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One Page Dungeon 2016 – the good parts

I should’ve done this instead of doing the review but oh well! Now you get both! As usual, local players please stay away. This list spoils all of the One Page Dungeons from 2016.

Content copyright and CC-BY-SA by participants in OPD 2016.

PS. If you contributed to OPD 2016. Look away, lest ye own heart be broken! This is just the taste of one DM, what do I know?

Decor and items

Dungeon

  1. Blind fish (reroll if no water nearby)

  2. 1d4+1 lava worm eggs, wiggle occasionally, look like burning coals, pressure to get hot and cause 2d6 dmg

  3. Fungus glows on sound

  4. Intelligent mold: you become anti-self for 1d8 hours and you want to spread the mold

  5. Indistinct murmuring, copper smell

  6. Dry fountain with pithy inscription and coins [DM prep]. Leave more coins? Blessed next fight. Take coins? Take damage.

  7. Weird time-themed statue, only opens on [specific dates and times], clues are available. DM determine dates while prepping

  8. Ceiling magically looks like how the sky looked at dawn today, minus the clouds, and it’s bright in the room

  9. Three inhuman skulls speak riddles in weird language

  10. Pixie corpses in jars

  11. Dragon’s eye in tripod, stare follows you around

  12. Potted vicious-looking plants, can uproot themselves at night and pull pranks

  13. A dead, chained up skeleton, touch it and it blasts you for 20 damage (dex save for half). It can’t be killed.

Wilderness

  1. Abandoned explorers backpack, weathered, items usable + ring (magical? 7/12).

  2. Gigantic glass dome, small low opening, weird flowers (and animals? 5/12)

  3. Gold panning operation, hastily abandoned long ago, gold is left, roll

  4. Overgrown remains of trade caravan, decide contents while prepping

Either

  1. Necklace with purple cone that can translate from monster language
  2. Captured goat to be fed as sacrifice
  3. Dog, master is lost
  4. Bloodstains
  5. Walkie Talkie expy (conch horn?), someone is on the other end, who? Decide while prepping
  6. A carpet bag full of identical very valuable gems (DMG) with a mimicking bird on top. Bag of duplication, duplicate gems vanish in 1d12 days.
  7. A huge stash of sealed bottles, one has genie inside (detail while prepping)
  8. Coins strung together with wire, become treasure map when lined up (determine which treasure, while prepping)

Traps

  1. A chest with runes that summon Fire Elemental if lock picked
  2. Pit covered with illusionary floor
  3. Trampled by stream of panicking ghosts (as if attacked by six ghosts, but they’re just accidentally pushing you as they are fleeing in terror [decide from what while prepping])

Room types

Outdoors

  1. Sunken amphitheater
  2. A tiny cabin with a small fire currently burning in the stove

Indoors

  1. A garden of exotic flora
  2. A grille to see room below

Terrain

  1. Quicksand, determine mechanics while prepping)
  2. A petrified giant blocking a river resting its elbows on either shore. Waterfalls over shoulders.

Unusual monsters

Dungeon

  1. Tentacle monster in pool (use a couple of crocodiles to represent one monster)

Wilderness

  1. Forest ghosts of humans
  2. Dire pelicans

Either indoors or wilderness

  1. Caged pupils that can bite

Weird monster behaviour

  1. Fighting each other
  2. Crushing a skeleton
  3. Clawing the walls
  4. Brooding as an egg, weird item that fell from the sky (metal ball with monsters in, decide type when prepping).

Façades

  1. A wrecked carriaged with signs attacked by [monster type]. Guards, servants, horses dead. Track to dungeon obvious. Players can make haste (con save or exhaustion level) or arrive at their leisure, and the dungeon has two clearly different states for that.
  2. Ye old “Dungeon in a basement”, resident scared, family member knocked out below, players can easily save. Then there are more doors to explore: big dungeon!
  3. Players get sucked into magic book

Mechanics

  1. “Petals diagram” to determine spread of disease
  2. Grid of pressure plates on floor, make puzzle out of pattern

Dungeon themes

  1. Orb of Judgment affects dungeon, say curse or lie and take 1d3 damage to leave lightning mark on nearby wall
  2. “Goblins” secretly disguised human runaway kids. Their leader, a teen girl, drugs them with berries. They feed people to a fish

Use the whole thing as is

Notable maps to restock