I'm preparing to (hopefully) create a ' style game, I have most of the ground floor mapped and some of the first floor but I have six blank rooms on the ground floor and don't know what to call them, what to put in them or what to do with them. Anybody got any ideas?

Here's the ground floor map as it stands:

The room that shares walls with the No Go Room and Drawing Room could be a full Bathroom. People seem to always forget about the facilities.

One of the rooms on the right could be a Livery storage room. All of the Footmen and Maids and Chauffeurs would need a place to store ther special clothing needed for special affairs at the house.

One of the rooms near the pantry could be a storeroom for extras needed to run a fancy house, like more kitchen gear or mirrors, lamps, dustcovers for furniture, &ca.

Maybe one could be a portrait room for the paintings of all of the previous owners of the estate. Perhaps the paintings of the less liked ancestors that the last owners did not want on more public display. Lots of potential horriferdy for a room like that.

Men's parlor (since you already have the withdrawing room) typically larger than the withdrawing (or drawing) room. Smoke colored walls, mysterious bottles labeled Ydnarb or Yeskihw. (And perhaps a servant has topped a bottle with Eniru to disguise pilferage....)

Trophy room - all those loverly, loverly dead animals in lifelike ferocious poses....

Ballroom room, and if one of the ladies of the house was serious about dancing then perhaps a practice room - mirrors and a barre, reflecting into infinity... why does it seem that not all the images agree?...

Library.

Recital room?

Chapel?

You may want to move the servants rooms to either another wing or to a separate building. With a secret passage to the women servants chambers, or just peek holes? Either way, can't be running into off duty servants, can we.

Depending on age, one of the smaller rooms could have a stock ticker and a telegraph. Perhaps even a booth for one of them newfangled telephones. (Ahoy, ahoy!)

Though I might suggest starting with a real house, and expanding from there - for example Portland has a house that really deserves to be haunted, judging by looks alone. The Morse-Libby House, also known as the Victoria Mansion.



That smaller building that you can see in the background was the servants quarters.

And here is a .

Not that I have ever, ummm, borrowed that floor plan in the past....

The Auld Grump, who also never used plans for the old St. Lawrence Church on Munjoy Hill....

Thanks for the pdf TAG, excellent resources in there.. umm not that I'd use them... much like yourself...

No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone. -- the first paragraph of The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson (1959)

When a traveller in north central Massachusetts takes the wrong fork at the junction of Aylesbury pike just beyond Dean's Corners he comes upon a lonely and curious country.

The ground gets higher, and the brier-bordered stone walls press closer and closer against the ruts of the dusty, curving road. The trees of the frequent forest belts seem too large, and the wild weeds, brambles and grasses attain a luxuriance not often found in settled regions. At the same time the planted fields appear singularly few and barren; while the sparsely scattered houses wear a surprisingly uniform aspect of age, squalor, and dilapidation.

Without knowing why, one hesitates to ask directions from the gnarled solitary figures spied now and then on crumbling doorsteps or on the sloping, rock-strewn meadows. Those figures are so silent and furtive that one feels somehow confronted by forbidden things, with which it would be better to have nothing to do. When a rise in the road brings the mountains in view above the deep woods, the feeling of strange uneasiness is increased. The summits are too rounded and symmetrical to give a sense of comfort and naturalness, and sometimes the sky silhouettes with especial clearness the queer circles of tall stone pillars with which most of them are crowned.

Gorges and ravines of problematical depth intersect the way, and the crude wooden bridges always seem of dubious safety. When the road dips again there are stretches of marshland that one instinctively dislikes, and indeed almost fears at evening when unseen whippoorwills chatter and the fireflies come out in abnormal profusion to dance to the raucous, creepily insistent rhythms of stridently piping bull-frogs. The thin, shining line of the Miskatonic's upper reaches has an oddly serpent-like suggestion as it winds close to the feet of the domed hills among which it rises.

As the hills draw nearer, one heeds their wooded sides more than their stone-crowned tops. Those sides loom up so darkly and precipitously that one wishes they would keep their distance, but there is no road by which to escape them. Across a covered bridge one sees a small village huddled between the stream and the vertical slope of Round Mountain, and wonders at the cluster of rotting gambrel roofs bespeaking an earlier architectural period than that of the neighbouring region. It is not reassuring to see, on a closer glance, that most of the houses are deserted and falling to ruin, and that the broken-steepled church now harbours the one slovenly mercantile establishment of the hamlet. One dreads to trust the tenebrous tunnel of the bridge, yet there is no way to avoid it. Once across, it is hard to prevent the impression of a faint, malign odour about the village street, as of the massed mould and decay of centuries. It is always a relief to get clear of the place, and to follow the narrow road around the base of the hills and across the level country beyond till it rejoins the Aylesbury pike. Afterwards one sometimes learns that one has been through Dunwich.... - The first page of The Dunwich Horror by H. P. Lovecraft

Just as I had come to this conclusion I heard a heavy step approaching behind the great door, and saw through the chinks the gleam of a coming light. Then there was the sound of rattling chains and the clanking of massive bolts drawn back. A key was turned with the loud grating noise of long disuse, and the great door swung back.

