When designing a new dungeon, I begin with an excel spreadsheet. Change row and column width to make square cells, color the whole thing light blue (like those great early modules) and re-color cells white for rooms and passages. This has a lot of limitations but is good to make sure the layout makes sense and it's very easy to edit.
@@luna-c7610 Oh nice that is cool you could then add on little images you have of things to represent places like towns, dungeon areas, towers or anything else. Hell just draw little image and take a photo on your phone drop it in and print it all off :-) great tips lads.
Player mapping needs to be brought back to the game. Revealing of a map with the online tools just isn't the same. Having to do the mapping really makes the player pay attention to room details and makes players think of ways to not get lost like using string or chalk marks. It just adds a whole other element to the game and to the atmosphere of a dungeon.
I miss all the Player Roles. Mapper... Caller.... etc. It took a lot of the weight off of the DM's Shoulders and helped the Players feel more invested in the game as a whole.
I recently sat-in with a group playing 5e at the FLGS. As it was a dungeon, I pulled out my graph paper and started mapping. Most of the players had never seen or heard of such a thing. All they have ever known is a DM drawing their map on a table mat for them.
I am running my 14 year old son and his friends through the 5e version of Undermountain and having them do all their own mapping. They are having a great time with it. And some disagreements as the party mapper has already gotten them lost once because he wasn't paying attention to my descriptions. Exploration and mapping like this just adds something to the game.
We used 10/12 graph paper under acetate covers and we used grease pencils to keep track of of where the party was. I played mostly among close friends but did play with a huge group as described in this video for a short time. The older guys who ran it were really into themselves and it became no fun real quick. Also played in some large convention like games at Andres Air Force base that were held on Saturdays. They were always to ambitious and usually got nowhere in the six hours they had. The price has really gone up on the original manuals since I last looked, hum.
Whenever I see a video like questing beast or dungeon craft tackling topics like that I always think of your channel. You are the OG. Timely subject for a video; thanks!
One thing that came up in my group when discussing this style of play is the issue of time paradoxes that might happen when going to a location took a long time, for example a week-long boat ride to a pirate cove, all described during a single session, but the other groups wouldn't have their time advance that much because they played more frequently than once a week. This style of play is not for me because I usually have only a single group at a time, but the idea of an exploration campaign in the old style, with generating points of interest on the fly is very appealing.
Yeah, I think the idea is to keep the adventure locals within a reasonable traveling time. I think this kind of play works best if you have a central 'club' location that you can go to. But it could also work well for online play. Create a discord server dedicated to the campaign and people can set up their games there.
Um, all the way back in 1e, and before, I made massive dungeons and, yeah, some were what you call 'funhouse', but most were not. They had some rhyme and reason to them, but they were enormous. We also did something in my area that I've never seen anyone duplicate in 5e. I'll actually be doing a video about this, myself. And, yes, you are correct - the party always had hirelings who stayed with the horses/donkey/cart, etc. while they delved... BUT... often, those hirelings would include backup characters for the players so that if they bit it in the dungeon, they could rejoin the party... We had four DMs in my area, myself included, and we would often employ 'West Marches' (not what we called it at the time) and parties varied based on which DM was running the game. The KEY thing to know is that an adventure typically ended with the party returning to town... so, if a player from that group couldn't make the next game, no problem - they stayed in town.
The reason why there doesn’t need to be a common thread - because each room is basically just another puzzle for the party to undertake and use their characters imagination, remember to always let the characters role playing in combat work most of the time, even skill check if preferred. Reward your players for thinking outside the box, instead of saying no you can’t do that, have them skill check and failure means a sloppy failure.
YES! Dungeon explorers. Love the artwork on the boxes over the actual miniatures to be fair... and I've really wanted to rebuy them, but wow are they expensive to get now.
@@captcorajus Mine were given to me by someone a couple of years older but who hadn't kept on playing D&D, he heard I was interested so just gave me a box of minis including those. Astonishing how seeing them again took me back about 40 years!
Yeah, I was also re-reading M&T just recently and my takeaway from this section was that it places a huge emphasis on screwing with the mapper. I find that good fun in moderation, but I maybe wouldn't have every other room be a stealth teleporter, rotating elevator, etc. I do love that it freely admits how some of the examples are "not suggested for actual use", though. ;) Edit: Reposting this comment because I attempted to fix a typo in the original and UA-cam served me an error and deleted it. Silly UA-cam.
I never used mapping tricks after realizing that players made enough mistakes on their own. I was also worried that they would give up mapping entirely if they felt I was making it hard on purpose.
Got a campaign coming up around a megadungeon using my own ruleset and definitely using player mapping as part of the adventure. I'm not gonna tell you if the item is important or not, but if you have limited inventory (which they do in my rules) then you should consider if it's worth keeping. Maybe set up a cache of stuff that you can't bring with you. Maybe set up a base camp with extra supplies that you can't carry with you. But I'm not keeping track of it. You'll want to mark on your map where it is. Or there's a weird statue here that looks important but doesn't really seem to do anything. Keep track of it on the map and come back to it later. Idk it kinda reminds me of games like Fear & Hunger.
Captain, I run my campaign semi-West March style. It’s sand boxy and open for the PCs to pursue leads as they will. I LOVE the Conan / Pulp adventure stories and have incorporated that in to my campaign with The Forbidden City (Module I1). I put a step pyramid dungeon with multiple levels in there that used a teleported to go level to level but can go haywire if the users aren’t careful. The old school dungeons that eschew ecology for rule of cool play are the best.
