[Dungeon] A Single Tomb, Unplundered... (Egyptian-style tomb for levels 4-6)

There are many Egyptian-style tomb dungeons like this, but this one is mine... 17 rooms, one level, I think it turned out quite good. 8 pages for the main text, so you can print it as a booklet (but print the cover on a separate sheet).

I wrote the bulk of this back in 2023, but somehow never got around to share it. I used OSRIC for the stocking. And I wanted to do something NOT for levels 1-3.

GRAB THE PDF HERE

[Dungeon] Wreck Worship - a sea & salt themed cult dungeon

Here's the hide-out of a shipwreck-worshipping cult of weirdos! They even have their own lighthouse to lure sailors onto the reefs. The dungeon is this best situated on a seaside cliff. 

19 keyed areas, minimal keys. Print on two pages or even on a single page. Stats are for Searchers of the Unknown, so, you know, D&D.

There are stairs to a potential level 2 (I envision it to be a Deep One cave?), but who knows if that ever gets created.

The lighthouse is not described in detail here. I imagine it to be a tall tower without an overground entrance, only reachable from below (or if somebody manages to scale the walls).

Actually, now I have TWO sea-cult dungeons. I'm gonna post the other one later as well, because it's also good, plus it was playtested in The World of Tomorrow campaign. But there is some overlap between them, so I cannot just connect them together.

The process was simple:

1. I picked 8 monsters that fit thematically, put them on the wandering encounters list, and also used that list to stock the monster rooms.
2. I rolled up the basic structure and contents from the Atelier Clandestin Sandbox Generator (pretty sweet book!)
3. I re-rolled results that didn't quite fit (like overlong corridors) and then modified everything on the go to make it fit better with the theme

GRAB THE PDF HERE

Have fun.

[Dungeon] Underground Station, Long Abandoned (location from The World of Tomorrow science fantasy campaign)

Sharing one of the dungeons from The World of Tomorrow campaign. 

This is an underground monorail hub. There are some arcane technological treasures and a weird fungal instruction to be found here, but the main “reward” is access to the monorail: if brought online, it can take the party to far-off places on the map.

DOWNLOAD PDF

(or download as a one-page dungeon to print right away here)

Map: North (N) is “up”. One square = 10’. Treasure values: listed in “standard coins” (c).

Vibes: mole people, Escape from New York, Terminator, Planet of the Apes, Fallout 1-2

Entrance: 500’ deep elevator shaft. Architecture: concrete walls & floors. Doors: Code-locked sliding metal doors, numerical panel by side (can be hacked, short-circuited; codes hidden in safe of #7).

Generator in #1 has three modes of operation:

Mode	Light	Elevator	Train
OFF	no	no	no
EMERGENCY	dim red	no	yes
FULL	bright white	yes	yes

Random encounters: 1-in-6 chance every other turn to run into Amyntor. Introduce wandering vermin or lesser mutants as needed.

Amyntor (Halfling 3): The main inhabitant of the station. A cyclopic person of short stature in a ragged vault-suit, exile from a secret high-class bunker (COMPLEX 4000). Has night-vision goggles (single-eyed, 60’) and a Puppet-Master 3000 device to control the Mutants in #3 (it glitches out often, so can only issue commands to 2 random mutants out of the 3 in each round). Shy and paranoid, likely to hide and sneak around (don’t forget to check for surprise and encounter distance – the result might mean he is around the corner). If in danger, flees and activates the Mutants.

AREAS:

1. ENTRANCE HALL. Elevator arrives here. Generator in SW corner, currently OFF.

2. SERVICE HALL. Train car from N tunnel (#3). Three large garage doors, each one has a Bulbous Mutant (as Troll) behind it: they are linked to the walls by feeding tubes, only come to life if controlled by Amyntor.

3. TRAIN CAR. All windows spray-painted black or covered with cardboard. Two rows of seats. Tunnel around car blocked with debris, but there is a small passage through the blockage on the top of the car.

