll open the first door. DM: It's a storage room for the housestaff. Player: Anything interesting in there? DM: No the room is mostly empty. Player: ... alright. I'll open the next door. DM: That's the staff quarters. Player: Cool. I take a look around. Anything interesting? DM: No the room is mostly empty. Player: .... cool.
The problem there is not the presence of empty rooms. The problem is taking an excessive amount of time to resolve empty rooms.
I have no problem with my players taking time to resolve an empty room, and they have no issue with it either, they know that not every room can be full of stuff and enjoy that tension that comes from mundane events lulling characters to a false sense of security.
I don't think the problem is the rooms or the layouts or what's in them. I agree that they kind of need to be there for pseudo-realism, and they don't all have to contain interesting stuff. I think the trick is to upgrade the behavior of the critters that live in the rooms, and the context of the structure or dungeon itself. Have the enemies posted guards or patrols? Will they just stay put when they hear the din of battle coming from the corridor? Will they rush in to see what's going on? Will they run away to hide or set up an ambush or alert the big bad in the last room? By baking behaviors like this into the enemies on my maps, I ensure that neither I nor the players have any clue which rooms will turn out to be important tactical locations.
Case in point: My evil PCs have to assassinate a minor noble who is holed up in his townhouse with a bunch of guards and servants. The rogue uses a tattoo of masquerade to infiltrate, makes a bunch of deception checks, and poisons the target's drink. For reasons beyond my comprehension, the rest of the PCs decide they just have to climb up the porch roof and hang out by a second story window. Around the same time the target succeeds his save vs. poison and screams for help, the wizard borks his stealth roll. The party crashes thru the window to attack the two alerted guards on the second floor. The rogue finishes off the target with a rapier and hides in a privy. The goliath tosses one guard over a rail into the first floor atrium while the other PCs make short work of the second one. The goliath and the half orc decide that they had better jump into the atrium to follow up on the first guard. They chase him through the dining hall, knocking over chairs and jumping on tables. Now the rest of the guards have discovered their employer's dead body, and run right past the privy to confront the bloodthirsty monsters (the PCs) that are rampaging thru the house. Somehow everyone converges on the grand staircase and starts slugging it out, except the rogue, who is quite pleased with her privy-sanctuary. Within a few rounds, someone has rung a bell to call the city watch, and the players know it is time to get the rock out of there. The rogue dashes out of the bathroom, makes a sneak attack against the guards' leader, putting him down, and hightails it thru the front door. The rest of the party disengages and follows her into the night...
The point is, I never had any idea which rooms the party might fight in, and I would have never guessed that the privy would play a starring role. I just loaded a townhouse map into the VTT, populated it with NPCs, and decided, in general, how they might behave. There was a little treasure and some plot clues in the nobleman's safe, and a few guards had some minor magic items, but the party never got to all of them because of the way things played out. The party could have done about 20 or 30 other things, including climbing to the roof and disabling the alarm bell, but, as it often does for this group, it culminated in a bloodbath followed by a hasty retreat from law enforcement (the half-orc player insists it was more of a blood-shower).
TLDR version- Use whatever rooms make sense in the context, don't worry if they lack personality, give the enemies as much personality as possible, and let your surgical strike/clever plan/meat headed wrecking ball PCs do the rest.
You don't need strange and fascinating things in every room in the house/cave etc. There should be rooms which are mundane, or hold nothing of value. If there aren't then even simple houses become death traps!
Let's give you an example. I have a family of five: father, mother and three children. That means the house has probably at least a kitchen, a living room, two-four bed rooms and a storage area. And that's assuming a family on the poorer end of the spectrum.
The big question that will help here is, why are we in this house? There has to be an adventure hook of some kind. If not, then make every room mundane; it contains the ordinary, everyday items that the family needs, and no room contains more than a combined total of 1gp worth of sellable goods.
So let's say that the mother is involved in a crime syndicate, and she is suspected of having stolen some important documents. Our party is level 2. Once we know who lives there, everything else becomes easy. The same goes for caves, castles and everything else - it's knowing who the lead occupant is or how it fits into the story you're creating that furnishes the rooms.
Firstly therefore, we create the mother as an NPC and the family. The mother is called Daisy, and she is a spy. We'll make the father an unknowning commoner who is an alcoholic, and usually in the tavern. The children are noncombatants, and because many players would have issues with combat where children are even nearby, they are away at their grandmother's house.
