The Manor that Leiriel built (part one, Running the House)

In the sun-deprived kingdom of Melrose, between the Coast of Chains and eastern Butterfly Forest there is a grand manor, sitting all alone at the top of the hill overlooking long-abandoned village of Owlswell. The area was abandoned for about two decades now but the manor doesn't look that terribly worse for wear. Even if all its windows are barren from inside with heavy shutters, the walls are solid, the door is sturdy and the roof is whole.

However the travellers came to visit this manor (be it for rumoured treasure still inside, be attracted by a lone light in a belltower, taking refuge from dangers of the coast and the forest, or finding an odd invitation letter addressed to them personally from Lady Leiriel, Esq., inviting them to visit), the result is the same: they quickly find themselves trapped in a house that seems to shift and change as they go, and none of the windows can be broken. 

They cannot even fully die in the Manor, as they find themselves back to Vestibule in case of untimely demise (but more about that later) but unless they decide to behave like douchebags the Manor is not hostile toward them and there is no direct danger.

Their only hope to successfully escape is either:
– find the Stray Room, open the door out and escape!
– reach the Bellower and lift the Leiriel's curse that distorts the manor;

Leiriel's Manor is a small depthcrawl-puzzle dungeon inspired by various modular Lego Houses, Tetris and the videogame 'Blue Prince' (for which there are early-game spoilers in the names of the Leiriel's rooms; the videogame itself operates on a different principle, so this post doesn't spoil the gameplay or the puzzles).

Leiriel's Manor is a puzzle dungeon, where the purpose of the player is to fill 5x6 grid with seven tetromino-shaped rooms in a such a way that they have either one or two separate 1x1-sized empty rooms.

Empty Manor grid

One of possible solutions is shown below; E1 and E2 there are empty rooms that must to be created for Stray Room and Belltower (or both) to be unlocked. Either of these exit rooms will only appear if the grid is otherwise fully filledwith an either one 1x1 or two 1x1 empty spaces (but not more) left, although they don't have to be in the same exact positions as on the picture. Stray Room will appear first (or if it is the only empty spot), Belltower will appear only if second empty spot is created.

image courtesy to Wikipedia

 

 

Rooms themselves are divided in eight categories (Additional Rooms, Hallways, Storages, Gardens, Social Rooms, Utility Rooms, Bedrooms and Hidden Rooms), with each category having six rooms in predefined tetromino shapes, sorted by depth. Hidden Rooms are not part of the usual process and can only be accessed from specific rooms within the Manor.

The building procedure:

– When traveller opens a door, DM rolls 1d7 twice for a type of the room from a table below (roll 1d8 discarding 8s). The current Depth defines what room from this category appears. This room has predefined shape, which is known to the traveller. Traveller than choses one of these two rooms to come into reality.

– If the shape of the room will result in room exceeding the borders of the manor, then the room is rotated by DM clockwise 90 degrees until it fits into the boundaries. If the shape still doesn't fit at all (for example, four-square I-piece located in a far end corner) it is rotated until the most of it fits and the rest is trimmed down. 

– Each room can be rolled many times but chosen to be on a floor plan only once; if both of the rolled rooms are already built, either reroll the rolls or shift the results one row deeper in the same column. 

If the selected room is highlighted (such as Archives), roll additional 1d6 for secret passage into the hidden room which all have special shapes; this passage will be behind somewhat secret door (likely barred and plastered over some time ago but now more noticeable due to time and neglect; this is the only time where breaking down a door will not cause any break of hospitality.)

Placing of the doors: initially I made another subprocedure for placing of doors in each piece but everything is complicated enough, so assume that there is one door as an entrance at the most narrow end of the piece and each piece has an exit door at the very opposite end from entrance; obviously this exit will chain into the entrance of the next piece. The exceptions are T-piece (which has two exit doors, making it a fork) and O-piece which has no other exits (making it a dead end.)

