Castle Greyhawk Four New Dungeon Level Maps Revealed

 CZ Act 1 "Alpha Preview" Map

TLG published a Castle Zagyg "Alpha Preview" to CZ1 backers on 2 April 2026, showing one-quarter of The Cellars, level 2 of Castle Zagyg:

Castle Zagyg Preview Map of
Level 2, The Cellars

Included along with the map were 12 pages of keyed encounters, all again labelled as an "Alpha Preview" so that we're ready for any and all typos and other errors in the text and map.  I may review the encounter keys later sometime---the map is all that caught my eye in the content thus far.  

Zach Howard of Zenopus Archives fame began a thread on 12 April 2026 to discuss the map and key details in Dragonsfoot's Gary Gygax's World of Greyhawk forum:   Castle Greyhawk Dungeon Level 2 [possible spoilers].  Trent Smith (of Mystical Trash Heap fame, and his Storm Fetish Productions rules and adventure designs are brilliantly Gygaxian) and other DF members have begun delving into the analysis, including me.

CZ Act 2 Backerkit Launch Map

The new Backerkit Castle Zagyg campaign preview launched on 7 April 2026 and revealed the complete map for the second level of Castle Zagyg, its full title revealed as Level 2 The Deep Cellars:

Castle Zagyg Level 2 Map,  
The Deep Cellars

The lower-left portion of the map is same one from the CZ preview sent out to backers from the first campaign, but with further changes made.  

The other three maps are all new to me, and I don't recognize them from my Castle Greyhawk or El Raja Key research thus far.  I'll be doing some additional digging to see what (if anything) I find in my archives, but for the moment each of the other quadrants appear to be newly-revealed-to-the-public level maps, which is of course a wonderful thing!

CZ Act 2 Lower-Left Map

Here's a zoomed in version:

Zoomed-In Map Version of
Castle Zagyg Level 2 The Deep Cellars

Many differences exist between this map and the Alpha Preview version from earlier in the month, which I plan to review in depth alongside all three versions of the map.

Three versions, you ask?

TSR Version by Eric Shook

A much earlier version of same the lower-left corner of the CZ2 preview map was rendered by Eric Shook for the early 1980s Greyhawk revival at TSR, and was later sold at auction in the mid-2000s by Paul Stormberg of Legends of Role-Playing and The Collector's Trove fame:

Eric Shook's Castle Greyhawk rendering
from TSR c. 1982

This map was one of six different levels auctioned at that time, four others from Castle Greyhawk's dungeon levels.  The auction also included one of my favorite level designs of all time, which Shook designed for Steve Marsh's Starstrands planar project that was, alas, never published by TSR.  That map was quite radical for its time!:

Eric Shook's unpublished Starstrands map c. 1982,
original photo by Paul Stormberg

Side-by-Side Analysis - Added 16 April 2026

I've completed my initial comparison of the three maps, and here's an image of them together, with changes highlighted in yellow and green:

All 3 maps compared
by grodog

Changes Logged Across the Three Versions

At a high level, the changes made are most prominent working from the 1980s Shook version of the map (on the left side in the above picture) compared to the initial preview released on 2 April 2026, in the middle in the above picture.  The changes from the Alpha Preview version (middle) to the Backerkit launch image (right side) are more-minimal, and mostly involve changing doors back to secret doors, which in fact help to correct and realign the movement and flow of the map to be closer to the original 1980s map than the Alpha Preview version.

It is also worthwhile to note that the Shook Map wasn't completed:  some areas on it are drawn without any access points, and there are no secret doors shown on the map at all.  (Presumably those would have been added in the next step of revisions and updates to it).  So, some of the changes introduced in the later revisions to the map may have been present on the original, and simply not completed at the time of Shook's draftings.  

1980s Shook Map Changes

The changes from this map to the Alpha Preview version are significant and run across the entire level.  They include: 

• Changes to fit the level into its new configuration as part of a larger, combined level spanning four separate original levels of one sheet each
• modifying the corridors along the north and east edges of the sheet to be 20' wide---which is a change I like, since I'm a fan of large corridors in general!
• adding entry points due north of 295 on the top edge of the map, and in the NE corner of the 20' wide corridor, along with another door on the eastern wall just north of 284
• simplifying several corridors by straightening them out, in particular in the SE quadrant of the level, but also in the NW quadrant's corridor north of 2-100
• Moving some corridor intersections and/or chamber walls:
• the huge NE chamber accessed by the long, winding corridors is 10' narrower (288 in the later versions)
• the chamber immediately south is also narrower by 10' (287 in the later maps)
• Removing most of the stairwells and pits, and the ramps/slides:
• stairs gone in the later versions include those that flank 2-108, east of 293 in the top-center, west of 285, 
• ramps and/or slides at 2-101 and 289 are changed to stairwells; when first seeing this level, my speculation was that one of these was the slide to China at the bottom of Gary's original Castle Greyhawk
• Altering the flow of the loops Gary built that connect sub-sections of the level to each other, and simplifying access to previously-less-accessible areas:
• 285 now has 2 doors that enter it vs. just one 
• the 2nd B to the right of 294 has two doors entering, instead of just one on the N wall, and either a false door on the S wall or a one-way door (this is the only door drawn as such on the level, so it's hard to know which the symbol might represent; it's possible the western-wall door leading into the 2-101 slide in Shook's map may also be another partially-drawn one-way door, which may edge the symbol closer to that function vs. false door)
• the archway into 284 is opened up, which creates a second entry point into that room 
• the corridor west of 284 no longer intersects as a four-way east of 286, which squeezes out one of the rooms in the stacked room maze due south of 286; the "S" corridor leading to the removed pillar west of 285 also provided another route into 284 and 285, but in the later versions only one path leads to those keys now
• Simplifying corridor and room flourishes:
• removing the rounded niche in the N wall of 296
• squaring off the rounded edges of 2-105 and 2-106
• removing the pillar west of 285
• removing most of the "end cap" square pillars on long hallways like east of 2-105, west of 2-103, east of 2-101 (south of the added doors/secret doors)