Great. Now we know why we're there, and who lives there. Let's fill out these rooms. I am assuming the PCs try to enter when the house is empty, but Daisy will show up.
Kitchen: The mother is an expert cook. She has a special set of silverware worth 10gp, and a hidden supply of narcotics hidden under the floorboards (requires a DC12 investgation check to find). Carved into the table is "Brell loves Hatty." If the PCs find Brell or Hatty in the tavern, they fondly reminisce about how they sold the table to Daisy. There is a back door into the kitchen.
Living Room: The living room is a comfortable space, but one chair is stained and heavily used - it seems like someone sits there a lot (DC12 investigation to discern). A stuffed Owlbear head is mounted on the wall. A rack of well polished knives is to one side. They are well polished. A pair of large mastiffs doze by the fire. An Animal Handling check (DC16) can be made to befriend the dogs, otherwise they will attack. If the dogs awake at night, it also wakes up Daisy from Bedroom 2.
Storage Area: This room is extremely cluttered, but a DC14 Investigation check shows that there's a hidden compartment beneath the floor. A simple trap protects it, which is spotted with a DC12 investigation check or DC18 Perception by a character attempting to open it. The trap releases poison gas for 2d6 poison damage. The documents are in the compartment. PCs who are proficient in Survival recognise poisons on the shelves and can acquire 2 vials of Basic Poison.
Bedroom 1: This is the children's bedroom. There's nothing useful here.
Bedroom 2: This is the master bedroom. Daisy can be encountered here at night. An Alarm spell cast by her wizard ally is placed on the door, so Daisy shows up with two thugs shortly if anyone enters anyway during the day. Daisy's ill-gotten gains are here, 35gp and a Potion of Healing, as well as some sellable art objects. There is also a book of documents linking to another adventure hook - her employers accounts, perhaps, showing that payments have been made to a local outlaw.
This is a simple house design, and only worth making if the PCs are very likely to go there, but it combines two combat encounters, a trap, some ability checks, some adventure documents and some treasure to find. The way to design this is simply "Imagine what would certainly be there, then make it more interesting."
DM: You arrive in the kitchen. Player: Cool. I take a look around. Is there anything for me to find? DM: No, the kitchen is mostly empty. Player: Cool. I open that door over there. DM: It's a pantry, where they store stuff. Player: Cool. I take a look around anything interesting? DM: No, it's an empty room. Player: ... cool. I take a look through that door. DM: It's a hallway with several more doors on the other side. Player: I'll open the first door. DM: It's a storage room for the housestaff. Player: Anything interesting in there? DM: No the room is mostly empty. Player: ... alright. I'll open the next door. DM: That's the staff quarters. Player: Cool. I take a look around. Anything interesting? DM: No the room is mostly empty. Player: .... cool.
You can skip through a lot of this, if you want to by lumping rooms together, calling for ability checks and so on. But why are the characters just wandering through a deserted castle? Where are the occupants? Is there no sense of tension here? Usually invading a castle/mansion is going to involve a stealth mission, or else it's a full on assault against the occupants. Add small details to make the world feel real.
As above, I need to know why we are there. Maybe the problem is that these are just generic locations, without a plot hook, but I assume this is just a result of giving examples on a forum and your players will be on a quest. In this example therefore, Daisy the spy has been defeated, the adventurers have followed the accounts document lead and are looking for more info in the mansion. The mansion's owner is the wizard who cast the Alarm spell for Daisy.
