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Lord.Sorasen
2011-01-12, 09:36 PM
So, I've been DMing the past couple of weeks, and so far all fights have been either outdoors or within a single room (dictated by those cardboard dungeon map things in the DMG.) This week, I want to do something different, and do an actual dungeon, with multiple rooms, walls, tighter spaces, etc... A temple to be exact.. The problem is I'm not sure how to.

I figure I might be able to print a gridded map on-line, but I have a couple issues with such. The first being is that I'm not sure how to guarantee the grid will actually be 1" by 1" once it's printed. The other issue is that I'd rather not waste a lot of colored ink.

My other problem is that there's no way I could draw my own map. I'm a terrible artist, but what's more is that I'm a terrible mapper. I have had to make only one map throughout the campaign (an over-world sort of thing) and it is the worst map anyone has ever seen. I would love to simply find either a dungeon generator or premade maps if such a thing exists.. Preferably in black and white (I don't mean the kind I can just set on my printer, btw. I mean literally black+white without shades of gray. Clean outline sort of thing). Is such a thing asking too much of the Internet?

Thanks in advanced, Lord Sorasen.

valadil
2011-01-12, 10:12 PM
Personally I don't like drawing out the whole dungeon. Tight spaces, forking hallways, spiral staircases, etc. It just takes too much time to draw and the players go right on past it. Instead I just draw the combat areas and fill in the rest verbally.

I mention this because it makes drawing and prepping the dungeon a whole lot easier. Get a chessex battlemat. Draw the room. It doesn't require artistic talent to draw a line along the grid.

Fuzzie Fuzz
2011-01-12, 11:17 PM
What I did was get a large sheet of cardstock, like a presentation board. Find one that has grid-lines printed on it, or use a thick marker to draw them on yourself. Go to Kinko's or an equivalent and get it laminated. Use Vis-À-Vis pens to draw erasable maps. They don't need to be pretty, just show where the walls and important places are. Fill with imagination and voice. Costs about $15 and no more than an hour of your time.

EDIT: Reread your post and this wasn't quite what you were asking for. Ah well.

There are maps available online if you look, but you don't want to give the players the map at the outset, unless they have some reason to, but even then don't give them one with a grid and all the secret rooms. Find a gridded map (or make one yourself, I see that you don't think you're very good, but dungeons aren't all that difficult since they can be all straight lines) and just describe where the players are going. Then, draw out the combat zones on your erasable grid when necessary.

FentonLyebread
2011-01-12, 11:25 PM
If your having trouble with ideas, here's one:
Take your Cathedral (or temple, whatever), and make an easy-to-see trap door or ladder of some sort that leads down into some kind of basement where the preist or temple leader (or, again, whatever) is actually also taking part in a cultist group!!!

...would I make a good bard or what??

Lord.Sorasen
2011-01-13, 02:13 AM
I'm afraid I didn't make myself entirely clear.

It's not that I don't know how to draw. It's that I'm terrible at mapping (I am also terrible at drawing). But both the ideas are excellent and I should definitely give it a try before giving up.


I mention this because it makes drawing and prepping the dungeon a whole lot easier. Get a chessex battlemat. Draw the room. It doesn't require artistic talent to draw a line along the grid.

So turns out the chessex battlemat is discontinued. Which sucks because it looks like a really good idea, actually. Is there any product out there that does the same thing? (Battle grid, water soluble marker sort of thing?)

never mind, turns out just the single sided mat is discontinued. Whoops.

Edit again: Turns out I own an essex battlemap! Just had no idea it was one until now.

Savannah
2011-01-13, 03:27 AM
If you're wanting a random dungeon generator, I like this one (http://www.myth-weavers.com/generate_dungeon.php?). Note that this will not give you 1" squares, but I would not recommend printing out the entire dungeon at full scale. 1) It's too unwieldy to use at the table 2) It's hard to keep the players from seeing too much 3) You'll waste a lot of ink on corridors and so on where there will never be any combat. I always have my map with all the details on it, then hand the players a blank sheet of graph paper and let them map as they go (it's always fun to see what notes they put on the map for themselves) and draw out rooms for combat separately on an erasable grid.