Summer Doldrums

It’s been a bit quiet ‘round these parts of late. Only four posts in the past 30 days time is a clear sign of summer. Nearly a month ago I announced I’d be absent for a dozen days so I could focus on judging the One Page Dungeon Contest, and devote spare time to wrapping up a rather large submission to Fight On!

Agreeing to get that adventure done in one month was me being over-confident in my writing capabilities. I didn’t meet the deadline, but was able to estimate the size so it could be planned around. I should’ve known I wasn’t giving myself enough time; I’ve had nothing but delays and, well, writer’s block with that adventure since day one back in August of last year.

It’s been submitted for a number of days now, but I figured I’d make a post in regard to the blasted project tonight. It’s something of a flight of fancy in many ways, and I’m hoping the editor is bold enough to cut out chunks of the text I wasn’t able to part with. It is truly the polar opposite of the One Page Dungeon, overflowing with information and threatening to collapse under its own weight.

I don’t even know if it’s coming back to me with a nasty letter and orders to revise the thing. It was submitted in font size 9, weighing in at 31 pages, 10 of which are devoted to the adventure’s appendix. It features in the neighborhood of 90 rooms, 70 NPC's, 20 new monsters, 24 new magic items, 20 rumors, 20 suggestions/events, and some tables. That room count includes guest rooms and sub-caves, and many of the NPC’s are just names. Don't let the high page count mislead you, although it is wordy where it needs to be, it is still crammed with substance.

Here's the altogether dense mess of a map that I'm hoping will be in FO! 6:


It was something of a challenge working a functional Adventurer’s Inn into the dungeon. My insistence on including a detailed background and loose plot further complicated matters. Wrapped around all of that I plugged in what I hope are realistic cave and spelunking features using speleological terms.

With an Inn so close to the action I had to take a few things into consideration. Resource management becomes easy mode if this is a normal dungeon level, having a safe house and resupply point around the corner. How can I ensure that players would want to continue to make use of the Inn, even after they are “done” on this level? What on earth, or beneath it, would make anyone want to run an Inn down here?

To combat the proximity of the Inn I undertook two goals. First I would make the caves difficult to negotiate, much like a real cavernous complex. They’re difficult to map, even harder to traverse, boast secret sub-caves and hidden tunnels. Jogging back to the Inn after each encounter is time consuming. Second I deliberately made many very challenging encounters. Most of which can be retreated from safely, but add even more in ensuring that although the Inn not too terribly far away, the level is downright nasty for 5th level characters unless they have large numbers and play wisely.

There’s another plot driven aspect to the Inn that actually might deter characters from spending the night within, but that’s GM adjudicated and shouldn’t be something that prevents them from using it altogether. The Inn is really the focal point of the level.

In an effort to make the Inn actually feel like an Inn and not just a collection of dungeon rooms, I wanted to add enough creative opportunity for GM’s to be able to craft endless possible adventures revolving around the establishment. How successful I was there remains to be seen.

Lastly, why would Jalen Longspear want to open and operate such a place? Reasons are given in the adventure and I think they hold up well enough that players won’t consider the whole affair ludicrous…that is as long as they don’t consider megadungeons in general ludicrous.

In the end I think that the Inn has some nice sand-box aspects to it, as there are plenty of areas to discover and explore. The NPC’s in the Inn offer a plethora of city-type adventures with a crafty GM at the helm. There’s some history and an involved story that can be uncovered but is not essential to the level. There’s some really weird eerie old magic infused throughout.

As I told Calithena, if nothing else the 10 page appendix might be worthwhile for the additional homebrew within. I’ll have more on this submission once I learn whether or not it is seeing print, and then I can give away more information as it is warranted.

*****

This long hiatus has also involved something which I’ll be announcing tomorrow. There’s a six eyed monstrosity stirring in its deep, dark lair, and I think it will awaken on the morrow.

~Sham, Quixotic Referee

The Dismal Depths

If you're looking to enjoy a long read on dungeon design, sit back and take in the following.

My current project, which has detracted a bit from my blogging, is the culmination of many of the ideas I have been collecting and forming recently as Ulin-Uthor, The Dim Expanse has become somewhat bogged down by its layers of detail. These ideas and sentiments are due in no small part to my ongoing Cover to Cover reading of the original D&D, Volumes I-III.