Here's how the gameplay could be more interesting:
DM: This room is clearly the mansion's kitchen. On the table, food has already been prepared. A hog's head has an apple stuffed into its mouth. Note: this indicates the mansion is occupied currently. Checking the food will show it is warm - someone has been here soon. This also gives a sense of time, as dinner is soon to be served. Player: Cool. I take a look around. Is there anything for me to find? DM: Make an investigation check. Player rolls a 17. You find a bunch of normal kitchen stuff, but the hog's eyes seem to follow you around the room. Player: Gross. Is it undead? I use Divine Sense. DM: No, it's just a head. You're maybe just feeling jumpy, since you're creeping around in the dark. Note: This is pure atmosphere, but it gives the player room to use an ability. Player: Are there any kitchen knives I can take? DM: Sure, they aren't really effective as daggers though. Note: When players search a common area, offer them things that they can use. A mop can function as a staff if you want it to. Even candles, rations, a lantern etc. are valuable. Player: Cool, I take three anyway. I open that door over there. Note: The player is being reckless, opening doors with no investigations. DM: The door creeks heavily on its hinges. Roll a d20 for me. Note: There is no purpose to the D20 roll here, nobody will hear, we're just freaking the player out and reminding them that they are invading someone's home. DM: It's a pantry, where they store stuff. Player: Cool. I take a look around anything interesting? DM: There's a bunch of stored stuff in there - about four large boxes and 3 smaller ones - how long are you going to spend searching it? Players: (the players quickly discuss whether to search it or not. They decide it's not worthwhile, and they're on a time limit) Player: ... cool. I take a look through that door. DM: It's a hallway with several more doors on the other side. Player: I'll open the first door. DM: It's a storage room for the housestaff. It looks like things here are disorderly, tossed in without much thought. Player: Anything interesting in there? DM: Again, you're going to need to spend time searching through all the things in there. If you want to spend 10 minutes you can make an investigation check. (If the PCs do, then they can find servant uniforms that they might try to disguise themselves, to gain easier access to the upper storey) Player: ... alright. I'll open the next door. Note: This house seems entirely empty - so let's put in someone. If these rooms are all just empty rooms, we might as well have said "Your make your way through the ground floor of the house. It seems deserted, but can you roll a Stealth check for me." Skip them on to the first place of relevance if you're intent is that there's nothing to do here. Run it like a cutscene with perhaps one general ability check. DM: As you open the door, you see a young woman with a shocked expression, caught up in the arms of another woman. They stare wide eyed at you. Player: Do they look hostile? DM: No, they look to be servants caught having a tryst. -- Begin roleplay encounter with the servants, who may assist the PCs on good Persuasion or Intimidation checks. One servant, a commoner hates the master of the house and can direct the PCs past all the pointless rooms. The other servant serves as a bandit for special expeditions. If left to go on her way, she fetches the master's security imps from a later room.
One of the biggest issues I'm struggling with as an DM is to come up with things to fill my maps/dungeons with. For every mansion the group investigates there are about 2-3 rooms that hold any significance and the rest of them are empty rooms with nothing in them. Same for caves or some ancient ruins. Now, of course, the obvious solution is to shrink down the place, but that's not necessarily possible most of the time.
Let's give you an example. I have a family of five: father, mother and three children. That means the house has probably at least a kitchen, a living room, two-four bed rooms and a storage area. And that's assuming a family on the poorer end of the spectrum. In a more wealthy family you could probably also have in addition up to several servant quarters, a recreational room, a lounge, a library/study and maybe even a small chapel or crypt. Now the father who's working with a group of smugglers has a secret document hidden inside a safe in his room. So now I have a story for one room, maybe two if I place a key in another room. That still leaves me with several rooms that don't really have anything of interest in them.
It's even worse in places like caves. In a building you can at least fill it with the owners belonging, but what do you add in a cave? I guess some monster trying to attack you, but just going "alright, in this room you are attacked by this creatures" each time the party moves 20 ft gets really boring real fast.
It's really frustrating and I'm wondering if any of you have any idea what to do in these kind of situations or how to get some inspiration to make things more interesting.
Thx in advance and a most pleasant day to all of you^^
It really depends on your players. I have players that want to investigate everything. So even in a mostly empty cave they will still want to check out the little pool of water in it. This allows me to add in glowing fungus or blind shrimp. Things that seem realistic and aren't dangerous.
Like you mentioned, buildings should have purpose for their interior. Just think about a house like you did and the rooms and purpose will be clear.
Remember, not every encounter has to be a fight. It can be a puzzle, or friendly/neutral animal or NPC. It can be a clue as to what lies ahead - a skeleton with parts missing, a very detailed statue, a pile of ashes scattered in a pattern away from a door.
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
You're right about having a combat encounter in every room being boring. Maybe lean into the exploration pillar a bit more here.
