Critique my 'five room dungeon': The Wreck of the Vuutun Palaa

[Wayfare]

Hi everyone, I just posted a summary of a ‘five room dungeon’ I ran for my group some time ago, and it got me thinking that maybe I should make a PDF out of it, because it was a lot of fun.

Before I do so I would like to post the summary here as well, so I can see if there are any questions, feedback or points of confusion. If you’d read it through and tell me what you think, that would be great!
Are you familiar with the Five Room Dungeon concept? If not, a quick google should sort you out. It’s a great way to quickly put an interesting dungeon together, and here’s an example that my players LOVED:

I made this one to replace the asteroid fortress from Trouble Brewing (the EotE core rulebook starter adventure). In my version the party was on Naboo and they found out the gang leader had set up shop in the wrecked portside arm of the Vuutun Palaa, the Droid Control Ship from Phantom Menace that got blown up by a nine-year-old. You can actually see this arm come off at the end of the movie and I figured if it were still in orbit, it’d make for a pretty neat pirate base.

The rooms were as follows:

Entrance .
The bad guys are set up at the front of the arm, where the fighters used to come out. This end is guarded by a turbolaser turret and a patrol droid or two. Players should figure out that they need to enter stealthily from the far side and make their way through the wreck instead.
There, they find a non-functional service shuttle bay on the far side of the wreck. They need to power up the airlock’s circuitry and then hotwire it to open the door. One of the droid players graciously offered to power up the circuits in exchange for some Strain. I then handed them an online circuit puzzle on a tablet to solve.

Puzzle .
Behind the airlock is a flock of mynocks, just for a little pew-pew. Then, a maze of abandoned corridors. I printed out a paper maze but kept it behind the GM screen, telling the players “you can go left, right, or back” and keeping track for them. Once they hacked into a terminal and downloaded a schematic, I handed them the map and they made the rest of the way through. The maze was also a great place to throw some ‘traps’ at them (unstable ordnance, sparking conduits etc.) to soften them up a bit.

Setback .
The players are almost at the flight deck when they find the long, featureless corridor ahead is guarded by a semi-malfunctioning Droideka Sharpshooter. It has been keeping itself alive on power cells for the past twenty years! It can no longer move and it is mentally completely unstable, but boy does it still shoot.
I was hoping the players would find some way to convince the droid that the war was long over and that it was time for the old soldier to shut down and finally be at rest. Instead they got badly shot up before managing to take the droid out with a thermal detonator and some very lucky dice rolling. Oh well, it was still a memorable encounter

Climax .
The players make it to the flight deck and there’s a big fight with the pirate boss and his henchmen. The prize is also here (an astromech with quest-critical space co-ordinates, in our case). The pirate boss controls the life support system and can change things like the air pressure and the orientation of gravity at will. And once the players figure that out, he turns the turbolaser battery (remember the one from the Entrance? It was Chekov’s turbolaser battery all along) inwards on them. That was a memorable fight too!

Twist .
“You’ll never take me alive!” Upon defeat, the pirate leader fires the turbolaser into the deck and detonates old munitions stores, starting a chain reaction that will destroy (well, further destroy) the wreck. The players need to grab their objective and run back through all the rooms they just passed while the ship is collapsing around them!
I structured this by describing a short part of their escape, then pointing to one player and asking: “You’re in front and there’s a collapsed bulkhead in the way. What do you do?” Then let them roll for their solution. They would always succeed, but at a greater or smaller cost in Strain and Health according to the die roll. Each player got to tackle one obstacle like this.

Then it’s a dramatic leap into their spaceship and a just-in-time fly-off-past-the-camera as the wreck spectacularly explodes behind them.

So, any feedback or questions on the adventure would be most welcome!

[P-47Thunderbolt]

That sounds pretty fun! The structure is simple and effective, but I do have a couple comments:

1. Real-life puzzles are very much a table choice. I don’t recommend running that way, but if it works for your table, it does. Any in-game consequences, I would pin on in-game choices and dice rolls, not on the player’s adeptness at an extra-game puzzle.
2. Droideka Sharpshooter is actually anachronistic for Phantom Menace, but nothing says the pirates can’t have recovered one elsewhere and added it.
3. Are the traps “wrong step and boom” or “here’s an obstacle, oh no Failure/Threat”? I find the latter more satisfying, aside from Threat abstractions causing the PC to trigger a trap.
4. Why do the pirates not send a response force toward the PC intrusion? Wouldn’t they notice the firefight and random explosions?

All in all, sounds like an exciting time.