The Dismal Depths was originally envisioned as an answer to my dissatisfaction with the involved design approach I had set forth for myself with The Dim Expanse. Fear not, The Dim Expanse is still going to be completed, but it has certainly given me an understanding of why there are so few actual honest-to-goodness megadungeons in print.

Perhaps the end result for The Dim Expanse will fall somewhere between its current state, and this new approach used for The Dismal Depths.

The notion of a no-frills megadungeon was the kindling for this project, but what truly pushed it over the edge into actual design process was a comment by one of my favorite odd74 posters, Dwayanu in this thread. For ease of clicking and scrolling, here's the blurb:

I'm trying out an approach of mapping by sectors of 30 x 30 squares. That leaves room on the same page for a succinct "key."

Now, in hindsight I don't think Dwayanu meant for his design process to result in anything more than a handy key on the map, but his words helped me form the approach for The Dismal Depths, a megadungeon with dungeon level maps, tables and room descriptions entirely on a single page.

It sounded like a brilliant idea. We've all seen plenty of similar maps online or in print, but I hope to offer a megadungeon that requires no more than a few handwritten notes on the part of the referee to dive in and enjoy a full-blown dungeon crawl campaign.

The Dismal Depths will hopefully embody the Empty Room Principle; giving referees more than ample creative opportunity, either beforehand, during a session, or afterwards when restocking or altering the dungeon.

My first steps were creating a list of unique, bare-bones monsters, thus I started everything off with The Dismal Depths Bestiary:

The Dismal Depths Beastiary

Amazons(C): AC 4 Move 9 HD 3+1 Women warriors from an all-female ruled nation. Wield silver headed spears and arrows. Amazons pay Dingo-Men for abducted male babies, all other men are slain or captured for ritual castration. Leader has 4+1 HD.

Boglings(C): AC 6 Move 6 HD 1-1 Small, randomly colored chaos-spawned humanoids. Flesh-eating, utterly evil (aside from the deviant Misfits). Wield crude weapons such as spears, clubs and tomahawks. Mortal enemies of the Wee Ones. Leaders have 3 HD.

Brainy Apes(N): AC 5 Move 9 HD 4+1 Smart, gigantic apes with rust orange fur. Prefer to attack with weapons, dealing +2 damage, but can never find armor that fits. Excellent negotiators but limited in languages. Gold is their greatest motivator.

Broodlings(N): AC 7 Move 6 HD ½ Misshapen, three-foot tall insect-men with ant-like strength. Low intellect, very acute senses. Travel in large packs hunting flesh for the nest. Never surprised, excellent ambushers. Scourge of the depths.

Cadavers(N): AC 8 Move 6 HD 1 Undead. Battle-axe wielding zombies immune to all magic.

Corrupted(C): AC 2 Move 15/30 HD 6 Undead. Vengeful spectres. Howl once per encounter, all in 30 feet save or flee in terror for 2d6 rounds. The character landing the killing blow must save or wither from unnatural aging.

Creepy-Crawlies(N): AC 8 Move 6 HD 2 Clean-up crew. Blanket of massed flesh-eating insects. Targets are treated as AC 9, deals 1 die of damage (1 in 6 chance to be poisonous) to all targets in 20’x20’. Attacks deal but 1 damage to it, but fire deals maximum damage and may deter it.

Desiccated(N): AC 7 Move 6 HD ½ Undead. Sword and shield wielding skeletons which take but 1 damage from most physical blows, blunt weapons deal full damage, and missiles do no damage.

Dingo-Men(C): AC 6 Move 12 HD 3 Cunning lycanthropes given to greed and deception. They are the only males able to interact with Amazons, and often lead unsuspecting men into ambushes. Only struck by silver weapons (not even magic ones, unless silver, effect them).

Fallen(C): AC 2 Move 6 HD 3 Outcast and dishonored, heavily armed and armored former Knights of the Order living in recluse in the Dismal Depths. Plotting to overthrow the Order and take control. Leader has 5+1 HD, his Guards have 4 HD.

Lab Rats(N): AC 7 Move 9 HD 1-1 Giant rabid albino rats with pink eyes, escaped from nefarious laboratories, now breeding throughout the depths. Bites accumulate and cause increasing itching unless save is made. One dozen together form a rudimentary hive mind capable of primitive speech.

