Empty Rooms

We fill our games with interesting worlds, dungeons, and stories. At every turn, we’re focused on what we can add to make it engaging and fun. But a continuous stream of information and decision-making risks exhausting players. Enter the empty room.

Exploring dungeons and the secrets within is fun. But if every room leads to a fight or a life-threatening trap, the game becomes a slog. We can combat this with empty rooms. When the party stumbles into an empty room, it provides a natural change to the pacing of the game. An empty room doesn’t have to be featureless but it shouldn’t contain important artifacts either. After all, everything can be something. Tattered banners might reveal traces of ancient lore. The shape or smell of the room might hint at its long lost function. This is a living world and not every room serves the players and their story.

Literal empty rooms are just one example of using this tool. An unassuming village or relatively empty hex can serve the same purpose. Adding space between adventures, like downtime, does the same. After all, why can’t heroes spend a week at the cafe with a good book?

Empty rooms are incredibly simple to use. Prep can be minimal to non-existent. They create more dynamic campaigns, allowing for natural changes in pacing. These empty spaces ultimately help us appreciate and emphasize the more important spaces in our game.

We strive to create fun and interesting games. We spend a lot of time thinking about everything we can put into those games to achieve that. Empty rooms are a simple yet powerful tool that we can include.

Game on.