Post-it Dungeon for October

There's been lots of talk among the OSR of character sheets, monster stats, or even whole dungeon maps that can fit on a typical 3x5 index card. But what about something EVEN SMALLER!!! Just on a whim, I drew up a dungeon map on a post-it note and stocked it as basically a funhouse dungeon (albeit with factions) as an exercise of sorts. Its fun to see what sorts of shapes you can just shove into such a small-square area! There's only one entry/exit to this particular locale, so it wouldn't work very well as a modular dungeon morph or anything, but I think you could easy make a modular dungeon out of small post-it chunks too (I'm pretty sure someone else has done that before but I don't recall who). I'm planning on running this as a duet game with my girlfriend so if you're her DON'T READ THIS!

 

ALSO ITS OCTOBER NOW !!!! So the donjon is mildly spooky themed

 

ROOM KEY

1: Heptagonal chamber (where an eighth side would be is instead the entry to a hallway, southeast). Each wall has a carved figure of a martyred saint, representing the seven virtues (prudence, justice, fortitude, temperance, faith, hope, and charity). Their injuries correspond to their respective virtue (prudence has been gored through the brain (seat of rationality), justice sits on the executioner's block, etc.) A fully articulated human skeleton (1 gp worth of silver wire holds the whole thing together) with one hand held upwards and the other downwards stands in the center of the room, its feet buried into the dark clay of the floor.

2: Square chamber, both door entrances to room 2 are locked, and will lock behind the players if not propped open. The sound of moving liquid can be heard through the walls, vaguely echoing throughout the chamber. The northern wall sports a large red devil head, mouth agape, tongue outstretched, and sporting two gemstone eyes (opals worth 25 gp). The tongue is the most obvious platform from which to pry the opals out, but stepping on the tongue opens pipes that begin to pour viscous blood into the room, steadily flooding it until the whole chamber is filled with blood, floor to ceiling, in 1 exploration turn.

3: The north wall of this chamber bows out in a gentle curve, patterned on the inside like the spine and ribcage of a great turtle. A mass of rusty metal pipes crisscross this room, primarily north-south, leading into the trap in room 2. A rag-man (vaguely humanoid form whose features are indistinct under piles of rags, stats as hobgoblin) with long pallid arms has set up camp in the far northwestern corner of the room, hanging up a dirty cloth over the pipes like a shelter. His name is Yarfan Loam and he wants nothing to do with the fight between the scientist and the ghouls. He is certain that one of the pipes in this room is full of sweet yogurt but is too afraid of breaking open the blood pipes to find it.

4: An abandoned library full of ancient books that crumble to dust when touched. A skeleton lays slumped on the desk in the center of the room, with a large wasp stinger buried in its spine. One book on the shelf on the eastern wall is made entirely of silver, every page a thinly hammered sheet, and written on in blood. This tome is worth 1,000 gp. The southern wall of this chamber is very thin and can be easily broken through with the right tools, leading you to the narrow passageway between rooms 1/5/6 to the west and rooms 14/15/16 to the east.

5: Rectangular chamber with a steep, narrow corner on the northeast edge. A flickering flame behind a pane of stained glass in that steep corner casts multicolored lights in an arc across the room. Stepping too close to the stained glass causes a trap door, hidden under a rug, to collapse, dropping the victim into a cistern full of whale oil (the fuel for the flame behind the glass pane). High risk of drowning follows, and a major difficulty in retrieving anyone who fell in due to the slipperiness of the oil.

6: Small square chamber. Two sets of empty suits of armor flank the room on the north and south walls. An empty husk of human skin lays on the floor.

7: A pond in the center of this chamber is home to 5 pale crocodiles. They are attracted to light, and lay strewn about the edges of the body of water. Going through this room inevitably involves skirting by the edge of the pond. One half-submerged skeleton has a jewel-encrusted gauntlet worth 1,000 gp. The skin of an individual pale crocodile is worth 150 gp to the right buyer.

8: Part of the home base/lair of the ghouls, a community that has made this dungeon home. There are 36 ghouls total living in the dungeon, including their leader, the Ghoul Princess Hyrcania Forsooth. They live in mud-daub huts built directly into the sloping triangular walls of rooms 8, 9, and 12, with the exception of the aforementioned Ghoul Princess (who wears a cape made from moth's wings) and some of her subordinates in their tribe, who live in family mausolea carved directly into the walls. The bodies of the formerly interred inhabitants are left leaning up against the wall with gold coins on their eyes and under their tongues. The ghouls farm giant ticks, which subsist on blood from giant flightless vampire bats, which themselves subsist on blood from pale crocodiles, which eat pale eyeless fish (who in turn scrape pallid algae off the rocks, or eat pale crayfish that scrape pallid algae off the rocks). Many of the ghouls yearn for the taste of human flesh, and would do anything for a bite, even though the Ghoul Princess hasn't allowed them to eat their enemy, The Scientist. The ghouls wield spears and their own paralytic touch, and look like shrink-wrapped corpses with unusually long faces and long silvery mops of hair.

9: Part of the home base/lair of the ghouls. Nothing notable except for more ghoul huts and disinterred corpses leaning on the walls. A secret door (the entire wall can rotate when the right brick is pressed) connects this room to room 14. The ghouls aren't aware of the secret door.

