I drew most of this level last night, and noodled on it more today over breakfast and lunch.  It’s about 80% done or so—I need to work on the detailing more, to make some decisions on areas that aren’t connected to the rest of the level yet, insert intra-level elevations, etc., as usual.

I wanted to focus on some specific design goals for the flow:

  • visible areas that are on/off inaccessible via portcullises, also with several one-way doors in the mix (including some off of the entry chamber; I need to add some more portcullises too)
  • some larger, more-open spaces, including a dragon lair perhaps (or one for a clutch of sibling sub-adults!)
  • several mini-hubs that corridors/rooms radiate outward from
  • a more middle-of-the-road level of complexity vs. my usual more-elaborately-tormenting designs ;)


Beyond what I noted above (and some miscellaneous very light notes on the map), I don’t have a specific ideas in mind for the key, but I do envision this as a more upper-level, perhaps even an alternate primary entry route into the dungeons.

I got the idea to start another new level when browsing through OSRIC for an unrelated product, and I rediscovered Sean “Stonegiant” Stone‘s starting area VI on page 159 (in the PDF).  (My entry point is the 30’ wide stair leading down into the level, center-ish in the lower-left quadrant):

grodog's "Behind Bars" level - first draft map
grodog’s “Behind Bars” level – first draft map

The full-size version is available @ http://www.greyhawkonline.com/grodog/gh_castle_grodog_level-behind-bars-01.jpg

The other articles in my Mega-Dungeon Maps series include:

Allan.