Dungeon Geomorph Basic Building Blocks

I was playing around with my dungeon geomorphs some more and broke them down into the basic 5 by 5 shapes that can be combined to create all sorts of rooms, tunnels, etc. Here are the building blocks, with a few additional ones added, and a few rooms made from them.

Also, a couple of quick examples of how the shapes could easily be redrawn to depict rough caves, which could be mixed in with the more refined blocks.

Of course, these will result in 2-dimensional, orthogonal dungeons, but I could always add in a few special rooms and tunnels as desired. Even pre-populated ones, rooms pulled from other dungeons, etc., to add some extra spice to a dungeon crawl.
I've also been thinking about visibility. For example, maybe I only check for doorways when they are within visible range (line of sight and lighting). For example, if the party enters that L-shaped room above from either end, they won't be able to see if the other end has any openings or not, until they get into the middle area. They may find it's a dead-end, but they may not even discover that until they've completed any encounter in the area first. Maybe light sources could affect what's visible as well. Creatures and characters with abilities to see in the dark wouldn't be affected, but others would only be able to see as far as light sources allowed. This is where candles, torches, lanterns, magic lighting, ambient or carried by the party, or even floating lights that can be sent around by a magic-user could all play a role. Still, I would want to keep it simple. Maybe something like, candles can light 1 "arena" (as they are called in OSH; and which basically correspond to one 5 by 5 tile in my geomorphs), torches 2 arenas, lanterns 3, magic - depends on the magic. I found some simple templates for tracking how many turns/rounds/what have you a torch or light source lasts. Some things can douse the light, temporarily or more long term. Torches and other light sources may also be found in the dungeon. For now I don't expect a dungeon adventure to last so long in game time to make food or water much of a concern, but in the event it could be I would lean towards simple rules for that as well. These kinds of resources do provide opportunities for things to go wrong or right, stuff gets damaged or stolen or lost, other stuff is found along the way, etc.
Of course, it's all too easy to make things overly complex, so to start out at least, I think I won't worry about lighting and just assume there is sufficient lighting one way or another. Line of sight visibility should make things interesting enough for starters.

Dungeon Geomorphs

One of the RPG rulessets I've been looking at is "Old School Hack". I love the simplicity of these rules, and the great graphic design of them. You can find a free download for them at http://www.oldschoolhack.net/ or another version at http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaigns/old-school-hack-the-fictive-way
At first glance I thought they might not be suitable for solo play, but the more I look at them I think they can still work. The "awesome point" economy might need some judgement calls, and may be possible to make a little more objective assuming I get going on playing the game. I've been collecting a bunch of the monsters from the few available sources into my own sort of monster folio, for my own use. I will likely do some tweaking and hopefully add more as I go.

I have also been working on a set of cards to randomize encounters and treasures, for dungeon crawls to start with. I admit I am enamored of cards, because they are easy to customize from game to game, add new stuff, drop stuff, etc. as the game evolves. For encounters I have the main encounter cards, which include monsters, some traps, cards with minor stuff or nothing of consequence, etc. In addition, I have a set of cards to modify or add to Encounters. These are cards that do things like add or subtract from the monsters, have one time events, reinforcements for the monsters, and other sort of temporary or timely things happening. Again, some of the cards do nothing or only add color, without affecting game play. I also have a set of treasure cards, with the usual stuff, from a few coins to jewels and minor magic items, as well as nothing at all or mundane items (some, like a bag of marbles - could be useful, but isn't going to bring in much money; others are really not likely to be of much use, but who knows.).

I have also been working on some dungeon geomorphs. The pictures below show some of the ones I've drawn so far. I also have some larger rooms of various shapes. I will find a way to randomize these (more cards?), as well as where doors are, what type (open doorway, open door, closed door, jammed open or closed, locked, etc.), and "arena" types for the parts of the rooms and hallways, based on the OSH arena types.

Here are some of the elements, all based on 5 by 5 squares so they can fit together well. The inside walls are all squared off, but they could be drawn as rough irregular cavern walls as well. That's just aesthetics and doesn't really have any effect in OSH.

And here is an example map. This shows how pieces can be linked together, with openings closed off as needed. Everything that is gray is solid, impassible.

Using the same 5 by 5 basic building block you could also include special pre-designed rooms/halls/areas. Probably as "one offs". I think that could be a way to include rooms from published adventures/dungeons as additional special random places.

In practice, other than the entry room, I only used rooms with openings on all of the exposed centers of each 5 by 5 square and closed some off as I went. You can see where I covered the ones that aren't open. I just need to work out how to randomize which are open and which aren't. As I type this I realize, that could be as simple as rolling for each opening that doesn't match up with an existing opening in any adjacent rooms or hallways, with something like 50/50 chance of it being open or not.

Test Map

Following on from my previous post I tried out the random mapping just to see what I might come up with. I've tried both having the rivers follow the hex edges and flow through the middle. This example is one with them following the edges. I'll post an example of the other type once I get it cleaned up. Since I didn't have any paper with large hexes handy when I did the tests I just drew some really rough "hexes" (and a few pentagons and other shapes) on paper with pencil, scanned the result later when I had access to my scanner, and then cleaned it all up in a drawing program.

