Hi!
Some time ago I’ve posted a move for exploring a haunted escape room. I’ve finally tested it and it was a bit too simple, my players expected a more detailed simulation of escape room experience. That’s a new version I hope to test on them one day. It has become quite a minigame but it seems that’s what my dear players want.
HAUNTED ESCAPE ROOMS
When inventing a haunted escape room, think of three things:
-What is its theme?
-How is it haunted and what happens if the visitors don’t solve it on time?
-What are three hardest riddles?
Assign each of those riddles difficulty ranging from -2 to +1. The average should be around -1. In play add the number of Hunters to this difficulty – so with 4 hunters -2 becomes 2 and +1 becomes 5.
SOLVING THE ROOM
When the hunters enter the room, describe its general feel and the hardest riddles. Then one of hunters rolls +Sharp. On 10+ they hold 3, on 7-9 they hold 2 and on a miss 1. They can spend 1 to know the difficulty of one of the riddles or get a vague idea about what will happen if they won’t solve the room on time. For riddles they don’t analyze that way give them difficulty either 1 too high or 1 too low, of course without telling how is the number wrong.
Then each hunter rolls +Sharp or +Cool. This roll represents their contribution to solving or investigating the room. On 10+ they hold 3, on 7-9 2 and on a miss 1. Each hold can be spent either to work on one of the riddles or to investigate what’s wrong with the room. Put holds spent by all hunters on each riddle in separate stocks. Then the hunters who spent their holds to investigate the room ask one question about the room’s foul secrets from Investigate the Mystery or Read a Bad Situation lists per hold spent.
Finally you compare each hold stock with the real difficulty of each riddle. If they gave enough holds to solve all of them, they are free far ahead of the timer and suffer no ill effects of the room’s curse. If they solved two riddles, they make it seconds before the time runs out and the room’s curse brushes them but it’s nothing serious. If they solved even less riddles they run out of time and are at the room’s mercy.
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The room from my session was lair of the Wawel dragon, a monster from Cracow legends. When the time to solve the room run out the dragon’s ghost manifested itself in the room and scared the hell out of visitors – officially it was just a projection and recorded noise, of course. He was then able to haunt their dreams, feeding on their fear even further, and once enough people were haunted that way he could return to corporeal form. Hunters’ fears are, of course, especially nutritious.