Open

Loop
Gain
This short document is about creating dungeon maps based on real-life electrical or electronic
circuits. It’s a method to try if you’re lacking inspiration, need something done quick, or if you
just want to mix things up a bit. It is relatively easy to find circuits to use. Datasheets of
appliances is what you would be looking for, and there are websites like „discovercircuits.com”,
which collect links to such circuit designs for interested parties.
Below you can find a list of how commonly used symbols could be interpreted to create a
dungeon, as well as one example dungeon. Note that symbols might differ depending on the
standardized set used when it was created. The set utilized in the table below is the IEC set
while you might encounter the ANSI set more commonly on US-centered sites, plus these are
very basic symbols – there are variations that mean slightly different things.
Suggested Map
IEC Symbol Meaning
Characteristic
Resistor Room Entrance
Capacitator Locked or blocked path
Diode Trap
Ground Stairs / Hole in the ground
Inductor Bridge
Source Dungeon Entrance
Change in sensory
Switch
perception or materials
Random objects (might
Transistor NPN
also include useful Loot)
Ambush / Wandering
Transistor PNP
creature

Out of this plan – drawn by one Bill Bowden for a Telephone Ring Generator, the following 2-
level dungeon was created (classic fantasy dungeon in this case but you can go for any other
genre too):
 (4)

(3) (2)

(5)
(1)

(6)

(12)

(7)

(11)
(10)
(8)

(9)

# Area Description You could find…

The mouth of the cave is small but the area you enter into immediately
opens up into a wide cavern. To your right, unforgiving stone wall. To
your left, a bridge leading across a seemingly bottomless pit. You can NPCs, some
1
also go straight ahead along the narrow footpath where the last of the animals
outside light casts a diffuse brightness on what appears to be a smaller
cave jutting out from the rock.
The first smaller cave has one entrance facing the bridge and another if
2 you follow the thin ledge around the cave, all stone crudely chipped NPCs
away.
A plateau gives you a reprieve from shuffling along the ledge. The path
continues towards another entrance, but straight ahead you can also see An item on the
3
a platform rising out the darkness – with no obvious way to get onto it – platform
which has something stacked up in the middle of it.
The second smaller cave contains what you think must have been a A trap in the side
4
stairwell at some point, but the structure has long since crumbled. wall, Creature
 A trap in the
A strange setup, definitely a man-made room with a partition and a door
5 smaller room, an
leading to nowhere but the depths below past the partition.
item
The bridge looks stable and if you cross, you you can hear the crashing
An item on the
of water below get louder. The pathway connecting back to the first
first walkway to
small cave is crumbled, but on this side of the bridge someone installed
the right, a trap on
6 a sight to behold: three walkways leading out and ending abruptly with
the second, and
waterfalls shooting out right beneath your feet. The one walkway to the
on the way to area
left of the bridge has water falling down on it instead, making the end of
7
the walkway difficult to access.
A small room with a long, winding stairwell downwards and a hole in the
A creature waiting
7 wall that looks like it might be an entrance as well, but, again leads only
at the bottom
towards a deadly plunge.
A distinctly non-natural hall that’s supported by wooden beams and has
two exits both connecting to the same walkway. This time there isn’t a
A guardian-type
8 great height being overcome, but rather a pool of water stretching across
NPC
the whole lower level and being fed by the waterfalls from above.
There’s also a secret entrance in the floor leading to area 9.
This secret room beneath the lake is accessible through two entries, one
in area 8 and one on the walkway and one through a path leading off the
9 An item
walkway with a hatch just below the water surface. If one wanted to hide
someone or something, it would definitely be in here.
An unassuming room, also with two doors, also clearly not a natural
10 occurrence. There’s a nook in it, the perfect place to restrict someone to A trap
and trap them.
The platform on this web of walkways seems out of place. There is Creature reaching
11
nothing to see from it, really. out from the water
Another door that doesn’t lead to anywhere in particular. The water
level outside occasionally reaches just high enough to flood the doorway
12 A creature
and surrounding area. In the corner of the room, a crumbling staircase
bides its time before it falls apart completely.

As you can see, some symbols were ignored in favor of logical design and even though you
could make the operational amplifiers (the triangular components) a symbol that means
something specific like the others, in this case they were simply used as platforms. By their
nature, the circuits only have symbols on the wiring, giving you the chance to fill the rooms with
whatever seems good to you.

