In my regular Thursday night game, the players are exploring the Gloomy Forest—a hexcrawl sandbox with established encounter areas related to (3) factions: 1) Human bandits seeking to overthrow the local lord (whom they view as a usurper); 2) A green hag named Mamawaldi and her servant, a wight-lord known as "The Blackheart" (the undead form of an ancient warlord who once ruled this area); and 3) Ancient denizens of this forest, some of whom have fallen under Mamawaldi's wicked influence (if not her direct control).
At this point in the campaign, the player-characters have allied themselves with the local lord and largely neutralized the bandit threat. Now, they're searching a section of the forest looking for the last remnants of the surviving bandits and their leader. Although my players are relative novices to RPGs, they've quickly adopted some smart strategies in their exploration, including never entering the forest from the same direction twice in a row. As such, their map is now crisscrossed with paths and marked with notes. They're beginning to get a feel for the lay-of-the-land and discovering lots of the little details I've sprinkled across the forest (which is relatively contained at a mere 8 x 12 miles).
They found themselves following an old trail through an unexplored area after discovering an ancient stone marker that indicated the trail led to an elven shrine. As they went deeper, they began to notice the tops of the trees were draped with webs that became denser the farther down the trail they ventured (making the forest even gloomier). Undeterred, however, they came to a fork in the road where I had placed an encounter area that read, simply:
"A cozy cottage made of webbing hangs up in the trees here. It is the lair of an ettercap-matron named Etta Capp. She likes to spin spidersilk while she looks out the window overlooking the path. Her body can't be seen, but at the window she appears to be an old crone with a tiny wrinkled face and really long, silken silver hair. If she sees an elf, she mentions the shrine and directs the party down the east fork (where her children--(2) giant spiders and (2) spider swarms--will ambush the PCs). She steers them away from the west fork (to the shrine), warning them of a "dangerous forest spirit" down that path."
In case the PCs decided to attack her, I statted Etta out and gave her some minor "Legendary" powers, including the occasional ability to summon a spider swarm, a giant spider, or an ettercap to her defense.
The encounter went down pretty much as written. The girls were wary of Etta but engaged her in conversation and received her directions. They did not guess her true nature (or catch on to the pun in her name, even though Rachel shouted "Attercop, Attercop!" when I first mentioned the webs), and so followed the east path where they encountered the spider ambush. At the end of that session, the group seemed determined to return to the cottage and deal with Etta.
Over the intervening week, I had some thoughts about expanding the encounter a little bit and after some sketching and note-jotting, I felt I had a really good mini-dungeon on my hands. I drew out the map in better detail/quality—an unnecessary step since I redraw everything on the battlemat, but one which helps me refine the layout and figure out the various ways I can challenge the players. I then created a simple key for the interiors and added some notes about how the denizens of the expanded lair would react to the party's intrusion.
The next session, however, the party decided not to seek revenge and avoided her cottage on their return trip toward the shrine. To my chagrin, quite a few hours of hurried work between sessions vanished in the party's rear-view mirror. I'm saving it in the hopes they come back this way, but I was a little disappointed. It's certainly not the first time that's happened to me in my 40 years of DMing and it won't be the last.
I have dozens of such lairs and micro-dungeons in my folders and I do eventually get to use them (or pieces of them), but I really like this one so I'll share it here. I've always called these micro-dungeons "Lurid Lairs" (after the set of tables in Judges Guild's Wilderlands of High Fantasy, which I was enthralled by in my youth.) This blog might be a good spot to post all that content for anyone to use. I designed this for 5e, since that's the version we're playing, but I think it's easily adapted to any edition or OSR ruleset.
Etta Capp's Cottage
Three trees stand close together here at the forest’s edge, overlooking a fork in the path. Their leafy boughs are thick with spiderwebs. Suspended from the branches is a delicate, 3-story cottage with shingled roofs, shuttered windows, flowerboxes, cornices, etc.--all made entirely of webbing. The area at the base of the trees is also shrouded in heavy webs, except for a cave-like opening between two of the trunks.
