[Dungeon] Delver's Delight - "lost world" level complete!

Another update to my dungeon, Delver's Delight! This time I added a large "lost world" style level, called Land of Dusk. It has a stronger overarching theme than the previous dungeony dungeon levels. Weird dino jungle & lake in a hollow earth cavity!

This is Level 3A.

Level 3B is also in the works, it's a dungeon/fortress area that connects up with the Land of Dusk.

Grab it here!

[Dungeon] Delver's Delight, a very dungeony dungeon, now with a second level!

I added level 2 to Delver's Delight! 32 more rooms. The method and feel are similar: traps, monsters, weird rooms, it doesn't make too much sense, but it's fun... I use random generators to get going and fill up rooms, then refine them, add more ideas.

Grab it here!

[Dungeon] Delver's Delight, Level 1 - a very dungeony dungeon adventure!

I made a dungeon module. It's very "dungeony", it doesn't have much logic or reason behind it, but it has fun rooms, traps, treasure and monsterrrrs. Stocked with OSRIC/AD&D.

Update, Oct. 8, 2023: NOW WITH TWO LEVELS!

GRAB IT HERE!

Have fun!

[Dungeon] Oracle of the Laughing Prophet - a small OSR location

I ran my procedurally-generated science fantasy hexcrawl over the weekend. The party happened upon a cave in a jungle hex, surrounded by psychic echoes, so we took a small break and I came up with a dungeon. Now I'm sharing it with y'all.

So if you need a small 6-room lair to put down in your hexcrawl, feel free to use this! It has a mad prophet and a Green Dragon in it...

Download PDF!

Anecdote: we had a near-TPK (3 dead, 1 unconscious), because they made too much noise and the Dragon woke up... So the group continued the game playing as the Deep Ones, and eventually managed to leave with the loot!

 

[Map] LEG DAY! The Dungeon of Stairs

I drew a slightly ridiculous dungeon map - a level chock-full of stairs leading up and down. Ridiculous as this map is, I do like certain parts, like the bridge/tower above the water caves in the north-east corner (#32-32).

I don't have keys or even a particular concept. I guess this dungeon was built by creatures who just LOVE stairs. So, this isn't a great fit for Barsoom (where they use ramps instead of stairs). 

Or for certain areas of Jane Gaskell's The Serpent:

'Now we should like to see our rooms,' Zerd said.

The governor led him over to the staircase - the more menial of us followed closely, the rest trailed behind or simply didn't bother - and the governor stood aside to let his guests precede him. I ran up, two steps at a time, and only when I was at the top did I realise that everyone else was still at the bottom.

They all stood quiet, with upturned faces, then gasped.

'What's the matter?' I said, feeling appallingly self-conscious alone at the top there. T'm sorry, I thought we were supposed to come up here - ' and I began to descend again, feeling the blushes rising up my throat and scorching my cheeks.

'How do you do it?' 'Where did you learn?' said several voices.

'Learn what?' I asked, most embarrassed.

'She ran up, two at a time,' said someone.

I was now at the bottom and a crowd of winegirls ran forward cheering me, and Isad came up, dripping wet, hooting on his pet horn. Lara looked sour.

'Do it again, do it again!' cried the winegirls to me.

'What is it?' I said.

'You're so fast, could you do it again just as fast?'

'Of course, my country is full of stairs. Our houses are often four-storeyed - aren't yours?'

'No,' Zerd said. 'We don't have stairs in the North. Do it again, Cija, it's fascinating to watch.'

So I ran up and down the stairs for them twice more, and they cheered me and chanted compliments, and at last all trooped up after me.

This version has the relative depth of areas:

[Dungeon] Temple of the Forgotten God

This is a 16-room dungeon I wrote in about an hour for the OSR discord's community hexcrawl. I thought I would share it here too. Meat & potatoes OD&D-style experience. Minimal keying. Have fun!

Download as PDF here!

(now with enhanced map)

Update: enhanced map!

All rooms are hewn from the black basalt of the mountain. Ceilings are 8’ high unless otherwise noted. Doors are stone slabs that slide into the wall. One square = 10’.

Wandering monsters (2d4):

2 2 Robots in love

3 Black Pudding

4 1-10 Pixies

5 2-8 Reptiloids

6 2-12 Koblins

7 1-4 Vampire Bats

8 Time-travelling Thaumaturgist

Areas:

0. Entrance Chamber

The double doors are voice operated (react to OPEN and CLOSE commands uttered in the language of the Ancients). Labored breathing of a large creature can be heard beyond the second set of doors.

1. Trapped Dragon

20’ high ceiling held up by red pillars. Emaciated Adult Red Dragon (half HD), trapped here a decade ago by a cunning adventurer who knew the command words. The monster cannot fit through the doors towards #2 or #5. Small hoard of 1200 gp in the corner.

