I’ve been working on the design and redesign of my version of the Castle Greyhawk mega-dungeon for nearly as along as I’ve been playing D&D:  I began construction of it in the early 1980s, when I designed the schema below for my vision of the castle dungeons’ depth and breadth of levels—it’s “footprint” in the Oerth of the Cairn Hills. 



grodog’s Castle Greyhawk – levels 1-10 elevation

and

grodog’s Castle Greyhawk – levels 10-17 elevation


I conceived the plan for my castle to fit within this elevation footprint of the levels, which would allow me sufficient depth and distance between the levels that I could flexibly add to overall structure with new levels, sub-levels, side levels, and such, easily as needed.  Or so I thought at the time….

The redesign work began again around 2006-2008, in response to the many discussions over at the Knights & Knaves Alehouse and Dragonsfoot on mega-dungeon design, and I eventually began to codify my new vision for both the castle and the levels beneath it:




grodog’s Castle Greyhawk – new sketch map
for ruins and wilderness environs


The environs map above replaced my original castle ruins level, which was much more prosaic, was designed with little regard for actual castle construction techniques, and was drawn before I’d even visited a real castle, all of which informed the newer design.

The image below is my first pass at a comprehensive inventory of my Castle Greyhawk dungeon levels:



A partial inventory of the dungeon levels in
my version of Castle Greyhawk

I’ve gone through my Castle folders and binders to compile the levels that weren’t already listed in my web site, on my blog, online in FB, or in discussions at the Knights & Knaves Alehouse or Dragonsfoot, and think I’ve got them all in the mix now (or at least the ones that I’ve mapped and/or mapped and keyed—I’ve got other ideas for levels that aren’t more than just concepts yet, of course). 

In the lower-right quadrant of the inventory, I also listed notes on levels designed by Gygax, Kuntz, Eric Shook, and other folks that I’ve considered incorporating into my overall schema for the dungeon environs. I’ve always planned to cherry-pick favorite levels and/or maps to insert alongside my own designs, but hadn’t quite gotten around to making those selections, inter-connections, and “to-design” decisions—for example, for some of Gygax’s levels that I only have a map for, without a key, so I’d need to do that design work myself in order to play that level map.  


In addition to the level maps, I need to inventory the keys too; these are somewhat centralized in my keys binder, but many associated notes are also scattered in my gaming design journals, too, which complicates pulling them together:

grodog’s gaming journals and notes


The open journal is my older one, and spans from 4 February 2001 (it was a Y2K Christmas gift from my sister) to 31 January 2007.  The larger, closed book (another Christmas gift) runs from 24 February 2007 to the present, but it’s almost out of pages.  You can also see a small clipped together pile of scrap notes, many of which are also inserted into the pages of the journals willy-nilly, just to keep things interesting (ha!). 

All of this info is linked to from my Castle Grehawk web page, but it isn’t readily apparently and accessible—that page needs some serious updating, which will follow-on from this work, too.  Until that’s done, here are some quick links to give you a sense of the ruins level for my version of Castle Greyhawk and its top-most dungeon levels:

Dig in, and if you have Qs, let me know! =)

Allan.