I wouldn't think that natural locations would *always* have to be populated to contain a combat encounter. Throw in some glowing fungus, or beetles. You could make one area of the cave a good spot for the party to rest *if you're running a multi-session crawl*. Use empty space as an opportunity to throw in some puzzles or altars. You could use the unoccupied rooms as an opportunity to showcase the "theme" of the cave/dungeon since the only thing to describe is the room. Try to take inspiration from actual manor homes and castles, some of them had music rooms, sitting rooms, sewing rooms, dressing rooms.... them rich folk got a room for everything. If they were rich enough, it didn't need to make too much sense, they just needed to want it. I've seen a trophy room inside a German castle, and I'm talking taxidermy, Audubon style trophy, not world's best cup stacker. There are actual examples of secret and hidden passages in history. Take a stroll through your favorite search engine for for castle floor plans, some are rather detailed. Some are even famous.
On the tension and pacing side of the DM screen, you might want some variation in your layouts. Combat in some, peaceful and tranquil in others. Done right, this can make the onset of combat seem even more brash and disruptive of the "natural order".
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” - Mark Twain - Innocents Abroad
In a building, every room I have has furniture that indicates what the room is used for; living room, bedroom, kitchen, dining room ...
In a dungeon, every room was built for a reason, but the builder may have moved out and the room emptied. So some dungeon rooms will be empty shells. However, for interest, furniture and other features should be in dungeon rooms to indicate their original purpose. Armory, library, kitchen, dining hall, sleeping ward, jail/prison, treasure vault, ...
And some rooms will have been built for a purpose, but are now used for something very different ... the Chapel is now a store room.
Just food for thought. Good luck.
Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt
First of, sry for only getting back to all of you now, I was kinda busy over the last couple of days, so I only managed to catch up today.
While I do appreciate the general ideas proposed here, I don't think they really adress what my real issue is. It is not that I'm struggling filling in rooms, like with kitchens, bedrooms, livingrooms, ect, it's filling in every single room of a map with something interesting in it. For example, let's go back to my mansion example from before. As in my previous example, let's say the group has to infiltrate the mansion of a rich noble to steal something from his private room on the second floor. So they sneak in through the backdoor, and arrive in the kitchen. So the following sequence of events goes as follows:
DM: You arrive in the kitchen.
Player: Cool. I take a look around. Is there anything for me to find?
DM: No, the kitchen is mostly empty.
Player: Cool. I open that door over there.
DM: It's a pantry, where they store stuff.
Player: Cool. I take a look around anything interesting?
DM: No, it's an empty room.
Player: ... cool. I take a look through that door.
DM: It's a hallway with several more doors on the other side.
Player: I'll open the first door.
DM: It's a storage room for the housestaff.
Player: Anything interesting in there?
DM: No the room is mostly empty.
Player: ... alright. I'll open the next door.
DM: That's the staff quarters.
Player: Cool. I take a look around. Anything interesting?
DM: No the room is mostly empty.
Player: .... cool.
Now continue like that for the next 20 rooms until the they find the one room that has something of interest in it. It's incredible hard to fill a multi room mansion/dungeon/whatever with things to make every single room interesting. A storage is just a storage after all. But I can't just drop the rooms, since it wouldn't make sense for a house not to have them.
Not to mention, another common issue I have is that whenever I create a multi-level map of a building, it's not really hard to fill in the first floor, with rooms, but then you move up to the next level and logic ditates that the size of the building has to be roughly the same as on the first level, so now you suddenly find you have a bunch of emty space with nothing really to fill it, but it has to be there since the building was the same size on the first floor and you can't just shrink everything down for the second floor....
It's a constant issue I'm sturggling with and I'm not really sure how to solve that or if there even is a solution.
What you describe here is not your failure to stock a room with interesting things. Even in the older versions of the game, dungeon rooms weren't gilded descriptions of wonder and delight. That was saved for the important locations, like maybe the boss. What you seem to be describing is the Skyrim version of exploration where the player goes from building to building in town trying to find every little Easter egg that the developers left behind for them to find.