Ha I have been looking up this type of campaign over this weekend what are the odds you make a vid about it? Going to be fun I am feeling with Mt OSR system.
Excellent video CC! I appreciate all the graphics that must take a lot of time to produce. I have to say that I much appreciate the ease of stocking a ready made dungeon like ‘In Search of the Unknown’. That really appealed to me as a first time DM.
I can not help but to think of Undermountian while I listen to you talk about these dungeons. Thinking about the game in this style make some of those old spells, the ones not widely used any more, make more since. I also never thought about odd angled passages being deliberate to throw off mapping. It makes since now. Game on!
neat-o...i remember making stuff like this when i was a teenager playing Basic/Expert and AD&D! :) and HA! I have the monster and treasure assortment book from then!! i also have that metal paladin mini you showed which I bought at the toy store in town, but I used to just bring it to the table and set it in front of me because we used "theatre of the mind" (my first successful character to survive was a paladin) ...that said, today i kind of dislike "mega-dungeons" and prefer to make sandboxes that have a mini open-world like how "Keep on the Borderland" is laid out (but bigger area) with a central location and and nearby adventure sites with rumor tables (fun!)...I combine what I learned in "Keep" and the hex crawls of "Isle of Dread" to create my adventures now, and the adventure involves moving across a hex map from the starting point to the adventure site, then exploring the adventure site (smaller & less funhousey than a mega-dungeon), and then returning or going to a new destination via hex crawl. If I do a hex crawl, it will be adjusted in different ways -- maybe sometimes its just a narrative with set encounters, or maybe it is more detailed with chances to have random encounters or events mixed in with some "set pieces" (planned encounters, stolen from soccer vocabulary)...I still love reading the stuff Gygax wrote. Even if not all of it is in the form of useful rules, there is a lot in there to think about and make it your way!
@@captcorajus the Wikipedia article i found says that Dungeon came out in 75, with D&D in 74, but a prototype was made in 72. Quibbles. In any case they were cut from the same Blackmoor cloth. I've owned the game since the early 80s and had lots of fun playing it with my friends. I picked up a more recent edition about ten years ago and got to play it with my kids.
I play with my kids and there isn’t going to be another “west marches” style group of PCs. But how about I do a little solo play, of one other pc or group of PCs. Then the main party can uncover the traces of the solo group
Swords & Chaos looked like it had some real good art; I love hot fantasy art. WOTC put a sword in D&D trying to slay it for years luckily I found a TTRPG I love called D100 Dungeon by Martin Knight.
"Undermountain? Ah, yes. A great place to have fun, the most famous battlefield in which to earn a reputation as a veteran adventurer-and the largest known mass grave in Faerun today." -Elminster of Shadowdale
I really like this and Dungeon Class' video on this topic, it really puts old-school type play into more context. I have a question about something Dungeon Class does with his campaign which is laying out everything around the starting city as one day of travel so the characters can be safe in the town at the end of each session. My question revolves around something about dungeon design which is are there other ways to make deeper parts of the dungeon more easily accessible other than through portals, teleportation circles or short cuts through the dungeon? It seems to me having only three options might get a little boring, unless I suppose things like gaseous form could even work in a dungeon as fast travel as well as over land. I was wondering if you or anyone else had more input on inter-dungeon fast travel. Thanks!
I've never been a fan of what's called the "west march" style, mainly because it always felt too open-ended and I've always enjoyed having at bare minimum a theme and scope for a campaign; on top of that D&D has to me always been a more intimate affair, not something with a "revolving door" of players (although, having seen the rise of "pickup games" in D&D, I DO think that's a solid candidate for this approach). I get that Gygax's original game was like that, but IMHO it's something that was never really "the way" of playing the game, and more just a result of it evolving from a wargame that had a club. That being said, however, I've become enamored with the more episodic approach of adventure design in the vein of the Conan stories or the 1970s Conan comic where each adventure could see him in a different land, without the detail of how he got there, and occasionally have some linked stories or previously-encountered person show up again.
I'm fortunate in that I have a pretty steady group of players, each week. I do not make an overly plan for a 'campaign arc' but I've learned that with simply following me weekly notes one will.. ultimately emerge. Thus, the emergent story is my thing. I let the plot evolve organically through campaign events that are built off the player character's decisions.
Have you played or seen Barrowmaze or those Mega Dungeons by the same creator? Everything is so well fleshed out including factions, areas outside the dungeon, hex areas etc... of course you can just plug your own setting in and use the dungeons but damn it is really cool though, could have your party come to the area and keep games going or even use them as a plug in and play in different areas of course but using these games own settings would be better and have a party made or show up in the area. Works with all B/X type rules no problem so will do for everyone who likes Old school gaming with little to no changes for stats :-)
When designing outdoor or building / underground adventures - keep in mind the hundreds of hours of down time for your 'monsters'... The design must have some logical setup for the creatures and people that live there. Storage, food, water, and Purpose - why have a bunch of rooms, what is their business or motovation ? The community of opponents must follow their version of logic, reason, practicality and usefullness. The player adventurers are usually the unwelcome intruders into their world. What is the reason your rag - time team of rebels or Shining Paladins come into conflict with the unknown ?