2. Trophy Room

Rusty weapons and shields (2 swords and 3 shields salvageable) on the walls. Thick layer of dust everywhere: trace of an approx. 3’ object dragged towards #4.

3. Locked Storage

Secret door: ventilation duct 6’ above the floor leads to a 4’ wide passage.

4. Drippy Area

Weird lemony green ooze drips from the walls. The object dragged over from #2 is a 3’ square extremely durable, yet light metal plate with handles.

5. Transitory Room

Doors to rooms #6-8 painted Orange, Yellow, Black.

6. Orange Door Room

Empty.

7. Yellow Door Room

6 Ghouls, transfixed, staring at a grainy TV screen. 

8. Black Door Room

Dark & squalid, walls painted black. Secret door: outline barely traceable below thick black varnish.

9. Healing Pool

Eerie blue glowing water. Murals on the walls depict nymphs bathing – sometimes laughter can be heard! A creature fully submerged in the water for 1 hour regains d4 hit points and, if poisoned, can repeat the save (this healing procedure is only effective 1/week). Partial submersion can lead to weird mutations.

10. Rug Maze

Garishly patterned rugs and curtains hang everywhere. Total value: 500 gp.

11. Crate Maze

Crates stacked high, easy to topple. 9 Dervishes lurk here, their leader holds the Pipes of Slumber (Sleep spell 1/day, but the wielder doesn’t heal from resting). 

12. Generator

Entrance partially obscured by crates. 10 Large Centipedes warming around an energy generator.

13. The Bone Gang

Entrance partially obscured by crates. 8 Skeletons, clearly a former group of adventurers (2 “fighters” with swords and shields, 1 “cleric” with mace and “unholy symbol”, 1 “magic-user” with a staff and a Scroll of Magic Missile, 4 “henchmen” with burnt-out torches and empty sacks). They guard a chest containing 4 rubies (500 gp ea.) and a gilded silver goblet (200 gp).

14. Ape Nest

Pool of dried blood before entrance. 2 White Apes lounging on dirty hay.

15. Wolf Lair

3 Giant Wolves, their hides colored blue (same hue as the pool in #9).

16. Garage

Functioning anti-grav skiff, with enough fuel for 2 days of operation. Seats 2 people.

Subterranean Gate: the scariest thing in Heroes III and something I'd like to see more of in hexcrawls

Heroes III is a wonderful game. I played it a LOT as a kid. One image that stuck with me is the Subterranean Gate... BEHOLD!

Passing through them takes a hero from the main surface map to an underground layer. The underground layer is the "home" to evil towns. And they have many connections to the aboveground layer, so they can provide shortcuts, alternative/surprise routes, or even the only way to reach an isolated region.

And these skull gates are so creepy! Their visual design is spot-on. I always remember feeling trepidation when directing a hero into them. You never knew what monstrosity guarded it on the other side...

I recalled them today because a user over at the OSR discord, Oaksmoker_Doomlord, posted his new hexmap, with "lots of cave paths linking secluded areas". He likened it to Zelda's Death Mountain. And of course, there is the archetypical subterranean shortcut during a wilderness adventure: Moria!

Adding a second layer to your hexmap, Heroes III style, can open up a bunch of possibilities. Of course, segments of these underground tunnels and cave systems can be played out as dungeon: like the entrance area, or a central lair. Longer stretches can be abstracted, procedural, wilderness-travel-like, with random encounters. And, like in Heroes III, they can provide alternate routes, tactical advantage, and more interconnections.

So, traipse the land, sail the seas, float down the rivers, fly above, or crawl beneath!

Music for Hexcrawls

Grid overlay done via the quick method presented by Spriggan's Den.

[Map] THE MADDENING CORRIDORS OF NUCLEAR CHAOS are just too big

2020 was the year of MAP DRAWING. I drew a lot of maps, even made geomorphs. But my magnum opus is this... THE MADDENING CORRIDORS OF NUCLEAR CHAOS! A megadungeon sketched onto four sheets of wrapping paper, adding up to around 100 x 75 cm (that's 40" x 29,5").

Today, I scanned it.

It took about 3 hours and half my sanity.

But it is done.

You can download the full map here...

(Click the link above to get the map in various resolutions, and I've also added a black & white version!)

Four long sheets of wrapping paper.

I scanned it bit-by-bit, in 16 bits. Then stitched it together in GIMP, corrected everything that wasn't lining up.

This is a thing of beauty.

It will probably never see play... But hey, perhaps I (or you, dear reader) can use parts of it?