Mantis-Men(N): AC 5 Move 9 HD 2+1 Giant, intelligent bipedal Mantises. Mortal enemy of the Spider-Folk. Excellent vision and senses, never surprised. Able to make a lightning-quick long-range lunge for surprise attack with their massive barbed forearms.

Mastiffs(N): AC 5 Move 9 HD 3 Enormous, armored trained war dogs employed as ferocious guards by many inhabitants of the Dismal Depths, often found prowling the halls looking for intruders. Cannot be surprised, able to track and find hidden foes.

Misfits(L): AC 4 Move 6 HD 1+1 Lawful Bogling Knights who protect the sacred Tomb of the Truth. Their kind often roams the depths, seeking to induct other possibly like-minded Boglings into their Misfit Order. Leader has 3 HD, Guards have 2 HD, Trainees are equal to Boglings.

Mole-Men(N-C): AC 6 Move 9 HD 1 Small, darkly furry, bald-headed humanoids. Those hit by Mole-Men glow with a pale phosphorescence for 1 hour, add 1 to hit for attacks upon the glowing character. Wield pick-axes and javelins. Mortal enemies of the Morlocks.

Morlocks(N-C): AC 5 Move 9 HD 1+1 Once tech-advanced time-travelers, now lost devolved species of cannibalistic subterranean men. Covered with pale fur, they are extremely sensitive to bright light. Able to slink silently and track foes. Wield clubs and spears. Favorite dish is pickled Mole-Man.

Pirates(C): AC 5 Move 9 HD 2 Really bad guys; buccaneers, corsairs, cut-throats, salty dogs. Leader has 3 HD.

Rotted(C): AC 6 Move 9 HD 2 Undead. Crazed, drooling man-hunting ghouls which, instead of paralyzing, cause targets to save or become wracked with pain, losing all actions for the rest of that round.

Seeping Ooze(N): AC 8 Move 6 HD 3 Clean-up crew. Mass of oozing purplish gunk which leaves a disgusting trail of goop and is notable for its fetid reek. It erodes metal in one round, and devours flesh thereafter at a rate of 1 die per round. Physical attacks and fire deal but 1 damage.

Skellington(C): AC 3 Move 9 HD 7 Tall, gaunt, brooding King of the Undead in the Dismal Depths. Skellington can never be truly slain by normal means, reforming in 2d6 days once defeated. Skellington’s hits cause soul wrack, save vs. death ray or die.

Sleestaks(C): AC 5 Move 9 HD 2 Tall, green reptilian aliens with bulbous unblinking eyes, pincer hands, and a blunt horn atop head. Wield crossbows, nets and ropes. Fearful of fire. Seek to capture men for alien rituals.

Spider-Folk(C): AC 6 Move 9 HD 2 Highly-intelligent, tall but stooped, long-limbed, gaunt race of arachnid men. Create flame-retardant web-homes, eat nothing but blood and body-fluids, have huge, poisoned fang-filled maws. Sworn enemies of the Mantis-Men.

Tainted(C): AC 3 Move 12/24 HD 4 Undead. Silvery-black wraiths with a chilling attack which treats all targets as AC 9, and causes 2 dice of damage.

Thugs(C): AC 7 Move 12 HD 1 Bad guys; bandits, brigands, rogues, robbers. Leader has 2 HD.

Twisted(C): AC 5 Move 9 HD 3 Undead. Withered wights with a berserk inducing touch. Save or attack random targets for 1d3 rounds.

Warped(C): AC 5 Move 12 HD 3+1 Strange, destructive mutated elf-like fey-kind. Random mutation: super-fast, super-strong, super-tough, super-smart, super-pretty, super-accurate, etc. Seek to collect brains for devious plots to overthrow mankind.

Wee Warriors(N): AC 5 Move 9 HD 2 The fighting Wee One. Diminutive winged fey-kind, greedy, devious, uncaring and opportunistic toward mortals. Heavily armed and armored to the point of non-flight. They wield daggers like swords. Despise Boglings above all others.

Wee Warlord(N): AC 4 Move 9 HD 3 The Wee One Leader. As above. All Warlords wield a Wee Sword (treat as a Dagger, +1 vs. Men, +2 vs. Boglings and Broodlings) which is enchanted with a duration of 1 game session.

