Wednesday 29 January 2020

The Caves of Chaos - complete map

Here we are at the end of our journey through the Caves of Chaos.



Here's a link to a large version of the map. I'm very pleased at how it turned out.

I've had great time blogging again this last 12 days - and I managed to post every day. Here are all the individual lair maps:

A: Kobold Lair
B: Orc Lair #1
C: Orc Lair #2
D: Goblin Lair
E: Ogre Lair
F: Hobgoblin Lair
G: The Shunned Lair
H: Bugbear Lair
I: Caves of the Minotaur
J: Gnoll Lair
K: Shrine of Evil Chaos

I have generated a to-do list of things I want to fix:

- Add in the slopes described in the module but omitted from the map
- Mark which of the alcoves are fireplaces (as specified in, and inferred from, the text) - especially for #9.
- Add text near the entrance to K
- Remove the screen from #59
- Fix the width of the wide corridor top left where it gets narrowed
- Add C for Gelatinous Cube in the two alcoves (all fixes for The Shrine)
- Enlarge the obviously too-small #38
- Join the dead ends in the Goblin Lair with collapsed tunnels

That's two fixes for the map which were apparently lost when they created the map for the original module, two fixes for how I've presented the map, three minor map-improvements and one encounter change. I think it's acceptable to have a couple of minor tweaks that are my own whilst still presenting it as "The" Caves of Chaos rather than "My" Caves of Chaos.

I'm musing over what to tackle next - a review of Gunderholfen or Old School Essentials, redraw the Caves with the fixes, do one of the other B2 maps (the ravine/the wilderness/the keep), complete & publish my redone key for the caves, my look-up tables for on-the-fly extra details, draw a publishable version of my own multi-level Castle Blood dungeon (with all it's complex inter-level connections), or do a map of the fascinating local former Medieval Priests College which I now have a personal attachment to!

Whatever it is, let's not leave it three years until the next post this time...

5 comments:

  1. Great job. In your opinion, whats the next module to run after B2 from a campaign perspective?

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  2. Thanks. When we played it we moved on to X1, which seemed to work well for us. Then we did the Slavers, then the Giants, then the Drow, then we threw Q1 in the bin and replaced it with a home grown alternative adventure.

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  3. Thanks. I'm running B2 on a personal vision: "The Citadel of Chaos". I'm just swap cave for masonry. I think this is a proper module to build a megadungeon "down" for it, step by step, and your work here help a lot.

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  4. Hi there. The link to the complete map seems to be daed. Is there any way to access the complete map please? Great work BTW!

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  5. I've updated the link, so it should work again. Glad you like it! I'm thinking of doing some maps like this for the blog of real life underground cities from Cappadocia, which are extremely D&D like, and are providing me with a lot of inspiration about what a real dungeon would be like.

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