Dudes… Use pen and paper. Just go spend $2 at staples and buy some graph paper and start at it. Make a map, number the rooms. Start inhabiting your rooms. Don’t worry about if it makes sense, because in the beginning there were very thin membranes of segueing rooms. Sure make some rooms where mobs run away to get reinforcements or what not, but yeah just use your imagination, NO RULES WHEN IMAGINAING.
I still use the 3.5 rules, I consider them tactically flexible and easy to teach to new players. A lot of the hard copy material that I have is 1st Edition AD&D, core books and soft cover adventuring modules. I also do internet research to use OSR modules and port them into 3.5. My latest pet project will be the descent into the depths style megadungeon. The PC's can explore it or not, but if they settle on going right through it. I plan to have it make a certain amount of ecological sense; while engaging that very fun house flavour, when considering the whole. Differing races, underworld factions and ecology; all combining to keep my players on their toes and not knowing what to expect, when they are 10 torches deep.
I'm assuming you're talking about the wilderness map? Do a google image search, 'west march campain' and you'll see many such maps. I can't say for sure, but it looks like it was created with inkarnate.
@@captcorajus Yup thats the one I'm referring to. I like the simple art on it and would want to use a similar design for a West Marches campaign. Thanks for that! Also on a sidenote, really enjoy your content my friend. As I continue diving into OSR style stuff, its nice to see theres a community out there with similar interests. Cheers!
Anyone know where I can get the maps on ArtStation printed to scale? Been searching everywhere so I can get some old school battle maps printed but no luck, I am in the UK but don't mind pay extra to have it done overseas
I really enjoy this channel and I've subscribed; however, having the name of the channel in all lower-case (captcorajus) and no space between capt & corajus is like a splinter in my mind. Perhaps you could update the channel name to include a couple of capital letters (even with no space) such as CaptCorajus. Anyway, great channel with great content for ol' grognards and for those of us who are new to OSR alike. Keep up the good work!
The name comes about a full decade before I started my channedl. I was trying to create a unique log on name for gaming that no one else would have. I didn't created it specifically for my review channel. It HAS been updated as much as UA-cam ALLOWS a channel to be updtated. I've added RPG Retro Reviews to the name, but it doesn't show up on the list.. if you know how to make it show up, i'm all ears.
5e works amazing with this kind of dungeon. It's basically designed to be a dungeon crawling system and that's where it kinda went wrong. People don't use it as a dungeon crawling system, resulting in numerous disparities in power.
My issue with 5E is that it actually spoils the Dungeon Crawling experience IMHO. Too many character abilities and spells just solve problems that players use to have to 'think' their way out of. Pack of the Chain Warlock has a familiar that can basically explore the dungeon for you, while the party waits outside. There are no encumbrance rules, and just about every race has infravision.
* This is a little off topic but, speaking of designing dungeons, how come they've never given us a really kick-ass Dungeons & Dragons movie yet? Would I be way out of line by saying that the 3 films that they've given us, kind of sucked ass? We need a Dungeons & Dragons film that is literally on par with Lord of the Rings. I'm talking, like that. I know that 1 year from now, they're going to release another one, starring Chris Pine. All I know about it, is that it's going to be taking place in The Forgotten Realms campaign setting, because they mention the nation of "Thay". * So it might involve "Szass Tam" the Zulkir Lich High Regent of Thay. They also mention a female Wood Elf, and a female Tabaxi(which is a type of cat-like bipedal humanoid that appeared in the 1.5 edition Fiend Folio). I always wondered why they didn't just have the 1st movie show a group of 4-7 high school kids in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin in 1974, who get together at the nerdiest kid in the group's uncle "Gary's" hobby shop in town, to use one of the gaming rooms to play the "Chainmail" wargame as they always do on a Friday and/or Saturday, when his uncle introduces them to a new game called "Dungeons & Dragons", and invites them into one of the available gaming rooms to play the game. * The idea would be give people who know nothing about D & D some context, some history on the game, and give them an idea of how it all works. Unfortunately, this first movie should use a lot of stereotyping to, not only get it out of the way for future movies, but also it gives an inexperienced audience a basis in context of the game. Such as, having the first film be taking place in the world of "Mystara", and having an adventuring party consisting of 2 male Human Fighters(a Lawful Knight-type, and a Neutral "Conan"-like type), a male Human Cleric, a male Human Magic-User, a female Human Thief, a male Dwarf, a female Elf, and a female Halfling character. * When they're creating their characters, they could speed that up by doing some clever editing using fade ins and fade outs like montage using little bits and pieces of the character creation process. Then have them about to begin one of Uncle Gary's 1st level, homebrewed adventures. As Gary begins to describe the situation and the scenery for the "Knight-Fighter" character's player, they begin to fade to the world of Mystara, with the character trotting on his horse through the town. * Then do a fade back to the real world, right in the middle of another game session with the nerdiest kid in the group now the Dungeon Master already in mid-sentence, describing a scene and a situation with a caption that appears on the screen, letting the audience know that it is now years later. Their characters are now 36th level, or something along those lines. There is a Dragon War going on. It is towards the end of a great battle that was the result of discovering that a family of Red Dragon Sorcerer-like Magic-Users that can shapechange, or shapeshift into humans, and had married into the royal family many years ago, taking control of the kingdom. * Upon discovering this treachery, a revolution broke out involving the player characters. Perhaps they were the ones who obtained the evidence that exposed this family of Red Dragons. We fade into the world of Mystara at the end of this great battle, where