Caves of the Unknown – Cobweb Caverns
By G. Bruce MacKenzie
In an earlier article I’d posted a map which enticingly links to the KOTB map. The map of level 1 was meant to inspire others to develop their own maps. Meanwhile I continued to work on my own under the auspices of an independent adventure, The Cobweb Caverns. This eventually became the adventure Wildwood, which is set entirely in another land and was created as a module for the Chimera Role Playing GameTM.
As you may or may not know the I and J series maps from the Judges Guild were very interesting and inspiring to me and although they did not have a dungeon text they provided hours of entertainment as I added my own content. The maps which follow here are presented in the same spirit, that is I hope you find them entertaining.
There are a few symbols on the maps from the Wildwood/Cobweb Caverns adventure which may require some explanation. There is a horrible monster on level 3. There are symbols carved in the walls by the Guardians who seek to keep this terror contained.
The key to the symbols is provided as follows, its also on the maps:
The monstrous horror cannot escape past map key 31 unless the Gate of Legend is carelessly left open by adventurers. The small red circle represents how small the creature may compress itself but its full size is indicated by the large circle. Note even that at its smallest size the creature cannot enter 10′ tunnels. By no means does anyone have to follow this, I offer it as an explanation.
The maps were drawn in Inkscape and I took some pains to develop an independent system of non TSR map symbols. For those that like to draw their own maps some years ago I uploaded the map symbols in a template to wikimediacommons. They are available there. Note that the symbols have a style; all traps have a triangle in them in one corner, ceiling symbols have a dot in one corner.
Well, on to the maps. They represent the finished work in Wildwood with its Cobweb Caverns dungeon. You can download the maps by right clicking them, they are in PNG format.
Level 1
Level 2
Level 3
Level 4
Level 5
Where can I get this set of maps with a key? It looks like just the kind of thing I want for my games.
Hi, Sorry for not replying sooner. The key to the map symbols is on the first map.
The maps are fabulous!
I am starting to do maps in Inkscape and back in 2011 there was a forum post saying you had some assets for Inkscape for drawing dungeons. I can’t find them on this blog. Are they still available please?
Hi Bob,
No problem. I did put them on Wikimedia Commons:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Goblyn_Dungeon_Map_Template_and_Map_Symbols.svg
I’ll look at my cd library tomorrow and see what else I have. If you need an explanation let me know.
Greg
Hi Bob,
I didn’t get a chance this weekend as things turn out but I’ll do that today and send you some examples by private email. My technique is to draw things in layers. Once you see an example it should help you quite a bit.
Greg
wow you made this years ago this is so amazing. I copied the first level and downloaded what you wrote for that (and realized it needed encounters and such), I started working on that for my group of friends. The story is a half elf named Eltherius entered the caves many many years ago, he was famous for his exploits, many solo or with just one or two others (so rather foolish), and he had some extraordinary magic items on him (a circlet and a broadsword), with unusual properties. They are in search of what became of him, but mostly to recover those magic items. In my head, I a whole myconid community and ecosytem imagined when I started reading your description of level 1 but… apparently not. Now that I know you have so many more levels, can you tell me the concept of what you wrote out for yours. I think I’d like to get the idea, then write it out or possibly run what you wrote. I’ll save my myconid concept for another dungeon (the story on this one is that there’s an abandoned dwarven mine, the first 3 levels are taken over by gigantic spiders (the reason for abadonment), plus cloakers, rust monsters and cave peircers and stirges, but after that another couple levels explores a natural cavern system that has the myconids, and I’ll swipe some of your descripton of level 1 for that adventure.
Please let me know if you are still reading this forum!
Hi Jeff, I’m still here! I’m really glad you are enjoying the maps. 🙂 Sounds like you are having fun with them. I always found maps inspiring so what you are doing sounds really great. If you wanted to contribute an article to BreeYark about your dungeon Erin and I would love to have it.
I shared the maps here because I know how much fun I had with the maps that the Judges Guild used to sell so many years ago. I had written a couple of adventure modules for Erin Smale’s Chimera Role Playing GameTM. The first module is Gloomland which is available at BreeYark for free as a kind of OSR homage to KOTB. The second I haven’t got around to converting yet but the idea is this:
There once was an ancient and powerful people who made war upon their neighbours. They controlled an army of war spiders but these proved to be their downfall and they were destroyed by them. Their civilization lies in ruins. Dwarves, in search of the treasures of the underworld, found a spider egg in the dungeon, which unfortunately for them hatched releasing one of the war spiders. This spider is kept imprisoned in the underworld by “Elvish Guardians” to prevent it from escaping into the forest above. It is too big to get through small 10′ tunnels and the Elves keep the door to the dungeon below shut to keep it in. The dungeon gets a little weird the deeper one goes as it has a second theme of ancient Cthonic evil and a spot where a meteor crashed into the dungeon providing a way in for a Dragon nursing a grudge against the Baron of Gloomland but the war spider can’t get out through the hole by the way. Here is a link to Wildwood https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hkWp5oC5hAK_LkNGdhM67muwFiCdgVJ_/view?usp=drive_link. You might enjoy it and you can pick out what you find useful to you. I’ll get around to converting Wildwood to OSR one of these days…
This BreeYark site really belongs to Erin Smale but I am looking after it and currently writing a series of articles about how to make a 3 level introductory dungeon by hand as an introduction to start playing. I don’t know if you have seen those. I am trying to tie the really old rules and everything in between to BECMI adventures. The idea will be to drop the hand made dungeon into one of the KOTB maps, somewhere…
Many thanks for writing! It is always interesting to hear from other people.
Greg
There is an article here about Gloomland and the PDF can be downloaded. https://breeyark.org/gloomland-a-travel-stone-adventure/