4. TRAIN TURNTABLE. Domed hall, 70’ high. Locomotive (#5-6) in middle.

a. Towards “NUCLEAR FACILITY”       b. Full of graffiti. Secret door to #9 graffiti’d over

c. Towards “EXPERIMENTAL CITY”      d. Dead-end

e. Towards “COMPLEX 4000”           f. Balcony of control room (#7), 40’ above floor

5. LOCOMOTIVE PILOT CABIN. Trash and a bedroll. Controls functional (magnet on/off, speed, open/close doors). Constant white noise with granular speech and music fragments emanates from a small speaker.

6. LOCOMOTIVE MAGNETIC ENGINE. Hermetically sealed door. If open, all metal objects in the door’s vicinity are attracted to the giant magnetic coil in the middle.

7. CONTROL ROOM. Control panels to bring the monorail network online. Computer logs show last activity was “9999 years ago”. Large safe built into the N wall: holds blueprints, instruction manuals, 6 platinum bars (3000 c total).

8. LONG CORRIDOR. “Danger” signs at both ends. TRAP: 1-in-8 chance of collapse into tunnels underneath in the middle section (20’ fall).

9. DANK CAVE. Metal footlocker: spare vault-suit and Pupper-Master 3000 device (fully functional, but with battery drained).

10. STORAGE ROOM. Dozens of crates stacked high: some tools and parts can be salvaged (500 c total). Sensitive characters feel tentative probing: one of the crates holds a plastiglass formicarium of psionic ants. The hive mind is ready to trade services for food.

11. COLLAPSED AREA. Fungal smell from N.

12. SHRINE OF SHROOM CONSCIOUSNESS. Save vs. Poison; on failure, commune with the the world-encompassing mycorrhizal network) – treat as a Contact Higher Plains spell, followed by 1d6 days of unconsciousness.

[Secret Santicorn Dungeon] The Dark Keep in the Snow

My contribution for the OSR discord server's Secret Santicorn event! envymania's prompt was simply "The Dark Keep in the Snow". I cycled through several ideas (one was to make a classic murder mystery! I might return to it...) then ended up creating a dungeon.

Frankly, feature creep is always a problem. I could have made something less ambitious. 

Underground dungeons are easy. You only have to care about the interior space... While when making something "architectural", there is also the exterior, and you are under more pressure to make it "make sense".

But here we are, in early February 2025, and The Dark Keep in the Snow is ready!

It's a fortified monastery of sorts, high up in the mountains, populated by Yetis - for a reason!

No stats, you can find all these monsters in OSRIC.

Get your snowshoes on and

DOWNLOAD THE PDF!

THE MAPS IN A SEPARATE IMAGE FILE

(I hope to eventually re-draw the maps. For now, they are here in all their hand-drawn beauty)

[Dungeon] Hole of the Goblin King

Buckle up and put on some Grieg, we are going on a trip to the Hall of the Mountain King! ...what? The DM blew all our money on novelty dice and now we can only afford infiltrating the Hole of the Goblin King? Uhhh I guess that's our life now.

Hole of the Goblin King is a dungeon I drew and wrote by hand. 18 keyed areas of an underground lair. I guess it's what you *might* call "vanilla fantasy", because it's about goblins in a hole, with by-the-book stuff. It has kind of a whimsical/tongue-in-cheek tone. Leveld 2-3? 

Anyway, this was FUN. You should have more FUN.

Full res scan here

Medieval Cappadocian dungeon design!

Archaeology and real-world architecture is always super inspiring. But one of the problem is that real-world architecture, unlike fantasy dungeons, is often linear and too simple. Not enough weird interconnections to really make dungeon exploration interesting! I posted about this in the early days of this blog.

Well, this Cappadocian rock-cut monastery at Selime Kalesi is a non-linear dream!

Map:

The map is from Cave Monasteries of Byzantine Cappadocia by Lyn Rodley (p. 64).

My favorite detail is the narrow passage between areas 13 and 18. Good design, Cappadocians!

And the detailed room-by-room description is like a keyed dungeon... Albeit without monsters. Some excerpts from the book:

Room 2

At the south side of the east wall of Room 1 a small rectangular opening leads into Room 2, a narrow rectangular room with a bench along west, east and south walls. The room is roughly barrel-vaulted at its north end and has a flat ceiling at the south end, carried above a cornice. West, east and south walls at this end of the room have a decoration of arched blind niches; those on the west and east walls taper off at their north sides. The niche of the south wall contains a large rectangular window, overlooking the valley.