Of course, you could use the method described above on its own and fill the dungeon you
created yourself or with the help of any number of great random tables out there, but in the
following pages you can also find ten of each “Traps and Tricky Places”, “NPCs”, and
“Creatures” which have also been inspired by concepts in electrics and electronics. Some of
them additionally have suggestions for items you could seed in previous dungeon rooms to aid
in the character’s quests. You can see which object or concept inspired the game idea too; in
case you want to read up on it.
d10 Traps and Tricky Places Inspiration Items
A room with 16 large stone tiles that will fall away into a
bottomless pit (and are then replaced by new tiles Karnaugh-Veitch-
1
lowering down) if you step on the wrong one. See closer Map
description on how to solve it below this table.
A room with two entrances, one will turn everything in
the room upside down. If you want to turn it the room Operational
2 back, you have to exit out the back and re-enter, but the Amplifiers and their Giant Potion
more often you do this, the bigger the objects in the inverting pin
room get.
A large stream of liquid is held back by a barrier, but the
barrier is connected to a tiny flow by a hidden
3 Bipolar Transistors
mechanism, such that increasing the small rivulet will
open the large barrier.
A mindless machine patrols a corridor, programmed to Slime that, it
attack any humanoids. It stops in regular intervals and you’re covered
Nyquist–Shannon
4 detects the vibration the footsteps create. Of course, in it, makes
sampling theorem
bipedal creatures have different step patterns than you slippery on
quadrupedal ones. any surface
The walls in this winding staircase make you feel hazy, Electromagnetic
5
confused, and yet you somehow feel drawn to this place. Induction
A junction that, once entered, will not let you leave,
always somehow returns you to that same place, unless
6 Kirchhoff’s first law
exactly the same number of creatures go in and out of the
junction at the same time.
A room will not let you advance unless you touch neither
7 Bandpass filter
the floor nor the ceiling.
There’s a normal-looking gate which signifies a rift in
A clock
time. Every time you pass in one direction, you get set
8 Delay Circuits showing the
back further in the current timeline (to you it appears as
true time
though time has moved faster on the other side).
The information you need is contained in a book that
9 can’t be opened normally, you have to wait until a very Capacitators
specific (repeating) point in time to be able to do so.
In a corridor, a cloud of toxic fumes is released by the
fungi on the wall on either side. The fungi are particularly
irritated and release more fumes if the wall they are
10 JFET-Transistors
growing on are very warm. Problem is, a pipe (or
naturally occurring hole) runs through these walls,
transporting warm air, also warming up the walls.

A Karnaugh-Veitch-Map is used to simplify Boolean expressions, but for the purposes of the
game, a modified version in both appearance and use are employed. An empty Karnaugh-
Veitch-Map (left) and one for game purposes (right) are shown next to each other below.
ABCD are used but they could be replaced by any array of four symbols or letters that better fit
your game:
 AB 𝐴̅𝐵̅ 𝐴̅𝐵 𝐴𝐵 𝐴𝐵̅
00 01 11 10 𝐶̅ 𝐷
̅

00 𝐶̅ 𝐷
CD 01 𝐶𝐷
11 ̅
𝐶𝐷
10

The line above a character means NOT. Generate one passcode that may look like 𝐴̅𝐵̅ 𝐶̅ +
𝐵𝐶𝐷 + 𝐴𝐵̅ 𝐶𝐷 ̅ . The tiles that are safe to step on are the ones that combine all these attributes.
The first part (𝐴̅𝐵̅ 𝐶̅ ) means not A, not B, not C: the 1st tile in the 1st row and the 1st tile in the
second row. The second part (𝐵𝐶𝐷) means that the safe tiles are the 2nd and 3rd tiles in the
3rd row. The last part (𝐴𝐵̅ 𝐶𝐷 ̅ ) designate the 4th tile in the 4th row as safe.

