Accountability: Story-Telling Collective – Daily Dungeon Design Challenge 2026: Day 1—The Gardeners or the Garden
The intro contained quite a few questions that would help give me an overview of the dungeon and its basic workings, but I always discover that the minute I start to work on the ‘logical’ side of things, the creative dries completely up.
For an exercise like this, I’d rather employ the ‘write into the dark’ technique, and write each room as it comes, then draw the threads together as they become apparent with each room…which mirrors the way I usually write story, or poetry.
Go figure. My head, it likes to work in the different.
It's been a while, so let’s hope, it’s up to this challenge.
Day 1
Prompt
A room with two exits, each with a different visible cost.
OR
"Hungry"
Concept
Initial Thoughts: When I first saw the challenge, I wanted to incorporate something ‘unexpected’ for the entrance, but today’s challenge doesn’t quite fit. I think the beginning involves a forbidden garden and a lost child, or maybe an unexpected ingress of some kind. Either way. This room is a little ways in, so it’s Room 1, but it’s not really Room 1. It will, at least help us build some of the story for this dungeon.
Prompt Choice: We are going to incorporate both prompt concepts…and there will be a garden, which probably means gardens or plants or growing things are going to be a bit of a theme for this dungeon.
Cost Concept: The costs should be larger than personal, and both should involve regrets and irreparable consequences BUT there should be a way to minimize the regrets of at least one choice, and perhaps put in a longer term solution to ameliorate the immediate consequences for those players who like to have a long-term agenda for their characters, and DMs willing to indulge them.
Room Overview: The room is fifteen squares from south to north with a central ‘corridor’ that is nine squares wide. There is a second section of the room to the west which is seventeen squares square. The central corridor is paved with one-square-wide tiles which are decorated with a central, stylized, sunburst surrounded by curling vines.
PCs enter through a door in the southern end of the room to see the center of the room is paved in stone. At the end of the room is a single narrow niche containing a pedestal, on which stands a bronze plaque engraved with writing. It cannot be read from across the room.
On the right-hand, eastern, wall, set in two, side-by-side niches, separated by a narrow (approx. half a foot) wall of stone, are two people, a man and a woman. They look to be nobles, and are held in stasis until the PCs enter.
On the left-hand, western, side, there is a low, stone wall, beyond which lies a garden. The wall is divided in the center by a gap allowing access to the center-most path in the garden. There are fruit-bearing vines down the south wall, and fruit trees palliased against the northern and western walls. The garden beds around the edges of this room are one square wide. There is a heavy wooden door set in the center of the western wall. Four garden beds (six squares square) surrounded by single-square-wide paths divide the room into four equal parts. Each garden grows a different food crops. There is a tuber-filled plot, a grain-filled plot, a plot evenly split by three different crops grown on bushy plants, and a plot divided into quarters, each quarter of which contains a low-growing food plant differently colored to the others.
Hidden Hazards: There are four pit traps in this room, and a fifth trap, described below. Each trap takes up a three-by-three-square space and are concealed by the tiles. There are two pit traps on either side of the door, equidistant apart and half-way along the southern ‘half’ of the wall. There are another two pits on either side of the pedestal in the northern side of the room, again equidistant apart and centred on the northern ‘half’ of the room, using the gap leading to the garden and the stasis niches as the central point. The ones closest the garden drop the player onto an island surrounded by lava…but that is in another room—or, rather, two conjoined rooms. Both rooms give a clear view of the lake of fire beneath the garden room, and the supports that will give way if the right trigger is given. Pipes overhead lead across the roof overhead and look like they lead towards where the stasis chambers are located above. The one closest the niches drops players into one of another pair of conjoined rooms, reflecting the fate of the pair upstairs. Through barred windows PCs can see twin cages that look like they are positioned below the stasis chambers. Each is mounted on a rail-based trolley whose tracks leads toward a different portal wreathed in flames of different colors. Checks involving knowledge skills in magic or planes reveal the portals lead to different realms, and high-level passes give the names of beings renowned for their torturous schemes and diabolical treatment of slaves. Both pit rooms provide a way back to the corridor outside the south entrance, so the room may be entered, once more. The final trap lies in the center of the corridor between the entrance and the pedestal bearing the plaque. This is not a pit trap, but a series of runes, each of which summons a very hungry plant monster into one of the ‘safe’ squares in the room.
Trap Triggers and Detection—Pits: The pit traps are triggered by something (PC or monster) crossing more than two squares of their surface, i.e. when the PC or monster crosses from the second trap square and enters the third. At this point (on the third square) movement is interrupted and a Dex-based save must be made in order for the triggering creature to leap clear of the trap to the nearest ‘safe’ square. Pit traps can be detected by a successful detect traps ability test or spell.
Trap Triggers and Detection—Plant Runes: The runes are triggered when stepped on. They can be detected by any ability or spell capable of detecting magic, which highlights them, or by a successful observation roll, beating a moderate-to-high difficulty, which reveals anomalies in both the sunburst and vine patterns that mark these squares as different to the surrounding squares. Those with skills in nature or natural magic gain a bonus to these detection rolls.
Directing PCs to the Plaque: PCs who ignore the obvious clue in the room, and who try to enter the garden before reading the plaque are refused entry by an invisible barrier. Likewise, PCs investigating the couple in stasis can see they are alive, and conscious, but cannot touch them or see a way of freeing them. The couple will point them toward the pedestal, but will not warn them of the traps, as they are not aware of them.
The Choice: The plaque offers a stark choice. “Food for the many, at the cost of two. The gardeners’ freedom, at the cost of no food. Starvation for all below, and Life for two above, or a Life of Enslavement and Separation to care for many over Love.”
How Do We Choose? Once the PCs have read the plaque, they will hear a loud click that signals the appearance of a lever on the wall between the two people in stasis. A brief chime signals a sigil lighting up above the door in the garden’s western wall. This sigil sends a beam of light down the path to the gap giving entry to the garden from the corridor.
The lever between the two people will release them from stasis, BUT it will drop the garden into the lake of fire below, something those who’ve observed the pit of fire and the framework below will gain an Intelligence-based check to put together.
Following the path of light to the door across the garden will see the gardeners dropped into the cages below to be transported to their torment. If consulted by sign, the gardeners will show they would prefer the PCs to save the garden, and NOT touch the lever.
Circumvention or Amelioration: PCs with a knowledge of nature can make checks to observe the plants in the garden from a distance, and to note that seeds and cuttings could be gathered and the plants in the garden re-propagated if a suitable space could be found. Experimenting with spells that can manipulate items from a distance (such as mage hand or levitation – i.e. levitating a plant from the ground and bringing it into the central room; or similar ideas) can lead to seeds and cuttings being able to be gathered, prior to the gardeners being released. Of course, this will mean that the populace being fed by the garden will also have to be discovered and released from whatever keeps them confined and reliant on the garden for food…and the clock is now ticking. This quandary is still in place, if the PCs release the gardeners and burn the garden. Likewise, PCs who have seen the cage room, could come up with a way to prevent the trolleys from reaching their portal destinations, and thus come up with a plan to rescue the gardeners after following the path of light to the western door.
‘Hunger’ Theme: The crop garden for feeding whatever/whoever else lies in the dungeon, and the hungry plants that are part of the rune trap.
Notes: I lack the drawing technology to add a map to this description, and it’s not written in DM-ready form, BUT I hope it presents a room complete enough to be incorporated into a dungeon. Also, the ‘story’ behind the dungeon is starting to form, and I look forward to uncovering more of it.
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