the dragons have decimated this kingdom, but the dragons have also all been killed save one, the oldest, most powerful dragon. The one that was posing as the King himself. Before being killed himself, he flees to his former home. An old castle atop of a cliff, beneath which lies a dungeon labyrinth. * Perhaps this dragon has also abducted the Queen, or a Princess, and taken her to this castle, which gives the player characters even more incentive to go there. First, they have to make their way through a forest, that would take too long to go around(unless they can fly by some means). There should only be a couple of relatively dangerous encounters(because we wanna get to the castle). When they get to the castle, they find that the drawbridge is up, and the portcullis is closed and locked, and yes, there is a moat with monsters in it, not crocodiles, monsters. * Perhaps while the dragons were gone, a lot of creatures and monsters have wondered into the castle, and the dungeon, and are now the denizens of the place. For instance, there could be some Hill Giants up top trying to pour a cauldron of some boiling liquid on top of them, if they get past the moat. There could also be archers. They explore the castle, dealing with any nasties until they find the entrance to the dungeon, and begin exploring it, watching out for booby traps, and collecting treasure. * They encounter the worst of the nasties in the dungeon, before finding an unfinished part of the dungeon, which turns out to be a ginormous cave in which the dragon dwells. It is resting, and was still in the process of recovering from the previous battle. It is also the dragons treasure cave. On the other side of the cave, there would be a huge hole, that opens out to the side of the cliff, which must be an alternate way of entering the cave if for some reason it cannot shapechange into human-form. * A terrible battle commences. The Dwarf, the Halfling, and the Thief might be the only characters that die throughout this adventure. The dragon is finally slain, with the Knight-like character delivering the killing blow. The movie ends in the midst of a celebration with all the survivors of the town, where the Knight is given the new title of "Dragonslayer", and then becomes the new King of that town. Then we fade back to these high school kids that are lauging and joking, and having a good time. * Perhaps as a final joke, one of the players could ask what's next on the agenda, and the DM might ask them something like "Well......are you familiar with, The Tomb of Horrors(or perhaps "The Demi-plane of Dread"), or something like that as the camera pans over, hovering over to the Dungeon Masters side of the table, showing the cover to The Tomb of Horrors, or maybe the cover of the Ravenloft boxed set(or one of its adventure modules). Fade to black, and the closing credits. * So I don't know. Wouldn't that have been a little more entertaining than the shit show that they gave us? It would've given everyone a very good idea of what a classical, if not stereotypical, D & D game would be like. Would it have worked, or would it have caused all of the chronic whiners to come out of the woodwork? I don't know. I guess we'll never know now.
Nonsensical dungeons such as these are an abomination. I thought they were legend until the internet revealed a subgroup who actually like these things. Never understood the appeal.
@@warlok363 Understood. I certainly wouldn't want to have an entire campaign run that way, but I think that you can have a pretty good 'reason' to have 'funhouse' dungeon as a change of pace. Such as on the fourth or fifth level there's a Deep Spawn that's creating the monsters, and perhaps an enchantment that is spawning the traps. It could be gritty, occasionally silly but still in keeping with S&S fantasy.
Other than Halaster, I've never seen a big dungeon that made sense to me. Who would build that? Dumb. Dungeons are just a convenient way to corral players. AND. I've been a player trying to map this bull-ish, AND I've been a DM trying to describe this bull-ish. There's some neat stuff in this milieu (😂) but it ends up being Angband or Diablo. My games are richer than that.
When designing a new dungeon, I begin with an excel spreadsheet. Change row and column width to make square cells, color the whole thing light blue (like those great early modules) and re-color cells white for rooms and passages. This has a lot of limitations but is good to make sure the layout makes sense and it's very easy to edit.
I will steal this
you can export that into paint using good ol ctrl-c ctrl-v on the desired cells to convert it to jpg or png for further editing, very useful trick ^^
@@luna-c7610 Oh nice that is cool you could then add on little images you have of things to represent places like towns, dungeon areas, towers or anything else. Hell just draw little image and take a photo on your phone drop it in and print it all off :-) great tips lads.
Player mapping needs to be brought back to the game. Revealing of a map with the online tools just isn't the same.
Having to do the mapping really makes the player pay attention to room details and makes players think of ways to not get lost like using string or chalk marks.
It just adds a whole other element to the game and to the atmosphere of a dungeon.
I 100% agree!
I miss all the Player Roles. Mapper... Caller.... etc. It took a lot of the weight off of the DM's Shoulders and helped the Players feel more invested in the game as a whole.
I recently sat-in with a group playing 5e at the FLGS. As it was a dungeon, I pulled out my graph paper and started mapping. Most of the players had never seen or heard of such a thing. All they have ever known is a DM drawing their map on a table mat for them.
I am running my 14 year old son and his friends through the 5e version of Undermountain and having them do all their own mapping. They are having a great time with it. And some disagreements as the party mapper has already gotten them lost once because he wasn't paying attention to my descriptions. Exploration and mapping like this just adds something to the game.
We used 10/12 graph paper under acetate covers and we used grease pencils to keep track of of where the party was. I played mostly among close friends but did play with a huge group as described in this video for a short time. The older guys who ran it were really into themselves and it became no fun real quick. Also played in some large convention like games at Andres Air Force base that were held on Saturdays. They were always to ambitious and usually got nowhere in the six hours they had. The price has really gone up on the original manuals since I last looked, hum.