d10 NPCs Inspiration Items

The guards: a group of professional looking young A ring
people sent by the local government. It has been belonging to
infiltrated by a bandit, as evidenced by the fact that the Doping of the infiltrator
1
infiltrator has slightly different than what appears to be Semiconductors that they lost
standard gear. Every time the PCs encounter them, they and secretly
have one member less because the spy killed them. want back
The collector: a harmless other adventurer looking for
the next of 8 pieces of an artefact. It is said to dispense Bit as a unit of
2
some ancient wisdom if assembled. Will ask to tag along, Information
has all kinds of trinkets in their vast bags of exotic fabrics.
The philosopher: a machine that contemplates if it is Alan Turing’s work A special key
3 alive and sentient and will pester the PCs with on machine that’ll turn off
philosophical questions. intelligence the machine
The prisoner: a person stuck in a hole that is just wide
“Holes” as carriers of
4 enough to fit them. They cannot move and are being
charge
artificially kept alive.
The exiled: half person half beast, they have fled society
and hidden in the dungeon when they began changing.
5 Not for nothing, if their beastly side comes through, they Alternating current
will attack the PCs while they mean no harm when the
human side dominates.
The mad scientist: a disheveled looking person, recently
lost their spouse and, in their experiments to revive them,
6 at least managed to make some dead bodies dance, Luigi Galvani
which their spouse also loved to do. Is in the dungeon for
the private, uninterrupted space.
The archivist: a writer, hands full of ink, weary looking
who won’t even acknowledge the PCs presence. They are
7 sitting in a library which is constantly slowly burning DRAM Refresh
down, and their sole job it is to rewrite the information
over and over again.
 The gatekeepers: a variation on the classic “one guard
who always lies”-scenario. There are 3 guards for 2
doors. One door is an AND door, one’s an OR door.
8 Any guard can either lie or tell the truth but if both Binary Logic
guards at the AND door say something, it is true, while
only one guard at the OR door needs to say something
for it to be true.
The landowner: Rich person with impressive mustache,
bored with their lifestyle, went to investigate when they
George
9 heard things were happening in this dungeon in the lands
Westinghouse
they recently purchased. Attracted to anything interesting
and by extension, dangerous.
The lost child: A kid who was exploring an area adjacent
to the dungeon and accidentally stumbled through a
A comfort item
secret entryway. The entryway wouldn’t open from the Reverse direction of
10 like a teddy
other side, and they’ve been trying to find their way out a Diode
bear
since. Has explored some areas but tends to exaggerate
dangers if asked.

d10 Creatures Inspiration Items

A tentacled creature that transmits the pure energy from
1 its central body to any living thing it touches. Can be Electrical wiring
defeated by connecting tentacles (short circuiting it).
A creature that is invisible to the eye at first but becomes
2 more visible each time it is struck successfully and gets LED light intensity
hurt.
Several creatures who have parasites attached to them A parasite (to
3 (which look like part of the creature to the untrained eye) Batteries know its
which make the creature behave aggressively. appearance)
A beast of steel, who, for short bursts of energy is able to
4 rotate around itself at incredible speed, making it hard to Electric generator Ball bearings
hit and flattening everything in its way.
A creature that excretes a fluid which will quickly erode
5 any metal on the attackers while at the same time adding Electrolysis
it onto its own protective shell.
A hive of small creatures that lies dormant in the walls
6 but is awakened and seeps out when light falls upon the Photoelectrical effect
wall.
A crystalline monster with sharp spikes all over its body.
Crystals used in
7 They are brittle, so both easy to break off and hard to get
semiconductors
out of wounds.
A creature with seemingly a thousand tiny legs with barbs
The looks of
that it drives into victims and kill them off slowly, either
8 microcontrollers / -
leeching off their blood or smothering them, whichever is
chips
more convenient.
 A large creature and a bunch of smaller creatures that
look exactly alike, if one of the smaller creatures is slain, Kirchhoff’s second
9
the big creature shrinks. If the big creature is injured, one law
of the smaller ones disappear.
A creature that is blind but has antennae sticking out its
head in multiple directions. They gradually get thinner as Beetles that
they go outwards so the ends are barely visible. They run around
10 Temperature sensors
float around the room like a single spider web strand in and combust
the breeze, sensing if there’s a temperature difference spontaneously
between them

Credits:
Designed and written by N.B. for The Heptagon Entertainment Company
Artwork free for non-commercial use:
Page 1: “Dynamo Machine” by William Dwight Whitney off https://etc.usf.edu/clipart
Page 2: “Electrical Symbols IEC” off https://commons.wikimedia.org
Page 8: “Watching, Waving Man” by Joseph Blanc off https://www.fromoldbooks.org