Hello new DMs, gather round. I am here to continue teaching you what is far and away the most important skill that a DM can possibly have- how to make dungeons. As Gary Gygax stated in the rules of the very first D&D ruleset released in 1974, all you need to run a game of Dungeons and Dragons is a dungeon with the first 6 levels ready to go, and a dragon thrown in the mix. That hasn't changed one speck in the half century since.
Today we will be looking at Dyson's Geomorphs and how to make a dungeon out of them. So what are we looking at here? A "Geomorph" is a 10x10 square plot of random dungeon terrain that can fit together with other geomorphs to create any imaginable variation.
First think about what dimensions you want for your dungeon level, in terms of A x B dimensions, as a multiple of 10. That is how many geomorphs you will need. I'll go ahead and make a 30x30 dungeon, so that means I will need 3x3 geomorphs. Carefully screenshot those geomorphs... Here we are:
Ok now that we have our geomorph plot, we can save this image and annotate it with room number and documentation and use it as a DM's map that only we get to see. To create the Player's map, what we are doing is uploading the image to our Dungeon making software of choice and importing it as a template which will stretch to the perfect dimensions assuming our screenshot wasn't offset.
From there we add the flooring, then walls, then elevation/thresholds/egress, then finally decorations. I'm not going to get into the details of that process here, check out this thread.
There we are. Now we are on to encounter building, setting up the challenges the PCs will face. And there you go! that's 2-3 sessions worth of dungeon crawling fun right there, the most bang for your buck prep-wise as a DM. Trust me.
Good to see someone else enjoys Dyson’s work as much as I do. Incidentally, he has many more maps on his site, Dyson’s Dodecahedron, that can be of use to DMs old and new. It’s mostly old-timely dungeons, with a few city maps and other illustrations thrown in. Highly recommend.
Hello new DMs, gather round. I am here to continue teaching you what is far and away the most important skill that a DM can possibly have- how to make dungeons. As Gary Gygax stated in the rules of the very first D&D ruleset released in 1974, all you need to run a game of Dungeons and Dragons is a dungeon with the first 6 levels ready to go, and a dragon thrown in the mix. That hasn't changed one speck in the half century since.
Today we will be looking at Dyson's Geomorphs and how to make a dungeon out of them. So what are we looking at here? A "Geomorph" is a 10x10 square plot of random dungeon terrain that can fit together with other geomorphs to create any imaginable variation.
First think about what dimensions you want for your dungeon level, in terms of A x B dimensions, as a multiple of 10. That is how many geomorphs you will need. I'll go ahead and make a 30x30 dungeon, so that means I will need 3x3 geomorphs. Carefully screenshot those geomorphs... Here we are:
Ok now that we have our geomorph plot, we can save this image and annotate it with room number and documentation and use it as a DM's map that only we get to see. To create the Player's map, what we are doing is uploading the image to our Dungeon making software of choice and importing it as a template which will stretch to the perfect dimensions assuming our screenshot wasn't offset.
From there we add the flooring, then walls, then elevation/thresholds/egress, then finally decorations. I'm not going to get into the details of that process here, check out this thread.
There we are. Now we are on to encounter building, setting up the challenges the PCs will face. And there you go! that's 2-3 sessions worth of dungeon crawling fun right there, the most bang for your buck prep-wise as a DM. Trust me.
Bookmarked that link for later. That's quite something.
Good to see someone else enjoys Dyson’s work as much as I do. Incidentally, he has many more maps on his site, Dyson’s Dodecahedron, that can be of use to DMs old and new. It’s mostly old-timely dungeons, with a few city maps and other illustrations thrown in. Highly recommend.
In any case, thanks for sharing.
Terra Lubridia archive:
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