I have to say, I never did understand the pure dungeon campaign. They always just seemed so hack and slash when I played them.

And if you want to see art, wilderness campaign maps are where it’s at. I always wished the players got to see what they were trekking through. Good times with colored pencil…

Personally, I think it’s incredibly tedious, and I’m amazed how much they all care about it. Wander-Encounter-Dice-NearlyDead-Repeat.

Maybe if it makes us nostalgic then it should count. YMMV.

For those unfamiliar, the gamers don’t know the layout but have to map it themselves from descriptions of what they “observe” as provided by the dungeon master”

“The west wall runs actually north-west to south-east 30 feet, and and in the south-east with a north-south wall extending…”

1. Lay a ruler across graph paper – the angle isn’t important, but make sure the line will intersect points on the graph rather than meandering through squares, never hitting anything.

2. Draw lines of random length, with random gaps between them, again making sure to go point to point.

3. Flip the ruler to some other angle, repeat. Don’t cross the stre…erm, lines. Once the ruler comes round to roughly the same direction as existing lines, keep it parallel to those lines.

4. Eventually, corridors and rooms reveal themselves – close the gaps. Mark ‘S’ on random walls to indicate secret doors. They needn’t lead anywhere important – they just need to be secret. Mark ‘T’ in other rooms for random traps. Again, there need be no rhyme or reason for their placement.

5. Populate rooms with random creatures. Spend no time whatsoever considering why this appears to be some sort of monster hotel, with various beasts and undead sitting in their rooms, staring at the walls, never venturing out, never getting into trouble with the monster in the next room, never peeking into the corridor when they hear the adventurers wreaking bloody havoc a few doors down. The players will not ask, because they do not care. The dungeon’s residents will wait around, become suddenly angry when somebody opens the door, and have some kind of loot.

6. Profit! (Don’t forget a compass rose.)

I’m off to get a tattoo of a mind flayer lich on a beholder chariot.

A savvy rules lawyer could argue that all the walls on the map are really paper-thin, and can just be busted through. “It seems the DM designed the dungeon with the architectural sensibility of Japan in mind.”

Also, if it’s in a museum, it means we can go in and loot it. Very popular pastime lately. We just have to get there before the Capital One guys.

I have deleted
the SPAM
that was in
the inbox

and which
you were probably
hoping
I would click

Forgive me
they were outrageous
so fleet
and so bold

“Guys, c’mon, I worked hard on this dungeon!”

“And we’re enjoying it! What’s your problem?”

I’m Tim Hutchings, the guy who organizes the PlaGMaDA archive. If any of you have questions about the archive, what’s in the archive, or why the archive might be important, please ask away.

If you have materials you think you’d like to donate, email collections@plagmada.org.

And yes, the kobolds can be very, very scary. They may only have 1 HP, but given some time they can hang a LOT of rocks from the ceiling to make a pretty ugly trap. That and a nearby underground stream can cause lots of trouble for anyone.

I once designed a dungeon that was vaguely spiral and each floor was similar in layout but slightly different in size (think the Guggenheim Museum). The dwarf blew his “detect slope passages” roll, and the poor party was totally convinced that some of the walls were of negative thickness to make their map work. They completed about 4 circuits before they figured out they weren’t going in circles and hitting amazingly-fast respawning monsters. :)

But the most evil thing I’ve personally seen done to a party…

Party of teen-level characters head into a dungeon, and on the first level they hit swarms of gas spores. Dozens of them. Over and over. Finally, they have disposed of them all, and get down to business… down several levels, where it gets *really* hard. They finally vanquish everything, and they’re slogging out of the dungeon. No spells left, no potions left, no scrolls left, everybody is in single-digit hit points. On the good side, the party is moving at “encumbered” speed because the 4 strongest party members are carrying a huge chest full of all sorts of goodies. They round a corner, almost out of the dungeon.. and down at the far end of the corridor they see another gas spore, floating in the dim darkness. Somebody with a bow says “Hah. We missed one” and wings it with an arrow.

The DM says “*thunk*”. “*thunk*? not *pop*?” “Yes, *thunk*, and it’s heading your way now”. The party realizes that they are in no shape to tackle a beholder, drop the chest, and run for their lives. Then they make their way back to town.

The next day, they’re commiserating their loss in the tavern when they overhear a very low-level thief and an illusionist chatting up the barkeep, with far more money than their level would usually imply. “We knew these guys went down into the dungeon, and we was drunk as an alcoholic dwarf and up for a laugh. So Frankie makes up this ball from leather and junk and sticks looks like a gas spore, and I throws my one invisibility spell on Frankie. He picks it up over his head and walks down the hallway at them. The elf shoots the ball, then soils his pants, they drop this chest and run… next thing you know, we’re rich.”

I always used a graph paper notebook for my maps- made it easier to coordinate them with notes on story, npcs, and so on. I used to just recycle them after a campaign ended, though…

It’s the image I often point to when I’m talking about how odd some of the stuff in the archive can be.

Toward the end of my scribbling I got pretty serious about making the levels make sense, architecturally and operationally.

I earned some money in the cowboy days of the RPG publishing industry, churning out articles and adventures.