From the archives - Twisting Tunnels of Terror

This is where the duckies started...

After the dungeon and sewers, I decided that I needed to make a set of maps for caves and underground caverns. The plan was to make everything based on an 8X8 grid, with every map being square so they would tile together nicely. I sketched out some shapes on graph paper and got stuck in, The very first map was a corner piece and to break up lines of sight a bit, I decided to put a pillar of rock in the middle of the passage, and a chasm across one end of it. Which made it look like a duck. Once I'd shown it to friends who pointed this out, the rubber duckies invaded...

I was going for a sort of horror thing with this set of maps (it's since been used for Call of Cthulhu a few times), which explains some of the other details like the eldritch monoliths and all the tentacles...

There are adaptors which allow this set to connect up to others like the dungeon and sewers, and at 25+ maps total it's one of the larger sets.

Let's have a look at some of the basic pieces today and go on to the more elaborate stuff next time.

Here it is - the infamous duck passage. It looks less ducky when connected up, but still, it gave rise to rather a lot of little rubber duckies...

Some sort of eldritch monolith. Coming up with obscene and blasphemous runes to write on these things is always fun.

Underground bandit camp. Not sure I'd feel safe sleeping beside the pool and it's sinister tentacles... Also not sure why this one is seven squares high instead of eight.

There ended up being a fair few coffins in the twisting tunnels. This particular map was given a ladder to connect with a haunted lighthouse in a Call of Cthulhu campaign.

Even something as simple as a cross roads is not safe from the madness, what with the tentacles and the simmering skull pot...

Here I experimented with adding a few steps to give the impression of changes in height.

I think this might have been the first one with tentacles, but I cannot be sure about that anymore.

Ah, the sinister squid gate. What could possibly be wrong with passing through this august portal?

I always like rickety rope bridges in films so it seemed like a good idea to drop on in here. If nothing else, it gives PCs a chance to use their agility outside of combat.

Okay, by this point the tentacles were getting pretty big, and here's the first example of the three-eyes octopus head!

Okay, that's it for this time. Stay tuned for such things as the mechanical rotating bridge and the temple of the dark cultists!

Remember, From the Archives is published every Monday and Thursday until I run out of archive stuff. Next up - more of the original dungeon!