If the purpose of the mansion, in your example, is to house the BBE and their evil flesh golem creation, there wouldn't be interesting contents in *all* of the rooms. Trap and lock hallways that don't have purpose in the story. Introduce the Rug of Smothering to empty rooms. Throw oozes, centipedes and jellies in old larders that are out of use. Sets of Animated Armor here, Flying Swords in the hallway. Rat swarms in the basement. Give your players something to find that they aren't interested in with the hope that they will tire of being harassed by the environment and attempt to accelerate their tour de Chateau. I'm not suggesting that you not allow your players to explore your world. Give them the easy path to BBE room #23 and the "other" path that has Stone Cursed guarding the doorways. Let their decision to wander off the path to their objective pay them back in ways they didn't imagine were possible. And, one might assume that the sounds of their screaming might echo a bit off of old empty halls. This might draw the attention of the "staff"?
Edit: typographical
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” - Mark Twain - Innocents Abroad
Use the rooms to tell the story, rather than to contain things which they can pick up and interact with.
For example: The party have been asked to investigate the manor house, as the old lady who lives there hasn't been seen, and the guard who was sent to check on her hasn't come back.
The actual plot (DM use only): The old lady was feeding the stray animals in her back garden, and it has attracted a displacer beast, who has killed her and dragged her to the attic where it has built a lair. The guard has also been kileld by the displacer beast. The smaller animals which the old lady was feeding have entered the open house, and have rooted around downstairs, making it messy.
So the players arrive, and the front door is locked, so they elect to break it down (I'm assuming typical players!).
"You enter a hallway, it is dark inside. The air smells like damp fur. As you enter, several small animals run away from you through the door which you can see leads through to a kitchen. There are animal droppings scattered around, and the carpet is scratched up."
"You enter the kitchen, and the cupboards have been pulled open. Through the open back door you see the small animals sprinting into the trees of a large forest beyond the garden. The floor is even messier here, and there are some bones on the floor."
"I investigate the bones"
"They seem to be from joints of meat, carefully cut, as though from a butcher.
And so on. The lounge is closed and remains pristine, if very dusty. The stairs have some concerningly large claw marks. The bedroom has a wolf in it, who seems at first to be terrified of you, before it sees you're people and starts growling. The door to the attic is broken and hanging from a hinge. The study contains shredded paper and a squirrel which leaps from the window. The spare room has blood splatters on the walls and a trail leading to the attic door. The attic is dark, and contains a displacer beast, while the corpses of several animals and the guard hang in the rafters. There are bloody bones in the corner, presumably the old lady. Cue an encounter with a displacer beast.
In short, put little clues in them, which the players can piece together. A spare room has a crib and toys in it, covered in cobwebs, and the door protests at being opened. The study has pictures of a young woman all over it, and increasingly mad notes like "soon, my love", and "I am sorry my love, I will try harder". Then the attic contains a man and a flesh golem of his wife, which the players can deduce he is bringing back to life as she died in childbirth and he was driven mad with grief.
So your best bet might be to ignore which rooms they are, and come up with a number of little clues which you can put in that number of rooms. Don't be too concerned with every room having something, but I can see your issue that you have one key room in a house and the rest seems mundane!
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Empty rooms with no threat can be a great thing to have, I have had the most fun as a dm watching my players be convinced the clock stood on the mantle piece is something dangerous, or that stone statue is going to come alive. Then, as they get a little more complacent as room after room nothing happens then they come across something that is dangerous.
You don’t need to present a threat every 20 feet, my players can sometimes go 3-4 chambers of an underground cave with nothing happening other then me describing what they are seeing and letting them move through it as they wish.
The problem there is not the presence of empty rooms. The problem is taking an excessive amount of time to resolve empty rooms.
I have no problem with my players taking time to resolve an empty room, and they have no issue with it either, they know that not every room can be full of stuff and enjoy that tension that comes from mundane events lulling characters to a false sense of security.
My two cents, take em or leave em...
I don't think the problem is the rooms or the layouts or what's in them. I agree that they kind of need to be there for pseudo-realism, and they don't all have to contain interesting stuff. I think the trick is to upgrade the behavior of the critters that live in the rooms, and the context of the structure or dungeon itself. Have the enemies posted guards or patrols? Will they just stay put when they hear the din of battle coming from the corridor? Will they rush in to see what's going on? Will they run away to hide or set up an ambush or alert the big bad in the last room? By baking behaviors like this into the enemies on my maps, I ensure that neither I nor the players have any clue which rooms will turn out to be important tactical locations.