[Map] Forgotten Depths of the Geomorphic Underground

I numbered the areas on the map from yesterday's geomorph post. Feel free to use/modify it if you are in need of a weird 94-room complex. Or parts of it. It's under the CC BY/SA licence. This was also an interesting exercise in room numbering... I tried to keep the flow of the numbers, so that if keyed, the descriptions of interconnected areas are nearby.

DIY dungeon geomorphs

I made a set of dungeon geomorphs yesterday! Took a sheet of cardboard, divided it into 30 equal squares, and then drew various combinations of rooms, corridors, caverns. I made sure to have the entrances/exits meeting roughly around the middle of each side of the square. On some tiles, all spaces are connected to each other; while other tiles have two or more separate areas. I filled the leftover spaces with dead-ends and finials - tiles that only have one entrance.

The drawing was done in pencil first (but basically with no erasing/corrections), then inked it with one of those Stabilo black pens.

Cut it up with a hobby knife and scissors, and ended up with a nice pile of dungeon tiles!

The first dungeon was a random draw of six tiles:

The second dungeon I started out with a random draw, then "curated" it: switched, reorganized or rotated some of the tiles, and added dead-ends to close off passages towards the borders.

I used the tiles where the areas are not interconnected to limit the sprawl of the dungeon too.

Then I fired up my trusty GIMP, and turned a photo of the tiles into a janky but also kinda stylish dungeon map! I cut off all the unconnected areas for now, to create an enclosed space.

It's an evenings craft project, and lots of fun! The geomorphs can be used to create a quick dungeon (draw a couple of tiles, assemble, take a photo, edit out all the unnecessary passages) during prep, or even on the fly; or just to inspire yourself.

P.S.: I numbered the areas on the final map, you can see it here: https://eldritchfields.blogspot.com/2020/10/map-forgotten-depths-of-geomorphic.html

Players' maps for the OD&D adventures (Temple of the Berserkers and Outpost of Stone & Silver)

I know a lot of people use virtual tabletops, especially in these quarantine days. Or just like to have something to show to the group. So I made players' maps for the two OD&D dungeons I published recently. These versions come without any text labels, and the traps and secret doors are masked. They probably don't line up perfectly with the 70px grids, but I'm sure you can get that to work... (oh, and the maps are on a 1 square = 10' scale).

You can get them here:

Players' maps & PDFs

[Dungeon] Temple of the Berserkers, one-page OD&D adventure

 As a little exercise, I drew a dungeon and stocked it according to the guidelines in the 3 original Dungeons & Dragons booklets. Behold, the Temple of the Berserkers!

Download PDF with map & key!*

(for a one-page adventure, print "2 pages on 1 sheet")

* 2020.08.11 - updated the file with a new map and a couple of minor edits.
Big thanks to John Bragg for spotting the error in the elevation levels!

* 2020.08.24 - now with a players' map, with traps, secret doors and labels hidden!

Workflow:

I started with the map (because I love drawing maps). 40-ish rooms, interconnections, etc., and I added some features like statues and secret doors right away. Then I reserved the bigger or more peculiar rooms as "specials", but didn't put anything in them yet.

Instead, I went through the rest of the areas, stocking them randomly, as a level 1 dungeon. The OD&D procedure is clunky (and can be substituted with a single-roll stocking method), but I used it more or less as written. Next, I rolled up random monsters for each populated room.

At this point, due to a freak coincidence, I rolled Berserkers three times. And so, a theme emerged. A temple/dungeon mostly overtaken by Berserkers, and a couple of other creatures and NPCs, who are either their leaders, allies, or, in some cases, enemies they can't get rid of.

With this theme set and most rooms stocked, I returned to the specials and adjusted them to fit the theme (or not fit the theme, as OD&D dungeons are not supposed to be all logical...). 

I like how it all came out and it was fun to make. Enjoy!

Drawing dungeons is fun

Just an old-school dungeon level... I wanted to draw something labyrinthine, with densely packed and weirdly shaped rooms. Inspired by the megadungeon topics on Dragonsfoot. Of course, at ~80 rooms, this is a relatively small offering :)

This image is licensed under Creative Commons 4.0. You are free to share and adapt (transform, remix, build upon) this image, even commercially, as long as you credit me (Tamás Kisbali / http://eldritchfields.blogspot.com). Also, if you do end up using this, I'd appreciate a message to see what you made of it!

Hex map interpretation of "The Men from Porlock" by Laird Barron

(click to zoom)

"The Men from Porlock" by Laird Barron is a kick-ass horror tale. Set it 1923, it's about a group of lumberjacks stumble upon a village, seemingly stuck in the past. The villagers worship the Great Dark and the Old Leech and generally do things cultists do in Barron's stories...

I was re-reading it, and mapped it out for fun. 

The story would make a great Call of Cthulhu one-shot, maybe?