Random Mapping

I've looked around and have also been doing some fiddling of my own on the subject of generating overland maps. The sort of small scale "wilderland" maps where one hex or other unit represents a fairly large area, something on the order of 30 miles across. Inspired by games like Source of the Nile, which I had many hours of fun with when I owned a copy "back in the day", and Adventures in Jimland, which I have also derived quite a bit of fun from more recently, I jotted down some notes and toyed around with generating maps. I'm still experimenting, but I'm hoping I might get more organized by writing this up, and possibly get some thoughtful feedback. (caveat: I'm making a number of assumptions based on my interests, the kind of game and the kind of "wilderland" I want, so everything here is subject to my taste and not set in stone)

So my preliminary explorations have taken me to this point:
I tried breaking down things into a few simple basic categories. So I have Elevation, divided into Low, Flat, Hilly, Mountainous. Of course, these are very coarse categories and meant to be relative, not absolute, nor does it cover how rugged the hills and mountains are.
The other main category I have is Vegetation, divided into Forest, Mixed (a mix of woods and open spaces, and/or open woodlands), and Open (grasslands, heaths, prairies, etc.). As I have decided the area I am starting with has a moist temperate climate (like England, more or less) I am leaving out drier "vegetation" for now. No deserts in this region, nor tundras or permafrost. There would be a chance for swamps, fens, bogs, marshes, or the like. In general terms, Wetlands (possibly with or without trees), in Low or Flat hexes, especially if there are sources of water, such as a river flowing through the area.

The gist of the idea is that a party would start out in a known hex. Their home base/town, on the edge of the wilderlands. The elevation and vegetation can be rolled for or decided by "executive fiat". This could be just a single starting hex or a line of hexes representing the known boundary. There should probably be at least one known river flowing out of (or even into, depending on taste). If there is a river or rivers those would be likely places for the main frontier towns.

So far I've tried something along these lines:
Roll 1D6 for Elevation of any starting hexes:
1 : Low
2-4 : Flat
5-6 : Hilly

Roll 1D6 for Vegetation in each starting hex:
1: Open
2-3 : Mixed
4-6 : Forest

If the hex is Low or Flat Elevation roll 1D6 again (subtract 1 from the roll if there is a river bordering or touching the hex):
1 :  Lake
2-4 : Wetland (based on "original" Vegetation; so, if the original was Open, it's an open swamp or fen; if the original was Mixed, it's a mix of open swamp/fen, with trees mixed in; and if the original was Forest it's a swampy forest)
5-6 : keep Vegetation as rolled above

As the party explores, the map gets added to. I have toyed with various ideas for this. For example, if I want to assume we start out on the lower elevations of some continent there could be a chance the elevation will be generally increase as one travels farther into the wilderlands.

Roll 1D6 for Elevation and compare to the hex you just left:
1 : Elevation decreases
2-3 : Elevation remains the same
4-5 : Elevation increases
6 : special (1 : Elevation decreases by 2; 2-3 : Elevation increases by 2; 4 : plateau; 5 : Elevation remains the same, but becomes more rugged; 6 : Elevation remains the same, but there's a river (cannot flow through any known hexes, so roll randomly for which hex sides it flows into and out of. If there is only one open hex side left the river has to flow out of this hex through that side.)  - these are just ideas, not tried out nor have I really worked out what they would mean in terms of encounters and such)

Roll 1D6 for vegetation and compare to the hex you just left:
1 : Vegetation "decreases" (Forest becomes Mixed, Mixed becomes Open. Could extend the Vegetation types and say Open becomes sparse?)
2-4 : Vegetation remains the same
5 : Vegetation "increases" (opposite of above. Could extend Forest to bogs, swamp, or rainforest, depending on Elevation (and/or ruggedness))
6 : special (1 : Vegetation decreases by 2; 2 : Vegetation increases by 2; 3 : recently burned; 4 : recently flooded; 5 : dense forest; 6 : impassable rugged terrain - these are just ideas, not tried out nor have I really worked out what they would mean in terms of encounters and such)

Roll 1D6 for Rivers:
1 : river turns left by one hex side
2 : river turns right by 1 hex side
3 : river turns left by 2 hex sides
4 : river turns right by 2 hex sides
5 : river turns opposite of last direction (that is, if the last river turning for that river was left it goes right and vice versa. This is to reduce the chance of a "corkscrew" river spiraling in on itself.)
6 : river forks, roll again for each branch (assuming 2 branches)

Alternate Rivers table, 1D6:
1 : river turns left by 1
2 : river turns right by 1
3 : river turns left (1-3) or right (4-6) by 2
4 : river turns opposite of last turning
5 : river forks, roll again for each branch (assuming 2 branches)
6 : special (1-2 : lake; 3-4 : swamp (if Elevation is Low or Flat) or cataract (if Elevation is Hilly or Mountainous); 5-6 : river ends, as a spring or small lake if going upstream or goes underground if going downstream)

Of course, a lot is left to the imagination to fill in details, rationale for what comes up, etc. This was my latest incarnation based on previous versions that I have tried out just to see what kinds of results and questions came up in the exercise, re-worked here in the course of typing it out. I will play around with it more myself. If anyone has any thoughts or actually tries it out I'd be interested to read your comments. Keep in mind, I "designed" (rather grandiose word for what I did here! ha ha) this to generate fairly simple basic terrain of large areas, not detailed in any way. I want details to arise in game play, encounters, etc.