Case in point: My evil PCs have to assassinate a minor noble who is holed up in his townhouse with a bunch of guards and servants. The rogue uses a tattoo of masquerade to infiltrate, makes a bunch of deception checks, and poisons the target's drink. For reasons beyond my comprehension, the rest of the PCs decide they just have to climb up the porch roof and hang out by a second story window. Around the same time the target succeeds his save vs. poison and screams for help, the wizard borks his stealth roll. The party crashes thru the window to attack the two alerted guards on the second floor. The rogue finishes off the target with a rapier and hides in a privy. The goliath tosses one guard over a rail into the first floor atrium while the other PCs make short work of the second one. The goliath and the half orc decide that they had better jump into the atrium to follow up on the first guard. They chase him through the dining hall, knocking over chairs and jumping on tables. Now the rest of the guards have discovered their employer's dead body, and run right past the privy to confront the bloodthirsty monsters (the PCs) that are rampaging thru the house. Somehow everyone converges on the grand staircase and starts slugging it out, except the rogue, who is quite pleased with her privy-sanctuary. Within a few rounds, someone has rung a bell to call the city watch, and the players know it is time to get the rock out of there. The rogue dashes out of the bathroom, makes a sneak attack against the guards' leader, putting him down, and hightails it thru the front door. The rest of the party disengages and follows her into the night...
The point is, I never had any idea which rooms the party might fight in, and I would have never guessed that the privy would play a starring role. I just loaded a townhouse map into the VTT, populated it with NPCs, and decided, in general, how they might behave. There was a little treasure and some plot clues in the nobleman's safe, and a few guards had some minor magic items, but the party never got to all of them because of the way things played out. The party could have done about 20 or 30 other things, including climbing to the roof and disabling the alarm bell, but, as it often does for this group, it culminated in a bloodbath followed by a hasty retreat from law enforcement (the half-orc player insists it was more of a blood-shower).
TLDR version- Use whatever rooms make sense in the context, don't worry if they lack personality, give the enemies as much personality as possible, and let your surgical strike/clever plan/meat headed wrecking ball PCs do the rest.
You don't need strange and fascinating things in every room in the house/cave etc. There should be rooms which are mundane, or hold nothing of value. If there aren't then even simple houses become death traps!
The big question that will help here is, why are we in this house? There has to be an adventure hook of some kind. If not, then make every room mundane; it contains the ordinary, everyday items that the family needs, and no room contains more than a combined total of 1gp worth of sellable goods.
So let's say that the mother is involved in a crime syndicate, and she is suspected of having stolen some important documents. Our party is level 2. Once we know who lives there, everything else becomes easy. The same goes for caves, castles and everything else - it's knowing who the lead occupant is or how it fits into the story you're creating that furnishes the rooms.
Firstly therefore, we create the mother as an NPC and the family. The mother is called Daisy, and she is a spy. We'll make the father an unknowning commoner who is an alcoholic, and usually in the tavern. The children are noncombatants, and because many players would have issues with combat where children are even nearby, they are away at their grandmother's house.
Great. Now we know why we're there, and who lives there. Let's fill out these rooms. I am assuming the PCs try to enter when the house is empty, but Daisy will show up.
Kitchen: The mother is an expert cook. She has a special set of silverware worth 10gp, and a hidden supply of narcotics hidden under the floorboards (requires a DC12 investgation check to find). Carved into the table is "Brell loves Hatty." If the PCs find Brell or Hatty in the tavern, they fondly reminisce about how they sold the table to Daisy. There is a back door into the kitchen.
Living Room: The living room is a comfortable space, but one chair is stained and heavily used - it seems like someone sits there a lot (DC12 investigation to discern). A stuffed Owlbear head is mounted on the wall. A rack of well polished knives is to one side. They are well polished. A pair of large mastiffs doze by the fire. An Animal Handling check (DC16) can be made to befriend the dogs, otherwise they will attack. If the dogs awake at night, it also wakes up Daisy from Bedroom 2.
Storage Area: This room is extremely cluttered, but a DC14 Investigation check shows that there's a hidden compartment beneath the floor. A simple trap protects it, which is spotted with a DC12 investigation check or DC18 Perception by a character attempting to open it. The trap releases poison gas for 2d6 poison damage. The documents are in the compartment. PCs who are proficient in Survival recognise poisons on the shelves and can acquire 2 vials of Basic Poison.
Bedroom 1: This is the children's bedroom. There's nothing useful here.
