Black and white dungeon map, old-school style.

[Turanil]

I have done this dungeon floor plan in black and white, "old-school" style (Yes, I know: this "old-school" term is really becoming annoying, but I don't know what other term to use).

I created a grid with Photoshop, hand-drew a background texture to fill around the walls, and hand-drew a number of symbols to put on the map. I then drew the straight and clean walls with Illustrator, and added a cavern using the tablet + Photoshop. Overall I am satisfied with the resulting style, which is what I wanted to obtain.

There is this "map-cliché" from old TSR maps, that all corridors and walls are perfectly straight with precise 90 degrees angles, etc. This is of course completely ridiculous (why and how those who build dungeons would do them like that, instead of in a more random and practical manner?), but I like it from an aesthetic point of view. Nonetheless, I added some cavern and rooms with rough boundaries, to break the overall too clean aspect of the floor-plan.

I plan (what a pun...) to do other dungeon maps in this style. I am happy with the overall style (grid, symbols, etc.), but now I am wondering about what I should feature on such future maps, so they might make for interesting RPG adventures (which is the main point). A simple bunch of square rooms linked by straight corridors is already boring. There is only so much temples with columns and octagonal rooms that can be added. Right now I have an idea (for a future map) of adding a huge tree trunk and its roots that could go across a couple of underground dungeon levels; entrance would be directly carved into the trunk where it emerges on the surface (or maybe higher). So my question is: do you have any suggestions for other interesting features?

Other than that: I release these two maps under the Creative Commons Attribution + Noncommercial use. The blank one is for GMs who want to fill them at their leisure for their own use, maybe releasing a free module on their own with it, on the Internet. This will be the same for other such maps that I may later release.

[Coriolis]

I love the classic approach (I prefer "classic" to "Old School"). So many CC dungeon maps seem soulless. This looks like a map I would actually use in a game.