Some new features were added in the Alpha Preview map too:

• A covered pit appears in the eastern corridor leading into 2-105
• A well is added at 2-102
• Pillars are added to 288 and 296
• A door is added to the 290 stairwell, which is also moved deeper into the corridor vs. Shook's original placement
  
  

Changes from Alpha Preview to BK Launch Map

The revisions to the later version of the map largely focus on secret doors, more-specifically changing standard doors into secret doors:

• The standard doors entering these key #s all became secret doors:  O by 295, 2-103, 2-105, 2-108, 285, the offset series of secret doors that lead into 288 from the east, 291
• The dead-end corridor/corner south of 292 was added, which provides another entry point into the SE sub-section of the level
• The inaccessible dead-end east of 2-108 is opened up on its eastern wall in the BK Launch map, with what looks like might be an archway

In general, these changes restore some of the difficulty in finding and accessing areas that had been made more open in the Alpha Preview map, by making the chambers harder to find, or less-accessible in terms of obviously-open paths leading to them (while still adding the secret doors as further possible entry points).  For example, in the Shook Map, 2-103 was only accessible from stairs down from its flanking chambers, which led to a seeming dead-end corridor, that seemed to have a trapdoor leading up into the center room.  

Continuing Review

I updated this post on 16 April 2026 with all of the text between this section and the Side-by-Side Analysis section above, along with the Starstrands map and comments.

More to come! :D

Allan.

grodog's Approach to Designing Mega-Dungeons - Part 2: the Function of Size

 ...or, a Meditation and Reflection on What grodog Likes Best about Playing in AD&D Mega-Dungeons

Sean Bean on the futility of finishing
Castle Greyhawk

If you've not read it, you may want to visit part one in this series first:  grodog's Approach to Designing Mega-Dungeons - Part 1: the Maps.   If you already read it, I revised it a bit while writing this article, since I'd left a sentence fragment dangling in the middle of discussing the "Best Presentation in Print" and "Pulls It All Together" criterial for my favorite mega-dungeons.

Drafting this follow-up post has taken me two weeks rather than one since life's remained pretty busy of late.  That will probably continue through the remainder of March, so follow-up posts may also appear a bit more slowly than I'd originally thought (surprise, surprise ;) ).  

Size Matters

In Part 1: The Maps, I wrote a bit about designing maps for mega-dungeons, with the explicit assertion that mega-dungeons and their levels should be large, and by large I mean a few different things:

1. Size as Coolness
2. Size as Options
3. Size as Really Freaking Huge

Let's tackle them one at a time.

Size as Coolness

The classic mega-dungeons have immense gravitas, so here size helps to deliver on the potential, the rumor, and the legend of Castle Greyhawk---Undermountain, or Caverns of Thracia, or Maure Castle, or [insert your favorite mega-dungeon name instead].  Bringing that legend to life at the table may be challenging, but the rest of the attributes I call out below help to support that mythic sense of awe---hopefully!

Implicit is my assertion that a mega-dungeon is cooler when it's bigger, which definitely (and coincidentally ;) ) aligns with my aesthetic preferences, but here are some thoughts on how larger levels actually make for cooler game play, using one of my designs as an example.

grodog's Recessive Gallery Level

grodog's Recessive Gallery Level

Recently reprinted in Fight On! Magazine #15 (Spring 2024), I'd forgotten that I'd previously shared this map on my grodog's Castle Greyhawk page, too---I had thought it was a "newly revealed" level when I offered it to Iggy to include in the zine.  So much for exclusivity, and my memory....  The full-sized version is at https://www.greyhawkonline.com/grodog/gh_castle_grodog_level_07-filled.jpg if you're curious.  

The map is unfinished, and incomplete:  many encounter areas drawn don't currently allow ingress, save by digging, passwall, or etherealness; there's not much added for intra-level stairways yet; ramps, trapdoors, and stairs up/down to adjacent levels aren't much present yet either (although placeholder spaces for these are present); pits are mostly unmarked (although the central double-T trap at the corner of the 30' wide cooridor where it turns N from E is a pit that opens into a holding/monster chamber below); etc.  That's pretty normal for how I work my maps up---some areas that are currently shown as inaccessible rooms may be filled in during the final version, or may have standard or secret doors added.  Or may remain inaccessible, and require digging or magic to enter---although I tend not to do that a whole lot, overall.  

This level is drawn on an 8.5x11" sheet of graph paper, gridded at 8 spi, making it pretty big:  64 squares N-S (~640') x 88 squares E-W (~840').  In this level, I placed several large chambers, intended in part as lairs for competing dragons.  When I redraw this to finish it, I'll likely use two of our Black Blade 11x17" sheets, for 17x22" dimensions drawn on the 6 spi side, so that'll allow 102 squares x 132 squares, which will let me fill out the rest of the level's edges that currently run off the sheet---I did this with the "Iounic Caverns" level maps, as well as my original Level 1 map too (if you click on the images in that blog post, they'll still load, but they don't display in the blog post due to Cloudflare).  The level will likely enlarge a bit further, similar to my process on Level 1, with some additional sub-level areas being added (or perhaps being relocated.  I may also connect the large southern chamber to one on my "Diamonds in the Rough" level, which has a very similar vibe with draconic presences; to do that, however, just might require a third sheet....).   