@Creatotron usually theater of the mind. We had a few but rarely used figures. Most were for medieval ‘Chainmail’ battles
Swords and Chaos sounds like how I'm playing my Dungeon Crawl Classics campaign currently! Looks great!
Whenever I see a video like questing beast or dungeon craft tackling topics like that I always think of your channel. You are the OG. Timely subject for a video; thanks!
Thanks! Glad you liked it!
One thing that came up in my group when discussing this style of play is the issue of time paradoxes that might happen when going to a location took a long time, for example a week-long boat ride to a pirate cove, all described during a single session, but the other groups wouldn't have their time advance that much because they played more frequently than once a week.
This style of play is not for me because I usually have only a single group at a time, but the idea of an exploration campaign in the old style, with generating points of interest on the fly is very appealing.
Yeah, I think the idea is to keep the adventure locals within a reasonable traveling time.
I think this kind of play works best if you have a central 'club' location that you can go to. But it could also work well for online play. Create a discord server dedicated to the campaign and people can set up their games there.
Very keen to do it with my two groups next year.
This should be a good one! Can’t wait to see what i forgot to do over the years lol
Um, all the way back in 1e, and before, I made massive dungeons and, yeah, some were what you call 'funhouse', but most were not.
They had some rhyme and reason to them, but they were enormous.
We also did something in my area that I've never seen anyone duplicate in 5e. I'll actually be doing a video about this, myself.
And, yes, you are correct - the party always had hirelings who stayed with the horses/donkey/cart, etc. while they delved... BUT... often, those hirelings would include backup characters for the players so that if they bit it in the dungeon, they could rejoin the party...
We had four DMs in my area, myself included, and we would often employ 'West Marches' (not what we called it at the time) and parties varied based on which DM was running the game.
The KEY thing to know is that an adventure typically ended with the party returning to town... so, if a player from that group couldn't make the next game, no problem - they stayed in town.
Dungeon geomorphs!! I remember those! I wonder if I've still got those stuck away somewhere...! Thanks for the walk down memory lane, sir. 🙂
The reason why there doesn’t need to be a common thread - because each room is basically just another puzzle for the party to undertake and use their characters imagination, remember to always let the characters role playing in combat work most of the time, even skill check if preferred.
Reward your players for thinking outside the box, instead of saying no you can’t do that, have them skill check and failure means a sloppy failure.
Sudden nostalgia - those miniatures at 15:39 - I had those exact ones, the first ones I ever owned!
YES! Dungeon explorers. Love the artwork on the boxes over the actual miniatures to be fair... and I've really wanted to rebuy them, but wow are they expensive to get now.
@@captcorajus Mine were given to me by someone a couple of years older but who hadn't kept on playing D&D, he heard I was interested so just gave me a box of minis including those. Astonishing how seeing them again took me back about 40 years!
Yeah, I was also re-reading M&T just recently and my takeaway from this section was that it places a huge emphasis on screwing with the mapper. I find that good fun in moderation, but I maybe wouldn't have every other room be a stealth teleporter, rotating elevator, etc. I do love that it freely admits how some of the examples are "not suggested for actual use", though. ;)
Edit: Reposting this comment because I attempted to fix a typo in the original and UA-cam served me an error and deleted it. Silly UA-cam.
I never used mapping tricks after realizing that players made enough mistakes on their own. I was also worried that they would give up mapping entirely if they felt I was making it hard on purpose.
Right. It's a great trope but it shouldn't be over-used. If it's a rare and occasionally frustrating thing, it's just right.
Thanks captain, I'm actually making a mega dungeon right now for od&d so this has helped a lot!
Great! Glad I could be of help!
Got a campaign coming up around a megadungeon using my own ruleset and definitely using player mapping as part of the adventure.
I'm not gonna tell you if the item is important or not, but if you have limited inventory (which they do in my rules) then you should consider if it's worth keeping. Maybe set up a cache of stuff that you can't bring with you. Maybe set up a base camp with extra supplies that you can't carry with you. But I'm not keeping track of it. You'll want to mark on your map where it is.
Or there's a weird statue here that looks important but doesn't really seem to do anything. Keep track of it on the map and come back to it later.
Idk it kinda reminds me of games like Fear & Hunger.
6:19 OMG that brings back memories.
Don’t forget the combat example in the 1e DMG was from a sandbox dungeon.
Man, thanks again from all of us. Graph paper, dice, pencils, miniatures, PHB ... let's go
I love paratime maps! I just them frequently
Wow! This video was so inspiring. My dungeons were getting kinda same-y. I can't wait to surprise my players with an old school mega dungeon. 😁
The old style dungeons were cool
Thanks for sharing
Dave's Mapper makes excellent side view dungeons :)
Captain, I run my campaign semi-West March style. It’s sand boxy and open for the PCs to pursue leads as they will. I LOVE the Conan / Pulp adventure stories and have incorporated that in to my campaign with The Forbidden City (Module I1). I put a step pyramid dungeon with multiple levels in there that used a teleported to go level to level but can go haywire if the users aren’t careful. The old school dungeons that eschew ecology for rule of cool play are the best.
Great video!! 😊🙏🏼
Awesome video.....brought back a lot of memories!
Ha I have been looking up this type of campaign over this weekend what are the odds you make a vid about it? Going to be fun I am feeling with Mt OSR system.