Here are the tables:
(because blogger doesn't allow me to comfortably insert pictures directly into a table, instead the room shapes are referenced by the number with key chart below, which likely makes it all even more confusing)

(I dislike very much how Blogger screws big tables)

(1d7) Type of room →	1 Additional Rooms	room shape	2 Hallways	room shape	3 Storages	room shape	4 Gardens	room shape
Depth ↓
1	Training Room	7	Hallway	1	Cellar	2	Enclosure	3
2	Chapel	1	W. Hallway	2	Kitchen	3	Patio	4
3	Gallery	2	E. Hallway	3	Storage	4	Terrace	5
4	Memorial	3	Crossroom	4	Attic	5	Inner courtyard	6
5	Museum	4	Secret passage	5	Armoury	6	Quiet room	7
6	Gaol	5	Grand Foyer	6	Archives	7	Garden	1

(1d7) Type of room →	5 Social Rooms	room shape	6 Utility Rooms	room shape	7 Bedrooms	room shape	8 Hidden rooms	room shape
Depth ↓
1	Games room	4	Guardroom	5	Servants’ quarter	6	Lavatory	8
2	Ballroom	5	Inner well	6	Closet	7	Furnace	9
3	Sitting room	6	Workshop	7	Guest bedroom	1	Shed	10
4	Dining room	7	Library	1	Childrens’ room	2	Office	11
5	Den	1	Laboratory	2	Boudoir	3	Study	12
6	Throne room	2	Library	3	Master Suit	4	Vault	13

 And here is a shape reference:

For example: when travellers opens the first door from the Vestibule, DM rolls 3 and 5 on 1d8 (ignoring 8), drawing Depth 1 rooms from Storages and Social Rooms categories, namely Cellar and Games Room, in related shapes 2 (S-piece) and 4 (I-piece). Player choses which of these two shapes they wish to place and the other one is discarded. 

Being a bad guest

The manor expects the guests to respect the rules of hospitality. Should the guest try to smash windows, trash furniture, leave waste, deface walls, break doors or do any other such impolite gesture, expect the following responce from the manor:

1st occasion: a ghostly butler Selwin will appear and politely explain what behaviour is expected from the guests. Should PCs threaten him, the ghost will vanish without a fight, but should they be cordial and remorseful he can divulge a little about the history of the manor, although, being a ghost in a cursed manour his memory is somewhat vague and doesn't retain anything that happened post-Sundown. He will name the owners of the manor (Leiriel, Esq. lady of refined manners and musical inclinations, her often-absend-on-important-business husband Rem, her son "young master" Bran and his passion for greenery, old maid Jolene, and irratable cook Fran.) From Selwin's point of view everybody just took a short vacation at the Coast, and should be back 'any moment now.'

2nd through 4th occasion: if PCs keep behave unappropriate for guests, 1 ghostly guards appears, conjured by the malice of the manor; this number increases twice up to 3 ghostly guards with each occasion. Hospitable welcome (see below) no longer in effect.

5th through 6th occasion: ghosly guards are replaced by wraiths, in a similar 1 through 3 pattern.

7th+ occasion: a cloud made of liquid malicious darkness stars chasing PCs through the rooms, starting in two rooms away and moving one room each 10 minutes. As a embodied curse is almost impossible to defeat; with each death PC loses a bit of themselves (initially 1d6 from each stat, then one class feature per death, than all their memories except the most vague, than their name). After the name is gone the PC is official dead – while it is also sort of a way to escape the manor, it isn't a very good one.

Being a good guest

If PCs are not breaking rules of hospitality, the manor will provide them with decent (although rather stale-tasting) food which can be found in the first of any of these four rooms built – Dining Room, Den, Kitchen and Inner Courtyard – once per day, in quantities enough for everybody. Entering any bedroom will provide refreshment as per short rest; any second bedroom built in the same day will provide a revitalization as if per long night of rest. 

Resetting the loop

It is quite possible that PCs will figure out really quickly what they need to do but it also might take them quite a few tries, as it is entirely possible to fill the floorplan too tightly too quickly or built into just dead ends. The whole manor resets if PCs return to Vestibule and close the inner door while all of them are inside the Vestibule.
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Part two will, hopefully, describe particularities of the rooms, some helpful finds and what this curse is all about and how to lift it.