Wee Wizards(N): AC 7 Move 12/24 HD 2 The spell-casting Wee One. As above. Typical spells include Sleep, Charm, Invisibility, ESP and Knock. Wee Wizards will have 1d4-1 spells at their disposal when encountered. Will use flight to avoid melee if possible.

Whisper-Wind(N): AC - Move -/6 HD 2 Clean-up crew. Large misty, damp mass of shimmering mystical air, up to 30’x10’ in size. It dissolves all flesh, bone and metal which it envelops at a rate of 1 die per round. Immune to physical attacks, spells or flaming oil will damage it.

You will notice that many of the new monsters simply replicate the statistics of standard D&D fare. For example, Broodlings = Kobolds, Boglings = Goblins, Mole-Men = Orcs, Morlocks = Hobgoblins, Sleestaks = Gnolls, Brainy Apes = Ogres, etc. The undead, which orignally had names such as Twisdead and Taindead, are simple homebrew alterations of the standard D&D undead. Toss in a few completely new creations, such as the Warped, Wee Ones and Spider-Folk, and a solid collection of new monsters is detailed in but two pages.

Next, I designed Level 1A, The Tunnels of the Mole-Men. A 30 square x 30 square map which encompasses the north-west corner of Level 1:


This was then scanned and cropped after filling the map in greater detail:


The rest of my time has been spent working with scanning, Photo-shop, and Word. I cropped, pasted, and played with all the various Word settings to produce this first draft version of Level 1A:


While I haven't typed in the Room Key just yet, the end result will be something limited to what I can type on a single line, maybe like so:

3-The Laughing Idol. Four shafts with ladders leading down. Mole-Men (7), Silver (300), Gold (50).

With just simple text, a referee could invent details on the fly, and still have the basic text for future use in order to jog his memory on how he handled the room in the past.

My immediate plan is to complete four maps for Levels 1-3, resulting in a dozen such maps. If I am happy with the finished product, I will expand the Bestiary, and continue with Levels 4-6, 6-9 and 10.

So, in case you're wondering, posting continues at a slow pace as I learn the ins and outs of making a dungeon in this manner. I'm still not entirely satisfied with the scan results, perhaps I need a better scanner, but considering the draft version is a scan of a scan that was emailed (the scanner is on my Wife's computer), it's not half bad.

I'll come up for air after I finish Level 1. The really cool thing about this type of dungeon is how I can share it here in its entirety. Hopefully The Dismal Depths will provide some entertainment for my readers who are willing to take on a referee style which begs for on the spot creativity.

Lastly, I want to add "Zulgyan's Hit Point Method", found here, somewhere in the Bestiary. If you're not familiar with it, go read that tidbit of genius.

Oh, and Happy Holidays! I Wish everyone a safe and entertaining New Year's Eve.

~Sham, Quixotic Referee

Another Teaser for Lower Caves

I started working on Lower Caves of The Darkness Beneath months ago. It has been a work in progress for quite some time, now. For those not in the know, it is my next planned adventure submission for Fight On!, level 5 of Calithena's group project megadungeon, The Darkness Beneath. I shared some of the very early ideas I had for this adventure here and here, but the project has changed quite a bit since those early ruminations. It is going to serve as the 'origin' of my home brewed Bugbears, the Bogbears (included in Issue 3 of Fight On!). Anyhow, I keep picking it up, then setting it down, as it is a non-conventional lay-out the likes of nothing I have done in the past.

The central theme is that Calithena's NPC Jalen Longspear runs an Inn for adventurers on this level, in the middle of the megadungeon, called the Halfway Inn. The challenge of making the Inn, Jalen and his guests interesting, and detailing why they are hanging out half-way down in this massive underworld death-trap has kept me from hammering this out in a few nights. The magnitude of the Inn, as I imagined it, forced a re-do of my first map; there simply wasn't enough space for actual adventuring, and I wanted to incorporate those Fae aspects I alluded to in those other Lower Caves posts.

I finally sat down and drew a map which I know will work well now. I have everything planned out, and about 30% of the text is done. All that is left to do is number the map as I place each idea, put my thoughts for each room into text, dress up the map, title it, and send it off to Calithena for a look-see. Hopefully this will see print in the Spring (provided it finds it's way into Fight On!). More on this as I continue the project.

