One Page Dungeon 2016 - Magic Shop Mayhem

This year has been the worst so far, at least as far as dithering over my One Page Dungeon Contest submission goes. It's the same story every year: I have a million ideas, but none of them really gel, and as the deadline looms I end up polishing the shiniest turd just so I can get something done.

Anyway, without further ado, I present Magic Shop Mayhem.

This concept first came about back when Wizards of the Coast had forums. One poster, going by the handle of bawylie, created Bawylie's Budget Dungeon Challenge.
The structure of a budget dungeon is simple.

1.) It must have a purpose or theme that's apparent by looking at it. (Church, aquatic, warehouse, etc).
2.) it has 3 areas or rooms (no more).
3.) One room has a hazard or trap capable of tpk
4.) One room has a trash encounter (even-level or lower).
5.) one room has a set piece encounter with a twist. (Often a choice between two mutually exclusive desireables or between two undesirables or the assumption of one desirable with an unavoidable undesirable).
I was one of several people who riffed ideas on the thread. I liked mine enough that I drew (crappy, Oh so crappy) tiny maps (maplets?) of the situations. I always planned on expanding them, but time gets away from you and the ideas just sit in the back of your mind, percolating.

So, I had a completely different (sci-fi) idea for this years 1PD, but while I thought the execution was nice, there wasn't any adventure in it -- and the idea is to have a single evening's entertainment on one piece of paper. I got to this evening, the day before it's due, and I realized I needed to do a Hail Mary. So I went into my mind palace where I keep my unused ideas, and dusted off one of the fun ones.

My thought at the time was to create "dungeons" that could be inserted in the adventure at odd moments. A lot of modules require build-up, foreshadowing, and planning. What happens when you find your mojo at its weakest point, and have people coming over in a few hours to play for an evening? I wanted to provide one-pagers tailored to that: adventures that require (or allow) no prep-work to drop into the campaign, that are generic enough to fit most fantasy campaigns, and yet have an interesting hook or mechanic to recommend them.

So, this is the first.
Magic Shop Mayhem

Hope you enjoy! I've got a few more ideas for odd and eccentric items for the shop. I may have to make a list of them later; it would be cool if I could expand it to 100!

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