This is the Shaowdark one pager I did without the random generator from the shadowdark rulebook. I feel like using that system starts to generate pretty similar stuff pretty fast so its better to look elsewhere for inspiration. I like how the witch cave hatching came out so wanted to make another one like that.
Let me know what you think.
This one page dungeon is a lair for the Dolmenwood RPG by Necrotic Gnome. I have been enthusiastically drawing OPDs for Shadowdark, but since at the moment I am really running Dolmenwood and there's also a project with my daughter, which we are planning to publish for this system, I thought maybe I should try to make OPDs for it as well. Making lairs is a no brainer for Dolmenwood so let's do those, I thought and here we are.
The dungeon in question is the home base of a witches coven called The Singing Pentacle. Only the coven's priestess lives here full time, but her witch sisters visit occasionally so there could be more than one witch present. If you decide to run this I would love to hear how it goes in the comments and all feedback is appreciated so shoot away if anything comes to mind.
This week's dungeon is an old dwarven outpost, which has fallen into bad times. The goddess of RNG bestowed less action to this one and it might be possible to go through the whole thing without a single fight. I got to say that now after 9 maps I am starting to have some problems with the Shadowdark "Shadowdark Maps" section as randomly rolled maps start repeating themselves. I guess will have to look for some other inspiration to keep this up, but no promises and we'll see.
For this map I experimented with some new technique. Firstly, I got myself thicker paper and instead of a grid, printed light dots to it. The grid on the map is hand drawn and I wanted the grids to be close to invisible in the text boxes. Secondly I got more pens of different thickness and even some grey ones to draw scatter and shadows on the map.
Got the ideas for these new drawing techniques from @Henksuli. He has some nice maps online as well. Take a look at them here, if you want.
As always, comments are more than welcome and if you use this in your game, please share your war stories :D
This time I made couple of new things. I wanted to try out making a more natural shaped cavern map opposed to the more abstract "blocky" look. Another thing was that instead of lines, I just colored the null space black. Someone already said that it could be an issue if someone wanted to print the map, but let me know what you think? I feel like I haven't yet found any style, I'd want to stick with even though this weeks work feels like the best so far (I am not sure if its the black null space or the fact that the dungeon is more natural shaped though).
The dungeon itself is a pretty basic cave style thing, which I imagined into the desert realms of the SD "Western Reaches" campaign setting, but which you are free to slap into wherever you want naturally :D
This one page dungeon is supposedly from the Shadowdark "Ruins" Geome. I am not entirely sure, what the ruins are supposed to be, but this particular dungeon is a part of a ruined city, which was hit by some sort of cataclysm. I think it could be used as a "point of interes" when crawling in a place like that. You can easilly make this into a regular dungeon too if that's what you are looking for.
Here I attempt to make something drastically different from your basic dungeon. It is a high level adventure sight, which is namely a thunder cloud which has a palace of a Storm Giant King inside. I feel like this sort of thing would really benefit from a little more text describing the environment (for example, if you can fly, what happens if you fly into a wall). However since this is a one page dungeon. I leave this sort of minutiae to the Dungeon Master :D
This week's OPD comes early, because I won't be able to get on my computer for a while. It's a low level dungeon caves with some orcs and something more nasty, which should be avoided at least if you are a low level party. I tried a new stippling method too. Let me know what you think about it.
This OPD is a tomb of an evil overlord. For some reason I feel like it would fit some desert climate. Maybe the tomb could even be inside a small pyramid. I think it would be a good fit for a party of around 3-5 levels, but haven't tested this one myself so might be I'm wrong. Enjoy!
This ruined church has a some dark cultists holed up in the catacombs. If you need hooks, maybe the cultists are abducting ppl for their nefarious rites. Room 5 in the dungeon looks like the obvious place to keep prisoners and the guy in there could be a prisoner of the cult if you like.
This here one pager is a low level dungeon with a nasty surprise at the end. I think it works best if you spam rumours of a kobold tribe and a kobold king to create false expectations for your players. If you are ever going to use this, I'd love to hear how it went in the comments below.
This Shadowdark map was inspired by a youtube video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDRmIhHhEy0). This was made with the random tables from the core book and all the monsters are from from that source as well. I think this would play out best for a high level party, because the critters you get in the deep tunnels are no joke.