 

Room 8

The porch, like the church, was plastered, but most of the plaster has fallen away. Fragments remain on the east wall, around the church entrance, and on the easternmost edges of north and south walls. Just below the cornice on each side is a painted inscription of seven lines on the north side and three lines on the south. The lines of the inscription appear to be complete and since they occupy the whole width of the plastered area of the porch it is possible that the plaster did not extend right across the porch wall, but was confined to a narrow vertical band the width of the inscription. Unlikely though this may seem, the alternative is to assume that by chance the area of plaster with the inscription has been preserved while the rest is lost. The text, a dodecasyllabic poem, is as follows:

‘Let no one be misled by the desire for wealth for the love of money has destroyed many. For this flesh is earth, clay and...’

The poem appears to refer to the tomb chamber below it, but clearly does not supply any information on the inhabitants of the chamber.

 

Room 12

A secondary opening in the west wall of Room 12 leads into Room 13, described below. The only original opening is the rectangular entrance from Area 10, described above, which opens into the south wall of Room 12. In the southeast corner of the room a chimney has been cut through the ceiling, and the room is much blackened by smoke.

 

Room 18

There are two openings in the south wall of the east gallery: to the west, the entrance to another elbow-shaped passage leading to the east end of the south gallery (18c) and to the east an opening into the long tunnel (b) which links the east wall of Room 18 with Room 13.

 

Room 28

This is a small barrel-vaulted room with cornices, a transverse arch and wall arches, like so many others of the monastery. One lunette is decorated with a relief carving of a horned animal. The location of the stable suggests that the tunnel was once the only entrance to the monastery, and that horses and pack animals had to be left at the foot of the hill and the tunnel entered on foot. The room with the horned animal may conceivably have been a gatehouse of sorts.

[Dungeon] "The Arnesonium" - a Blackmoorian exercise

The topic of the dungeon maps from First Fantasy Campaign came up on the Wandering DMs discord server. Mostly we discussed how to describe all those weirdly shaped spaces and labyrinthine corridors...

Just for fun, I decided to draw up and stock a dungeon level in this style. I did not use the "Protection Point" system (you can read about it over at The Alexandrian's blog), just filled everything up as I went randomly. 

The Arnesonium, Level 1

1) 4 Ogres, lazy, 4000 GP, Potion of Ogre Shape

2) 8 Spiders

3) 5800 GP, Wand of Bridge Building

4) Knee-deep water. 28 Talking Eels

A. Teleport to 3)

5) 6 dead adventurers, will rise as Zombies

6) Dungeon noticeboard: monsters for hire

7)

8) Switch: lowers the ambient temperature of the whole dungeon level to arctic, then breaks off.

9) 6300 GP, Dragon-Fang Spear, 2 Potions of Sadness

10) 1 Wight

Wandering Monsters by Quadrant

A) 6 Berserkers

B) Conjurer and 4 Men-at-Arms

C) 4 Zombies

D) 1 Ogre

Grab as a PDF...

[Dungeon] The Red Bastion - old-school adventure

Last week, I wrote about my process of drawing dungeon maps. Now I stocked the "tutorial map" and turned it into a proper little adventure location!

The Red Bastion - the prison of a dwarf ghost princess... A 15-room dungeon for levels 2-3.

Grab the PDF here!

How do I make dungeon maps? A tutorial...

People ask me from time to time about my digital dungeon drawing method. Here’s a write-up! I hope it’s useful.

Update: I turned the tutorial map into a keyed adventure location!

The Process:

I use GIMP, which is an open-source graphic editor. Photoshop can do the same. Basically, you need any graphic software that can do layers and brushes.

You can find my sample map and some brushes here.

I learned the basis of my approach from this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_agst3lSQ7A&ab_channel=P3RPLEX3D

P3RPLEX3D explains very well how to do basic wall outlines and fill it with a grid pattern. Thanks!

I use custom brushes for dungeon symbols. I downloaded a set from a blog many years ago, and cannot find it :( The file was shared openly, so I feel mildly comfortable including it here.