[Wayfare]

Thanks! I do love the five room structure, and the escape sequence is basically a “skill challenge”. I was watching a lot of Matthew Colville those days

@P-47Thunderbolt

Real-life puzzles are very much a table choice. I don’t recommend running that way, but if it works for your table, it does. Any in-game consequences, I would pin on in-game choices and dice rolls, not on the player’s adeptness at an extra-game puzzle.

Our table has a couple of board game and puzzle nerds who love this sort of thing, but I can see how it may not be to everyone’s taste. You could replace this with skills checks of course. I do wonder, what would an in-game puzzle look like instead of an extra-game one?

@P-47Thunderbolt

Droideka Sharpshooter is actually anachronistic for Phantom Menace, but nothing says the pirates can’t have recovered one elsewhere and added it.

Are they? I know they’re from the animated series, but I’m not aware of any official start of service. Meh, could have been a prototype then The droid was not actually part of pirate security, just a relic from the Battle of Naboo. The pirates considered the wreck impassable from behind and thus “safe”.

@P-47Thunderbolt

Are the traps “wrong step and boom” or “here’s an obstacle, oh no Failure/Threat”? I find the latter more satisfying, aside from Threat abstractions causing the PC to trigger a trap.

Mostly the latter: the players encounter something like a loose panel, a crate, a sparking cable etc. and then they can decide how to deal with it. I had some useful goodies in there as well, like grenades, to promote curiosity.

@P-47Thunderbolt

Why do the pirates not send a response force toward the PC intrusion? Wouldn’t they notice the firefight and random explosions?

The wreck was a creaking, crumbling place even before the turbolaser suicide. As far as the pirates were concerned, nothing was getting through from the rear end. They considered themselves quite safe in their little life support bubble on the flight deck.

Thanks for your questions! These really help to inform what should go into the PDF. If you have anything else, don’t hesitate.

[P-47Thunderbolt]

An in-game puzzle would be something like a door with a secret opening mechanism. Through various skill challenges, the PCs deduce that they need four “key” MacGuffins, acquire those MacGuffins, and determine which places are the correct spots. It requires some deductive reasoning on the players’ part, but only in so far as combat requires tactical thinking on the players’ part. The primary determining factor is the use of in-game resources to solve an in-game problem with an in-game solution. The difference between doing a cross-word puzzle and rolling Knowledge (Education).

There is no specific “date of origin” for the Droideka Sharpshooters, but I can make several in-universe arguments for a later date of origin:

1. Droid models were introduced and improved over time, creating a more varied and flexible army.
2. Upgraded models and variants (B2s, BXs) were introduced as new needs were felt.
3. TPM was a watershed for the droid army, exposing vulnerabilities and capability gaps.
4. The Droideka Sharpshooter is a hyper-specialized droid that fills a particular niche.
5. We don’t see them used until late in the Clone Wars. If available, they would have been used sooner.

If the pirates aren’t hearing explosions/firefights, I suppose that could work, but I would still expect them to at least send somebody to check if they should be worried about their secret base falling apart around them. An encounter with a search party of goons adds a wrinkle and a decision point:

1. Kill them? If you aren’t fast enough, they report you. If you are fast enough, they’ll miss a check-in.
2. Sneak past? Fail, and they report you and you end up in a firefight. Succeed, and they’re behind you.
3. Lure them into a trap? Tricky, but could get the best of both worlds.

Etc. Leaves a lot of room for clever player ideas, or unfortunate disasters of planning. It would make the encounter a lot more dynamic and reactive/responsive to player choices.

[Wayfare]

Ah I see what you mean by an in-game puzzle then, thanks for clearing that up Do whatever is right for your table of course. I’ll keep that in mind for the PDF.

Thinking on it, I think the droid could have been a regular Droideka and still perform the same role. Maybe with a little shooting advantage, as it has been staring down that corridor for twenty years. Its real purpose is to be a roadblock that can be overcome in several different ways: violence, persuasion, hacking, or whatever cool things the players come up with.

I like the idea of the pirates sending a party to investigate if the players are being particularly loud and violent. This could trigger pretty early on if the players attempt a frontal approach to the wreck. And taking out the pirate party means fewer pirates to fight at the climax, which could change things up a bit. Hell, they might even end up fleeing the wreck before the players and making off with their ship!

One thing I think I should explain (and I’ll note that in the PDF) is that this little adventure is intentionally quite linear. It’s a break from the usual sandbox and I found my table was quick to get into the action once they saw there was really only one way forward. There were of course multiple possible solutions to each problem, but the order of them was pretty much fixed. Nice for a change of pace between more freeform adventures.