Excellent video CC! I appreciate all the graphics that must take a lot of time to produce. I have to say that I much appreciate the ease of stocking a ready made dungeon like ‘In Search of the Unknown’. That really appealed to me as a first time DM.
Yeah it really makes DMing easy!
Well done my liege
To me this style along with the Greyhawk boxset is, and will always be, D&D
Elden Ring is Old Shool D&D, everything about it feels like a huge Sandbox FunHouse Dungeon Adventure campaign.
Backed Swords & Chaos a few days ago. Now the long wait for fulfillment....
Awesome content
Well done Cap. I’m happy to see another quality video. 🙏
I can not help but to think of Undermountian while I listen to you talk about these dungeons. Thinking about the game in this style make some of those old spells, the ones not widely used any more, make more since. I also never thought about odd angled passages being deliberate to throw off mapping. It makes since now. Game on!
I LOVE Undermountain.
Great video, Captain! Good advice
I'm still at a loss about terms like "pulp" & "spaghetti", but here it's always exciting. 😂
Great video Cap! Keep em coming!
I really like your videos. Thanks.
neat-o...i remember making stuff like this when i was a teenager playing Basic/Expert and AD&D! :) and HA! I have the monster and treasure assortment book from then!! i also have that metal paladin mini you showed which I bought at the toy store in town, but I used to just bring it to the table and set it in front of me because we used "theatre of the mind" (my first successful character to survive was a paladin) ...that said, today i kind of dislike "mega-dungeons" and prefer to make sandboxes that have a mini open-world like how "Keep on the Borderland" is laid out (but bigger area) with a central location and and nearby adventure sites with rumor tables (fun!)...I combine what I learned in "Keep" and the hex crawls of "Isle of Dread" to create my adventures now, and the adventure involves moving across a hex map from the starting point to the adventure site, then exploring the adventure site (smaller & less funhousey than a mega-dungeon), and then returning or going to a new destination via hex crawl. If I do a hex crawl, it will be adjusted in different ways -- maybe sometimes its just a narrative with set encounters, or maybe it is more detailed with chances to have random encounters or events mixed in with some "set pieces" (planned encounters, stolen from soccer vocabulary)...I still love reading the stuff Gygax wrote. Even if not all of it is in the form of useful rules, there is a lot in there to think about and make it your way!
This explains a lot about the origins of TSR's board game Dungeon!
Actually, Dungeon PREDATES D&D by a full year.
@@captcorajus the Wikipedia article i found says that Dungeon came out in 75, with D&D in 74, but a prototype was made in 72. Quibbles. In any case they were cut from the same Blackmoor cloth. I've owned the game since the early 80s and had lots of fun playing it with my friends. I picked up a more recent edition about ten years ago and got to play it with my kids.
I play with my kids and there isn’t going to be another “west marches” style group of PCs. But how about I do a little solo play, of one other pc or group of PCs. Then the main party can uncover the traces of the solo group
A nice trip down memory lane! It's easy to forget how silly the game was in the early days.
Don't go to the underworld, tis a silly place.
HEX CRAWLS!!!!!! HECK YEAH!!!!
I think this would be fun, but I can barely get a group together once a week!
Swords & Chaos looked like it had some real good art; I love hot fantasy art. WOTC put a sword in D&D trying to slay it for years luckily I found a TTRPG I love called D100 Dungeon by Martin Knight.
Thanks.
I even leave some rooms empty in case I get an idea while we are playing, if I’m not ready - just fill it empty with small nick backs.
Great informative video.
Undermountain. That's the one mega dungeon thst I've run that's like this. It swallowed parties never to be seen again
"Undermountain? Ah, yes. A great place to have fun, the most famous battlefield in which to earn a reputation as a veteran adventurer-and the largest known mass grave in Faerun today."
-Elminster of Shadowdale
I really like this and Dungeon Class' video on this topic, it really puts old-school type play into more context. I have a question about something Dungeon Class does with his campaign which is laying out everything around the starting city as one day of travel so the characters can be safe in the town at the end of each session. My question revolves around something about dungeon design which is are there other ways to make deeper parts of the dungeon more easily accessible other than through portals, teleportation circles or short cuts through the dungeon? It seems to me having only three options might get a little boring, unless I suppose things like gaseous form could even work in a dungeon as fast travel as well as over land. I was wondering if you or anyone else had more input on inter-dungeon fast travel. Thanks!
I've never been a fan of what's called the "west march" style, mainly because it always felt too open-ended and I've always enjoyed having at bare minimum a theme and scope for a campaign; on top of that D&D has to me always been a more intimate affair, not something with a "revolving door" of players (although, having seen the rise of "pickup games" in D&D, I DO think that's a solid candidate for this approach). I get that Gygax's original game was like that, but IMHO it's something that was never really "the way" of playing the game, and more just a result of it evolving from a wargame that had a club.
That being said, however, I've become enamored with the more episodic approach of adventure design in the vein of the Conan stories or the 1970s Conan comic where each adventure could see him in a different land, without the detail of how he got there, and occasionally have some linked stories or previously-encountered person show up again.
I'm fortunate in that I have a pretty steady group of players, each week. I do not make an overly plan for a 'campaign arc' but I've learned that with simply following me weekly notes one will.. ultimately emerge. Thus, the emergent story is my thing. I let the plot evolve organically through campaign events that are built off the player character's decisions.