The larger encounter areas include, starting at top-right and moving clockwise:

• overlapping encounter areas at different elevations along the 3- to 5-o'clock arcs
• temple chamber in the southern 6-o'clock area, via the skull/lightbulb shaped room and the multi-level complex to it's immediate NE
• large off-edge chamber at the south 7-o'clock, possibly a dragon lair; this is accessed via a Gygaxian room maze of octagons joined by squares that likely has teleports protecting the lair
• upside-down coffin-shaped hexagonal chamber at the confluence of several large and/or long corridors, at the 10- to 11-o'clock positions in the NW corner; I think this is the primary dragon on the level
• top N at 12-o'clock is another room maze of regular hexagons
• central N at 12-o'clock to 12:30-o'clock is where the titular Recessed Gallery resides

The use of different sized sheets and grid-sizes for the levels in a mega-dungeon help to hide the edges of each level, so that the players won't automatically be able to find an edge and then circumnavigate the level's periphery:  it makes exploration less predictable, and each level more distinctly unique, and keeps the players guessing "just how large is this level?" which is definitely a good thing!  Both room mazes and the long corridors along the left/W similarly blur that edge, breaking it in the case of the room mazes and the 7-o'clock S large chamber.  The ragged right-hand E edge similarly leaves gaps, which should suggest searching for some of the secreat areas too.

The large size of the level helps to support these kinds of larger, cyclopean (to HPL for a moment) corridors and chambers, which increase that sense of awe and immensity that I want players to experience have when they're exploring Castle Greyhawk.  Large spaces and long corridors that extend well-beyond the range of visible light sources, including continual light at 6"radius and bullseye lanterns at 8" range, increase player paranoid and build that sense of scope, or vastness, in particular when that extends above (and sometimes below!) your current walking surface---PCs are moving through an ocean of darkness, in their tiny island bubble of illumination.  Peter Fitzpatrick's cover art for Knockspell #4 amply illustrates this concept nicely:

Knockspell #4 cover art
by Peter Fitzpatrick

The scenes of Thorin's company marching through Erebor while Smaug is "not at home" also convey this sense of cyclopean immensity too:

The dwarves exploring Erebor, The Lonely Mountain,
from "The Battle of Five Armies" (2014)

Very large levels also provide additional options during game play, as I detail next.

Size as Options

In many ways, the mega-dungeon offers the most concentrated essentials available for playing AD&D---AD&D in its most "pure" form, if you will.  Within its boundary walls, the mega-dungeon encapsulates the essence of AD&D play, and challenges the players in all aspects of the game:  all classes, monsters, spells, magic items, encounters, and treasures are on the table.  All PC classes have equal opportunity to rise in glory, or to die trying in the agony of defeat.  All DM encounters may be mowed down in the player pursuit of XP, or may mature into recurring villains like Obmi or Eclavdra.  

Showcasing the breadth of possibility for the whole of AD&D does not mean that simple and  "anything goes" funhouse environs are the required format for mega-dungeons---whether built by Zagig Yragerne, Halaster Blackcloak, or the scions of Uncle from Maure Castle---but that in gaming there, all tools are available to the players and the DM.  All PC classes should have equal opportunity to shine, including druids, assassins, barbarians, and bards, among all the remaining PC and NPC classes (well, maybe not cavaliers.... ;) ).  All PC races should be able to flex their detection muscles too---dwarves finding stonework traps and elevators, gnomes determining sloping passages and direction of travel, elves and half-elves finding secret doors, and half-orcs acting as intermediaries with humanoids, and gnomes and hobbits entering small spaces.  

A related aspect that larger mega-dungeon levels support is expandable capacity:  the mega-dungeon keeps inspiration and creativity flowing by offering plenty of room for sub-levels, side levels, split levels, demi-planes, and other pet projects.  This keeps the players and the DM creatively intrigued and engaged, since formerly-explored areas can be enriched with new encounter areas, perhaps even via variable features, and allows the creation of distinctly unique challenges and areas to support less-common and non-standard classes, monsters, and encounter types.  

I group these two together under their own heading since I see them both as closely-related but different approaches to supporting options.  The breadth of possibility focuses on the wide expanse of core rules and their supplemental additions and expansions, while expandable capacity focuses on the actual dungeon level, its architecture, and environs, rather than the rules that govern what encounters occur within the level.  

Size as Really Freaking Huge

These attributes drill down into the above two, but still stand-out in my mind as important criteria that merit their own focus and discussion.

Verticality as Large and Open Spaces:  Large monsters like dragons and rocs, elementals and purple worms need wide and spacious areas to operate within, so dungeon level designs need to provide room for such creatures , and to accommodate the tactical selection of encounter terrain being brought to bear in combat and flight by both mega-dungeon inhabitants and invaders.  

This is where the the 20' to 50' wide corridors from the DMG's Appendix A come into play, along with the chambers and rooms of unusual shape and size (CaRoUSSs, perhaps ;) ).  However, long or wide corridors that connect to central plazas, squares, or parade grounds can serve similar functions, too, as can numbers of 10' wide corridors converging into hubs, with their long lines of sight.

Verticality as Depth Within and Between Levels:  Verticality is highly-valued in the mega-dungeon design ethos, and is generally credited to Jennell Jaquays' Caverns of Thracia and Dark Tower, which feature movement up and down within levels, across and between levels, and vertical features spanning multiple levels like chasms and wells, balconies and overlooks, and interconnected cavern systems.

Verticality within a level is, in my mind, nearly as important as verticality between levels, but both are essential to good mega-dungeon play.  The levels need room to breathe, to provide the space required for those large encounter areas, and that means that they probably need 50 to 100 feet of depth per level (those pits that don't fall through into a new level below need to fit within the level's depth, along with the headroom for those 30 to 50' ceilings.  

To give room for those spaces, the depth between levels should likely be 50 or more feet.  That also allows room for smaller clusters of rooms at landings, or off of stairs.  It also helps to keep players guessing about the depth that they're going down between levels---if each level is only 10 feet down from the previous one, they'll have an easier time guessing where their PCs are, and the challenges that their PCs will face.  

