From the archives: The Original Dungeon part four - THE LAST PART!

 Archive time once more my friends! And this time we're going to wrap up the original dungeon! Let's dive right in!

This is known as the Shaman's Chamber and is designed to team up with the next one.

The Shaman's study - complete with magic circle and cage to keep text subjects! Lots of detail in this one, making it quite fun to draw.

Okay, they can't all be as fun as the shaman's study... A flight of stairs leading down.

It can't be a proper dungeon without a torture chamber can it?

This is known as The Vestry - it's designed to go on the side of the temple map I posted earlier to give the orc priests somewhere for a nice sit down and a cuppa between sacrifices.

Finally, I made a bunch of doors which can be added to maps. Not sure why this one's background is not transparent - I'm sure I had them with transparent backgrounds. Could be a draft or something...?

As above really.

Okay, this one has the transparent backdrop.

A slightly fancier one.

And finally, a door way I made which can be added to any wall so that you can customise rooms further.

Well, that's the whole of the OG dungeon posted - but there's still more stuff in the archives, so keep on coming back on Mondays and Thursdays for the posts!

From the Archives: Twisting Tunnels of Terror part two!

 Here we are again wading through the muck and filth of the archive... And what has come up on the end of our ten-foot pole? The rest of the Twisting Tunnels of Terror!

A little corner... with a tiny narrow tunnel leading to a hidden chamber! Mayhap it contains treasure beyond the imaginings of mortals? Maybe it contains a skull and a rubber duck. Who can say?

This capstan mechanism looks like it might operate something of importance (and indeed it does, but not something I'm posting until next time! This is called 'always leave them wanting more'!)

This was a fun one to draw - it's affectionately known as The Gibbering Mass. It's been used in play only once, and it certainly creeped out the party.

Ever since the cool plastic knight's tomb piece in HeroQuest I've had a thing about putting knights tombs in RPG maps. With knights sculpted on top of course.

Here I decided to make two tunnels on the same map which don't meet up. It allows for a more compact yet still twisting tunnel layout!

This is half of a two-part map which connects the twisting tunnels to an underground lake or river or maybe even the sea. It's also one of two larger rooms made using two pages each which are designed at 6 squares wide to give a much larger area for important battles.

Here's the other end, complete with mysterious crates, presumably smuggled here by sinister forces. There is a reasonably high chance they contain rubber duckies...

A flooded room! You could call it shallow enough to wade through making it difficult terrain or it could be deep enough that swimming is needed... In either way, a nice way of breaking things up.

Look, if you can accept the tentacles and rubber duckies, there's no reason you cannot accept a shark in that pool there.

Ah, a sinister temple immortalised in stone as a shrine to dark and dreadful powers! What more can you want?

Well, the actual temple to those powers I guess. It's coming up soon! Check back on Mondays and Thursdays for more archive posts!

From the Archives: The Original Dungeon (part three)

 Once again it's time to dip into the archive and look at some more of that first dungeon! So without further ado, let's get cracking! Gasmasks on!

Let's get the boring bits out of the way... it's... A PASSAGE!

It's also a passage, but it's met some friends...

This passage only has one friend. Poor passage.

And this one's going round the bend.

Ah! Semi exciting stuff at last! A little prison cell. Note that at this time, I was trying to indicate squares on the drawings, which is why there are crosses on the floor showing their corners. I'm not sure if I didn't realise Roll20 had a built in grid, or it was an aesthetic choice, but these days I just leave the Roll20 gird overlay on and use that.

Well, not every room can be exciting...

Some can be very dull in fact.

Okay, this is the second dungeon map I drew, and the first to actually be used in a game. The very first one was experimental, and didn't really connect up to things.

Some sort of big temple-ish thing? Or is this where the goblins hold their open-mic nights?

Back to boring things for the last one then...

There's still some more of the OG Dungeon to post - and it's mostly the more exciting stuff I believe. We've gotten the passages out of our system by now.

