Help wanted: Five-room dungeon for two level 1 5E/RPG beginners

My 11-year-old son is inviting his best friend over next weekend, to help him roll up his D&D character and they want to play an adventure together. My son has a level 1 rogue (a swashbuckler type, although he doesn't know about that subclass, nor would it occur to him to min-max for it). His friend seems likely to want to play a fighter with the knight background.

So I've come up with a five-room dungeon plan for them, and need a bit of help on one step, although I'm open to ideas generally. Note that, at the moment, I only have the three core 5E books.

I set all my D&D games, since 3E in and around Ptolus. This adventure would start with the two player characters playing a game of cards (or other game of chance) against an NPC, who puts in a key for his bet. This isn't just any key, however: It's an ornate one, carved to look like a grinning goblin's face, with mirrored eyes. He says it's supposed to unlock the Goblin Door room in the megadungeon beneath Ptolus. But this NPC, an adventuring rogue himself, has taken the key there and was unable to get the key to unlock the Goblin Door, and is giving up on trying to solve the secret of the room himself.

Once the players win the key, the adventure moves to the Dungeon, turning off the tunnel to the famous dead-end known as Goblin Door.

1. Entrance: Spider webs fill the corners of the room, and a giant spider has recently moved in to this relatively undisturbed corner of the Dungeon.

2. Puzzle: The Goblin Door itself is in the next room, opposite the entrance. It's a huge stone door, carved with a bas relief of a grinning goblin, holding a box before him, with a prominent keyhole. The room otherwise looks like a well picked-over wizard's sanctum, and there's a rumor that the goblin was a wizard who served the BBEG who created the dungeon, centuries ago. One of the few items not stolen or smashed by previous adventurers is a large mirror attached to one of the walls perpendicular to the entrance and door. The key fits the Goblin Door, and turns it, but nothing happens. Someone inspecting the room via the mirror will eventually spot, on the opposite side of the room from the mirror, another keyhole, only visible with the mirror. The key fits this hidden keyhole and opens a secret door. (The Goblin Door itself is just a wall, carved to look like a door, with a lock mechanism embedded in it.)
3. Setback: The next room doesn't appear to have been disturbed since the fall of the BBEG, long ago. It contains the goblin wizard's living quarters, his chest of belongings, and so on. And interestingly, a full suit of armor. That suit is actually an animated suit of armor, and once anything in the room is disturbed, rises to attack.

4. The Boss Fight: I'm not sure what to do here. Another room with more combat? Three fights (one's coming up) already seems like a lot, especially for a party of two. Do I count the game of chance as one major beat for this adventure and skip this?
5. Reversal: On the way back out of the Goblin Door complex, to head back up to the surface, the adventurers are blocked by the rogue who intentionally lost the key to them, wanting them to solve the mystery for him instead, which they have. He attempts to rob the now worn-down pair, and will fight to the death if they refuse to give up their treasure.

Given that we'll be rolling up a new character and teaching the basics of the game as we go, and that this is a small group, this feels to me like a pretty good amount of content. But I'm open to suggestions about the mini-dungeon, adding more to it, or other advice.

Constructive criticism greatly appreciated.

The confrontation with the rogue is the Boss fight. He is familiar with the area, give him legendary actions and one lair action.

Skip the other boss fight or better yet make it a closed room mystery and a hook for further adventures

Overall it looks like a nice 5-room dungeon to me! I'm sure the kids will have lots of fun!

If you want to keep the boss fight, I'd add some trick and make it easy if you spot the trick. For example, staying within the theme of the adventure, I'd make the "boss" a very hard statue (NOT a living statue, just a statue... perhaps representing a goblin?) with the illusion that it is moving and attacking the characters while the attacks are made by a small, weak but invisible gobin that can be seen only through a mirror or similar. This way the characters are induced to attack the statue while they are attacked from behind by the weak creature that is invisible.

I'm guessing for your setup, opening the door to the room with the animated armor counts as "disturbing anything in the room"?