Multi-Level Dungeon Features
from Roger Musson's "The Dungeon Architect, Part 2"
Artwork by Iain McCaig

Verticality as Total Depth:  As the space within and between levels increases, the mega-dungeon grows downward, deeper into the depths.  First DM'd at GaryCon II and North Texas RPGCon #2, my "Escape from Level 14" scenario thrust the PCs from the level 10 dungeon challenge they were expecting and dumped them lost into level 14.  They needed to find their way up and out, if possible.  

For that scenario, built using my old Castle Greyhawk elevations, they were ~4200 feet below the surface, which is about 8/10th of a mile.  Earth's deepest mines are ~2 1/2 miles down, so as I build my new elevation maps, I'll allocate the necessary room for each level's footprint (as a placeholder I only used 50 feet per level, for the most part, in the original versions), which will increase the depths for the lower dungeon levels even further.  That should also enable connections to the drowic underworld for some of the deepest levels, perhaps.

Big and complex enough that players and their PCs can get lost:  For reasons to get the PCs lost in the first place, see Roger Musson's "Dungeon Architect" articles, referenced in the first article of this series.    

Getting lost is a design function of the mega-dungeon's size, interconnectedness within and across levels, and its external connections to other environments ("extraconnectedness" perhaps?).  Teleporters---with or without similarly-designed areas of levels---are not the main reasons that PCs get lost in mega-dungeons.  Flight from encounters is why PCs get lost.  Players can't map while fleeing at , and if they end up going up/down a level, fall into a pit or a chute to another level, wander down a sloping passage, etc., then they're well and truly lost, and the entire tenor of the evening changes to finding a path back to familiar ground.  

When PCs are lost, strange actions may be taken, like:  

• players desperately consulting the mappers, trying to guesstimate distances and turn counts travelled 
• gnome, dwarf, and stout halfling PCs being consulted for GPS coordinates
• characters asking for directions, or bribing (or charming) dungeon denizens for the same
• divination spells suddenly being memorized

...to say nothing about the possibility of the party running into other encounters as they flee blindly hither and yon ;)

Sufficiently vast in scope that the players and their characters will never completely explore the largest levels, much less the entirety of the mega-dungeon itself.  Always will some monsters  remain undiscovered and undefeated, traps unsprung, enigmas unsolved, and treasures unlooted.

Sean Bean on the futility of finishing
Castle Greyhawk

As Boromir asserts, one does not beat Castle Greyhawk by exploring its every nook and cranny, and then move onto the next checkbox in the AD&D gaming experience ;)

Next Up?

For part three, I will examine how I key mega-dungeon levels, including the types of paper/sheets I use, and some volume-based keying strategies, unless I tangentialize on other topics first---such as traps, a dungeon encounter type that I hold great love for.   We'll see! 

Thanks for reading and your comments!

Allan.

grodog's Approach to Designing Mega-Dungeons - Part 1: the Maps

...or, a Meditation and Reflection on What grodog Likes Best about Playing in AD&D Mega-Dungeons

Introduction

This post is my response to a recent discussion of my mapping style and inspirations over on reddit, begun by user SydLonreiro, who asked

For my first AD&D dungeon, I would like to map it like Grodog, but I don’t know how to do it. I’m not sure whether he developed a specific method for doing so, or whether some of you map large dungeon levels in this way. I want to create a dungeon the way Kuntz would, and map it in this style, because it seems like the right approach for preparing my sessions — and I love this type of map. 

I was quite tickled to discover the thread after Heather and I returned from dinner celebrating St. Valentine's Day (we never go out on a Valentine's date on the actual day/weekend when it's usually so crazy-busy), and I spent some time this weekend noodling a bit in response to SydLonreiro and also to user chaoticneutral262, who raised some Qs/concerns about mapping style relative to encounter keys that I plan to tackle a bit later.

And, as it turns out, SydLonreiro is building his own mega-dungeon for use among his friends, and plans to run it in a very "Gygax 75" manner using OD&D, which is quite cool.

grodog's Inspirations and Design Sources

To begin to answer some of SydLonreiro's questions on the mapping front, I tend to wear my key inspirations on my (tie-dyed) sleeves, including:

• The original mega-dungeon levels of Castle Greyhawk and Castle El Raja Key designed by Gary Gygax and Rob Kuntz in particular, alongside a variety of other old-school designers like Jennell Jaquays (Caverns of Thracia) and Phil Barker (Empire of the Petal Throne's Jakallan Underworld)
• In the OSR/contemporary era, I particularly favor works large-scale dungeon designs by Richard Barton, Chainsaw, Anthony Huso, Gabor Lux, Tony Rosten, Keith Sloan, and Trent Smith, among others
• Architectural artwork including M. C. Escher's non-Euclidean optical-illusions, Piranesi's Imaginary Prisons which echo with a vastness that definitely catches my eye, and Philippe Druillet's Elric Le Necromancien--first published in the year I was born!

Some of my favorite dungeon design articles include these pieces:

• "Hints of D&D Judges - Part 3: The Dungeons" by Joe Fisher in The Dragon #2 (August 1976) - another excellent example of early dungeon design advice that stands the test of time; I particularly like Fisher's active and imaginative example treasures, use of watery areas, and recounting of Castle Greyhawk lore
• Gygax's various early 1970s articles about D&D play and design, mostly-summarized on my web site at https://www.greyhawkonline.com/grodog/gh_castle_sources.html 
• The Players Handbook's section on "Successful Adventures" in pages 107-109
• "The Dungeon Architect"--Roger Musson's classic from White Dwarf 25 (June 1981), 26 (August 1981), and 27 (October 1981) is an excellent three-part series that covers dungeon origins, NPCs (creators, raiders, inhabitants), and dungeon construction (architecture, traps/tricks/teleporters/etc.), and dungeon design models (silly, ecological, etc.).  Reprinted in Best of White Dwarf Articles Volume 2 (complied in 1983), where I first read it.  I'd still love to reprint this someday (along with some of Paul Vernon's WD articles too)!
• Gabor Lux's "Dungeon layout, map flow and old school game design" originally published on ENWorld 15 July 2006 and reprinted at K&KA on 12 July 2011
• Matt Finch's "Megadungeon Tactics: Mission-Based Adventuring" in Knockspell #4 (Spring 2010)
• Trent Smith's essays on adventure design in his Heroic Legendarium pages 97-118

We've enjoyed some good discussions about design theory articles like the above over on ODD74 at essential references for dungeon designers and K&KA at megadungeon resources.

grodog's Mega-Dungeon Design Aspirations and Touchstones

The design approaches exemplified through the works created by our past and present masters come together as a set of internal tendencies and design northstars that I aspire while working on my mega-dungeon levels.