Then I add everything else on top… Here’s my process:

1. I put on some music (“Hejira” by Joni Mitchell today)
2. I sketch out the map on paper. This is not the final version, but it’s good to have the general layout from the start
3. I open GIMP
4. I already have a blank map file, so that I don’t have to go through basic setup every time. This blank has several layers:
   a. Background
   b. Dungeon wall outline
   c. Dungeon grid
   d. Symbols
   e. A group of text labels
   f. Optional layers to contain stuff like water, overlays, or cover-ups for secrets and traps if I want to create a players’ map
5. I set the editor’s grid to 70 x 70. This is the standard scale for Roll20 digital maps, but you can use any scale you want
6. I draw all the walls
   a. Brush size for walls is 8 pixels
   b. For built architecture, I switch on “snap to grid”. Sometimes you have to adjust the grid to 35 x 35 etc., as needed. For natural cave areas, I switch “snap to grid” off
7. I leave gaps for doors and similar features
8. Fill up the dungeon with the grid pattern (see the video tutorial above)
9. Draw the rest of the fckin owl Add in symbols for doors, secret doors, traps, main room features like statues and coffins
10. Add “indoor” cliffs, bodies of water – these all go on extra layers. The slider for layer opacity helps a LOT!
11. Add labels and room numbers on top. I always number the rooms on my paper sketch first, and only after that add the digital labels. I use Jost, font size 54 for room numbers, 40 for smaller notes

And so on. There’s a lot of trial-and-error, janky additions and overlays, mistakes happy coincidences. But overall, this is a relatively easy method of creating usable digital dungeon maps without resorting to specialized software. And I like the flexibility it offers.

Step-by-step illustrations:

1. Sketch:

2. Digital outlines:

3. Grid fill:

4. Symbols and extra layers:

5. Labels and finishing touches:

6. TIME TO STOCK IT!

[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.

Making a dungeon in 5 minutes?! (Enter the House of Metal...)

I saw a title today - "5-Minute Dungeon (and some D&D reflections)", it's an interesting post about a boardgame with that title, go and read it!

But of course my mind went in a different direction before actually reading the post. "So, is this a dungeon you can play in 5 minutes? Or a dungeon made in 5 minutes? Can you prep a dungeon in 5 minutes?"

So I tried to make a dungeon in 5 minutes. As you might imagine, it didn't work out too well, but it wasn't a complete disaster either.

As my timer, I picked a track that's exactly 5 minutes long: "House of Metal" by Chelsea Wolfe, turned it up, took its title as the dungeon's name, and sketched a castle and wrote down everything that came to my head.

Transcription:

HOUSE OF METAL
Gigantic blue metal castle
Wandering monsters:
1. Blue metal golems
2. Sneaky goblins
3. Lost scientist, disoriented
1. Hall with iron guard dogs
2. Lever opens door to #3
3. Giant magnet attracts all metal except blue special metal
4.
5. 1000 sp
6. 
7. 
8. Courtyard
9.
10. Tower of floating coins.

You be the judge... 

I think on a better day, when I'm not so overworked, I could do something better and more focused. But it was a fun little challenge nonetheless. Thanks, Chelsea!

The Tower of Zenopus map - redrawn by me

There are many iterations of the classic Tower of Zenopus/Holmes sample dungeon map! But this is mine!

I did a Referee map and a Player map (with labels and secret doors hidden). Grid size is 70x70 pixels, so this is compatible with Roll20.

MAPS!

I think there is merit in re-drawing dungeons: by doing it, you gain a better understanding of the map, and it's also a sort of meditative homage?...

You can read more about the history of this dungeon over at Zenopus Archives and the Zenopus blog.

Nest of the Circuit Roaches - a small sci-fi horror adventure!

I wrote (by hand!!) a small sci-fi horror adventure, Nest of the Circuit Roaches. It takes place on a space station or planetary outpost, and the party is tasked with cleaning out the titular Circuit Roach infestation before the swarm drains all the data & electricity.

It's system-agnostic, OSR in soul, and a good fit for Mothership, Traveller, Stars Without Number.

It's free/PWYW at itch.io!

There are a couple of versions. The main version is the hand-written "pocketmod" booklet. But I also included a typed-up one-page dungeon and some other files and maps for ease of use.

The title came from the wonderful "Generic Room Stocker" by Michael Raston. Great inspirational resource, highly recommended.

[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!