10: Behind the stuck door that connects this room to room 8, this room is crawling with 5 black puddings on the floor and dripping green slime on the ceiling. There is no treasure; indentations in the wall where rich wooden artifacts would have been placed have been eroded by the oozes.

11: There is a tall mirror on the wall opposite the entrance to this room (i.e. the eastern wall), which shows an idealized version of anyone who looks into it. One party member (randomly determined) will not appear in the mirror at all, no matter what, seemingly implying the world would be better off without them in it. As mentioned below, under random encounters, if The Robot is roaming, this room will be full of roosting giant flightless vampire bats.

12: Part of the home base/lair of the ghouls. This room is the location of the grand mausoleum of Ghoul Princess Hyrcania Forsooth. She has a peacock feather fan in pride of place in her mausoleum, worth 350 gp. Directly opposite is the largest giant tick pen where the ghouls farm tick blood.

13: This room is completely empty except for a beautifully carved antique chair, complete with handwoven upholstery in the style of a Persian rug. The feet of the chair are nailed to the floor. This chair is worth 600 gp.

14: This room has the appearance of a throne room and banquet chamber for some long forgotten evil lord. There are tattered tapestries on the walls, cornices in the shapes of bats and spiders, and a central banquet table with fragile, nearly collapsed chairs. There are no cups nor silverware on the table, and no treasure of any kind.

from (I'm pretty sure) The Curse of Frankenstein (1957)

15: The laboratory of The Scientist. He is a recent arrival to the dungeon and has taken over what appears to have been formerly an armory or pantry of some kind (complete with crumbled barrels and rusted polearms leaning against the walls) as an impromptu laboratory, having set up tables covered with all manner of alembics, bunsen burners, diodes, electrical equipment, glass containers of sulfuric acid, etc. A humanoid robot stands off to the side, with a door in its torso open to reveal unfinished mechanisms and wiring. The Scientist wants to study the ghouls' paralytic powers, to determine whether it is a venom or a psychosomatic effect; he also looks down on the ghouls, and considers them beneath him, in a manner similar to a scholarly colonialist. He is working on the aforementioned robot to break into the ghouls' lair, but it needs silver wiring to be complete and he currently doesn't have any. In the meantime, he has bred a race of mutated two-headed and two-stingered wasp things that act as his more brutish underlings.

16: Nest of some of The Scientist's wasp things. There are 10 wasp things that dwell in this strangely circular chamber, complete with a domed ceiling. The floor is sticky with their secretions.

17: Circular chamber with a domed ceiling. The ceiling sports tiled mosaics depicting hell scenes, including scenes of sinners having to march into a gaping hellmouth. The mosaic tiles are worth 2 for 1 gp to an artist. 2-in-6 chance that 1d6 wasp things from room 16 will also be present in this room.

18: Circular chamber with a domed ceiling. The ceiling clearly used to sport tiled mosaics, except now most of the tiles have fallen to the floor, and there are some bricks missing in the walls. The fallen tiles obscure pressure plates in the floor which, when pressed down on, activate a pneumatic trap that launches bricks out of the walls straight at head-height. Victims take 1d6 damage per brick for 1d6 bricks launched. Halflings and other diminutive types are immune.

from Santa Claus Conquers the Martians (1964)

RANDOM ENCOUNTERS

Roll 1d6

1: 1d8 giant flightless vampire bats

2: 1d4+1 wasp things (allied with The Scientist)

3: 1d6 ghouls with 2d6 giant ticks on leashes (part of the Ghouls faction)

4: 2d6 black puddings

5: 2d6+1 moss-encrusted skeletons (controlled by a mute necromancer in the next room; if the necromancer is killed, replace this entry with 10d6 dermestid beetles)

6: 1d6 pale crocodiles (if 4 are rolled, one pale crocodile is wearing a black cape)

7: The Robot (stats as iron living statue)

If (and ONLY if) The Scientist is able to finish creating The Robot in his laboratory in room 15, add +1 to random encounter rolls. The Robot is his latest attempt to one-up the Ghouls and find access to their secret chambers. It is impossible to encounter giant flightless vampire bats when The Robot is about, because its slow shuddering footfalls scare them, leaving all of the remaining giant flightless vampire bats to roost in room 11 (as far from The Scientist's laboratory as possible).

wasp-thing photocollage by me

Wasp Thing

No. Encountered: 1d4+1 (up to 2d6+1 in lair)

Hit Dice: 2

Attacks: 2 stings (1d6+1 and venom, see below)

Armor: as chain and shield

Morale: 7

Flying: Wasp things can fly, albeit clumsily. Given the cramped quarters of the dungeon, they don't do that often outside of combat, where it gives them a height advantage.

Venomous sting: Each individual target stung must make a save vs. poison (only one save is made, even if stung twice; receiving 2 stings gives disadvantage on the saving throw) or swell up uncontrollably, making any armor uncomfortable to wear and making any pressure or weight put on the body (like opening a door, pushing an object, lifting treasure, etc.) deal 1d4 damage. This effect lasts for 2d6 exploration turns.

The stats for all the other monsters can be either inferred or are described using equivalents from OSR games, mentioned above :)

This dungeon ended up being a bit less Halloween-themed than I initially intended but its still kinda spooky and I feel like it all came together very satisfactorily :) Hope y'all like it!