Saturday, June 29, 2013

Doodle Downs [Mini-Mega-Dungeon]

This is how things start...
I was waiting in the break room after work, doodling on the back of a vacation request form. My doodling usually takes the form of  geometric patterns that repeat and build on each other. I looked down at what I was drawing the other night and said "Hey that looks like a dungeon."

So I switched gears and kept building on the doodle, now with the intent of covering the entire page with a mini-mega-dungeon. I had already doodled a little adventurer dude on a different part of the paper, and as the doodle dungeon spread from the corner where I started, I figured I'd just incorporate him. Now the little fighter guy was wicked huge fighter guy. What is he? a massive statue? The corpse of a giant? A dead godling? Some folks on the Google Plus suggested he's an ordinary sized guy and the dungeon is made for pixies. Who knows.

My goal was not to think about the structure of the dungeon as I drew it. Just let my hand wander, drawing as things came. Room, room , room, hallway, hallway, hallway, door, insert circular chamber here, pop in a lake there. No planning. It's given it a neat organic look.

Click for a much, much larger version

The map was drawn all freehand on the back of a standard letter-sized sheet of xerox paper with crappy ballpoint pens. I did it over three days in little bursts where I had some free time.

I'll probably never actually use this map, but it was fun. If you happen to use it for any of your games, please gimmie a shout to let me know how it turns out!

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