Have you played or seen Barrowmaze or those Mega Dungeons by the same creator? Everything is so well fleshed out including factions, areas outside the dungeon, hex areas etc... of course you can just plug your own setting in and use the dungeons but damn it is really cool though, could have your party come to the area and keep games going or even use them as a plug in and play in different areas of course but using these games own settings would be better and have a party made or show up in the area. Works with all B/X type rules no problem so will do for everyone who likes Old school gaming with little to no changes for stats :-)
Am I a supporter of the "lost" cross sectional maps? Flip your copy of Chromatic Dungeons Basic book to page 51 ;)
When designing outdoor or building / underground adventures - keep in mind the hundreds of hours of down time for your 'monsters'... The design must have some logical setup for the creatures and people that live there. Storage, food, water, and Purpose - why have a bunch of rooms, what is their business or motovation ? The community of opponents must follow their version of logic, reason, practicality and usefullness. The player adventurers are usually the unwelcome intruders into their world. What is the reason your rag - time team of rebels or Shining Paladins come into conflict with the unknown ?
Dudes…
Use pen and paper. Just go spend $2 at staples and buy some graph paper and start at it.
Make a map, number the rooms.
Start inhabiting your rooms. Don’t worry about if it makes sense, because in the beginning there were very thin membranes of segueing rooms.
Sure make some rooms where mobs run away to get reinforcements or what not, but yeah just use your imagination, NO RULES WHEN IMAGINAING.
I still use the 3.5 rules, I consider them tactically flexible and easy to teach to new players. A lot of the hard copy material that I have is 1st Edition AD&D, core books and soft cover adventuring modules. I also do internet research to use OSR modules and port them into 3.5. My latest pet project will be the descent into the depths style megadungeon. The PC's can explore it or not, but if they settle on going right through it. I plan to have it make a certain amount of ecological sense; while engaging that very fun house flavour, when considering the whole. Differing races, underworld factions and ecology; all combining to keep my players on their toes and not knowing what to expect, when they are 10 torches deep.
What is that map of at the beginning of your video and how was it made? Was it some software?
I'm assuming you're talking about the wilderness map? Do a google image search, 'west march campain' and you'll see many such maps. I can't say for sure, but it looks like it was created with inkarnate.
@@captcorajus Yup thats the one I'm referring to. I like the simple art on it and would want to use a similar design for a West Marches campaign. Thanks for that!
Also on a sidenote, really enjoy your content my friend. As I continue diving into OSR style stuff, its nice to see theres a community out there with similar interests. Cheers!
Anyone know where I can get the maps on ArtStation printed to scale? Been searching everywhere so I can get some old school battle maps printed but no luck, I am in the UK but don't mind pay extra to have it done overseas
I really enjoy this channel and I've subscribed; however, having the name of the channel in all lower-case (captcorajus) and no space between capt & corajus is like a splinter in my mind. Perhaps you could update the channel name to include a couple of capital letters (even with no space) such as CaptCorajus. Anyway, great channel with great content for ol' grognards and for those of us who are new to OSR alike. Keep up the good work!
The name comes about a full decade before I started my channedl. I was trying to create a unique log on name for gaming that no one else would have. I didn't created it specifically for my review channel. It HAS been updated as much as UA-cam ALLOWS a channel to be updtated. I've added RPG Retro Reviews to the name, but it doesn't show up on the list.. if you know how to make it show up, i'm all ears.
5e works amazing with this kind of dungeon. It's basically designed to be a dungeon crawling system and that's where it kinda went wrong. People don't use it as a dungeon crawling system, resulting in numerous disparities in power.
My issue with 5E is that it actually spoils the Dungeon Crawling experience IMHO. Too many character abilities and spells just solve problems that players use to have to 'think' their way out of.
Pack of the Chain Warlock has a familiar that can basically explore the dungeon for you, while the party waits outside.
There are no encumbrance rules, and just about every race has infravision.
* This is a little off topic but, speaking of designing dungeons, how come they've never given us a really kick-ass Dungeons & Dragons movie yet? Would I be way out of line by saying that the 3 films that they've given us, kind of sucked ass? We need a Dungeons & Dragons film that is literally on par with Lord of the Rings. I'm talking, like that. I know that 1 year from now, they're going to release another one, starring Chris Pine. All I know about it, is that it's going to be taking place in The Forgotten Realms campaign setting, because they mention the nation of "Thay".
* So it might involve "Szass Tam" the Zulkir Lich High Regent of Thay. They also mention a female Wood Elf, and a female Tabaxi(which is a type of cat-like bipedal humanoid that appeared in the 1.5 edition Fiend Folio). I always wondered why they didn't just have the 1st movie show a group of 4-7 high school kids in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin in 1974, who get together at the nerdiest kid in the group's uncle "Gary's" hobby shop in town, to use one of the gaming rooms to play the "Chainmail" wargame as they always do on a Friday and/or Saturday, when his uncle introduces them to a new game called "Dungeons & Dragons", and invites them into one of the available gaming rooms to play the game.
* The idea would be give people who know nothing about D & D some context, some history on the game, and give them an idea of how it all works. Unfortunately, this first movie should use a lot of stereotyping to, not only get it out of the way for future movies, but also it gives an inexperienced audience a basis in context of the game. Such as, having the first film be taking place in the world of "Mystara", and having an adventuring party consisting of 2 male Human Fighters(a Lawful Knight-type, and a Neutral "Conan"-like type), a male Human Cleric, a male Human Magic-User, a female Human Thief, a male Dwarf, a female Elf, and a female Halfling character.