Anyhow, I promised to share this back in August, so here's the initial map draw:



I claimed before that work would speed up on The Lower Caves, so I'll be careful to make that assertion again, but it is definitely moving along in a promising fashion.

~Sham, Quixotic Referee

Session One Report

Session One ended early Sunday morning. Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending upon how you look at it, the game was rolling along and keeping me so tied up in things I forgot to get pix of live play, OR of the post game table! We kept pushing for just ‘one more room’ to the point that my Wife had to come remind me to fire up the grill a few times.

I allowed players to show up ‘anytime before 5 PM’, so we had a rolling start which allowed me to help each player get his Primary Character and Loyal Follower written and geared up. I related an abridged version of the campaign intro, dumped them at the entrance to Dim X, and began describing the old worn spiral stone steps that lead down into Room 1 of Krawlspace, the upper level of that megadungeon.

Aside from the break to grill and serve food, we played from 5:30 PM to almost 2:30 AM Sunday morning. Roughly eight hours of old school D&D fun. This translated to two separate excursions into Dim X, the first lasted for six hours of dungeon crawling campaign time, with a break in between, and a second excursion which didn’t last long, under two hours of campaign time before they retreated to rest, and we called the game just before 2:30.

We had a new guest player, one cancellation, one late arrival, and two no-shows. The party managed to maintain a decent size, running with from seven to ten characters the entire session. Between the methodical, thorough veteran approach to dungeon crawling that was used, and some excellent early dice rolling, the players did very well, and avoided any major calamities. There were two character deaths, three characters reduced to -1 HP, and one who was poisoned, reacted quickly, made two dice rolls, and was lucky to be ‘revived’.

The mix of characters was not what I had expected. Apparently Kobolds and Barbarians are very popular! Of the 12 player characters created Saturday, there were three Kobolds and three Barbarians. Only one Elf, and NO Dwarves! The racial breakdown was Humans: 6, Kobolds: 3, Hobbits: 2, Elves 1, Dwarves: 0 (and Fauns: 0). Not what I had expected. Here’s the other shocker to me; no one played a Cleric. Seems like old times.

Everyone was very enthusiastic and aside from some unavoidable slow moments during game play, a good time was had by all. It was one of those sessions where you KNEW that if we were teenagers back in the early 80’s, we would’ve played right through until Dawn. But alas, players have families and Sunday plans, so I think playing until almost 2:30 AM was quite a surprise (especially considering a few of them drove over an hour to get here). I sent the players home well fed and satisfied, and we talked about arranging the details for the next game day.

Here’s a scan of the player map thus far:


I decided to hand out experience immediately after it was earned, so after each encounter, I told the party the total experience which was to be divided equally. Most of the encounters were of the Wandering Monster variety.

Within the first room the party found a Bumble named Nozzle, and his Welcome Inn; an extra-dimensional tavern of sorts, with a warm fireplace, cots, and a seemingly endless supply of free stew, ale, tea and biscuits. After some serious paranoid role-playing, the characters partook in the services provided. Kobold Henchmen were available for hire, but no one could afford any at that time. The Bumbles are the stewards of Krawlspace, they clean halls, remove corpses, reset traps, and make the entire place inviting for adventurers. What these Gnomes receive from all of their efforts is not known, and they remain just another mystery and oddity of Dim X.

The Northernmost set of rooms, The Terrible Temple, took up a large portion of the day, as it involves swiveling fountains, levers, evil clones of the characters, and a large rift from which 1d4 Vile Spirits emerge each round while living beings are within the temple proper. The whole system of levers and swiveling fountains is rather complex, but ultimately pitted one character against the clone of another character, trapped alone in one of the side rooms.

The party also found The Cartographer's Crypt; a room within which the restless spirit of the dungeon’s architect exacts his revenge upon his former masters by attempting to reveal the dungeon’s secrets via crude drawings and messages on the wall (which are constantly wiped clean by the stewards within).

