Rooms and Room Characteristics

Now that I have some ideas for monsters, the next thing I was looking at was what kind of rooms and what are in these rooms that the players would be doing. What would make the game interesting? What will keep the game from becoming boring and repetative? What could be just a little bit different than every other board game/dungeon crawl? What will keep the game different every time it's played? How to change it all around? Once again the Internet was my friend and I searched around some forums and found some "wishes" that people had for dungeon crawl board games. What I found was quite extensive and, surprisenly, repetative in what people were wishing for in games. I know not every idea can be used in one game, but there are lots of ideas to choose from. Got any more ideas for the perfect room? Leave me a comment.


Some ideas for some rooms in my dungeon:

• Torture chambers
• Rooms that rotate
• Rooms that the tiles would be swapped to change look of room
• Event rooms (pull lever and XYZ happens)
• Puzzle rooms
• Pressing rooms that the walls come together or roof lowers
• Moving room where the whole room relocates to another part of dungeon

Some ideas for the characteristics of some of the rooms:

• Doors to unlock, burn down, or burst through
• Pits to push opponents into (or for PCs to fall into)
• Shadows to investigate for loot, bodies, or to hide
• Traps to other levels, to isolate players from others possibly with a monster of their own
• Portcullises that need keys that are hidden in other rooms or on monsters
• Trap doors that lead to a secret room
• Teleporter to link two rooms, randomly relocate one or all members, or can be put wherever needed when room is too cramped on the table and need to conserve room
• Secret doors
• Pools and fountains
• Moving stairs
• Ice or glass floors where players will slip or slide in direction pushed or were moving
• Dead ends
• Mazes
• Scything blades where a lever or trap square activates and deactivates
• Wards that are magic locks that need magic to open

Things in the rooms:

• Chests to open for loot or traps
• Ladders
• Tables to hide behind or push around to block things
• Alters (if I decide to add the element of religion)
• Destroyed tables, ladders, chests, etc
• A fire in a fireplace
• Statues
• Animate furniture to help or hinder
• Torches
• Corpses to search for loot or information/XP

Some items to look for in rooms:

• Potions in chests 
• Maps
• Riddles
• Weapons
• Runes
• Spells