Blank maps

When I began this blog two years ago, I posted some of my hand-drawn D&D maps from the early 1980s. Some people seemed to like them. I don’t often draw dungeon maps by hand these days, which is perhaps a pity. Mostly I use Dungeon Crafter III, which used to be freely available from someone called Shard Games but the site has sadly vanished. While it has some obvious limitations, it’s relatively quick and easy to use, and you can get that classic TSR blue map style that some people hate but I really like.

Anyway, here are the maps I made for The Ancient Crypt of Feng-Hou with all the numbers and annotations removed, in case anyone wants to use them for dungeons of their own.

You might notice that both levels contain several “loops” (Level 1 has 11 and there are 9 on Level 2, although some are only accessible via secret doors). To my mind these are essential and I get grumpy when I encounter dungeons without plenty of loopage. Why? I can do no better than quote Justin Alexander’s words from his excellent series on Jaquaying the Dungeon:

These loops are the basic building blocks for non-linear dungeons: They provide meaningful strategic and tactical choices; make exploration meaningful; and allow PCs to find alternative routes around or through potential threats.

As ever, if you do find a use for these maps or anything else I post here, please comment or drop me a line and let me know. Cheers.