These lurk behind the scenes in my Favorite Mega-Dungeons post as well as some of my favorite adventures too:  both the original list, and my expanded and revised lists.  The qualities I called out as key to my favorite designers' levels were:

1. Best Environments to Explore and Map
2. Most-Fun Encounters
3. Most-Fun Puzzles, Enigmas, and Centerpiece Encounters
4. Coolest Maps

I listed a fifth and sixth pair of attributes too (Best Presentation in Print and Pulls It All Together), but at the time I'd not felt that any in-print products did a mega-dungeon justice, and that few published ones managed to pull it all together as a complete product.  Tomb of Abysthor (Necromancer Games, 2001) and Maure Castle (Paizo Publishing, 2004-2006) come closest, with ToA at 7 levels with 2 sub-levels and MC published 4 levels with 3 sub-levels (including the free "The Warlock's Walk" level on the now-defunct Pied Piper Publishing discussion boards and in The Oerth Journal #23).  Rob outlined a vision defining 18 total levels for Maure Castle, but Paizo lost the licenses for Dungeon and Dragon, so the series ended, incomplete.  Caverns of Thracia (Necromancer Games, 2004) and Foolsgrave are runners up,  at 4 levels with 2 sub-levels and 3 very very large levels, respectively.  CoT is about the same size as The Temple of Elemental Evil, but is significantly more complex and interesting as a dungeon, so I don't consider ToEE a mega-dungeon and generally consider Thracia as the minimum viable footprint to be a "true" multi-level mega-dungeon.  Foolsgrave, however, counters that since it's levels are substantially larger than the three other published mega-dungeons combined:  its three levels are built from 29 levels worth of footprint—the other mega-dungeons' levels were drawn at one sheet per level, and total only 18 sheets worth of dungeons.  It captures that majesty and scope that's so essential to the mega-dungeon exploration experience.  

I'm sure you've already noticed that #1 and #4 both focus on the maps, and that's a huge factor in my design approach:  I almost-always begin with drawing a map then keying it, rather than building the keys and designing the map to fit them (which really is something I should try sometime...).  And #2 and #3 are really both two sides of the same coin on the encounter keys—I just emphasize the puzzles, enigmas, and centerpieces a bit more by calling them out specifically over the dungeon dressing, monsters, treasures, traps, hazards, and riddles encounter types.

In thinking about these while working on a recent article about Anthony Huso's OSR designs, I revised and expanded those first four precepts to six:

1. Compelling and Imaginative Creativity
2. Inspiring Environments to Explore and Map
3. Fun and Challenging Encounters
4. Great Layout and Information Presentation
5. Modular but Filled with Inspirational Expandability
6. Tempered in the Crucible of Campaign Playtesting
   
   

And while they track to my general adventure design sensibilities, my favorite mega-dungeon design preferences remain fairly rooted in the idea that bigger = better.  In a 2016 discussion on putting the "mega" back in the mega-dungeon, I wrote:

My sense is that mega-dungeons are driven by both focus and size. 

In terms of focus, a mega-dungeon that grounds an entire campaign is a campaign dungeon—and IIRC Trent Smith coined that term some years ago. In my mind "mega-dungeon" and "campaign dungeon" are related but not synonymous terms. I have placed several mega-dungeons in my Greyhawk campaigns—Castle Greyhawk, Blackmoor Castle, Maure Castle, a series of inter-related ruined Suloise dungeon complexes below the Sea of Dust, a great dungeon carved out of the glacial Black Ice, etc., etc. Other than Castle Greyhawk and Maure Castle, however, none of the others are campaign dungeons in my games, since they're not the focus of my players' activity. Castle Greyhawk provides that primary focus (with some interleaving with Maure Castle from time to time), so it is the campaign dungeon in most of my Greyhawk campaigns. 

In terms of size, a mega-dungeon is sufficiently large that it cannot be completed during game play. That size can be accomplished in a variety of ways, depending on how the DM approaches their dungeon design: 

• very large individual levels: I try to vary the sizes of my dungeon levels by creating them using differently-sized graph sheets, and I have 8.5x11 sheets that are 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, and 20 squares per inch, 11x17 sheets that are 5, 6, 8, and 10 spi, and 1 big pad of 17x22 sheets at 4 spi. You can fit a LOT of dungeon onto an 8 spi 8.5x11 sheet, much less an 11x17 one, let me tell you! The gigantic poster maps of Undermountain, Mammoth Dungeons, and Armaron are probably the best examples of this style of dungeon that have been published (that I'm aware of). Barrowmaze's poster maps from the KS also fall into this scale (although I'm not sure whether poster maps were done for Barrowmaze Complete or not??), and the large and inter-related cavern levels in Castle of the Mad Archmage do as well. Phil Barker's Jakallan Underworld from EPT also falls into this category, along with Arden Vul. 

• lots and lots of levels and sub-levels: the levels can be in physical proximity, and thus attached to the dungeon, or adjacent at the planetary or planar levels, and potentially exist physically in another multiverse. Rappan Athuk features many small levels, as do the Mines of Khunmar. 