Within, stood a tall old man, clean shaven save for a long white moustache, and clad in black from head to foot, without a single speck of colour about him anywhere. He held in his hand an antique silver lamp, in which the flame burned without a chimney or globe of any kind, throwing long quivering shadows as it flickered in the draught of the open door.

The old man motioned me in with his right hand with a courtly gesture, saying in excellent English, but with a strange intonation.

"Welcome to my house! Enter freely and of your own free will!"

He made no motion of stepping to meet me, but stood like a statue, as though his gesture of welcome had fixed him into stone.

The instant, however, that I had stepped over the threshold, he moved impulsively forward, and holding out his hand grasped mine with a strength which made me wince, an effect which was not lessened by the fact that it seemed cold as ice, more like the hand of a dead than a living man.

Again he said.

"Welcome to my house! Enter freely. Go safely, and leave something of the happiness you bring!" The strength of the handshake was so much akin to that which I had noticed in the driver, whose face I had not seen, that for a moment I doubted if it were not the same person to whom I was speaking.

So to make sure, I said interrogatively, "Count Dracula?" He bowed in a courtly was as he replied, "I am Dracula, and I bid you welcome, Mr. Harker, to my house. Come in, the night air is chill, and you must need to eat and rest." As he was speaking, he put the lamp on a bracket on the wall, and stepping out, took my luggage. He had carried it in before I could forestall him. I protested, but he insisted. "Nay, sir, you are my guest. It is late, and my people are not available.

Let me see to your comfort myself. "He insisted on carrying my traps along the passage, and then up a great winding stair, and along another great passage, on whose stone floor our steps rang heavily.

At the end of this he threw open a heavy door, and I rejoiced to see within a well-lit room in which a table was spread for supper, and on whose mighty hearth a great fire of logs, freshly replenished, flamed and flared.

The Count halted, putting down my bags, closed the door, and crossing the room, opened another door, which led into a small octagonal room lit by a single lamp, and seemingly without a window of any sort. Passing through this, he opened another door, and motioned me to enter. It was a welcome sight. For here was a great bedroom well lighted and warmed with another log fire, also added to but lately, for the top logs were fresh, which sent a hollow roar up the wide chimney. The Count himself left my luggage inside and withdrew, saying, before he closed the door.

"You will need, after your journey, to refresh yourself by making your toilet. I trust you will find all you wish. When you are ready, come into the other room, where you will find your supper prepared."

The light and warmth and the Count's courteous welcome seemed to have dissipated all my doubts and fears. Having then reached my normal state, I discovered that I was half famished with hunger. So making a hasty toilet, I went into the other room.... - From Dracula, by Bram Stoker

The Auld Grump

Old Posh manor houses!


FYI servants quarters are indeed split by a double door but at the top of the building in the roof area.

Dining area's were bigger,
Drawing room's were often on the out side and had a large fireplace (with a secrete trap door)

The servants/kitchen area was often separate and hidden from the main house with often narrow secrete corridors to dining and drawing rooms.

I echo the hunting room mentioned by T.A.G. but sometime there was also a boot/gun room on the outside back wall.

And on closing if the owner was mad you may even find a lab/workshop!

This may be of interest to you -

If the building dates to the Federalist period or earlier the kitchen might even be a separate building - if made of wood they burned down with depressing regularity.

Something fun - more than once a disused mortuary has turned out to have a forgotten corpse in one of the drawers - typically an unclaimed pauper. Back when they used arsenic to preserve corpses they could be kept for decades. Not much stink, either.

One that I saw that had suffered that fate was nicknamed 'Speedy'. (Not the 'Speedy' in Paducah.)More famous is the case of , who's preserved corpse was found hanging in a fun house during a filming for The Six Million Dollar Man.

The Auld Grump

Ah, Hosue of Hell that takes me back, mostly to broken down cars and long abandoned roads with lights beckoning the unwary from the storm.

So, some thoughts, some covered already.

Sitting room
Living Room
Downstairs Library – connected to the study
Reception Room
Store room – cleaning materials etc for the ground floor.
Parlour
Lavatories
Sun Room/ Sewing Room
Work room
Playroom – pesky kids out of the way and no thumping noises from upstairs.


I had a look at the House of Hell map and the Games Workshop floorplans and a Call of Cthulhu thingy that Thing passed to me from the cupboard, but they didn't add anything that you didn't already have.

Thanks to everyone that's replied, some interesting stuff there.

Just so you know this is for a text adventure game (... "get Sword", "open cupboard", "attack zombie with sword", that sort of thing) so no physical board / terrain will be made just description of the rooms.