Don't forget, archive material goes up on Mondays and Thursdays until I run out of it!

From the Archives: The Cursed Crypt

Well, I had been planning to show off some maps I drew to make a WFRP Empire town, but I cannot find the scans. I've got the originals, and I know I have parts uploaded to Roll20, but I seem to have deleted the scans to make space at some point... Until I can dig up my backup portable drive, we'll have to make do with the Cursed Crypts. Or I might need to rescan them... Sigh.

The Cursed Crypt is another example of the 8X8 tile idea in play - this time to make a massive tomb complex. I wanted this to be pretty grim and dark, but that didn't stop the odd duck or squid turning up. 

Another of those classic cave-in maps. I like these because they allow you to make a tight choke-point on the map and really restrict the party's movement.

The great and sinister skull chamber. It's very sinister. Note the open six-wide edges for connecting to other large open rooms.

Just a little corner with some sarcophagi.

This unit is designed to attach to the side of an open 6X6 map like the skull chamber above. This allows for bigger rooms, but also allows them to be customised and flexible.

The opposite number to the one above really.

Drawing the flames coming off the skull braziers was a bit of a challenge - I'd never really thought about how flames looked from this perspective...

I like a good sinister statue.

An adaptor to allow you to go from the standard two-square wide passage to the full 6 square wide open plan rooms.

I wanted to play around with different heights, hence this map which widens from 2 to 4 squares wide with stairs between. I like maps with a bit of a third dimension.

I did warn you the gothic gloom was punctuated with ducks and squid and things...

This is one of the smaller map sets, so in the next instalment we'll be looking at only a few more maps, but I've also got some example layout images showing how the whole thing can be stuck together. There's also the tomb of Friar Moderation Carter - Priest of Tyr (no not that Tyr, the other one) - my DND cleric who spent most of the campaign taking death saves and finally managed to die for good in the last session.  

Remember, I'm uploading archive stuff on Mondays and Thursdays until I run out, and that'll be a while yet.

From the Archives - The Original Dungeon part two

 Back to the original dungeon this time! There's rather a lot of this, so let's press on!

The grand entry hall! This was my first time having pillars in the middle of the room and I tried a few things before just having them solid black. I also drew a few different goblinesque icons which I could overlay on the circle on the raised dias - although I don't seem to have them saved as seperate assets.

The feasting hall of the foul orcish king! The doorway on the left is designed to hook up to a specific kitchen piece (which would make this my first multi-part room I guess) but it can hook to anything really.

The fighting pit! This was my first proper go at having two different height levels in the same map - I had done some experimental drawings to test the idea beforehand. I intentionally went for a very different floor at the bottom of the pit to help sell the idea, and used shading on the coloured version. I'd probably approach this a bit differently today for a line-drawing version and add some more hatching to the bottom of the pit to suggest depth.

A guard post. Note that the drain in the corner has not been shaded as at this time I planned to add colour and shading using the computer. These days I always block in the black areas with a pen before I scan.

Another guard post. This was my first experiment with adding low walls in the middle of other rooms.

The foul bed chamber of the foul orcish king. Although he can't be that foul because he does have indoor plumbing... Have we misjudged the great and enlightened orcish civilisation?? Also an early appearance of a rug and my hatching technique for making them look worn and threadbare.

A little study. I was pretty much in an orc head space drawing these maps, so possibly this is for the shaman? Note the arch at the bottom - it's meant to be a fire place, but it looks like I never drew in any fire...

The dread orc kitchen. Note the wall separating the two rooms. These days I'd only draw one side of it instead of showing both sides. Drawing all the detail in this one was good fun.

Let's round out the post with some boring passages.

Boring passages need love too.

Well, that's enough for this post! Check back next time for things like the Shaman's chambers!

Remember, I'm publishing archive material every Monday and Thursday until I run out, so come back next time for a look at some town buildings!