I whole heartedly agree with the rogue being the boss fight at the end of the dungeon. But I would recommend thinking a bit about the location where the rogue confronts them. You can do a clever thing design-wise here, by using the fact that the players have knowledge of the room that the rogue may not have. This gives the players a slight upperhand here, since they may be able to use any traps/mechanisms in the room against the rogue that they already became familiar with during their way into the dungeon.

You may also want to think a bit about alternative outcomes. Can the players outwit the rogue and avoid a fight? Can they change his mind perhaps, or lie to him? While a fight might be your intention, things don't always go as planned, and you may want to be ready to run with other outcomes. You never know what the players will come up, but it helps to think ahead.

As a more general advice, it also helps to not think of a dungeon as just a series of obstacles, but also as a series of choices. Maybe you can include a branching path? Maybe the players can choose to avoid the giant spider, but try to overcome a trap-filled corridor instead? I like to present my players with interesting choices, but that does mean I may have to design a few extra rooms which may not be visited at all. But that's okay, that is not wasted content. If my players avoid a particular room because it seems dangerous to them, and take a different route instead, that room has also served its purpose. They will forever be wondering what was in it, and if it really was the more dangerous route.

Whizbang Dustyboots said:

My 11-year-old son is inviting his best friend over next weekend, to help him roll up his D&D character and they want to play an adventure together. My son has a level 1 rogue (a swashbuckler type, although he doesn't know about that subclass, nor would it occur to him to min-max for it). His friend seems likely to want to play a fighter with the knight background. . . This adventure would start with the two player characters playing a game of cards (or other game of chance) against an NPC, who puts in a key for his bet. This isn't just any key, however: It's an ornate one, carved to look like a grinning goblin's face, with mirrored eyes. He says it's supposed to unlock the Goblin Door room in the megadungeon...

Click to expand...

"Thanks, but we're level 1. Are you trying to get us killed?"

Whizbang Dustyboots said:

One of the few items not stolen or smashed by previous adventurers is a large mirror attached to one of the walls perpendicular to the entrance and door. The key fits the Goblin Door, and turns it, but nothing happens. Someone inspecting the room via the mirror will eventually spot, on the opposite side of the room from the mirror, another keyhole, only visible with the mirror. The key fits this hidden keyhole and opens a secret door. (The Goblin Door itself is just a wall, carved to look like a door, with a lock mechanism embedded in it.)

Click to expand...

According to the rule "Because: Players," that mirror will get smashed before it can reveal another keyhole. You're going to have to throw out a big, glowing bone: "as you approach the mirror to (do whatever), you see something sparkling on the far side of the room, that you couldn't see before you looked in the mirror."

Also, if your boss encounter is required to be a fight, the other encounters should be different types. You have a mirror puzzle, a card-game puzzle (hand waived?)...I would toss in a social conflict. Like, the NPC gambler loses the card game, and grabs the key and walks off before your PCs can collect their winnings. Hopefully, the presence of bouncers/watchmen indicate that fighting isn't a good idea, so a little persuasion will be needed to get that shiny key.

You could replace the animated armor fight in the Setback room with a quote Sphere of Annihilation unquote. When the PCs open the door they set off an Alarm spell tied into a 'theft prevention' spell. A glowing globe (looks like a Will o' Wisp) moves around the room swallowing the dead wizard's neat stuff, one item at a time. The PCs have to decide what to grab before the globe gets to it.
Unbeknownst to the PCs, the glowing globe puts the stuff back when the room has nobody in it.

This gives them a room with "magical stuff" in it, for flavor and atmosphere.

DMMike said:

"Thanks, but we're level 1. Are you trying to get us killed?"

Click to expand...

The Dungeon under Ptolus ranges from level 1 to 20. It's basically 99 percent of all the dungeons in the world, according to Monte Cook. I've actually loosened that up a bit in my campaign, but it's still a well-traveled and generally safe, even boring area, on the top levels. Everything near the top has been picked over by Delvers, and only the most foolhardy low level humanoids slip back into the well-traveled areas. So this mini-dungeon will be about as difficult to reach as Hot Topic at the mall, but since it's famously "locked," no one's likely to disturb them, other than a giant spider who might otherwise have found a relatively quiet place to make her lair.