Does anyone know where the 5 room dungeon method came from?

9 thoughts on “Does anyone know where the 5 room dungeon method came from?”

1. OSR stuff – check those communities, as there’s always tons of people with historical knowledge there.

2. Thanks, so far I’ve only gotten non answers but I’ll keep the hunt going

3. First time I saw it was from roleplayingtips.com – Role Playing Tips for Tabletop Game Masters and I think he referenced a Dragon magazine article? Johnn Four​

4. 30 seconds of Googling finds this?

   strolen.com – Strolen’s Citadel: 5 Room Dungeon By JohnnFour

5. Lester Ward, thanks! I came up with that too, I just don’t know if that is the origin. As far as I can tell, that is the earliest I have seen on the internet, but it may be from like Dungeon Mag or something.

6. From the same author as the Strolen post. The article is “Dungeon Design and the Art of Simplicity: Fun Dungeons” by Johnn Four, Dragon 320, June, 2004.

7. I’ve been trying to come up with a pbta -way to use 5-room dungeons. Anyone found a good approach to this? Prep, full impro or something between? Using rooms as guidelines for improvising different situations after entrance?

8. +Antti Lusila Check out +Mark Tygart ‘s “Tomb of Atuan” https://plus.google.com/+MarkTygart/posts/PXscSZMN3YV — it’s basically 5 rooms the players can choose to get to using “The Labyrinth Move”. I ran it with no prep other than copying down relevant details into a notebook (didn’t have a printer at the time).

9. As far as I know, I invented the name and approach. Published it in an early Roleplaying Tips, then other venues.

   The Strolen’s article is a copy of the Roleplaying Tips one used to launch a 5 Room Dungeon community contest at that site.

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