One major battle was in the room entitled The Pool and the Predator, a secret chamber guarded by a Gargoyle. This beast slew one character, and rendered two others unconscious. Just prior to this encounter the party had slowly made their way through a long niche filled hall choked with dense, silvery mist (called the Fourteen of Smithereen due to the fourteen mysterious iron statues in those niches, each of an Orc with a strange name). Upon exiting, they found themselves caked in this silvery glitter like residue. Little did they realize at the time that this mist temporarily enchants all metal to +0 magic. A few of the characters declared that they were spending a couple turns cleaning it all off. Once they faced the Gargoyle, and realized that it was only struck by magic items, they were second guessing that decision. Nevertheless, one of the characters rendered unconscious in that melee dropped his silvery glitter covered Battle Axe, which was taken up by no less than two others as they finally dispatched the Gargoyle in this melee which was probably very close to turning into a total party kill.

Within that room the characters found their first treasure trove. It was a hard won pay-off, to be sure. One dead, two unconscious.

Another difficult melee, with a few scares, was a simple roaming pack of Zombies. That was the final encounter, after which the party licked their wounds and we called it a night.

Rooms encountered and left for later were the Moldy Mess chamber, with the annoying skeleton named Heckler; and No Moss, a chamber with a huge 15 ton round boulder which clearly rolled around (due to the recessed tracks of it’s various paths).

One other room of note, in which the party encountered a group of Kobolds arguing about who would drink from The Mermaid Fountain, produced two interesting moments. Graffiti on the wall read “These waters heal wounds” and below “So drink deeply, but only from the falling water”. The assumption was then that drinking the spouting water would heal you. One of the Barbarians, reduced to a single HP after a nasty pitfall, decided to do just that, and drink from the falling water. All of his wounds were instantly healed, but he missed his save vs. poison, and dropped dead on the spot. Interestingly, one of the players had a fast burst of inspiration when his loyal follower has poisoned by a Giant Spider just before entering The Terrible Temple. The character snatched up the Hobbit’s body, rushed him back to the magical fountain, and put his mouth under the falling water. I gave him a % chance to survive the poison based on his CON of 8 (he rolled 05), AND he needed to save vs. poison to survive the fountain. Both rolls were made, and the player earned the only Style Point of the day, for quick thinking under pressure.

All in all I am satisfied with the session, and I am looking forward to future dungeon crawls within Dim X. One thing’s for sure, at this rate I have enough dungeon made up for a very, very long time.

~Sham, Quixotic Referee

Junk From My Closet: The Donjon

Since this is a good week for me to throw out such lazy posts, I'll continue with more stuff I worked on in the past. With that in mind, here's another one gathering dust in my basement gaming closet of oddities from yesteryear. This isn't quite as old as the ALL CAPS pieces. This map was the next to last level in the dungeon Sham's Furnace. The Donjon was, essentially, my version of S1: Tomb of Horrors in that it was chock full of deadly traps, with only one or two actual monsters. I recall that running this level was a great deal of fun.



I'm not sure where the notes are, but I think room 9 required a pair of keys to activate the portal which lead to the lowest dungeon level. You can see the keys drawn on the map in rooms 14 and 20. It looks like a computer game map, heh.

Like all of my 'best' maps, this level had some water flowing in it. This would've been from my never finished Antholerin campaign, circa 1996 or so. The same campaign that I drew the Devil's Throne map for.

~Sham, Quixotic Referee

Map Development

As promised, I wanted to post a bit about my process for map development. I love drawing maps, and as referee, a good looking map makes me enjoy running that particular adventure more than staring at a boring or confusing map. Now, my style is particularly neat and clean for the most part. It’s just how my maps turn out. I love seeing other people’s maps, and I am usually envious of the raw, unrefined style that, for me, is so often evocative of old school, home brew adventures. Nevertheless, this is my style and I make maps this way, for better or worse.

Normally, when I set about to drawing a map, I already have thought out the theme for that adventure. Whether that theme defines the entire map, or just a portion of it, I have it worked out beforehand. By this point, I have a handful of ideas and features planned based on this theme, and I might even have a half dozen or so major rooms fleshed out a bit on paper.

Often, I will draw these features and major rooms first on the map, and connect them later. Other times I just start drawing lines and fit these particulars in as I go. I want to use the map I’m submitting for SGotC for this example. I’ll repost the map I started with a few days ago here.

My first step is the outline. Simply lines with no detail or features of note, as shown below.


Once I am satisfied with the overall lay-out, I will consider further details of the adventure. This in depth analysis allows me to proceed to the next step, that of adding details, doors and making minor fixes, as shown below.