• connections to other large dungeons: Scott Casper created teleporters between Castle Greyhawk and Maure Castle in his Castle Greyhawk webcomic, for example, which intertwines both of those mega-dungeons, effectively doubling their already prodigious sizes, with the added complexity that you could be teleporting within a level, across levels within the same mega-dungeon, or across mega-dungeons! 

• vastness of the environs: think of Erebor or Moria in terms of simply how huge they are, regardless of whether they're really mappable as levels at all; Holmes' "Underworld" in his Boinger and Zereth fictions is said to delve the entire planet: "What race or races built the maze, no one knew. In the opinion of the sages of Caladan, many layers of dungeons and underworld were laid down, one atop the other, as the world crust was formed, so that now no one knew or even guessed how many levels extended below the surface" (Maze of Peril back cover text).  This also suggests another scope of "mega"—that of depth below the surface, which naturally brings to mind the G-D modules and drowic underworld, Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth, Pellucidar, etc., etc.

For related discussion, see putting the "mega" back in the mega-dungeon at K&KA and Megadungeon Definition? at Dragonsfoot.

Foolsgrave - Chainsaw's Ultimate Mega-Dungeon

I still don't think that anyone has topped Chainsaw's brilliant Foolsgrave levels, which are vast and beautiful and visible from inception through conclusion in his Foolsgrave (development thread, spoilers) at K&KA, with the finished maps shown below at https://knights-n-knaves.com/phpbb3/viewtopic.php?p=225505#p225505:

Old Level 1

New Level 1

Level 2

Level 3

More to follow, later in the week!

Allan.

Mega-Dungeon Monday - The Recessive Gallery Level

This is a presently-unfinished map that I designed primarily during the pre-COVID era:

The Recessive Gallery Level - 
map by Allan Grohe (grodog)

The map is drawn on 8 spi graph paper, so it represents a fairly large level environment---880' east-west by 640' north-south.  That places it solidly among the largest of my dungeon levels, and it's comparable in width to my original design for the first level of my Castle Greyhawk (which has been significantly enlarged more-recently, along with my second level).  

Unlike many of my maps, I didn't sign and date this one, so I'm not sure offhand when I created it during the past decade-ish, but I worked on it last in November 2019, probably as prep for running it as a convention game, but I didn’t get quite that far with the keying. 

As usual with my unfinished maps, various rooms are orphaned until I determine whether access to them will be via doors, archways, secret doors, or other more-esoteric means of entry.  

Some interesting (to me, anyway!) features to note:

• Entrances are via the 60’ circular shaft just right-of-center, ramps on the right side, a 20' wide corridor to the south, and a 20’ wide secret corridor on the far left
• The area just above the entry shaft is the levels titular Recessive Gallery---a recessed artwork gallery.  I haven’t decided exactly what type of art is represented in its exhibits, but I’m leaning toward statues and other physical/magical art emplacements (similar in style but not necessarily subject matter to those in my drowic sage of demonology's home in Erelhei Cinlu)
• You’ll notice some triangular doors drawn on the level, and they are in fact triangular in shape and placed in triangularly-shaped corridors, which complicate movement (the triangles are oriented with the point downward)
• A few of the rooms are moving, although only one is marked on this version of hte map:  the lower-right 40x40’ room
• Two multi-level complexes exist:  an octagonally-shaped one in the lower-ish left, and a square-ish shaped one in the lower middle right.  These extend upward and downward from the baseline elevation of the level, and may reach into other adjacent levels (I haven't determined that yet).
• The large skull/lightbulb-shaped room is likely a temple, perhaps to a god of death---perhaps Nerull or Wee Jas or a previously-slain god of death (two of my players' PCs are interested in the god of death:  one is from the Horned Society and has been actively worshipping Nerull, while another is a fey bard from another plane and is enamored with an aspect of the god of death from that plane, who may or may not also existing within the portfolio of one of Greyhawk's death gods)
• I placed a few repeating room-door mazes in the level, in the tradition of early Gygaxian and Kuntzian map designs
• At least two of the large rooms are inhabited by dragons!

More to come as I continue to work through older draft posts and as inspiration strikes! :)

Allan. 

#Dungeon23 Resources - Mega-Dungeon Tools of the Trade

Desmond Tutu's old adage---"How do you eat an elephant?  One bite at a time."---is sound wisdom for how to deal with any seemingly-impossible and/or overwhelming and/or too-daunting task.  Just take it one step at a time, and eventually you'll have finished whatever Herculean trial that besets you. 

But, you ask, what do Desmond Tutu and eating elephants have to do with Advanced Dungeons & Dragons or the World of Greyhawk?  Far more than may immediately meet the eye!:

1. Fantastical elephants have a long and storied place in wargaming and history---Hannibal's elephants crossing the Italian Alps to invade the Roman Empire were quite real in 281 B.C.E.---as well in AD&D's elephant-inspired outer-planar-agent of Good, the baku. 
   
   Tolkien's oliphants, however, probably take the cake:
   
   
   

   

   Animated Oliphants from Peter Jackson's
   Return of the King film

   
   
   
2. When we played together as kids, my younger-brother Phil sometimes lifted historical, real-world people for use as high-level NPCs in his games set in the Known World from CM1 Test of the Warlords.  A few distinct names still stick with me: 
   
   - Sho-Rembo, a pregen elf name borrowed from B1 In Search of the Unknown (I may be conflating this character with another character he named Suhie Baba, perhaps)
   - Bruce Lee as the Grand Master of Flowers (likely as inspired by the Commodore 64 Bruce Lee game as Enter the Dragon :) ):
   
   
   

   

   Bruce Lee -
   Commodore 64 title screen

   
   - Nelson Mandela!---but alas, I don't recall any specifics about Mandela's class or level in the game, just that he was a high-level NPC national leader
   - ...and Desmond Tutu, who was, of course, one of the few a high-level NPC clerics able to cast Restoration, Gate, and Resurrection =)
   
   
3. Several folks have been championing a cross-blog/platform project of building a mega-dungeon, one room a day, one level a month, to end up with a 365 room mega-dungeon by the end of the year. 
   