Bedroom 2: This is the master bedroom. Daisy can be encountered here at night. An Alarm spell cast by her wizard ally is placed on the door, so Daisy shows up with two thugs shortly if anyone enters anyway during the day. Daisy's ill-gotten gains are here, 35gp and a Potion of Healing, as well as some sellable art objects. There is also a book of documents linking to another adventure hook - her employers accounts, perhaps, showing that payments have been made to a local outlaw.
This is a simple house design, and only worth making if the PCs are very likely to go there, but it combines two combat encounters, a trap, some ability checks, some adventure documents and some treasure to find. The way to design this is simply "Imagine what would certainly be there, then make it more interesting."
You can skip through a lot of this, if you want to by lumping rooms together, calling for ability checks and so on. But why are the characters just wandering through a deserted castle? Where are the occupants? Is there no sense of tension here? Usually invading a castle/mansion is going to involve a stealth mission, or else it's a full on assault against the occupants. Add small details to make the world feel real.
As above, I need to know why we are there. Maybe the problem is that these are just generic locations, without a plot hook, but I assume this is just a result of giving examples on a forum and your players will be on a quest. In this example therefore, Daisy the spy has been defeated, the adventurers have followed the accounts document lead and are looking for more info in the mansion. The mansion's owner is the wizard who cast the Alarm spell for Daisy.
Here's how the gameplay could be more interesting:
DM: This room is clearly the mansion's kitchen. On the table, food has already been prepared. A hog's head has an apple stuffed into its mouth. Note: this indicates the mansion is occupied currently. Checking the food will show it is warm - someone has been here soon. This also gives a sense of time, as dinner is soon to be served.
Player: Cool. I take a look around. Is there anything for me to find?
DM: Make an investigation check. Player rolls a 17. You find a bunch of normal kitchen stuff, but the hog's eyes seem to follow you around the room.
Player: Gross. Is it undead? I use Divine Sense.
DM: No, it's just a head. You're maybe just feeling jumpy, since you're creeping around in the dark. Note: This is pure atmosphere, but it gives the player room to use an ability.
Player: Are there any kitchen knives I can take?
DM: Sure, they aren't really effective as daggers though. Note: When players search a common area, offer them things that they can use. A mop can function as a staff if you want it to. Even candles, rations, a lantern etc. are valuable.
Player: Cool, I take three anyway. I open that door over there. Note: The player is being reckless, opening doors with no investigations.
DM: The door creeks heavily on its hinges. Roll a d20 for me. Note: There is no purpose to the D20 roll here, nobody will hear, we're just freaking the player out and reminding them that they are invading someone's home.
DM: It's a pantry, where they store stuff.
Player: Cool. I take a look around anything interesting?
DM: There's a bunch of stored stuff in there - about four large boxes and 3 smaller ones - how long are you going to spend searching it?
Players: (the players quickly discuss whether to search it or not. They decide it's not worthwhile, and they're on a time limit)
Player: ... cool. I take a look through that door.
DM: It's a hallway with several more doors on the other side.
Player: I'll open the first door.
DM: It's a storage room for the housestaff. It looks like things here are disorderly, tossed in without much thought.
Player: Anything interesting in there?
DM: Again, you're going to need to spend time searching through all the things in there. If you want to spend 10 minutes you can make an investigation check. (If the PCs do, then they can find servant uniforms that they might try to disguise themselves, to gain easier access to the upper storey)
Player: ... alright. I'll open the next door.
Note: This house seems entirely empty - so let's put in someone. If these rooms are all just empty rooms, we might as well have said "Your make your way through the ground floor of the house. It seems deserted, but can you roll a Stealth check for me." Skip them on to the first place of relevance if you're intent is that there's nothing to do here. Run it like a cutscene with perhaps one general ability check.
DM: As you open the door, you see a young woman with a shocked expression, caught up in the arms of another woman. They stare wide eyed at you.
Player: Do they look hostile?
DM: No, they look to be servants caught having a tryst.
-- Begin roleplay encounter with the servants, who may assist the PCs on good Persuasion or Intimidation checks. One servant, a commoner hates the master of the house and can direct the PCs past all the pointless rooms. The other servant serves as a bandit for special expeditions. If left to go on her way, she fetches the master's security imps from a later room.