The Moathouse Dungeons (Patreon)

While I often point to In Search of the Unknown as one of my favourite and ideal dungeon adventures (since it comes unstocked, even the “empty” rooms have a nice description), there is no denying that T1 Village of Hommlet is a near perfect module all the way through. While studying what makes it tick so well, I decided to spend a day focused entirely on the dungeon level and how it comes together. And there’s nothing that gives me a better feel for a dungeon than sitting down and drawing the map again and reading out each room as I draw it.

I was struck once again with the similarities between this dungeon and the much larger “Dungeon of the Fire Opal” from the AD&D1e DMG with the distinct zones between the undead and other residents, the weird geometry, and a lot more negative space than we saw in most of Gary’s previous designs (just look at his maps for Castle Greyhawk – almost zero negative space all told).

For this redraw, I went with 5′ squares instead of the traditional 10′ squares – but I drew it at my usual scale, so it comes to 150 pixels per square. Converting this to use with most VTTs would involve shrinking it to 70 pixels per square. In addition to this tagged version, I included an untagged version (no secret doors or room numbers) on the blog.

https://dysonlogos.blog/2020/07/21/the-moathouse-dungeons/