   According to Ben Laurence's post, Sean McCoy started the idea, which has been shared enthusiastically across Twitter, reddit, Facebook, user forums, and elsewhere using the #dungeon23 hash tag, which I'm rendering as dungeon23 since I'm not sure whether blogger actually supports pound signs in labels.
   
   And, of course, building a mega-dungeon is a monumental task, so taking it one bite-sized room at a time is a worthwhile methodology to drive some creative focus.
   

That said, while I love and support the idea of more mega-dungeony creativity and goodness entering the old-school gaming world on a regular basis, I'm not going to participate in the Dungeon 23 challenge as structured.   I am quite interested, but I have enjoyed judging my version of Castle Greyhawk at conventions over the past 15 years, and running an online campaign centered in and around Castle Greyhawk since 2020, as well as DMing my boys through Castle Greyhawk in their ongoing (but now more intermittent, since they're both freshmen) Castle Greyhawk campaign since 2012 or so, too.  So I don't really need to build a new mega-dungeon, per se. 

Instead I will take inspiration from the #dungeon23 challenge to continue to develop my own version of Castle Greyhawk, and to leverage the focus of #dungeon23 as an inspirational push to finish some of my still-incomplete levels, and to whip them in shape for publication.  That's been a long-time goal of mine, so perhaps this'll help provide the additional structure and focus I need!

grodog's 8-ish years delayed
Castle Greyhawk levels

It'll also help to get me back on track for more-regular mega-dungeon Mondays content, too! 

#Dungeon23 Resources

And just because I'm not building a room a day doesn't mean that I don't have contributions to make to support a cause so near-and-dear to my DMing heart! =)

I'll start out with some basic tools of the trade for folks who are new to mega-dungeon design, and continue later with additional design resources.  

Graph and Hex Paper

One of the primary challenges to building and running a mega-dungeon is conveying its scale:  

• How do you convince your players of the huge majesty of the dungeon and its many levels?
• How do you design levels that are worthy of the term "mega-dungeon level"---big enough for the players and their characters to get lost within?
• How do you encourage them to map and explore the ruin, each cautious step into the dark balancing trepidation and expectation for what may be revealed?
  

One key way that I try to convey scale is through building my Castle Greyhawk levels using a variety of graph paper sizes.  Levels designed on sheets with 4 spi (squares per inch), 5 spi, 6 spi, 8 spi, and 10 spi will provide very different size dungeon levels, even if all drawn on a single sheet of 8.5"x11" graph paper. 

I most-regularly use grid sizes of 5 spi, 6 spi, and 8 spi for my levels, but they all get used from time-to-time (and one or two of my old Armory pads of graph paper have 20 spi grids on them, which I use for cross-section/elevation maps showing the relationships between the levels themselves and large features that span multiple levels). 

 

I also like large sheets of paper, and while most of my pads are 8.5"x11", I regularly use 11"x17" sheets with 5 spi, 6 spi, and 10 spi, with some are even larger 17"x22" sheets in 4 spi and 8 spi (my thanks to Rich Franks for gifting me the latter nearly a decade ago!). 

 

Black Blade Graph and Hex Pads

I love graph and hex paper so much, we began to sell pads of it for Black Blade back in 2011!

 

We offer three sizes of graph and hex pads, with 40 sheets per pad, and each sheet is 60# weight paper (it's heavy enough that some friends paint dungeon fill on the sheets using India Ink and a brush!):

1. mini-pads @ 4.25" x 5.5"
2. standard letter-sized @ 8.5" x 11"
   
3. standard ledger/tabloid-sized @ 11" x 17"
   

The mini-pads are single-sided, while the two larger pads are duplex-printed with different-sized grids on the front and back of each sheet. 

You can see them in our Facebook album (which is publicly visible) at https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.705096762986612&type=3 and if you're not interested in a Facebook link, you can also view the graph and hex sheet designs in my GaryCon X post at https://grodog.blogspot.com/2018/03/new-titles-at-black-blade-booth-at-garycon-x.html.

Hex Crawling Home for Your New Mega-Dungeon

While our Black Blade hex grid pads were designed to be compatible with drilling-down into the classic Greyhawk and Wilderlands of High Fantasy map hexes, you can use them with any homebrew or published campagin setting, of course. 

Our 8.5" x 11" hex pad contains three levels of hexes, to allow you to drill down into a single large campaign hex for local details, while our 11" x 17" pads feature two levels of hex to build out regional and continental map details. 

You can view our sheets in use in some of my blog posts where I've drilled into large, campaign-sized Greyhawk hexes at https://grodog.blogspot.com/2023/01/why-greyhawk-in-2023.html and https://grodog.blogspot.com/2020/02/renovating-the-monastery-in-greyhawk-part-1.html (this one also walks through my methodology for to detail larger hexes by breaking them down into smaller ones) and also in Mike Bridge's Greyhawkery blog at https://greyhawkery.blogspot.com/2017/06/new-greyhawk-map-ulakand-mesa.html and https://greyhawkery.blogspot.com/2020/11/new-map-ice-barbarian-campaign.html (among others).

If you're interested in ordering any of our graph or hex pads, you can email us at tacojohndm@yahoo.com or message us from our Black Blade Publishing Facebook page.

Pencils, Erasers, Markers, and Pens

I use mechanical pencils with .5 mm leads for drawing most of a level's features.   I also use Prismacolor colored pencils, for drawing water, gates, traps, magical and other zones, and other features that I want to distinguish with color. 

 

For fixing errors, I use both a Pentel Elite Eraser (~1/4" around white eraser) and Sanford Tuff Stuff Eraser Stick (~1/8" around white eraser)---this one I usually slice off the tip so that I have a sharper and more-refined edge for more-controlled, precise erasures. 