* When they're creating their characters, they could speed that up by doing some clever editing using fade ins and fade outs like montage using little bits and pieces of the character creation process. Then have them about to begin one of Uncle Gary's 1st level, homebrewed adventures. As Gary begins to describe the situation and the scenery for the "Knight-Fighter" character's player, they begin to fade to the world of Mystara, with the character trotting on his horse through the town.
* Then do a fade back to the real world, right in the middle of another game session with the nerdiest kid in the group now the Dungeon Master already in mid-sentence, describing a scene and a situation with a caption that appears on the screen, letting the audience know that it is now years later. Their characters are now 36th level, or something along those lines. There is a Dragon War going on. It is towards the end of a great battle that was the result of discovering that a family of Red Dragon Sorcerer-like Magic-Users that can shapechange, or shapeshift into humans, and had married into the royal family many years ago, taking control of the kingdom.
* Upon discovering this treachery, a revolution broke out involving the player characters. Perhaps they were the ones who obtained the evidence that exposed this family of Red Dragons. We fade into the world of Mystara at the end of this great battle, where the dragons have decimated this kingdom, but the dragons have also all been killed save one, the oldest, most powerful dragon. The one that was posing as the King himself. Before being killed himself, he flees to his former home. An old castle atop of a cliff, beneath which lies a dungeon labyrinth.
* Perhaps this dragon has also abducted the Queen, or a Princess, and taken her to this castle, which gives the player characters even more incentive to go there. First, they have to make their way through a forest, that would take too long to go around(unless they can fly by some means). There should only be a couple of relatively dangerous encounters(because we wanna get to the castle). When they get to the castle, they find that the drawbridge is up, and the portcullis is closed and locked, and yes, there is a moat with monsters in it, not crocodiles, monsters.
* Perhaps while the dragons were gone, a lot of creatures and monsters have wondered into the castle, and the dungeon, and are now the denizens of the place. For instance, there could be some Hill Giants up top trying to pour a cauldron of some boiling liquid on top of them, if they get past the moat. There could also be archers. They explore the castle, dealing with any nasties until they find the entrance to the dungeon, and begin exploring it, watching out for booby traps, and collecting treasure.
* They encounter the worst of the nasties in the dungeon, before finding an unfinished part of the dungeon, which turns out to be a ginormous cave in which the dragon dwells. It is resting, and was still in the process of recovering from the previous battle. It is also the dragons treasure cave. On the other side of the cave, there would be a huge hole, that opens out to the side of the cliff, which must be an alternate way of entering the cave if for some reason it cannot shapechange into human-form.
* A terrible battle commences. The Dwarf, the Halfling, and the Thief might be the only characters that die throughout this adventure. The dragon is finally slain, with the Knight-like character delivering the killing blow. The movie ends in the midst of a celebration with all the survivors of the town, where the Knight is given the new title of "Dragonslayer", and then becomes the new King of that town. Then we fade back to these high school kids that are lauging and joking, and having a good time.
* Perhaps as a final joke, one of the players could ask what's next on the agenda, and the DM might ask them something like "Well......are you familiar with, The Tomb of Horrors(or perhaps "The Demi-plane of Dread"), or something like that as the camera pans over, hovering over to the Dungeon Masters side of the table, showing the cover to The Tomb of Horrors, or maybe the cover of the Ravenloft boxed set(or one of its adventure modules). Fade to black, and the closing credits.
* So I don't know. Wouldn't that have been a little more entertaining than the shit show that they gave us? It would've given everyone a very good idea of what a classical, if not stereotypical, D & D game would be like. Would it have worked, or would it have caused all of the chronic whiners to come out of the woodwork? I don't know. I guess we'll never know now.
Which map is the first one in this video?
what is the name of the opening music??? i adore it!
it might be two songs?? idk, if anyone can tell me i’d appreciate it a lot :)
Nonsensical dungeons such as these are an abomination. I thought they were legend until the internet revealed a subgroup who actually like these things. Never understood the appeal.
Give me more 'abominations' then! lol.. the appeal is they are fun, and they are challenging.
Wow, I bet you’re fun at parties
I personally despise "fun house" style dungeons with arbitrary crap. Traps and sprawl are fine, but it all needs to be grounded in reason.
Reason is over rated. 🤣 sometimes its just okay to have a bit of fun working out traps, and fighting monsters.
@@captcorajus I get that I just think it runs counter to a gritty S&S style that I enjoy.
@@warlok363 Understood. I certainly wouldn't want to have an entire campaign run that way, but I think that you can have a pretty good 'reason' to have 'funhouse' dungeon as a change of pace.
Such as on the fourth or fifth level there's a Deep Spawn that's creating the monsters, and perhaps an enchantment that is spawning the traps. It could be gritty, occasionally silly but still in keeping with S&S fantasy.
Other than Halaster, I've never seen a big dungeon that made sense to me. Who would build that? Dumb.
Dungeons are just a convenient way to corral players.
AND. I've been a player trying to map this bull-ish, AND I've been a DM trying to describe this bull-ish. There's some neat stuff in this milieu (😂) but it ends up being Angband or Diablo. My games are richer than that.