The next step is more involved, as it takes into account the actual description of each of the soon to be keyed areas. During this stage, I sit down and rough out a list of rooms and small descriptions for each. Next I number the map in as logical a manner as I can, as shown below.


Normally, at this point, I go about the process of actually writing the entire adventure. This allows me to draw further details on the map, make notations if necessary, then title it and dress it up a bit. For this post, I am proceeding to the last stage before actually finishing the written adventure, but I am fairly satisfied with the map as is, and I have most of the entire dungeon level worked out on paper and in my head. The example below is fairly close to what I will end up submitting to Fight On!.


I’m fairly gun-shy right now about adding shading or delineating lines, and I feel once numbered this particular map is fairly distinct and easy to understand. I’ll probably add delineating lines and submit two versions in the end.

There's not much difference between versions 3 and 4 in this example, but I suspect that by the time I've finished writing the adventure, there will be plenty of details added here and there.

A few complaints. The erasure marks scan in too damn well. The numbers I drew for keying are too large, and detract from the finished map. I'm very rarely satisfied with the flow of the numbering on my maps, and this one is no different. Area 3 is kind of messy.

Lastly, yep you guessed it, I'm an anal bastard when it comes to my maps.

I hope you enjoy these maps, and I would like to provide further step by step examples in the future. Hopefully my next series of maps will not include any caves, as I believe my pure brick and block maps are much more interesting.

~Sham, Quixotic Referee

Junk From My Closet: Devil's Throne

This is the first installment of Junk From My Closet. Hat's off to Jeff for the idea. I can waste plenty of time scanning in old garbage and yacking about it, and...that's what I plan to do.

My first offering is an old map I dug up from my never finished Antholerin campaign. I'll probably find more Junk from that setting in the closet, but this is a map I always liked and I never used in actual play. Antholerin was a long running campaign, centered around multiple levels of 'undercities' which led, eventually, to the Deep Down, my version of Arduin's Great Wyrm Road, or the Underdark. The lowest reaches of the Deep Down were drawn out on a hex map, ala D1-3 inspired by Gygax's map, with keyed hexes. Devil's Throne was one of those hexes, in this case the hex directly under Antholerin.

Devil's Throne was probably drawn around 1995 or so, so it's fairly recent as far as most of the Junk From My Closet goes.



Devil's Throne is the legendary Trollhome. Within resides clans of Giant Trolls, Trolls, and Troglodytes, as well as the Great Troll Overlord. Here's a rough outline of the keyed areas.

1: Temple of Vathakk. Region shared by two clans, the Vor Clan (ruled by Gelbar) and the Nes clan (ruled by Irenis).
2: Byrfellag, the Great Citadel. Ruled over by Aragen the Massive, the Great Troll Overlord. To the south, Slave Pits and Royal Mines, and the Rior clan of Giant Trolls.
3: Walled Siv clan home (ruled by H'ree).
4: Temple of Kavring. Region shared by two clans, the Pel clan (ruled by Ridues) to the far north, and the Ain clan (ruled by Eakeh) surrounding the Temple.
5: Temple of Gorog-Nor (The Hungry One), surrounded by the Une clan (ruled by Natue).
6: Walled Pril clan home (ruled by Vorad).
7: Walled Eiun clan home (ruled by Leum).

Devil's Throne has eight Troll clans, totaling over 10,000 Trolls, and one Giant Troll clan of 600.

I can no longer remember, but some of the Temples might be named after Demons from Arduin.

This region occupied hex number 21 on the Deep Down overview. If I find that hex map, I'll scan it along with the other hex notes.

~Sham, Quixotic Referee

Sham's New Toy

OK, so I’ve got a new toy. Rather, I should specify, I had my computer literate and all-around wonderful Wife show me how to actually USE her scanner. I think I’ve discovered a new tool that will keep me busy rooting through my gaming closet and posting images.

One of the uses of this new tool will be an upcoming post that details Map Development for my upcoming submission to Fight On!. The finished version of which will only be found in the actual publication, but I’ll walk through some of the steps I use when hand-drawing a dungeon map.

So, in order to test the waters, so to speak, I’m scanning the map of SGotC as it is right now, before it’s fleshed out.



Once I have some time I’ll scan some of my ancient hand drawn maps for your viewing pleasure, along with tidbits here and there ala Jeff Rients.

~Sham, Quixotic Referee