 

I still draw some levels in pen and ink, using my signature Parker rollerball pen with .5 mm fine blue ink cartridges.  While I drew many of the levels I designed from 2005 to 2014 or so in ink, and still have a fondness for that look, one of our cats spilled water across the dining room table and wiped out a bunch of our play session notes and some of the maps from one of Henry's dungeons (not his DM maps, but our player maps/notes).  The ink just washed off the sheets like it was never there, alas.  So I've mostly shifted over to drawing in pencil again these days.  

 

I also still have a set of technical pens from my architecture days, that I'll pull out (along with some calligraphy pens that Heather doesn't use anymore) when I want to design some treasure maps, letters, or other player handouts:

 

Various parchment papers with
Rapidograph and Rotring pens

If I didn't own the pens and inks already, I wouldn't buy/use them just to make D&D handouts, since they're somewhat fiddly and have to be cleaned properly or the unused ink will clog the nibs.  As an undergrad I never had a vibrating ultrasonic cleaner, and I don't use the pens often enough to justify the expense today---although I have heard that some miniatures painters use the ultrasonic cleaners to help with stripping minis, too.... 

 

I use Stabilo art markers (sensor .3 fine, point 88 .4 fine and sensor .7 medium thicknesses when drawing dungeons in ink (and have pretty much fully replaced my Berol Prismacolor colored pencils, although for maps that I draw in pencil, I'm still more likely to draw features in colored pencils on them vs. markers).  

I use Sharpie and Bic black permanent markers (fine point, although "fine" on these markers is still far thicker than on the mechanical pencils or Stabilo markers), for filling in the between-stuff fill.  

 

For ink and marker corrections, I use a Bic Wite-Out Shake 'n' Squeeze correction pen, although it's not always the best.  Sometimes I'll just patch a sheet by redrawing it, and taping a smaller sheet atop the area that needs repair (I'll do the same thing in some maps to add another layer above or below the baseline elevation of the level, too---my "Heretical Temple of Wee Jas" level has these elevated additions taped to the map). 

To store my pens and pencils, I use a ArtBin Pencil/Utility Box (one for each).  Inside them, in addition to the pens or pencils, I keep a small manual pencil sharpener with two sizes of holes, spare pencil leads and erasers for the mechanical pencils, very small rulers (including a small triangle ruler with different grids along each face; this too dates from Penn State), spare blue and black ink rollerball cartridges for my Parker pen, and the odd paper clip or binder clip.  The ArtBin boxes have padding along one side, which helps prevent the tips of the pencils from being crushed as they move around in the box.   

Stencils

I have ten plastic mapping stencils that I keep together using a single ring-clip.  Here are a few of them:

A sampling of grodog's mapping tools

My go-to stencil is one I've had since college (several of my mapping supplies, in fact, date from my one semester and one week as an architecture major at Penn State), and is the Template Designs General Purpose TD 422.  I use this to draw doors, hexes, arcs, and small equilateral triangles.  Henry has a newer version that's basically the same template but with two arcs on it instead of just one, but I think it has fewer hexes.  

Other regular-rotation stencils include:

• Triangles and Diamonds R51
• Squares R30, and
  
• Combo Circle Master TD104---used a lot to draw both circles and arcs (using just part of a circle)

For hexagonal rooms, I use general purpose template (it has 7 hexes on it, ranging from 1/8" per side to 1/2" per side), as well as several other's I've picked up for just the hexes on them:

• Rapiddesign R-57 Template Bolts and Nuts---includes 13 hexes and would be my first choice if i were to be buying these fresh today; the hexes range in size from 1" across side-to-side to 1/4" across side-to-side; it also has squares and circles on it, and some silhouettes of a bow-like looking washer design
  
• Staedtler Professional Sketch Master Template 977-135---has 12 hexes on it, but it also has little nubs that raise the template higher off of the paper surface, which makes it a bit harder to work with

 Less-frequently used, but still quite nice to have templates include:

• Ellipse Masters R77 and R78---I probably really didn't need both, but the ellipses span different sizes on each template; R78 is the same as R77 but includes ellipses that are 20, 30, 40, and 50 degrees)
• Rapidesign R-83 Chemical Ring template---includes three pentagons, hexagons, septagons, and octagons, in addition to some molecule groupings of hexes
• Learning Advantage Geometry Template 2826---includes a nice mix of larger shapes, including a novagon, decagon, various non-standard triangles and parallelograms, and a protractor

 

Other Tools of the Trade

I use a very nice composite-woods clipboard that one of my cousins gave me ages ago, and it fits standard letter-sized sheets quite handily.   I normally have the clipboard loaded up with sheets of scrap paper, since we re-use the blank backs of stuff that gets printed and isn't needed anymore:  I take notes for games sessions on these, use them for noodling on level keys, writing drafts of articles, etc.  While mapping, I usually draw with a few sheets of the scrap paper behind my graph paper sheet; it feels like it gives a smoother flow for drawing. 

From time-to-time, I occasionally use:

• 6" and 12" ruler or other trustworthy straight edge; the stencils do fine most of the time; I do have a T-square also dating from my architecture days, and will use that occasionally on the larger map sheets
  
• a compass; I don't use this much, since the circles template meets my needs most of the time
• flexible curve; I rarely use this now---it's one of those artifacts from my undergrad architecture time
  

For letter-sized storage, I use either a 3-ring binder (I do prefer ones with at least 1 if not 2 pockets) with sheet protectors (I use heavier archival ones, as much because they're thick and provide better protection as for preservation).  For the larger sheets I use both 11"x17" sheet protectors, or a Dunwell Art Portfolio sized for 11"x17" sheets.  For the sheets larger than 11"x17", I fold them in half (which I also do with some of the 11"x17" sheets, to fit them into a letter-sized sheet protector). 

I'd love to hear about what other tools do you may use when drafting your maps, in the comments! :D

Next time:  my favorite mega-dungeon design articles!

Allan.